CIO November 15 2009 Issue by Sreekanth Sastry

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11/18/2011 3:14:54 PM

From The Editor-in-Chief

“For a tree to become tall it must grow tough roots among the rocks.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

A year back, CIOs and industry gurus told us that the only ways to beat the economic

Forward Looking 2010 is likely to be the year of buoyancy and hope.

slowdown was to get smarter, get the basics right, and get at the money, while keeping a close watch on customers. The slump didn’t seem to have a horizon then, though macro-economic guru Dr. Subir Gokarn did point to October-November 2009 as the time when the dark clouds would begin to lift. Dr. Gokarn, who’s recently been appointed the Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, was spot on in his analysis. It’s been an interesting dozen months that we’ve been through. Budgets have taken a beating, ROI windows have shrunk, management expectations have reached a record high, and the IT department has emerged as the means to CIOs are chanting a growth reduce operational cost. mantra with talk of not only Not all organizations went gentle on increasing headcount but their IT spend. Some like Ashok Leyland also pursuing disruption. and Infosys used the downturn to re-tool their IT, to better prepare for the resurgence in the economy. And, yet others, like the eight CIOs we celebrate in our cover feature this month (Page 32) decided to transform their organizations with an impact reaching far beyond technology, based on specific business goals. I believe that the slowdown, traumatic as it was, was also a wake-up call for Indian organizations to become more agile and responsive. Transformation is also on the minds of your peers, who tell us in the State of the CIO Survey 2009, that they are sufficiently upbeat about prospects next year to look beyond cost-cutting. They’re speaking a growth lingo with talk of not only increasing headcount but also pursuing innovation and disruption. The study also gave rise to mixed feelings. While, I was amazed to note that over 60 percent of the CIOs surveyed had MBAs, I was more than a trifle disappointed that this didn’t result in too much of a monetary benefit. On the next page you’ll find an easily detachable ready reckoner, which contains our findings from the biggest study of its kind in India. And, to mark our fourth anniversary, we’re introducing, Mentor, a monthly column with insights and strategic advice from members of our Governing Council (Page 92). This month we feature Manish Choksi writing on a subject close to his heart — information management. As always keep your feedback flowing — that’s what keeps us alive to your information needs. Salud.

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

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content NOVEMBER 15 2009- | -VOL/4- | -ISSUE/23

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ila dikshit hukku, director strategic planning, Cry; shirish munj, vp-it, tata teleservices; and basant kumar Chaturvedi,senior manager it, perfetti van melle india are just three of eight it transformative leaders who have changed the face of their organizations.

Leadership

Case Files

COVER STORY THE TRANSFORMERS| 32

IN FIFTH GEAR | 52 Without real-time information to make critical business decisions, TVS Iyengar & Sons was beginning to lose steam. How IT helped the company accelarate growth.

I P HoToS BY SRIVATSA SH AN DIlYA, MEXY

We look at the stuff that transformative leaders are made of, and how they are opening up new paths for their companies. Feature by Team CIO

100% DATA SECURITY, 0% DATA LOSS | 60 How Karnataka Bank lived up to that promise.

DEEP DIVE GREEN I.T. | 65

Feature by Varsha Chidambaram

Case Study

IT Management

Green Datacenter: The Real Deal | 66

CoVER: DESIGN BY MM SHANITH

Feature by Sneha Jha

NOT SO FAST | 46 The economic upturn is here and businesses want growth. But the after-effects of the slowdown, including tight budgets can still be felt. How CIOs are managing.

Features

7 Green Technologies to Watch | 78 Green Conversation Starters | 86

Feature by Michael Fitzgerald

Test Center

The Clash of PC Power Managers 6

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content

Thrive | 90 Technology | Out of Your Mind

Feature by Kristin Burnham

Mentor | 92 Data Management | Set Data Priorities

Column by Manish Choksi

New

From the Editor-in-Chief | 4 Forward Looking

By Vijay Ramachandran

NOW ONLINE “i hold all airlines — including spicejet — responsible for this completely irrational pricing,” says sanjay Aggarwal, Ceo, spicejet.

5 4

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

Executive Expectations VIEW FROM THE TOP | 54 Sanjay Aggarwal, CEO, SpiceJet, says that despite being hit by the slowdown, the airline is now poised for growth and is leveraging IT to get there.

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Interview by sneha Jha

Strategic CIO CRM IN THE BALANCE | 28 At some point in a CRM system's life, you have to ask whether the business will be better served by investing in the existing system, or replacing it. Column by David Taber

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SPECIAL SECTION

CIO EXECUTIVE VIEW POINT

Pooling Resources Can Beat Legacy Blues Delivering IT as a service can help CIOs control cost better. Jim Wagstaff

VP and GM – APJ, HP StorageWorks Wagstaff is responsible for leading the business unit, which encompasses networked, near-line and software storage solutions for companies of all sizes. Prior to this, he was a GM at Dell, and managed the server and storage business in China and Hong Kong. He studied finance at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, and business management at the University of Phoenix, U.S.

There is a prevalent mindset that storage has got commoditized. Do you think this mindset may prohibit enterprises from looking at storage virtualization? We are reaching a kind of tipping point here. The traditional block-based transactional data, which is usually core to the business as it is closely held in ERP systems, is not quite where CIOs are ready to look at bringing in storage virtualization. Rather, CIOs are keen to deal file-based storage with virtualization. Though it is not core to the businesses, it has exceeded the blockbased storage in growth and has become a problem in most enterprises. In fact, you can also look at it from the perspective of tier-one versus tiertwo storage. Tier-one storage is where you typically find a lot of structured data, which is core to the organization. It is the unstructured data in most of the tier-two storage for which the CIOs are comfortable to adopt virtualization.

in IT into a service. HP’s Virtual Resource Pool architecture approach can help them to level out budget spikes and deliver IT as a service to their customers within their organizations.

What’s the new architecture approach termed Virtual Resource Pool that you have been recently talking about? Simply put, it is the convergence of the infrastructure – server, storage and networking – and having a common management framework. In a CIO’s language, it is about driving more and more of everything towards a service. CIOs have got a heady mix of legacy and new infrastructure, which they are wondering how to converge into virtual resource pools and gain better control over their costs, make their budgets more predictable and be able to accurately bill back their internal customers. CIOs are now trying to turn everything they do

What’s the threshold of data that CIOs should have before looking at storage virtualization? One of the ways to look at it is the amount of utilization being driven on their storage today. Typical utilization rates on storage systems are very low. This means you may have more than half of your storage going unused. It is sitting on the books and costing money to having to manage it even if it is not doing anything. My advice would be that if you are seeing less than 50 percent of utilization on your storage infrastructure, you clearly need to consider storage virtualization. Instead of buying more products, just use what you have more efficiently.

EVP-HP Storageworks Page 9.indd 9

How the acquisitions of LeftHand Networks and Ibrix helping HP to do this? LeftHand Networks offered virtualized storage product, which we incorporated into our product lines. It creates large virtual pool of storage across multiple locations and arrays, and presents it back to the virtual servers. Ibrix is about the file system that we are integrating into some of our NAS products. It is quite high performance and highly available file system for large pools of unstructured data and archives. It is useful for managing massive amounts of data and presenting it to the relevant applications. Going forward, LeftHand’s adept virtualization technology and Ibrix’s high performance file system is a powerful combination to put together in our future products.

What should CIOs look for while embarking on a storage virtualization project? It is quite limited to basic principles. I’ve seen people making most of their mistakes when they get enamored by technologies. People usually approach it with a big bang, doing too much at once. I believe starting small is the rule number one. Moreover, figure out what is it that you don’t know. Providing training and tools necessary for your staff is another aspect I see being ignored quite often. Going in ill-prepared and not giving enough equipment to get the job done is another fundamental mistake. Hence, develop adequate know-how. In fact, bringing in a consultant or a system integrator that specializes in storage virtualization is one of the ways that can help you avoid potential pitfalls early on.

11/13/2009 8:36:42 AM

Governing BOARD Publisher Louis D’Mello Editorial Editor-IN-CHIEF Vijay Ramachandran assistant editors Gunjan Trivedi, Kanika Goswami Chief COPY EDITOR Sunil Shah Copy Editor Shardha Subramanian Senior Correspondent Kailas Shastry Correspondent Deepti Balani Sneha Jha Trainee Journalists Priyanka Varsha Chidambaram Product manager Online Sreekant Sastry Sr. Engineer Online Anil Kumar B.S. Design & Production Lead Designers Girish A V Vinoj KN SENIOR Designers Jithesh CC, Sani Mani Designer MM Shanith trainee designer Amrita C Roy Photography Srivatsa Shandilya Production Manager T K Karunakaran DY. Production Manager Jayadeep T K Ev ents & Audience Development VP Rupesh Sreedharan Senior Manager Chetan Acharya Managers Ajay Adhikari Pooja Chhabra Assistant Manager Erica Michelle Gopalakrishnan, Sachin Arora Ma rketin g & Sa l es (National) VP Sales & Marketing Sudhir Kamath VP Client Marketing Alok Anand VP Sales Sudhir Argula AGM Sales Parul Singh SR. Manager Client Marketing Rohan Chandhok SENIOR MANAGER BRAND Siddharth Singh ASSt. Manager Marketing Sukanya Saikia Associate Brand Disha Gaur ASSOCIATE MARKETING Dinesh P Ad Sales Co-ordinators Hema Saravanan C.M. Nadira Hyder Regional sal es Bangalore Ajay S. Chakravarthy Arun Kumar, Kumarjeet Bhattacharjee Manoj D, Sheetal Violet Singh Delhi Aveek Bhose, Mohit Dhingra Prachi Gupta, Punit Mishra Rajesh Kumar Sharma Mumbai Dipti Mahendra Modi Hafeez Shaikh, Pooja Nayak Rajesh Punjabi

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced by any means without prior written permission from the publisher. Address requests for customized reprints to IDG Media Private Limited, Geetha Building, 49, 3rd Cross, Mission Road, Bangalore - 560 027, India. IDG Media Private Limited is an IDG (International Data Group) company.

Printed and Published by Louis D’Mello on behalf of IDG Media Private Limited, Geetha Building, 49, 3rd Cross, Mission Road, Bangalore - 560 027. Editor: Louis D’Mello Printed at Manipal Press Ltd., Press Corner, Tile Factory Road, Manipal, Udupi, Karnataka - 576 104.

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Alok Kumar Global Head - Internal IT, TCS Anil Khopkar GM (MIS) & CIO, Bajaj Auto Anjan Choudhury CTO, BSE Ashish Chauhan President & CIO, IT Applications, Reliance Industries Atul Jayawant President Corporate IT & Group CIO, Aditya Birla Group Donald Patra CIO, HSBC India

Advertiser Index

Alcatel Lucent India Ltd

Avaya Global Connect Ltd

2&3

Bharat Petroleum

BMC Software

Canon India Pvt Ltd

Elitecore Technologies Ltd

Emerson Networks Power (I) Pvt Ltd

Gopal Shukla VP - Business Systems, Hindustan Coca Cola

Fortinet

Manish Choksi Chief Corporate Strategy & CIO, Asian Paints

HCL Infinet Ltd (Toshiba)

HP EDS

Dr. Jai Menon Director Technology & Customer Service, Bharti Airtel & Group CIO, Bharti Enterprises

Manish Gupta Director-IT, Pepsi Foods Murali krishna K. Head - CCD, Infosys Technologies Navin Chadha CIO, Vodafone Pravir Vohra Group CTO, ICICI Bank Rajesh Uppal Chief General Manager IT & Distribution, Maruti Udyog Sanjay Jain CIO, WNS Global Services Shreekant Mokashi Chief-IT, Tata Steel Sunil Mehta Sr. VP & Area Systems Director (Central Asia), JWT T.K. Subramanian Div. VP-IS, UB Group V. K Magapu Director, Larsen & Toubro V.V.R Babu Group CIO, ITC

IDG offices Bangalore Geetha Building, 49, 3rd Cross, Mission Road Bangalore 560 027 Ph: 3053 0300 Fax: 3058 6065 DELHI

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9,29 &31

Huawei Symantec

IBM India Ltd BC Interface Connectronics Pvt Ltd

Krone Communications Ltd

Leviton

Oracle

IBC

Reichle & De Massari MEA

Safenet India Pvt Ltd

SAS Institue (I) Pvt Ltd

Sigma Byte

13 & 51

SNIA India

Symantec Software Solutions Pvt Ltd

Verizon Business Wipro Infotech

IFC, 77 69, 71, 73 & 75

This index is provided as an additional service. The publisher does not assume any liabilities for errors or omissions.

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neW

hoT

uneXpecTed

ILLUSTRATION By MM SHANITH

CIos:: We meAN bUSINeSS c i O r O l e CIOs from the ASEAN region are becoming more involved in the business side of their company's operations more than their Western counterparts, a global CIO study from IBM revealed. The study, conducted among 2,500 CIOs around the world, showed that CIOs from the region are increasingly recognizing the need to be deeply involved with the business. "IT is no longer a separate part of the company in most successful organizations," said Sandy Vann, country leader, IBM global business services, IBM Philippines. ASEAN CIOs are driven primarily by their respective company's business processes, driving these executives to see themselves as less of an IT manager and more as a member of the company's strategic planning team. "ASEAN CIOs have more voice in the business, which enables them to help

drive revenues up," Vann claimed, adding that traditionally, ASEAN businesses have more personnel taking care of technical matters than their Western counterparts. This shift in the role of the CIO is pervasive around the world, as majority of information executives surveyed in the study say they are slowly easing out of managing technical aspects of the company and moving into strategically leveraging IT for the business. Most respondents are spending less on ongoing business, and are exerting efforts and putting investment on slowly transforming their business. Eightyfour percent of the respondents said the simplification of business processes — more than consolidation — acts as a major key for growth. Of top CIO priorities globally, BI and analytics turned out to be their top visionary plan (83 percent globally and 71 percent in ASEAN), followed closely by

virtualization (76 percent), risk management and compliance (71 percent) and customer and partner collaboration (68 percent). CIOs understand that analytics can be key to new growth markets and in gaining a competitive advantage in these new markets. —By John Mark V. Tuazon

Quick Take

Amrita Gangotra on Being a Woman CIO c i O s From conquering the Mount Everest to guarding the borders of our country, women are everywhere today. The IT department is no different. Though, women CIOs are few and far between, they definitely cannot be ignored. Priyanka spoke to Amrita Gangotra, CIO, Bharti ICS, and here’s what she had to say:

WOmen

Why are there only a handful of women CIOs? There could be many reasons for this. But I think the fear of technology makes most women think that it’s not their cup of tea. The legacy of their education or their family background may not have been supportive of their aspirations and skills. But things have changed now. The younger generation is very tech-savvy and keeps itself abreast with new technology. So, the fear of technology is slowly diminishing and more women are becoming part of the IT industry.

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Did you find it difficult to negotiate your way around? Never. I was more than accommodated. Also, your attitude at work is very crucial. As long as you are hardworking, dedicated, and add value to the business, I see no problems. For women CIOs, which approach works better: authoritative or collaborative? I think for women and men, the collaborative approach always works well. It is not possible or advisable to push all the decisions you take. And this becomes particularly difficult as you reach the levels of top management.

Amrita Gangotra

What growth strategies would you suggest to women IT executives? You should be committed and you should clearly identify your priorities. Concentrate on what is important to you at a particular time. If you try to do many things at once, you are more likely to fail. REAL CIO WORLD | N o v e m b e r 1 5 , 2 0 0 9

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Less Funds

How is Integration Driving ERP? ERP is one of the earliest concepts that took IT beyond a support function and turned it into a business enabler. Though it’s been around for long, it’s far from being passé, in fact, other IT systems are being integrated into ERP, making it as important as ever. Kailas Shastry spoke to some IT decision makers to see what they have to say:

More Outage

Enterprise Apps

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“ERP is the building block for any organization’s MIS. While ERP remains a basic transactional system, many Web-enabled systems may be integrated with it.” U. C. Dubey EVP-IT and Business Systems, IFFCO Tokio General Insurance

“ERP has grown beyond the limits of the enterprise and is being integrated with BI, CRM and SCM technologies.” Deepak Madan Head – IT, DLF LAING O'ROURKE

“While ERP is a core IT component in enterprises, today it is being integrated with other systems like HR, supply chain and even intercompany transactions.”

B u d g e t Despite an improving economy, companies aren't moving quickly to replace servers, PCs and printers, which will likely cause an increase in failure rates over the next two years, according to Gartner. In round numbers, the scheduled replacement of some three million servers worldwide, or about 3 percent of all servers, has been delayed, Peter Sondergaard, Gartner's global head of research, said at the research firm's Symposium/ITxpo 2009 conference. He added that the number of delayed replacements should reach 10 percent of all servers by 2010. As a result, Sondergaard said, IT operations "are going to have to start to plan for the impact of increased equipment failure rates." Gartner's hardware forecast was the starkest indication of the cumulative impact of IT budget cutbacks. For example, recent outages at some service providers point to at least the appearance of growing equipment problems. Budget cuts are expected to continue. Sondergaard said that enterprise IT spending worldwide is expected to decline by about 6.8 percent this year, and won't return to 2008 levels until 2012. "The IT market is exiting its worst year ever," he added. Randy George, information services manager, at the Osceola County Schools in Florida, said the time for replacing the department's main computer system is fast approaching. George has been meeting a vendor about upgrading our server, "but whether we will have the funds for it is questionable," he said. The existing server is four-years-old, and five years is an ideal replacement point, said George. It's not hardware reliability that's a concern, but it’s the ability to keep up with growing demands. The school district has been adding more applications to the server while the demands on the hardware also grow. The school system has 53,000 students and some 7,000 employees, he added. "There have been a couple of times where we have peaked its capacity," said George. If system capacity isn't increased, then "the users may just have to live with a little less service than what they are use to." Gene Hall, Gartner CEO, said that while IT managers are planning for growth, "they don't expect to see everything back to normal in 2010," he said.

S. Sridhar

Head-IT Corporate Enterprise Business, Vodafone Essar

Lend Your

Voice

Write to editor@cio.in 12

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—By Patrick Thibodeau

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nanotech Promises Immortality

trendlines

t e c h n O l O g y In 30 or 40 years, we'll have microscopic machines traveling through our bodies, repairing damaged cells and organs, effectively wiping out diseases. And nanotechnology will also be used to back up our memories and personalities. In an interview with Computerworld (CIO's sister publication), author and futurist Ray Kurzweil said that anyone alive come 2040 or 2050 could be close to being immortal. The quickening advance of nanotechnology means that the human condition will shift into more of a collaboration of man and machine, as nanobots flow through human blood streams and eventually even replace biological blood, he added. That may sound like something out of a sci-fi movie, but Kurzweil says that research well underway today is leading to a time when a combination of nanotechnology and biotechnology will wipe out cancer, Alzheimer's disease, obesity and diabetes. It'll also be a time when humans will augment their natural cognitive powers and add years to their lives, Kurzweil said. "It's radical life extension," Kurzweil said. "The full realization of nanobots will basically eliminate biological disease and aging. I think we'll see widespread use in 20 years of [nanotech] devices that perform certain functions for us. In 30 or 40 years, we will overcome disease and aging. The nanobots will scout out organs and cells that need repairs and simply fix them. It will lead to profound extensions of our health and longevity." Of course, people will still be struck by lightning or hit by a bus, but much more trauma will be repairable. If nanobots swim in, or even replace, biological blood, then wounds could be healed almost instantly. Limbs could be regrown. Backed up memories and personalities could be accessed after a head trauma. Today, researchers at MIT already are using nanoparticles to deliver killer genes that battle late-stage cancer. Earlier this year, scientists at the University of London reported using nanotechnology to blast cancer cells in mice with 'tumor

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With nanotechnology, by 2024 we'll be adding a year to our life expectancy with every year that passes. busting' genes, giving new hope to patients with inoperable tumors. So far, tests have shown that the new technique leaves healthy cells undamaged. With this kind of work going on now, Kurzweil says that by 2024 we'll be adding a year to our life expectancy with every year that passes. "The sense of time will be running in and not running out," he added. "Within 15 years, we will reverse this loss of remaining life expectancy. We will be adding more time than is going by." And in 35 to 40 years, we basically will be immortal, according to the man who wrote The Age of Spiritual Machines and The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. Kurzweil also maintains that adding microscopic machines to our bodies won't make us any less human than we are today or were 500 years ago.

"The definition of human is that we are the species that goes beyond our limitations and changes who we are," he said. "If that wasn't the case, you and I wouldn't be around because at one point life expectancy was just 23 years. We've extended ourselves in many ways. This is an extension of who we are. Ever since we picked up a stick to reach a higher branch, we've extended who we are through tools. It's the nature of human beings to change who we are." But that doesn't mean there aren't parts of this future that don't worry him. With nanotechnology so advanced that it can travel through our bodies and affect great change on them, come dangers as well as benefits. The nanobots, he explained, will be self-replicating and engineers will have to harness and contain that replication. "You could have some self-replicating nanobot that could create copies of itself... and ultimately, within 90 replications, it could devour the body it's in or all humans if it becomes a non-biological plague," said Kurzweil. "Technology is not a utopia. It's a double-edged sword and always has been since we first had fire." â&#x20AC;&#x201D;By Sharon Gaudin

In FOCUS IT-BUSINESS ALIGNMENT is the flavor of the season. Indian CIOs ranked it as their most important focus area.

Top Five Focus Areas for Indian CIOs 1 Aligning IT initiatives with business goals 2 Improving IT operations/systems performance 3 Improving IT operations/systems performance 4 Implementing new systems and architecture 5 Security management

Source: State of the CIO Survey 2009

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Collaboration: It’s Worth It A recent global survey of business and IT managers found that their companies got back benefits perceived as equal to four times their investment, on average, in unified communication and collaboration technologies. The online survey run by Frost & Sullivan looked at deployments of networking tools including voice over IP phones, videoconferencing and instant messaging to support distributed work forces and teleworkers in 10 countries. Only 44 percent of respondents had deployed tools for better collaboration, but 80 percent of those who had not deployed them said they planned to deploy in two to three years. The range of unified communications and collaboration tools included in the survey was broad, but generally audio- and Web-conferencing tools provided the greatest benefits to companies, followed by videoconferencing (sometimes at the desktop instead of in a room-sized location), and then instant messaging, wikis and blogs, said Bill Versen, director of global unified communications and collaboration at Verizon. In sales, more than 40 percent of those surveyed said the tools improved the quality of communications with customers,

trendlines

S u rv ey

improved the success of sales efforts and reduced the cost of sales and the sales cycle time. The survey also found that collaboration technologies were more prevalent in financial services, high technology businesses and professional services. The survey also found several other insights: A majority of respondents said collaboration tools were helping them balance work with their personal lives, giving them more of a sense of control. Nearly 60 percent of those surveyed said that despite modern tools, there are still times they don't want to be reached. More than 60 percent reported that collaboration tools reduce the need to travel on business. Almost half of respondents said that their companies have a formal telecommuting policy in place, although only 22 percent telecommute every day. More than half said that the need to reduce their organization's carbon emissions was important in deciding to adopt collaboration technology. The study was conducted on 3,662 business and IT leaders. —By Matt Hamblen

No Value in Business Intelligence A p p s More than three-quarters of business intelligence projects take more than a year to produce meaningful results. And nearly twothirds of companies who have installed business intelligence systems have done such a poor job that they get regular complaints from business users. That's according to a new survey from Kognitio, which provides data migration and business intelligence solutions. The survey found that, in many cases, BI's reputation as a catalyst in IT disasters has been well merited. "I've seen surveys that suggest 60 percent of BI projects fail," said Kognitio's CEO Roger Llewellyn. "This survey validates what we thought. BI is a high risk business. We're trying to remodel how people plan BI and bring down to project level." According to the survey, 78 percent of respondents said that it took over a year to see meaningful results, often

Enterprise

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that are failing. "My biggest complaint making the data out of date by the time about the industry, is that there has it has been received. The survey also to be so much consultancy around revealed a staggering gap between the data warehouses and that's business and IT sides when because IT is indelibly linked it came to what was expected to consultancies," he said. He from a BI project. According added that BI should be about to the survey, 88 percent of The number of bringing out the data where enterprises admitted that respondents who any question could be asked business departments did said that a BI of it. "To paraphrase a former not properly define what project took over US president — it's the data, they want to achieve from a year to show stupid," he said. an implementation, the Kognitio's Llewellyn assumption being that the meaningful results. thinks that a more flexible project scope would be defined approach to BI is needed. by the IT department. "People should take a pragmatic Llewellyn said there was a approach to BI," he said. fundamental gap between the IT and Llewellyn is of the opinion that business departments and that the people companies should think small at first and who should be bridging it are the business think short time periods. "If you can show consultants, who are not succeeding. value for your investment within 90 days, In fact, Llewellyn believes that the that immediately lowers the risk." business consultants have a large part —By Maxwell Cooter to play in the number of BI projects

78%

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Simplifying Datacenters

Monitoring operations should be a regular practice. U.C. Dubey | Executive Vice President (IT), IFFCO-TOKIO General Insurance With a career spanning over 35 years in the IT sector, Dubey is experienced in design, development and implementation of various IT projects, involving building ERP systems and data networks for process industry and financial sector organizations. Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s also a senior life member of Computer Society of India.

: How can CIOs keep things simple at their datacenters and utilize their full potential? A: A large number of technologies are being incorporated in a conventional IT infrastructure owing to constantly growing applications. In order to reduce complexity, we should try to include only a handful technologies, and the number of integration points should also be reduced, excess of which leads to manageability issues. We can also use tools like MDM (master data management) that can control data across multiple applications. We should also use tools like data de-duplication, so that we have accurate information in our database. Monitoring datacenter operations should be a regular practice, as it indicates whether the resources are being utilized properly; otherwise itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s better to go for server virtualization. Through virtualization, the datacenter will become relatively smaller and we can ensure higher utilization of available resources. : How best can CIOs reduce costs, increase service levels, and improve manageability in their datacenters? A: Some cost cutting can be done by improving resource utilization. The major cost element lies in the services and utilization of manpower resources. So,

we are trying to balance both inhouse and outsourced resources. Virtualization can sometimes save software licensing costs, which is a major chunk of the expenditure. By consolidation of applications and hardware, we can certainly improve our service levels. For improving the manageability, tools like active directory, desktop, server and network management tools are available. These can certainly help in improving the manageability of datacenter resources. : Building a truly reliable power network requires multiple areas of expertise. What should CIOs focus on while addressing such infrastructure integration? A: The exercise of building a reliable power network is a part of ensuring continuity in datacenters and making it available 24 X 7. A CIO needs to ensure that redundant power sources are available all the time. In our organization, datacenter power is supplied by two different lines of electricity board. We also have digisets and UPSs available as backup sources of electricity. So, there are ample alternative power sources available, which are kept in redundant mode. We have two UPSs running parallel, and each is equipped to take the entire load of the datacenter, but normally they share the

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CIO 2 CIO_Emerson Page 17.indd 7

: How best can CIOs have a sustainable performance improvement at their datacenters? A: If we do regular monitoring of our various datacenter activities, we can reduce the downtime for any application and improve the utility of various servers, power and cooling equipment. All these things have to be checked on a regular basis. If any incidence is recorded, we need to do it's root cause analysis and then take corrective actions, so that these things are not repeated in future. This monitoring can be done using various tools and proper follow up. Through these methods we can sustain performance improvement in our datacenters.

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load. For power and cooling maintenance we have appointed a single vendor, thus having to face less vendor management problems and ensuring more availability. We also have redundant network providers and their lines work in parallel.

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11/13/2009 8:35:32 AM

No Plan B for SMBs Small and midsize businesses are confident in their disaster recovery capabilities, but their actual performance preventing outages shows that they are "remarkably unprepared," according to survey results released by Symantec. Four out of five SMBs are satisfied with their DR plans, and two-thirds believe their customers would be willing to "wait patiently until our systems were back in place" in the event of an outage, Symantec found. But that confidence is unwarranted. Three out of four SMBs report that they are based in a region susceptible to natural disasters. The average respondent suffered three outages in the past 12 months, either from natural disasters, power outages, or virus and hacker attacks. "With this kind of exposure, and with the confidence SMBs display about their disaster preparedness, one would think SMBs have solid disaster-recovery plans in place," Symantec said in the SMB Disaster Preparedness report. "However this is not universally the case — almost half (47 percent) report they do not yet have a plan to deal with such disruptions." "First, the average SMB backs up only 60 percent of its company and customer data," Symantec writes. "Second, they do so infrequently. Only one in five (23 percent) back up on a daily

trendlines

Business

issues

Back Ups on the Back Burner Don't have a plan to deal with disruptions

47%

Back up on a daily basis

23%

Back up on a monthly basis

40%

basis and 40 percent back up monthly or less. This inattention to data backup is echoed by the fact that more than half (55 percent) of the SMBs feel they would lose 40 percent of their company data if their computing systems were wiped out in a fire." This lack of preparedness puts SMBs at risk of losing customers. Two out of five SMB customers surveyed have switched vendors because they decided their vendor's technology was unreliable. More than a quarter of customers had suffered outages, many of which were significant. Forty-two percent of outages reported by SMB customers lasted eight hours or more, and 26 percent of customers reported losing data because of a vendor's outage. SMBs should determine what critical information should be secured and protected, giving priority to customer, financial and business information, and trade secrets. SMBs should also automate the backup process to minimize human error, and test systems annually to ensure that data can be recovered and downtime minimized during a disaster. —By Jon Brodkin 18

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Sweet Talking

Your ceo

s t A F F m A n A g e m e n t It doesn't always take a year full of global upheaval for a company to acquire a new CEO. And when money is tight and staff members are stressed, it's more essential than ever for CIOs to have a game plan for what to do when there's a new personality with new priorities in the top office. "Hang on to your hat," says Maurizio Laudisa, CIO of medical services company Lifelabs. "It's all about who you get." To flourish, CIOs should get themselves in front of the new CEO and get familiar with the person behind the title. How do they like to communicate? How do they operate? And what are their experiences with IT? That last question is particularly important to tease out early, says Don Zimmerman, CIO of Wendy's/Arby's Group. No matter what a CEO knows about IT and how technology can advance the business, dealing with a new CEO whose experiences with IT are good versus one who has been burned are two very different things. Even for CIOs with a business background, laying this extensive personal groundwork can seem like a lot of slogging for little gain. But skipping it can have repercussions, warns Jim Burdiss, VP and CIO of Affinia Group. "It went very poorly the first time I went through this," he admits. "you need to gauge in that first meeting where all of their interest and experience comes from, and I couldn't have missed it more if I threw a dart from 100 yards. I was over-anxious, trying to justify what IT was doing and IT expenditures, and I didn't listen enough. I talked too much and I absolutely was not myself." Unless you're at a relatively small company, the CEO isn't going to have a personal bond with every member of the IT staff. Some CIOs have even taken the step of asking the new CEO to meet with senior IT staff, ensuring that at least some level of personal relationship goes deeper into the organization. Getting direct reports involved with establishing IT's message to the top also creates a higher level of comfort with long-term benefits for both sides. No matter what steps CIOs take for themselves or their staff, one of the biggest opportunities for the IT organization as a whole can be the chance to establish IT's role as a partner in value for the company and the CEO. "you have to market yourself and your staff as an innovative group that knows how to leverage technology for more effective business purposes," says Chris Barber, SVP and CIO of the Western Corporate Federal Credit Union. And sometimes CIOs need to stop talking and listen to a new perspective. —By Diane Frank

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11/13/2009 11:20:51 AM

Six Ways to Stay Happy On a good day, the cybersecurity profession can be rough. But there's no need to feel like a slave to the grind. Just ask Mike Rothman, Security Incite president and principal analyst. Rothman’s worked for TruSecure, CipherTrust and now eIQnetworks and he's butted heads with upper management and been fired more than once. Along the way, he's learned to be happy and has been sharing pointers in a presentation called “Pursuit of Security Happyness." Accepting that We Can't Win: Let's face it: No matter how many hours you spend in your IT shop and no matter how big your security budget and level of upper-management buy-in, the bad guys are always going to be three steps ahead of you. It's also inevitable that credit won't be given when there's no attack, and blame will certainly be forthcoming in the event of a data

Security

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breach. Rothman's advice is to lay out a clear definition for success that accounts for these pesky realities and just do the best you can. Focus Only on What You CAN Control: No matter how hard you try, there will always be things you can't control: senior management, budget, user stupidity, IT operational challenges, DBA "dimwits," as Rothman calls them, office politics, business partners, auditors and regulations. The good news is that there are things you can control: policies, security awareness, monitoring that enables a quicker response to sinister activity, incident response, communications, and how to respond to dimwits. Look for NOT Normal: And no matter how much security awareness training employees have, there will always be one or two who fall for phishing schemes. Rothman recommends IT shops make the most of

monitoring tools. The more you monitor systems for unusual activity, the better the chances of stopping a data thief. Communicate the Good and the Bad: Since there are things beyond your control, it doesn't hurt to lower expectations or, as Rothman suggests, "manage expectations." To that end, he recommends using what he calls the rule of three: 1. Tell people what you are going to do, 2. do it, and 3. tell them what you did. Roll with the Punches: This tip is especially hard to heed if you are addicted to trying to control what you can't control. Remember that whatever the atmosphere, it's not about you and, well, someone always has to pay. Try not to take it personally. Cover Thy Behind: Rothman's tips for doing this are to protect your flanks politically by documenting everything and being nice — until it's time not to be nice. — By Bill Brenner

11/13/2009 11:21:04 AM

alternative views B Y va r s h a c h i d a m ba r a m

IT Management Strategies In-house Vs Outsource

"Once, we brought IT services back in, our manpower

costs lowered significantly."

Mahesh Kumar Pinnamaneni, CIO, Aurobindo Pharma

trendlines

In my experience I have found that outsourcing IT services to an external vendor is

P hotos by Srivatsa Shandilya

seldom a foolproof strategy. Take our set up at Aurobindo Pharma for example. Between 2003 and 2008, we had outsourced our IT infrastructure management. This deal included helpdesk management, our servers, backup, network, mail and desktops among other things. The service was delivered on a hybrid model, which meant that the vendor had onsite teams at some locations and provided remote management at others. Now when a problem couldn’t be addressed via remote support, on-call engineers would be sent to attend to it. Because users weren’t very IT savvy, the situation increasingly warranted an engineer’s physical presence at various locations. The outsourcing model soon became inadequate and remotely managing infrastructure seemed like a fruitless exercise. In fact over five years, the cost of our IT grew by six-fold. So we cut our losses. And bringing IT back in-house or in-sourcing, which we have done recently, has many significant benefits. Once, we brought IT services back in, our manpower costs lowered significantly. How did we do this? We managed to replace skilled and expensive resources with low-cost resources. That skilled manpower is readily available at much more affordable costs is one of the few, perhaps the only, benefit of the recession. Also, in-sourcing ensures greater control over IT infrastructure and therefore better manageability. You cannot expect to have the same flexibility and confidence with outsourced partners.

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"I believe that outsourcing IT services brings in a lot of value in

terms of cost savings and service delivery." John Nadar, Head-IT, Tata Chemicals

At Tata Chemicals, we have outsourced our SAP support and infrastructure, along with networking and hardware support. Personally, I believe that outsourcing IT services brings in a lot of value in terms of cost savings and service delivery. Partnering with medium and large service providers helps us access a larger knowledge base and augments our experience in handling issues. Further, our outsourced IT partners ensure that SLAs are adhered to and sometimes even surpassed, because they want to gain partner confidence and loyalty. The high rate of attrition is another reason why an outsourced setup is more beneficial. It’s often difficult to retain an in-house team for long periods, which subsequently hampers the progress of projects. In an outsourced environment, the onus of ensuring the continuity of projects rests on an external vendor. I am also a strong believer that shared services should try to capitalize on the benefits of outsourcing for cost rationalization. Outsourcing is also a smart way of passing on the routine outside because these can often be deterrents to creativity. That said it is imperative to have a back-up plan in place if services need to be transferred back in-house to ensure that the shift does not lead to business disruptions. Also, outsourcing does not mean that you are not responsible and accountable for what’s being outsourced. A governing body should have the power to oversee and exercise control over outsourced activity. Good governance coupled with healthy partner relations can ensure that your outsourced activities run smoothly and bring competitive edge to the organization.

Vol/4 | ISSUE/23

11/13/2009 11:21:08 AM

SPECIAL SECTION

CIO EXECUTIVE VIEW POINT

Fostering Customer Delight Web 2.0 services are helping overcome existing barriers to customer connect. Shekhar Agrawal

VP, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Business Group – South Asia In his career, Agarwal has successfully dealt with managing networking and telecommunications technologies in different organizations, with sound expertise and strong knowledge in the business–tobusiness enterprise market of India and Asia Pacific. Previously, he has held several executive positions in multinational corporations like Lucent, Tata, Cisco, and HCL.

What challenges does globalization bring to organizations? Globalization is transforming competition into a fast moving target. We believe that the companies which will succeed in this global market transformation are the ones that interconnect their core assets, namely their network, people, and processes, with real-time communications to harness a hidden wealth and the knowledge of their employees and partners. Knowledge is the real competitive differentiator that no one can copy. We call these companies ‘dynamic enterprises.’

weapons to help their business units gain market share and become more profitable. This implies that CIOs need to focus more on the essentials, and two trends will emerge: First, all IP service-aware networks will become the norm, supporting applications from the core (or the carrier’s point of presence) to the device, which is not possible with heterogeneous technologies. Second, managed communications services models will be favored for opex-based deals. We believe carriers will play an increasingly important role in helping organizations to be dynamic.

What impact will Web 2.0 have in this environment? Web 2.0 services (or Enterprise 2.0 when used in a business context), are overcoming existing barriers to knowledge sharing by creating a strong and rapid network effect between people. But a core function — the ability to connect through the voice channel wherever you or your correspondent may be still missing in Web 2.O services. We used to say that companies that find the answer to the 'search-find-reach' trilogy will get a significant competitive advantage. This is why we strongly believe that Web 2.0 will be progressively coupled with real-time communications capabilities, adding the ability to reach the expert identified on the social networking platform, and this, when needed, during a business situation.

Can UC really simplify communications? We believe that the UC market will transform into what we call ‘contextual communications,’ where real-time communications offered by UC techniques will be embedded into composite applications that aim to serve specific business needs. UC’s role will not only be to simplify communications, but rather to make sure that there’s no latency in communications between people during critical business instances, such as a sales negotiation. Then UC’s contribution to business will become indisputable.

How can CIOs reduce TCO while making their organizations more dynamic? Our vision is that IT departments will shift from technology houses to internal business service providers, delivering the digital

EVP-Alcatel Lucent Page 21.indd 9

experts into the process. For example, in our Genesys offering, we provide agents with the ability to reach an expert during an interaction with a customer through the integration of presence-based UC and collaboration features embedded into their screen pop-up application. How do you see communication and collaboration integrating? Integration naturally happens as long as a company understands the combined value of the components of a dynamic enterprise — network, people, process and knowledge. Communication now has little value, it’s almost a commodity. However, if companies consider it part of a broader scope which puts business imperatives at its center, then it becomes a real differentiator in a Web 2.0 world where collaboration is the name of the game.

How can an organization foster customer delight? So far, customer service excellence has been the primary vehicle to measure customer satisfaction. In some situations, customer service agents’ skills are not sufficient for providing the right answer at the first contact. Organizations should consider expanding customer service beyond the contact center walls, by integrating company

11/13/2009 8:36:35 AM

Mary Brandel

Applied Insight

Getting Business to be Sold On IT Marketing IT internally is not about hype. It's about conveying IT's value and winning respect.

Illustration by MM Shanith

t's almost a clichĂŠ that the first item cut in a slow economy is training. Not for Ben Berry at the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT). The frugal CIO has hired consulting firm Ouellette & Associates (O&A) to host a workshop this fall for his direct reports and IT staffers throughout the state government. The topic: marketing the value of IT. For many IT professionals, the idea of marketing the services they provide every day might seem like a useless luxury. But Berry says marketing IT internally has never been more necessary, particularly to avoid what he calls the double-edged sword of cutting IT services to lower costs. "If the organization cuts the IT budget with a full understanding of the value being delivered, that's one thing," Berry says. "But if they cut the budget and service levels go down, the customer is getting hit twice. So it behooves us to be able to speak to what IT does so people understand what they're doing as they make these decisions." Even Dan Roberts, president of O&A, acknowledges that there are misunderstandings surrounding the topic of marketing IT, including a widespread association of marketing with hype. But CIOs who have embraced the concept say marketing is less about glitz and more about being perceived as the partner of choice when business clients want to get something done. That's increasingly important, says Roberts, as increasingly hungry external vendors, outsourcers and consultants pitch compelling messages to top execs looking to reduce IT expenditures. "We're in a competitive world, and clients can just as easily hire Bill and Ted's Excellent Training Adventure," says Janet Craig, a training leader in Bayer's internal business and

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Vol/4 | ISSUE/23

11/13/2009 9:47:53 AM

Mary Brandel

Applied Insight

technology services group. While the term 'marketing' can throw IT people off, she says, it's a crucial practice for her group, which depends on billable hours from internal clients. In fact, through its marketing efforts, Craig's group has expanded its mission from supporting IT implementations to facilitating soft skills. Then there's the flip side: Marketing can also lend perspective on what you can't do, particularly as budgets get slashed, says Ron Bonig, who recently retired as CIO at George Washington University. While at GWU, Bonig hired a full-time marketing communications professional to help promote IT's accomplishments, such as the way it met strategic goals and fulfilled service-level agreements. But the marketing professional also helped IT convey why it wasn't able to pursue desired initiatives, particularly when IT was responding to top-level budget decisions. Ways of marketing IT range from the formal to the informal and from the tactical to the strategic. With the help of the marketing specialist, Bonig tried to turn any communications

of 83 percent), it also showed only 70 percent satisfaction with the ability to obtain needed information. That, Berry says, gave him an opportunity to improve service. Other touch points include an intranet-based electronic brochure, which features video coverage explaining the goals and critical decision stages of IT initiatives, such as a mainframe software consolidation project. Additionally, Berry is researching whether the help desk could use Twitter to send alerts about service outages, and PC technicians now solicit direct feedback by giving users survey cards after servicing their computers.

Develop Client Profiles Everyone wants to feel understood, which is why sophisticated marketing efforts strive to apply a personal touch. At Bayer, personalization is achieved by creating profiles of the most important clients Craig's group works with. The profiles include information on who the clients report to, and their level of authority, special interests and hot buttons, such as a desire to be a technology leader, keep costs down or not waste time.

CIOs who have embraced the concept say marketing is less about glitz and more about being perceived as the partner of choice when business clients want to get something done. emanating from IT into marketing tools. One of the most prominent is the department's annual report, which not only reports on IT's accomplishments, but relates those successes to IT's strategic plan and the university's goals as well. The report also lists resources saved, awards won and conferences at which staff members have spoken. It's distributed on a USB flash drive, tucked inside what looks like a formal invitation to read about IT's progress and plans. The marketing specialist ensures that all communication is jargon-free and, where appropriate, incorporates a subtle marketing spin. For instance, a message reporting a weekend system outage due to maintenance might include a reminder of how long it's been since the last outage. Or a virus warning might note that the university's infection rate is low compared with those of other universities. "We're always selling our story," Bonig says. "From that, people get the idea you're competent, effective and driving hard to support the goals of the organization. If you lose that, you're pretty well screwed, because then you lose your budget, people and respect."

Create Customer Touch Points Berry has established multiple layers of what he calls ‘touch points,’ or opportunities to communicate with business users. One is his annual customer satisfaction survey. While his recent survey revealed an 85 percent satisfaction rate (above his target 24

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Before a client meeting, the group can review the profile to see what matters most to the client, which topics to avoid and whether to keep the meeting short. "If they're always worried about managing time, we don't want to keep them talking about golf for hours," Craig says.

Employ 'Hallway Marketing' A marketing mind-set can't stop at the top levels of IT; the entire staff needs to understand and accept that marketing is now part of their everyday jobs, since every word they utter fosters a negative or positive perception in the client's mind. "You need to embed a 24/7 marketing mind-set throughout the organization, not just in one or two people," Roberts says. "They should speak positively of IT every chance they get, whether in a meeting, the elevator or the parking lot." This often means changing the very language the IT staff uses. At GWU, Bonig launched an initiative to train IT groups throughout the university to improve their customer service and communication skills. Among other things, participants in the two-hour sessions learned what to say and how to say it. The training emphasized that every communication — whether written, spoken or conveyed through another form of interpersonal contact — needs to be positive and should relate to IT's annual goals, which were provided to each staffer in writing. A big change was learning not to say no, Bonig says. Instead, staff learned to "put a price on 'Yes,' he

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Pathways to

the Future ge 88 to Pa n r u ,T tions

rec

i For D

Mary Brandel

Applied insight

says. In other words, instead of saying something can't be done, explain that it's an extra service that will cost more. At GWU, that sometimes means involving an account manager, who consults with the service catalog to create the formal terms of providing the service. Improvement was encouraged through friendly competition in the form of awards presented to groups that showed the most progress, says Bonig. But success took time. "It was easier to get managers to change the way they communicated than some of the staff members," he notes.

SeeYourself Through the Client's Eyes Berry also undertook a year-long effort to educate all 700plus employees in ODOT's central service organization — which included IT, finance and HR — to become a customer service organization. Embedded in the training was the notion of marketing the group's services. Part of the training was to help employees learn how they're initially perceived by customers, he says. That led to a review of all customer touch points, which raised a number of questions: Are clients asked to fill out too many forms or follow too many processes? Is the Web site too onerous to maneuver through? Are the responses to common help desk questions readily accessible? Do voice-mail messages sound friendly? The review also covered the physical setup of the office. Now the desks face the door, so employees can greet visitors more easily.

Create Slogans

FUTURE TECH

ENTERPRISE APPLICATION

Presenting Partner

Associate Partner

It might feel corny to adopt a marketing slogan or catchphrase. But doing so can help unify IT around a meaningful purpose and keep the group 'on message'. "It's very akin to the elevator speech — why are you in business, and what have you done for me lately?" Berry says. ODOT, for instance, is introducing the slogan "IT delivers information," which is supported by a graphic of a train moving through a modern cityscape. Of course, you don't want to get too flashy, particularly in these days of cost sensitivity. "No one wants to feel they're being marketed to," Roberts says. "If you're too professional-looking in your marketing materials, clients start to ask, 'Why are we wasting money on this?" CIO DATACENTER Associate Partners

Send feedback on this column to editor@cio.in

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11/13/2009 9:48:00 AM

EXECUTIVE VIEWPOINT

Green IT can give enterprises a cost advantage Through sustainable computing, IT can improve its efficiency by driving higher utilization of IT assets from the desktop to the datacenter, including applications. SUNDEEP KHISTY

Green Practice Leader, EDS, Asia Pacific Japan Kishty has over 20 years of experience in IT industry, and at EDS he is responsible for developing the organisation’s ‘Green IT’ service offerings, overall go-tomarket strategy and consultancy of this comprehensive portfolio across the Asia Pacific Japan region. Prior to joining EDS, Kishty was the Director of Software Development at Lancom Technologies, Melbourne. Why is Greening IT operations more than just a warm, fuzzy feeling? Greening of IT is no longer a superficial marketing strategy but has truly become an essential and part of business strategy. Enterprises are taking steps to demonstrate green leadership and meet their shareholder and government driven environmental goals. The Kyoto Protocol will both directly affect you and you are responsible for it. Failing to take timely action leads to business risks and can

Why should CIOs even care about energy efficiency? After all, the power bill is seldom a part of an IT budget. Analyzing the energy bills has become an imperative due to an ever increasing demand for IT resources. Rising energy costs and the need to meet voluntary and mandatory carbon emission goals dictate that CIOs need to be best friends with the facilities managers and jointly mitigate business risk especially when the business is on growth

CIOs need to be best friends with the facilities manager and jointly mitigate business risk, specially when the business is on growth trajectory. have a serious cost impact to the tune of 10-15 percent of the TCO. How should CIOs take a holistic view of sustainable computing? Corporate activities entail both IT and non IT- view of what is sustainable, and more specifically, what is a sustainable IT practice. IT can improve business efficiency by driving higher utilization of IT assets from desktop to datacenter including applications. It can also provide an information platform for the tracking, monitoring and inventory of carbon emissions. Overall, establishing governance for environment management and embedding the discipline in the organization by establishing specific greening KPIs. Compliance will enable sustainable computing, and more broadly, will enable businesses to prepare for a more sustainable future.

Exicutive View point _HP EDS Page 27.indd 27

trajectory. There is high probability that the cost of energy will eat into the CIO budget by up to 50 percent. That money should go to support business strategy and growth. Why perform an audit of IT and datacenter power consumption? There is a saying that what you measure is what you manage. Therefore, carbon emission and energy assessment is the first step to Green Journey and establishes governance in an enterprise that will baseline, monitor and reduce their climate impact. One has to be holistic in its approach, which means assessing, managing and changing behaviors from desktop to datacenter to applications. Everything that leaves a carbon footprint leaves a significant footprint in your budget.

What impact does greening a datacenter have on TCO? Implementing resources efficiency, driving higher utilization and increasing productivity of the IT assets, results in significant cost savings and environmental benefits. We believe, there is potential to cut carbon footprint by about 40 percent and reduce TCO by 30 percent. Who should push for Green IT: a CEO, or CFO or a CIO? Climate change is a CXO issue as most of the governments are establishing regulatory and statutory reporting of carbon emissions. Therefore, it should be driven from the top as a business strategy. It starts with establishing accountability and responsibility for activities that generate carbon emissions, identifying where cost savings can be achieved, change of behavior and sustainability actively planned and achieved. How are you seeing clients utilize green IT for business advantage? It’s a differentiator that gives enterprises cost, reputation and strategic advantages. It’s become a buying criteria, and shareholders and employees are driving the change. Overall it makes a good business sense.

11/13/2009 8:36:46 AM

David Taber

Strategic CIO

CRM in the Balance At some point in a CRM system's life, you have to ask whether the business will be better served by investing in the existing system, or replacing it.

've written endlessly that your CRM data is far more valuable (and expensive to maintain) than the system in which it runs. The Hippocratic Oath for all CRM decision makers must be "above all, do no harm to the data." Even so, CRM systems must be maintained, extended, and integrated to meet competitive realities and business needs that evolve over time. And with each improvement to the CRM system comes implementation cost, changes in maintenance costs, and risks to the data, so you have to consider the alternative of CRM system replacement. Here are ten real-world factors to consider about your CRM system on an annual basis, in order of priority:

Risk to Your Data Sometimes, an existing system or its integration points cause data pollution: field corruption, record duplicates, or outright deletion. If this can't be resolved due to architectural or operational reasons, I can think of no more compelling reasons to replace a CRM system.

Users Hate It

Illustration by Amrita C Roy

Since human interaction is the source of almost all interesting CRM data, unhappy users undermine both the functionality and credibility of the system. In evaluating the user-happiness issue, you have to look way beyond the sales rep's UI: Look at every external touch point that's feeding the CRM system. Do callers detest your IVR or your predictive dialer? Do customers get frustrated by your support website? Does your e-commerce system have a ridiculous checkout sequence? If the central CRM system is an obstacle to fixing those problems, that's a pretty good argument for getting that system out of there. 28

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David Taber

Strategic CIO

Too Hard to Integrate or Extend Most enterprise software have a very long design life. Not so with CRM. Too many marketplace issues change the rules â&#x20AC;&#x201D; whether it's your channel, your competitors, or the customer standards of service. So it's almost inevitable that even the perfect CRM system will need to be extended or integrated in fundamental ways every couple of years. Don't believe me? Just wait for the request for Twitter marketplace integration. If your current system is too hard to integrate or too expensive to extend, it's only a matter of time before you'll have to move on.

Mobility and Extended Access Users in many organizations are increasingly decentralized and mobile. In highly virtual organizations, they may be consultants, contractors, or partner employees. If your system doesn't have a flexible security model, doesn't support mobile laptops well, and can't be used on an iPhone, your field sales and support people are going to look increasingly weak versus the competition. This is not just a matter of flashy appearance. Mobile is the way people increasingly work.

Need to Replace an Adjacent System

Divestiture Divesting a company is usually very stressful to CRM systems because you need to partition the existing database, change all integration points, redo the security model, and rework the user interfaces. In addition, there may be dramatic changes to the size and structure of the channel, complexity of the price list, and the revenue-oriented business processes. These changes can be too much for an existing system to handle. It may be cheaper and better to just start over.

End of the Code Line Any time a system is a dead-end code line, whether it's been end-of-lifed by a vendor or it's an internal code base needing a full rewrite, you're left with a three-way dilemma. Do you stay where you are, jump to the new code line (which is guaranteed to require new integrations, rebuilt custom extensions, database rework), or move to a totally new vendor? The choice N o v e mb e r 1 5 , 2 0 0 9 | REAL CIO WORLD

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No Web Services More than any other category of enterprise application, CRM systems should be built on a solid platform of Web services. XML APIs aren't enough: You need a serviceoriented architecture to get the level of malleability and depth of integration required for a lasting CRM system. Business requirements, executive preferences, channel structure, and competitive pressure will mean you must modify and extend your CRM system over the years. So if your system doesn't have the ability to do full call-in and call-out, using triggers, workflows, and asynchronous processing, you need to move to a platform that does.

Cloud Versus On Premise The choice of SaaS vs installed software depends on the specifics of your company. There isn't one right answer for everyone. Here's an important truth: The vendors who excel

Most enterprise software have a very long design life. Not so with CRM. Too many issues change the rules. So it's almost inevitable that CRM systems will need fundamental changes every few years.

Even if your CRM system is in fine shape, you may have a corporate initiative requiring replacement of a system on which it depends. For example, you may be rolling out a new multi-location call center that supports virtual workers. In making that replacement, analysts will note new requirements for user features and technical integration points-and your existing CRM system may not be able to support those extensions.

will depend on risks, rewards, and time horizon. But generally speaking, you want to start planning to move to a new code line as soon as the old one's death is announced.

at SaaS are not best-in-class in installed software (if they offer it at all), and the kings of installed CRM are really crummy at SaaS. So if your needs have changed to the point that you really want to go for SaaS, or come out of the cloud for an on-premises solution, you will have to replace your CRM system.

Big New Feature Functionality New software features are not good reasons to switch CRM systems. No matter how good the demo given to the VP of sales might have been, it is rare for functionality to be the right reason to change. In CRM, the credibility and scope of the customer data is more important to your company's performance than any one piece of system functionality. Many of the things that look important and cool don't turn out to be important. If a new feature set really is critical, other vendors will eventually deliver something that brings them to competitive parity. Of course, if you need architectural functionality and your vendor doesn't even have it on his roadmap, your only real choices are to build a custom extension or buy from a new vendor who has what you need. CIO David Taber is the author of Salesforce.com Secrets of Success. Send feedback on this column to editor@cio.in

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Pg. 36

Pg. 37

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N. Nataraj of Hexaware sprung for a new business unit, made millions, and extended the solution provider's portfolio. Nuff' said.

At Ericsson, Tamal Chakravorty clubbed the company’s, customerfacing NOC with his own operations and ushered in a new era of efficiency.

Shirish Munj of Tata Teleservices gave the company an edge its competitors could not have because their IT leaders were foxed by an interesting challenge.

Entrepreneur

Strategist

Problem Solver

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Ila Dikshit Hukku of CRY revamped the non-profit's donor management system and changed the collections of India's most celebrated fund raiser — forever.

HPCL's reputation got a shot in the arm when Nishi Vasudeva enabled a revival of faith and restored it as India's most trusted fuel retailer.

Visionary

Trust Builder

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Arvind Tawde of Mahindra & Mahindra got multiple group companies to join hands and built one giant customer database, giving the group a single view of its customers.

Vijay Sethi zoomed one of Hero Honda's more popular customer relationship programs into the 21st century — and doubled the number of enrollments.

At Perfetti Van Melle India, the cost of collaboration was eating into the candy-maker's profits until Basant Kumar Chaturvedi found a sure-fire way to fix it.

Evangelist

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Client Winner

Clarity

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Cover Story | Leadership

In a world fraught with dramatic change, more and more organizations are turning to their IT leaders for direction. And plenty of CIOs are stepping up to the plate. We look at the stuff that transformative leaders are made of, the kind of impact they have, and how they are opening up

ILLUSTRAT IO N BY MM SH AN IT H

I P HOTOS BY SRIVATSA SHANDILYA, MEXY

new paths — and new futures — for their companies.

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e define transformative CIOs as men and women who have managed, through innovation and sweat, to change the way their enterprises worked — and affected the brands or the profits of their companies. Of the many we spoke to, one harnessed the power of collaboration to drive cost-cutting in a spread-out corporate environment, while another drove higher profits by moving around costs intelligently, making an existing unit more cost efficient. A far-sighted IT leader in a non-profit harnessed the strength of technology to bump up donor collections. Yet another CIO used his business acumen to spin off a profit center, earning his business millions. In an extremely competitive and fragmented market marred by pricing and quality malpractices, the CIO of a PSU drove a project Reader ROI: that ensured customers quality and quantity for their How IT can foster money. This not only ironed out retailer-customer business change wrinkles, but also ensured increased respect for The far-reaching the brand. effects of wellRead on these CIOs and others who have made thought out incredible changes to their businesses. technology projects REAL CIO WORLD | N O V E M B E R 1 5 , 2 0 0 9

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Cover Story | Leadership

Quick-Witt Transformer Trait:

Quick-Witted

Faced with a problem that had foxed his competition, Shirish Munj took an unconventional path and gave Tata Teleservices an advantage it always wanted.

NIFTY NAVIGATION BY KAILAS SHASTRY

T The CIO Litmus Test

Shirish Munj uses the kind of problem-solving thinking we all need more of. He solved an old channel challenge by internalizing it entirely.

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hat India has the highest growth rate of mobile subscribers or that it is an extremely price sensitive market needs no repetition. So, if you are a telecom player in the country, every little edge you can get over your competitor counts. The power to track the sales of mobile products (pre paid top-up vouchers, for example) at the distributor level was one such advantage that Tata Teleservices (TTSL) wanted, but couldn’t have until Shirish Munj, its VP of IT put on his thinking cap. Telecom service providers cater to their pre-paid customer base through retail partners who form a network of distributors and retailers. For a pan-India telecom service provider like TTSL — which has offerings in 22 out of India’s 23 circles — knowing which of its products work better in specific regions — and which don’t — enable strategic planning. It’s the sort of planning that allows TTSL to draw up product plans and manage an inventory of physical products like recharge scratch cards to ensure that an out-of-stock situation does not arise. The obvious approach — which Munj’s peers in other telecom companies tried — is

to install an application at the distributor’s end that is tied online to the telecom company’s ERP. Telecom executives then asked distributors to enter sales data (like information regarding which products have been bought by a particular retailer) manually. The application would then send that information to the service provider’s ERP. Sounds simple, but there’s a catch: almost all distributors already use an accounting software, the ubiquitous Tally, to manage their finances. It is also where they feed their sales records into. By asking distributors to input data into the service provider’s application, telecom executives were basically asking them to replicate work — without any tangible benefit to them. It was the sort of application that made end user buy-in a make or break deal, something that some of Munj's peers at other telecom companies had found out the hard way. But Munj wasn’t someone who would take the conventional and coax channel partners or the business to cough up an incentive scheme. He went beyond problem solving by completely circumventing the problem. He knew only

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tted PHONE A FRIEND Shirish Munj, VP-IT, Tata Teleservices, helped his company in a way none of his rivals could by using unusual means to track TTSL's products among its distributors.

too well that Tally is a favorite amongst his distributors and with some quick thinking, he got a customized version of Tally built for them. The look and feel remained same except for a new, nifty, yet unobtrusive feature. Now information entered into Tally is captured by the add-on and sent to TTSLâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ERP system when an Internet connection is detected. To the end user, this process is transparent, and they can continue to use Tally without interruption even when the update is in progress. Since channel partners did not have to put

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in extra effort to make this system work, they did not resent it. In fact, the system helps distributors by showing them their existing credit limit (used for e-recharges) with TTSL and the credit limits that various retailers have with him. The business need to track product movement through its supply chain is now a reality at Tata Teleservices â&#x20AC;&#x201D; but it needed someone like Munj to find some cleaver ways of working around practical problems. CIO REAL CIO WORLD | N O V E M B E R 1 5 , 2 0 0 9

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Cover Story | Leadership

Entrepreneurs Entrepreneurship Transformer Trait:

Entrepreneur CIO. It’s more than just the ring to it that makes it among the most coveted of CIO titles. A bad year raises both its importance and — if N. Nataraj’s example is anything to go by — the opportunity to be one. By spinning off a new business unit from Hexaware, he not only transformed the business, but also added to its bottom line.

DRUMMING UP NEW BUSINESS BY KANIKA GOSWAMI

hen N. Nataraj joined Hexaware Technologies as its CIO in 2008, he didn’t walk in carrying a past filled only with technology. He brought with him a history of business development and a deep understanding of marketing. And he was itching to use it. Nataraj is your dyed-in-the-wool entrepreneur CIO. He’s the kind of IT leader that gets business heads turning when he talks because he looks beyond using IT as an enabler or as a business driver. He wants to employ IT to bring in the money. At Hexaware, as he took his daily routine in his stride, he scanned the company looking for opportunities to sell existing expertise. He studied Hexaware’s 15-year-old business and figured that its strengths lay in high-end designing, ERP implementations, and i n f r a st r u c t u r e m a n a ge m e n t . That gave him an idea. “With Hexaware’s strengths in mind, I looked for the best way to create a business that was aligned to our organization,” Nataraj says.

The CIO Litmus Test

He’s is on the list of transformative leaders because he has the sand and the sense to start and run a profitable business operation.

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Natraj’s business sense pointed him to infrastructure management. Soon he found a way to pull the idea’s potential from the air in two groups: the STG, or the Systems Technology Group, which takes care of the company’s hardware, software and networks. And the ISG, the Internal Systems Group, which is responsible for Hexaware’s numerous applications. What he found in these two groups, he says, is a competence which he could translate into a whole new business that offered infrastructure management.

GETTING THE DETAILS RIGHT Under Natraj’s leadership, the new business unit took shape quickly. Within six months Hexaware’s new Infrastructure Management Services (IMS) was operational. Despite a long checklist of things that needed to be done including arranging office space and launching a website, Natraj focused on putting together a crackerjack team. He commandeered 35 staffers from STG and some more from the Internal Systems Group. His team’s credentials are hard to beat. The professionals from the STG, for example, were already looking after 6,500 desktops and 1,000plus servers, among other pieces of infrastructure. What might seem like a shortcut to team-building, however, also had its share of challenges. Building his team from in-house talent brought up new questions: who did the team owe allegiance to? How would he deal with the inherent risks in getting them to embrace their new identities? How were salaries going to be apportioned? The team also needed training. Natraj says educating his new unit in communication was his biggest challenge because the dynamics of providing service to external customers was very different from what they were used to. “If we were not comparable to others in the market, our clients could always discontinue their contracts,” says Nataraj. Fortunately this was an area that Natraj, with his background in marketing, understood well. He led his team out of its cushy

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rship

IT comfort zone into business’ cutthroat arena. With his team in place Nataraj was faced with every entrepreneur’s bête noire: making money. “A new business unit — even one based on a sound concept — is not assured business. And we launched at a hard time when even the best businesses are facing trouble.” This is the point at which many entrepreneurs stumble. They’ve read the glossy magazines urging them to take more risk, they ready themselves to make the jump, they leap — and land hard. Looking for ways to make money, when none seem to exist is one of the scariest bits of being a business man. Natraj, however, did not falter. He turned around and made Hexaware one of his customers using a shared-service model. A smart move it turns out. Since Hexaware ‘outsourced’ some of its IT needs to IMS, Hexware’s own IT costs have fallen by almost 60 percent. “That’s because most of the cost of Hexaware’s IT was human resources and now that’s been pushed to IMS,” says Natraj. Since then Nataraj has acquired several other clients, including one of the world's largest private banks and a big insurance brand in the US. “As a business unit, we have already broken even and have been reporting profits,” says Nataraj. Today, IMS is 150 strong and is contributing to Hexaware’s bottom line. And it’s won the respect of tough, veteran businessmen. “The IMS practice is extremely important to our service offering. It gives us an end-to-end capability,” says R.V. Ramanan, president global delivery, Hexaware. “We already have proven capability in software development, testing, business intelligence, ERP and BPO. IMS completes our service portfolio. It has significantly enhanced our go-tomarket approach and our ability to service our customers.” Although he is reluctant to share revenue numbers at this stage, Natraj says that IMS is targeting about $10 million (about Rs 45 crore) in the next year. “With the demand for IMS growing the target should not be difficult to meet,” he says. CIO

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Strategy Strategy Transformer Focus:

Plan your work and work your plan is the mantra of every successful CIO. By turning a unit into a cost-efficient one, Tamal Chakravorty changed the way IT did business.

WORKING I.T. OUT BY VARSHA CHIDAMBARAM

lot of CIOs will agree that business isn’t great at handling operations that are anchored on a strong IT footing. Tamal Chakravorty, CIO, Ericsson, is one of them. And he had his reasons. The company’s Network Operation Center (NOC) which manages back-end services for a host of telecom operators was structured on a robust IT framework but run by a non-IT team. While it was a critical revenue generator for the business, the IT processes that ran it needed to be revamped. “The business was not in control of the NOC's IT costs and the processes. Reports on uptime and downtime weren’t being generated and this was affecting performance,” explains Chakravorty. But when you have Chakravorty on board, there are fewer reasons to worry. Being an avid footballer, strategic planning comes naturally to him. He realized that, “We were running two IT teams for essentially the same end user. My WAN team was internally doing for Ericsson what the NOC was doing for telecom operators,” he says. So, he went to the business with a proposition: open a new, distinct business unit to which he would transfer his 13-man WAN team and add seven people from the NOC team. “The business knows telecom; I know IT. We needed to merge the two,” says Chakravorty. Giving shape to his strategy, the company opened a new unit and called it the Enteprise NOC (eNOC). “I avoided the whole rigmarole of recruiting people and rebuilding the IT processes,” he says. But there was a catch to this plan. How would the business extract the cost of running the new unit from the operators? Chakravorty devised a strategy to counter that too: issue a purchase order to the NOC, buy the services of the IT team from the NOC and pass on those costs to the operators. Today, with Chakravorty’s strategy, eNOC has helped Ericsson scale up and sell its services to a whole new bunch of networks. From 12-18 months earlier, it can now transition its activities in less than six months. CIO

The CIO Litmus Test

His keen strategic sense catapulted the business into new heights of profitability without any investment.

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Cover Story | Leadership

Vision Vision Transformer Trait:

Inspired by Ila Hukku’s vision CRY centralized its donor management. Her foresight not only increased CRY’s efficiency and profitability, it also revealed a transformed business.

WELCOME TO A A NEW FUTURE BY SNEHA JHA

Non-profits need management even more than business does, precisely because they lack the discipline of the bottomline. — Peter Drucker

HEARING A CRY FOR HELP By fixing the fund-raiser's stunted donor management system, Ila Dikshit Hukku, Director Strategic Planning, Childs Rights and You (CRY), and raised her organization to a whole new level.

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here aren’t many IT executives who can propel the growth of their organizations and transform their businesses. It's even harder to find transformative leaders in the NGO space. But there are a few whose rare combination of vision, technology-savvy and business sense makes them exceptions. One of these is Ila Dikshit Hukku, director strategic planning for Childs Rights and You (CRY). CRY raises funds through multiple channels including the Web, direct debits, and credit cards, among others. Raising funds and resources is it's sole focus; it does not implement, it enbles other NGOs. And to keep the money flowing, it has realized the importance of retaining and upgrade existing donors. CRY is not alone in this challenge. The growth in NGO numbers has made it harder and more expensive for mature NGOs to acquire new donors. “Since the cost in acquiring new donors is very high, it makes sound business sense to retain and upgrade an existing donor base,” says Meena Menon, senior manager individual partnerships for CRY’s North East operations. “But retention and upgradation is possible only if you have an efficient donor servicing and monitoring system. It’s the most effective way of enhancing the transparency and credibility of your organization in the eyes of donors.” But till July 2007, CRY’s donor management process was operated in a decentralized manner. Each region managed its activities on local desktop applications, which led to data duplication and high maintenance costs. Worse, CRY did not have a unified real-time view of their donor database. The bottom line? CRY was not able to access, analyse, and segment its donor base. It also made CRY’s collection-to-cash cycle long. This delay resulted in poor cashflow and also slowed down the issuance of receipts and tax exemption certificates to donors. Hence CRY was unable to process donor queries promptly making it difficult to retain, upgrade and build relationship with them.

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Cover Story | Leadership

The CIO Litmus Test By focusing her energies on CRY’s CRM, she grew the NGO’s customer base by 50 percent and forever altered the way the nonprofit operated.

With over 11 years of heading diverse areas within CRY, Hukku is acquainted with the nitty-gritties of the fund-raising business. She was aware of the challenge and envisioned a centralized system that would fix the problem and lead CRY into the future. Because other NGOs with similar issues had not dared apply a technology solution, her foresight would also give CRY first-mover advantage. Centralization would also free up CRY personnel for more important things like donor relationship building. But before her vision could take off she needed users at CRY to subscribe to it. “For us, I think it was more about confidence-building. People needed to believe that Web-enabled services could be secure and productivityenhancing,” she says.

She succeeded and the project raised CRY’s donor servicing standards by several notches. Hukku’s vision reduced the time it takes to send receipts to donors from 13 days to eight days, a seemingly insignificant but very important part in getting people to donate over and over again. Post-centralization, CRY also cut the the time it takes to issue tax exemptions to donors from 45 days to about 20 days. It has also reduced the cash-to-collection cycle from 12 days to three days and freed up personnel for donor relationship building. That, in turn, has helped CRY add 1 lakh new donors in the first year since the implementation — a growth of almost 50 percent. And thanks to Hukku’s vision CRY is seeing a 4 percent improvement in donor retention rates. CIO

Bu ilds Builds TrustTrust Transformer Trait:

In a cluttered and competitive market, trust is often the only differentiator. By focusing on building it Nishi Vasudeva transformed HPCL into one of the country’s most trusted petrol retailers.

REVIVING FAITH BY KANIKA GOSWAMI

he job of the CIO in a public sector petroleum company can be very tough, especially when it involves tweaking what thousands of consumers think of a brand. For consumers of HPCL’s products these impressions come down to two things: the quality and quantity of the fuel they pay for. Over the last few years rumors of diluted fuel and tampered gas dispensers (which deliver less fuel than the meters claim) have haunted petrol players. The Rs 1,16,428crore HPCL knew that the burden of proving their trustworthiness lay with it. By making this one of her centers of focus, Nishi Vasudeva, executive director-IS, HPCL, drove a ‘good quality, right quantity’ push that altered the way customers viewed HPCL. And she changed one of the most intangible of business drivers, trust, with one of business’ most structured tools: IT. And how? She 40

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started by placing forecourt controllers at each bunk. Basically, the controllers monitor most of the processes at gas stations including the quality of fuel that's being offloaded from trucks, the amount of inventory retailers have, and the amount of gas coming out of a dispenser. “This ensures that there is total control over what is getting out of a tanker and every drop that goes out from the nozzle,” says Hariharan Kumar, GM, HPCL Retail SBU, HPCL. “Since dealers cannot tamper with the product, quality is assured. They cannot shortsell customers either because the dispensing units are automated. Cheating is not possible. The main objective was to provide customer confidence by eliminating manual intervention.” That’s exactly what Vasudeva wanted. “The idea was to impart efficiency to our retail customer and ultimately build trust on both the quality and quantity fronts,” she says. And that brand exercise puts her in a league of transformative IT leaders. How so? Because to understand the needs of the market, to place a finger on the needs

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of end customers, and to look for solutions to solve challenges at both levels requires more than a technology-oriented executive. There’s no doubt her work with the retail automation system created a huge boost in customer confidence. Proof of that trust can be found in a 2009 AC Nielsen study on India’s most trusted brands. The study, which looked at different parameters including trustworthiness, a credible image and quality, cited HPCL as India’s most trusted petrol retailer. But creating that level of trust across a customer base as large as HPCL’s was hard work. In addition to the massive challenge of deploying the technology with its gauges and instruments in each retail outlet, training the people running the dealerships was not easy. Internally, too, the data that the controllers sent back had to be translated into useful information. Sales personnel at HPCL needed to be armed with the ability to deduce inventory requirements, stock information, sales figures from a centralized dashboard at a regional office level that took care of about 20-30 dealerships and retail outlets. All this required training, says Vasudeva. But the shovel work is paying off. Vasudeva’s drive for a countrywide push for change has worked wonders for HPCL. At the end of the latest phase of the project, the controller-led solution was being run on 1,682 out of HPCL’s 8,500 dealerships. Today those dealerships, which form only 19 percent of HPCL’s retailers, bring in 65 percent of the company’s sales volume. The retail automation system not only assures quality, quantity but service to the end customer, too. It offers the convenience of various modes of payment. For dealers, it ensures better inventory control and enhanced customer value. For HPCL, the system provides transparency and control of all facets of retail outlet operations. “Linking up all the individual retail processes on a platform has been our strength,” Vasudeva says. “Others may have automated on a standalone basis. Getting it all together and integrated seamlessly into the ERP system makes the whole process integrated, and this is all done with the customer in mind.” CIO

The CIO Litmus Test

Trust can change the course of a business. By building it across millions of customers, Nishi Vasudeva earned a place on our list of transformative leaders.

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Brandin Transformer Focus:

Branding

Being a CIO is no longer about supporting business, it’s about building your brand and taking the business ahead of the competition. How Arvind Tawde did just that.

WHEN LABELS AREN'T BAD BY VARSHA CHIDAMBARAM

hen Mahindra Xylo launched in January this year, nearly 6,000 SUVs were booked in the first two weeks, despite the slowdown. And a lot of that had to do with Arvind Tawde, senior VP and CIO, Mahindra & Mahindra. A year-and-a-half back Tawde initiated the common customer database project (CCDB) pooling in the customer databases of six business units: the Auto sector, Farm Equipment sector, Mahindra Finance, Mahindra Holidays, Mahindra Life Spaces and Mahindra Insurance. “The two major objectives of the project were to leverage the synergy within the group and enhance the Mahindra brand image. We recognized the potential of creating a common customer database and consolidating different attributes of our customers to provide a richer understanding of customer profile,” he says. The Mahindra group offers its customers a range of products with different lifecycles. Tawde and his team collated demographic information gathered over four years and cleansed the data into a single database, eliminating the discrepancies with frequent updates. For this, Tawde used enterprise information bus technology, which connects multiple business apps and databases of the business

The CIO Litmus Test By building a common customer database, he strengthened the Mahindra Group's relationship with its customers and enhanced its brand image. VOL/4 | ISSUE/23

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Cover Story | Leadership

ing

units and ensures real-time business event monitoring and predicative responses. But because the company’s customer data comes from different dealers, IT processes of data collection weren’t congruent across all units. So, the management of the participating units agreed upon having common minimum fields at customer touch-points. Today, thanks to Tawde, CCDB has an impressive database of 22 lakh customers. CCDB is being used for various cross-selling campaigns, reaching out to existing customers at a much lower cost. Also, Mahindra keeps its customers intimated about new products, while offering them additional incentives. It has further reduced the cost of acquiring new customers. “We created a high decibel pre-launch buzz arond the XYLO using digital media and CCDB contributed significantly by leading over 13,000 visitors to the Xylo pre-launch website, generating more than 1,400 test drive requests,” says Vivek Nayer, senior VP marketingAutomotive Sector, Mahindra & Mahindra. The success of the project can be best illustrated by the Xylo campaign where a whopping 10 percent of the company’s e-mail database responded with positive feedback. “The CCDB has helped us enhance our brand image by providing a delightful and consistent experience to our customers,” says Tawde. And that it has. CIO

CRM and the CIO Let’s face it: The work of making the customer happy rarely tops a CIO's to-do list. But there are some ho are making customer satisfaction a priority — and reaping huge rewards as a result. In fact, by tackling customer-centric IT projects, CIOs can reshape their role as key corporate players and position themselves for greater enterprise responsibility by aligning with the major concern of their executive peers and bosses. Business, after all, is all about serving the customer. If you want to be part of the business (and you do, don’t you?), you want to be a part of that. — Cindy Waxer

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Customer Customer Transformer Focus:

The ability to know what your customers want is key to the success of any business. In Hero Honda’s case, customers wanted Hero Honda to fast forward one of its customer relationship programs and Vijay Sethi stepped up to the job.

TURN RIGHT FOR CUSTOMERS BY PRIYANKA

hen Hero Honda’s CIO, Vijay Sethi, launched project Goodlife he might not have known it, but he made his mark on larger canvas. The project changed the way Hero Honda’s customers viewed the world’s largest motorcycle manufacturer. And, by driving the project Sethi planted a new milestone in the company’s history and demonstrated a level of customer focus that can only be defined as transformative. What did Goodlife change? Most people don’t associate old-economy manufacturers — like those that make motor bikes — with the new age strategies used by strongly-marketed companies. The former are earnest companies that focus on creating durability and reliability — not customer relationship systems that track redeemable points. But when you already sell the most motorcycles in the world — Hero Honda has crossed the 25 million mark — the next frontier is transforming the way customers interact with you. Sethi’s project Goodlife helped do that. It took an existing idea called the Hero Honda Passport program (that allows customers to collect points on purchases or servicing) and widened it like never before. “We felt that we could use IT to reach a larger customer base,” says Sethi. Goodlife replaced the paper membership cards of the Passport program with magnetic cards. When a magnetic card is swiped, representatives at Hero Honda showrooms or workshops can view all of that customer’s information, speeding up service and racking up points for them on a

The CIO Litmus Test

Why is he here? Because, not only did he back the right customer relationship process, he also bettered it.

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centralized database. It sharpens the image of Hero Honda as a modern company and has introduced transparency to customers, dealers, and the company. “The program has made things simple,” says D.S Rajan, MD of a Hero Honda dealership called Sai Motors, 80 percent of whose customers now carry magnetic cards. “Customers no longer have to carry booklets and we can get data online.” It’s also taken the Passport program to a new level. “Goodlife has seen overwhelming response,” says Sethi. “It has doubled the number of enrollments to the Passport program.” It’s a claim that the business backs. “90,000 people registered as members [of the Passport program] every month until last year,” says Ajay Dixit, associate VP, Hero Honda. “But now we are enrolling an average of 1.7 lakh customers every month.” CIO

Clarity Clarity Transformer Trait:

In a world filled with data, complexity and unfriendly technology, it’s the simple that often gets heard. Basant Kumar Chaturvedi lived that credo when he introduced unified communications at Perfetti and changed the way India’s largest candy maker did business.

KEEPING IT SIMPLE KEEPING IT SWEET BY KAILAS SHASTRY

What Does it Mean to Focus on the External Customer? The C-level competency of external customer focus is the ability to think about serving the customer and building value-added relationships with an external customer or client. It isn't selling. Gathering information and listening to feedback represents a low level of performance. At a moderate level, you know the customer from the inside, which means you can predict their response to a given offering and you can anticipate future needs. At the top level is a trusted advisor who is intertwined with the customer's decision-making processes.. — By Reynold Lewke and Steve Kelner, Egon Zehnder International

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hat’s sweet, popular, and takes plenty of a lot of collaboration to sell? Candy. No jokes. At Perfetti Van Melle India, executives have spent an impressive Rs 6.6 crore on travel — just in the last 10 months. Collaboration costs, that’s the bitter truth. And not bitter in the way chocolate can be. Perfetti Van Melle India isn’t exactly small. As the makers of Alpenliebe, Marbels, Center Fresh and a dozen other candies and gums that have become household names, Perfetti has about a quarter of the Indian sugar confectionary market. But even for the big daddy of candy, a Rs 6.6-crore tab for teamwork wasn’t easy to digest. Perfetti Van Melle India operates from 48 locations within the country, including one factory in Rudrapur (pop. 88,720), a small town in Uttarakhand, probably most known for its proximity to Nainital. That's how it is at Perfetti. Because its operations are so spread out, travel became a norm for Perfetti’s executives. Meetings and discussions — part of every business’ everyday functioning — meant extensive travel at Perfetti. This, Basant Kumar Chaturvedi, Perfetti’s senior manager IT, figured could be replaced by online collaboration tools. Chaturvedi chose a Web-based on-demand business collaboration

The CIO Litmus Test

What makes Basant Chaturvedi stand out is his strategic decision to choose the simple over everything else when he decided to introduce new age collaboration tools to Perfetti. VOL/4 | ISSUE/23

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THE TASTE OF EFFICIENCY For Basant Kumar Chaturvedi,Senior Manager IT, Perfetti Van Melle India, the decision to turn to collaborative tools was easy. How to get everyone on board was harder.

service that includes chat, voice conferencing, video conferencing, the ability to make sales presentations and even the ability to run a remote IT helpdesk. With this service in place, business units could collaborate using any media — chat, voice or video — with manufacturing units and regional sales office alike. Apart from the expenses it would save, he knew it would lead to greater visibility within the company and quicker decisions. But experience told him that getting people to change the way they work is among the hardest things to do. One of the biggest bottlenecks to the success of a project that involves collaboration tools is user acceptance. As is installing and troubleshooting an application at remote locations. This is where Chaturvedi played to the role of a simplifier to perfection. Rather than face these issues by going with a custom-built application — and endanger a project he knew could transform the way business at Perfetti was done — he took a Web-based service route. His strategic decision meant that there would be no installation and support hassles, and that all users needed to do to join a meeting is click a link. His decision to keep an enterprisewide project as simple as possible got it immediate buy in. Interactions with Perfetti offices in other countries including Dubai, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are now done over this service. In fact, Perfetti’s so taken up with the service, it’s taken it beyond its own locations. For instance, the company now uses it to interact with their tax and excise consultants. And the HR department is looking into conducting interviews remotely by sending potential recruits an e-mail with a link to an online meeting.

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Ramesh Chari R., CFO, Perfetti says he uses the service three to four times a week. As the head of finance, he appreciates the cost savings that flowed to the bottom line post the implementation of the service. “The intention of this project was to achieve business efficiency,” he says. And it looks like it’s met that goal. CIO

How To: Simple Steps to Speed Up Projects • Start with process mapping to find a simple sequence of tasks that drives the business operation you are addressing. • Design a logical data model to capture the data used by those tasks. • Implement that data model in a database; if it's an appropriate data model you'll find easy SQL statements deliver most of the functionality required from the system. That simple sequence of tasks and the appropriate data model do take some work to uncover, but they are there. Convert the tasks in the process model in terms of "If, Then, Else" statements and some simple equations. Figure out what kind of user interaction is needed for each task — it's usually the entering of selection and sort criteria and reporting parameters.

—K.S. REAL CIO WORLD | N O V E M B E R 1 5 , 2 0 0 9

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re e h t s i n . Bu r u pt owth wn, u c t gr do ll i om wan slow n sti n co ses the , ca d. e f a s s e Th usine cts o dget y ahe RALD b -effe t bu wa FITZGE d an fter tigh The ICHAEL a ng . BY M t e l e h i f t lud e b c in 46

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IT Management

Anne Agee is living a dual life at work these days. On the one hand, she's facing the prospect of a deep cut in her IT budget. On the other, she's bracing for a boom in business.

Illust ration by MM Shanit h

Agee, CIO at the University of Massachusetts Boston, is in a position that many IT leaders find themselves in these days â&#x20AC;&#x201D; coping with the ongoing effects of a grinding recession while simultaneously being asked to get ready for a recovery. At UMass Boston, Agee has to prepare for a possibly devastating budget cut while also readying her department for an influx of students, and related faculty hiring, as families shift from more expensive schools to state colleges. Agee is using the downturn to eliminate sacred cows, such as a long-standing remote-access modem pool that costs several thousand dollars a month in connection fees. That will be replaced by an existing virtual private network, which will cost less and be more secure. She's also pushing to eliminate fax machines, with the goal of putting in fax servers or related technology. And she's exploring whether she can replace individual desktop printers with centralized, shared multi-function printers. She's already renegotiating vendor contracts to reduce the risk of needing to cut staff if she does have to whack her budget. Another hedge would be to close labs on weekends and delay certain technology purchases. Agee isn't the only IT leader having to plan for growth during a downturn. There are others and they share nuggets of wisdom.

Take Care of Your Business Partners The downturn has given some IT leaders a chance to slow down and examine what they've been racing around doing. That's the case for Frank Lowery, IS director at Ebara Intnational, which makes liquid natural gas equipment. While Ebara has had some layoffs, Lowery himself has had to neither lay anyone off nor cut his budget.

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Still, business has slowed, so he's had the opportunity to evaluate past projects and look ahead. That has led to a refocusing of resources, from customer projects to ones that will help Ebara's suppliers. Instead of building a massive portal to share data with customers and suppliers, as Ebara had originally planned, it built a supplier portal only, with the customer piece on hold until later. That might seem counter-intuitive, but the company builds its equipment to order, so holding off on addressing suppliers' needs could create efficiency problems. "If we can make it easier for suppliers to do business with us, in the end it saves us money," says Lowery. By re-examining existing IT resources, Lowery also found a simpler way to build Ebara's supplier portal. His original plan was to buy new development tools and build a portal from scratch. But his department realized that it could use Oracle's Application Express, which was bundled with its Oracle database. That reduced licensing costs and also saved time: It took less than three months to build the supplier portal, rather than the six months the team had originally allotted.

Don't Reduce If You Can Re-Engineer For Mark Settle, CIO at BMC Software, the downturn meant cutting more than 5 percent of the company's IT staff. Yet BMC has managed not to cut any of its IT projects. It finished deploying a major rollout of HR and finance software in

Reader ROI:

Why you should prepare to continue making hard decisions How you can advance your enterprise on a tight budget

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IT Management October, and in April it started using Salesforce.com for sales activities like contact and lead management. BMC kept projects going in part by taking a hard look at employees' responsibilities. Settle realized that cost-cutting over the years had led his senior developers and architects to gradually take on operations and service tasks. Automating those tasks has freed his senior-level staffers to do more senior-level work. For example, about half of BMC's IT employees are developers, who need new runtime environments for their code. These usually are built to custom specifications and take up to six weeks to create. Because they're specialized, they often create glitches that crash BMC's server clusters, forcing reboots. One of BMC's automation engineers determined that it cost the company $5,000 (about Rs 2.5 lakh) every time a server needed rebooting. He then figured out how to create a catalog of standard environments that could be made available to developers within two hours. "We'll still do custom work, but you'd be amazed how those [requests] melt away when they can get something in two hours," says Settle. The server crashes diminished as well.

And as soon as business shows signs of turning around, he can quickly instruct his outsourcers to add personnel for projects that are in the works. Kifer says IT's success in crafting such flexible outsourcing agreements has led other parts of the company to apply the same managed-services mantra. For example, Applied Materials found it was employing financial analysts who were spending most of their time developing reports and aggregating data — tasks that could be done outside the firm, reducing costs by a third through lower head count. The remaining financial analysts were then able to focus on more valuable work. Even so, firms should be careful not to do blanket outsourcing, says Jim Milde, a veteran CIO who is now executive vice president of global services at IT services firm Keane. "You never outsource your core, customer-facing IT people who work with your business," he says. Instead, consider outsourcing business analysts, call centers and some business process functions.

Spend Strategically, Finance Creatively

The University of Northern Florida (UNF) won't know its new IT budget until the state legislature signs off on it for fiscal 2010. But IT has already been taking creative moneyConsider — Or Reconsider— Outsourcing saving actions. With revenues crushed at many companies, even IT leaders Stephen Lyon, assistant director of network engineering at who avoided outsourcing in the past are being forced to UNF in Jacksonville, says his group surveyed students and consider it anew. found that they were bringing not just computers to campus, Applied Materials, a nanomanufacturing technology but game consoles, various handhelds and netbooks, all of company, has used outsourcing to help it deal with the down which need their own IP addresses. cycles that hit the semiconductor industry about once every Meanwhile, various departments at the university were seven years. It has developed flexible service-level agreements examining new embedded systems to manage things like that allow it to add or subtract employees quickly. sprinkler systems, parking permit dispensers, lights and That doesn't mean it avoids internal layoffs, "but they're in elevators. All of these help the university save money, but the hundreds rather than the thousands," says CIO Ron Kifer. they too need bandwidth. The school needed a communications infrastructure upgrade. Lyon saw that multiple groups in the university had problems that could be solved with a 10 Gigabit Ethernet How are your peers in Singapore preparing for the recovery, even as they focus on cost? backbone and Gigabit Ethernet to the desktop. Typically, the university coughs up cash in These are the tools they are choosing, according to IDC: one fiscal year for a big project. But with the New Web 2.0 business apps (portals, mashups) 59% downturn obviously coming, Lyon in late 2008 New IT ﬁnancing strategies* proposed a four-year capital-expense payment plan. His argument: It would prevent the business intelligence tools 62% university from having to take a big one-time Client/desktop virtualization 42% hit, and it would not affect the yearly operating Deploying an IT refresh strategy that focuses on SoA 45% budget. The result is that the university, which approved the project, created wiggle room in Outsourcing its operating budget and its network. Social networking and collaboration services for employees 59% For its part, Applied Materials actually Host IT infrastructure and business data in a third-party environment 37% increased spending on communications * these companies are shifting from It leasing to subscription of It software and hardware rental over 36 months. technology. In fact, it accelerated an ongoing videoconferencing project after the downturn — by Subatra Suppiah struck, aiming to reduce travel costs without

Recovery, Singapore-Style

37%

67%

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IT Management losing face-to-face contact with customers and suppliers. Kifer says the technology is so good, the videoconferences are comparable to in-person meetings; that has created a new model for doing business, even in an upturn. "We can reduce the travel budget without losing continuity and closeness with customers," he says. BMC also boosted spending on communications technology, upgrading its video gear and increasing bandwidth to make it easier to use video in instant messaging. "We're investing in how to use these tools, because even if quality of the video is low, it somehow makes a conversation more meaningful," says Settle.

Hire a Few Good People

Time to Step Off Your Throne During emergency situations like the economic meltdown, decisions have to be made hurriedly, without a lot of consultation. Now, with things looking better, it’s time to stop playing dictator. have you gotten a little too used to being able to make choices and impose your will in a dictatorial, emergency-driven style? It might have felt a little heady in the midst of crisis to have your people look to you for decisive plans and instruction. Don’t get too comfortable with that feeling. the support you enjoyed from your staff will probably evaporate just as quickly as it materialized. before you face a full-scale rebellion, it’s time to start building support for decisions that you were able to promulgate by fiat. the most important thing to remember about the support your staff gives you is that it arises more from emotion than from reason. you will have to pay attention to your staff's feelings about several things. Self-interest. Clearly, people are most interested in how a decision affects them personally. If they feel that a decision will be good for the group but bad for them, they may resist. and resistance brought on by self-interest could be compounded if people feel that during the economic crisis they have had to accept things not in their short-term interest. If they suffered pay cuts, were forced to work more hours or got stuck doing distasteful work because the staff was thinner, they may be looking for payback now that things are getting better. Group benefit. though self-interest trumps this, people also care about the effect a decision will have on the group. not many are willing to subordinate their own self-interest to the good of the overall group. but most people most of the time are going to want to see both a group and an individual payoff. Fair process. In most cases, it is easier to build support for a decision as it is being made than it is after the fact. When it comes to especially difficult decisions, everyone knows that there will be winners and losers — that's why the decision is difficult. but those who are among the losers will have a much easier time accepting the decision if they feel that their case was heard and everyone's perspective was represented during the deliberation. If they lose fair and square, they are more likely to support the outcome, even if they don't like it. — by Paul Glen

Good people are being let go by firms that either aren't thinking clearly or have no choice but to cut muscle, says John Ciacchella, a principal in Deloitte Consulting. That means there are talented people available who can work with both IT and business units. Companies need to go after such talent, even if they're reducing other staff, Ciacchella says. It may mean an extra cut or two in some areas, he acknowledges, but hiring key people now will automatically put a company in a better position when the upturn comes. Businesses that are hiring are enjoying the bonanza of top-quality applicants. RightNow Technologies, a midsize Web applications vendor has 30 open IT positions. It has invested in a recruiting management tool from Taleo to help it sift through hundreds of résumés. RightNow CIO Laef Olson says he and his top managers meet for an hour a week to evaluate candidates for senior-level networking jobs. "Instead of looking for a guy with 'Cisco training,' I'm getting someone experienced with MPLS, voice over IP and quality-of-service in a single candidate. We're raising the bar on talent," Olson says.

Innovate to Invigorate the Bottom Line As is the case at so many other companies, the downturn has caused sharp declines in growth, and then a cutback in expenses, at Ebags, an online retailer of luggage and bags. The company had built a staff based on 30 percent estimated growth rates, so anticipated flat sales meant big staff cuts — 17 out of 40 employees, including 35 percent of its IT staff, says Peter Cobb, senior vice president and co-founder of the Greenwood Village, Colorado, firm. 50

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Those who remain are focusing on adding features that directly help customers find goods to purchase. So Ebags is doing things like enabling customers to search by color and adding new tags to the site, like "laptop bag," for easier searching. It also used site analysis tools from Gomez to figure out how to get page loads down from 1.5 seconds to 0.7. Cobb says these priority shifts should put the company in good stead when consumers begin buying again. In the end, IT leaders say their priority is to not just endure the downturn, but to be prepared for the recovery when it finally arrives. As UMass Boston's Agee says, "We're lining up our strategic priorities for the university, and targeting our cuts as far away from them as possible." CIO Fitzgerald is a freelance writer. Send feedback on this feature to editor@cio.in

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Running on legacy systems and without real-time information to make critical business decisions, Indiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largest automobile distribution company was beginning to lose steam. How IT helped the company accelerate growth.

ILLUSTRATION BY MM SHANITH

BY SNEHA JHA THE ORGANIZATION Established in 1911, T.V. Sundram Iyengar and Sons is the parent company of the TVS group. Headquartered in Madurai, the 2,168-crore company has an employee base of about 3,000 and has three divisions: TVS, Sundaram Motors, and Madras Auto Service. With 33 companies under these divisions, T. V. Sundram Iyengar and Sons is Indiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largest automobile distribution company. Not only that, the company has gone beyond borders. Today, it has international presence in six countries: Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, the UK, the US, Germany and Spain. THE BUSINESS CASE But the company, with such a global footprint, was running on legacy systems. Its core business processes were managed manually. Consequently, there was no real-time availability of business critical information. And this was making it difficult for the distribution line of business to take prompt business decisions based on real-time data. 52

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Reader ROI:

How automation can support decision making How ERP can boost integration across the enterprise Importance of BPM in enhancing agility

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Case File “Marketing unit heads needed to be informed on a daily basis about where they stood with respect to their monthly targets. They also needed the collection status to meet their targets. The legacy system did not cater to these needs,” says V. Sundar, CIO, T.V. Sundram Iyengar and Sons. The inefficiencies that beleaguered the distribution line of the business led to a loss of sales and were threatening to make a dent in the company’s revenues. Says R. Sridhar, VP-Distribution, T.V. Sundram Iyengar and Sons, “The distribution line of our business operates across India and is the cash cow of the company. For the past two years, the company has been focusing on improving the top and bottom line.”

“Process automation creates value for the business, internal customers, marketing, and distributors. It makes us nimble footed in the market. — V. Sundar, CIO, T.V. Sundram Iyengar and Sons

THE PROJECT To do that, Sundar began scouting for solutions that could address these issues. Automating and integrating business processes was the need of the hour. Migrating to an integrated and flexible ERP system seemed like a fitting solution. “Process automation creates value for business, internal customers, marketing, and distributors. It would also make us nimble-footed in the market place,” says Sundar. After much deliberation he embraced the idea of deploying an ERPenabled automation project. THE FIRST STEPS Sundar trained his sights on a solution that would be a combination of ERP and add-on modules developed in-house. These modules — customized to meet business requirements — would involve analytics and generate role-based MIS reports. More importantly, the project was also expected to automatically trigger sales performance charts (which were maintained marketing unit wise) every day. “It provided centralized target definition for regions, marketing units, sales teams and for the product lines. This real-time online solution would also facilitate

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tracking the status of customer orders, inventory and receivables,” says Sundar. The process enhancement project would provide multi-user transaction handling, online reservation of sales order and status monitoring. The scope of the project is impressive. It touches 175 concurrent users, 3,000 sales invoices, 500 goods received notices, and 4,000 part numbers for dispatches per day. But Sundar would have to handle the Herculean task of mitigating the adoption challenges. The scale and scope of change that the migration entailed was unprecedented. The end users had been working on the legacy system for the past 15-20 years. Convincing them to migrate to a new integrated system was a prickly issue. However, Sundar countered SNAPSHOT the challenge by explaining T.V. Sundram how the new setup would Iyengar & Sons drive efficiency and HEADQUARTERS: enhance the scope for value Madurai added activities. REVENUE:

Rs 2,168 crore EMPLOYEES:

3,368

JOINT MD:

R. Dinesh

THE BOTTOM LINE Launched in February 2009, the Rs 1.48-crore project has brought significant benefits to T.V. Sundram Iyengar and

Sons. The automated process saved 3,500 man hours per month, in turn, saving a whopping Rs 31.60 lakh per year, for the company. Moreover, the sales turnover per month has risen from Rs 21 crore to Rs 27 crore. “This is due to the daily sales order analysis which shows stock availability in various stages at the warehouses and thus the estimated dispatches for the day. This information allows the business to increase daily billing and dispatches,” says Sundar. The project has also improved customer service as the distribution line of business is now able to keep track of delivery deadlines for every order. Purchase planning and follow-up is being done by keeping the order delivery date in focus. This has reduced stock out situations. In addition, the standardization of business processes across the enterprise boosted agility and led to an enhanced IT-business alignment. Also, “The automatic sales performance chart bolstered the competitive spirit among different units, leading to overall higher performance,” says Sundar. By fine-tuning the business processes T.V. Sundram Iyengar and Sons has taken itself way ahead of competition. CIO

Sneha Jha is correspondent. Send feedback on this feature to sneha_jha@idgindia. com

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VIEW

from the TOP

Flight

Plan

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 Sneha Jha In October 2008, depressed demand, skyrocketing ATF prices, and unviable pricing structures had sparked off a battle for the bottom line in the aviation sector. The industry was going through a turbulent phase marked by profitless growth. Even one of the most popular low-cost carriers (LCC), SpiceJet had drifted from that previously enjoyed position in the LCC segment. With a market share that had nosedived to about 8 percent, the airline was losing its original momentum. Worse, for as long as three months, the cabin of the airline’s CEO was vacant. That’s when Sanjay Aggarwal, CEO, SpiceJet, stepped in. He knew that he would have to use every bit of his experience as an internal consultant with US Airways to propel the cut-price carrier. He decided to pilot SpiceJet to profitability. One year since then, Aggarwal’s focus on safety, service and sustainability, has taken SpiceJet’s market share to a respectable 13.2 percent. Today, the airline’s thrust on customer satisfaction has ensured that profits no longer seem like a pie in the sky.

Recently you completed a year with SpiceJet. What has changed since you took charge? Sanjay Aggarwal:

In the last year, I have focused all my efforts on making SpiceJet a well run and the most

capitalized airline in India. My efforts have paid off. We are pursuing a growth-based strategy and are focused on maintaining the lowest cost base in the industry. At the same time, we are exploring growth opportunities — both organic and inorganic. We believe that the

Ph oto by Srivatsa Sh an dilya

Sanjay Aggarwal, CEO, SpiceJet, says that despite being hit by the slowdown, the airline is now poised for growth and is leveraging IT to get there.

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Sanjay Aggarwal expects IT to: Optimize costs Enhance customer experience Improve the quality of service

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View from the Top

aviation sector, despite the challenges of the slowdown, is still scratching the surface. We value its long term potential and want to be a significant player in the aviation sector. On the financial front, we witnessed modest growth. In the first quarter of 2009, we made profits to the tune of Rs 26 crore. The last two quarters prior to that were almost break-even quarters. There are a lot of fluctuations in the aviation sector, so to stimulate depressed demands all the airlines rationalized fares irrationally. This indisciplined pricing structure led to serious financial repercussions. It hurt us too. Our business plan was to breakeven in this fiscal but the slowdown didn’t allow that to happen. But I am cautiously optimistic about our financial health.

What is driving this optimism at SpiceJet? We have increased our focus on improving the quality of our services. We have hired skilled personnel to deliver quality to our customers. According to a survey conducted by DIAL (Delhi International Airport), we ranked number one in terms of customer experience at the airport. So, it is evident that the quality has improved both internally and externally. There has been sizeable fleet augmentation in the last one year. We were flying 91 planes until October 2008 now we are flying 129. When I took charge, SpiceJet’s market share was below 8 percent. Our overall market share today (in the domestic market) is about 13.2 percent as of September 2009. SpiceJet carries more passengers per flight than any other airlines on an average. We are definitely poised for growth.

How harmful are the irrational pricing structures going to be? The aviation sector witnessed turbulent times in the past 12 months. Spiraling fuel 56

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What are your key learnings from the US aviation industry?

“I hold all airlines — including SpiceJet — responsible for this completely irrational pricing. " — Sanjay Aggarwal

prices and contracted demand ensured that costs went beyond control. Consequently, major airlines incurred a loss of Rs 3,000 crore on domestic operations. I will hold all airlines, including SpiceJet, responsible for this completely irrational pricing. I think in India, airlines have confused the customer. In the US, airlines offer the best prices if you book your tickets 21 days before the journey, but the most expensive rates are between a few hours to a week of the journey. The customers are trained for this. India has about two percent of the world’s aviation capacity. And we incurred 22 percent of world’s aviation loss last year. But, I also believe that airlines have learnt their lessons and are bringing fares back to realistic levels. The last quarter was tough because of low yield. And SpiceJet, despite being a low cost carrier, could not make money so you can imagine the plight of full-service carriers (FSC).

I spent 16 years in the US working for aviation companies. Interestingly, I was part of US Airways at a time when it launched its low-cost division. From my experience, I realized that whether it’s business aviation (full-service carriers) or low cost, the aviation business has always been a low margin business and that’s why it’s very competitive. So, you have to remain focused on the bottomline. Keeping your costs low ensures business sustainability for a long time. Safety is paramount in the airline business. It takes priority in anything and everything that we do at SpiceJet. The next element is service and, of course, profitability and sustainability. These are the three elements you should focus on: safety, service and sustainability, in that order. If you flip the order, you won’t be a sustainable business.

How difficult was it for you to adjust to the Indian low-cost airline scene? If I compare the Indian aviation industry to that of the US, I would say that it is still in its infancy. Hence, it goes without saying that there is a vast latent potential in this market that is waiting to be tapped. The Indian aviation industry is expected to grow at around 8.5 percent annually over the next five years. The low-cost environment in India has been very interesting. It has witnessed phenomenal growth altering the dynamics in the Indian aviation sector. The market share of LCCs is rising steadily. It stood at a modest 5 percent in 2005; today LCCs command a market share of 30 percent. This figure is expected to increase to 44 percent by 2010. It is interesting to be a part of this growing, dynamic and challenging market. I was exposed to a

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View from the Top

low cost operating environment in the US but the challenges facing LCCs in India are very different in terms of fuel prices and infrastructure cost and facilities.

What else is different? One big difference between the LCCs in India and abroad is the availability of low cost airports. In India, we still use the same airports as full-service carriers. The resulting congestion in the terminals and on the runways mars passenger experience and leads to a costly, inefficient operating environment for the airlines, especially for LCCs. This is one challenge that is very unique to India. Insufficient investment in improving infrastructure for air traffic management is another problem because this results in expensive aircraft holding patterns, indirect flight paths and sub-optimal use of runways. As a result, the operating cost for LCCs goes up. Also, the high ATF tariff is another unique factor. But that applies to both the LCCs and full-service carriers. However, in our cost structure, fuel is a higher percentage of our costs (around 40-50 percent). If that percentage goes up by 20 percent, it will affect our cost base by 8-10 percent. Hence, we try to keep our other costs low.

Why aren't Low cost carriers doing that well? The LCCs operate a relatively young fleet and this means that their lease costs are high. On the other hand, there’s fierce competition from other LCCs, this further intensifies the price wars to woo value conscious customers. This is a big reason why LCCs are bleeding. Some airlines are resorting to fleet augmentation to cater to the passengers in tier II and tier III cities. This has given rise to a scarcity of trained pilots, cabin crew and technical personnel. These are the factors that tend to depress yields. Despite that, the growth 58

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of LCCs in India has been very impressive. Today, 70 percent of the air travelers fly LCCs. I think that number will rise to about 85 percent in two years.

SNAPSHOT

to keep our cost base lowest in the industry? One way is by keeping our aircraft Headquarters: utilization the best in the Gurgaon industry. We stress upon Revenue: aircraft utilization because our aircrafts are our liquid Rs 1,200 crore assets. We fly our airplanes How does IT Employees: much smarter. Quick lend SpiceJet 2,800 turnarounds allow us to competitive keep our planes in flight IT Team: advantage? much longer. 14 We are also focused on IT has always been our fuel efficiency because fuel key focus area. We have and airport costs add to about 50-60 always leveraged technology to gain a percent of our costs. And, of course, our competitive edge. IT enhanced distribution model which We use technology to keep our is more cost effective. We also pick up distribution costs low. The channels profitable routes that ensure good yields through which we distribute our tickets are and load. technology-based. Distribution costs are a Also, we pay our bills on time to the oil big differentiator between a full-service companies and AAI and in return get a carrier and an LCC. So using technology discount, so that has kept costs low. in that area is absolutely critical. We use IT for customer satisfaction. We introduced Web check-ins and we What’s your vision for are trying to introduce roll-in (when a SpiceJet? passenger is standing in a queue and has no bags to check-in, one of our personnel SpiceJet wants to differentiate itself on could walk up to him and hand over his various fronts. Our differentiators would boarding pass). be: our people, IT and creating a brand We use technology to gain twin benefits: that has top-of-the-mind recall. enhance customer experience and reduce We want to be a friendlier airline with costs. We have the lowest rate of online customer friendly policies. We want to ticketing frauds in Asia. This has taken use technology to innovate and enhance customer satisfaction and efficacy of customer experience. We want to offer a distribution channels to the next level. comfortable, efficient and reliable service across all customer touch points. We are a zero-debt company and we want to take What measures is this advantage forward. SpiceJet adopting to I want SpiceJet to be the best capitalized prune operational costs? and best run Indian airline. I believe it’s not about the size it’s also about creating Like I said, we are a zero-debt company customer loyalty. CIO and have the lowest cost base in the industry. SpiceJet flies one of the youngest fleets in the segment. This means our lease payments are relatively higher than our competitors. We pay the same price for the fuel, ATF, airport charges and competitive Sneha Jha is correspondent. Send feedback on this wages to employees. So how do we manage interview to sneha_jha@idgindia.com

SpiceJet

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DATA

How Karnataka Bank lived up to that promise. BY VARSHA CHIDAMBARAM 60

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THE ORGANIZATION Founded on the coastal banks of Mangalore, Karnataka Bank has become a name to reckon with in India’s financial sector. With an 85-year banking history and a network of 456 branches, the bank has become synonymous with reliability to many of its 4.5 million customers. But with that trust comes responsibility. “Our banking environment requires real time access to information with no room for data loss,” says Ananthakrishna, non-executive chairman, Karnataka Bank. THE BUSINESS CASE Handling and ensuring the safety of a sprawling database of 4.5 million customers is hard. So much so, that the Reserve Bank of India passed a regulation two years ago, urging banks to conduct frequent disaster recovery drills to ensure zero loss of customer data. Karnataka Bank had a disaster recovery process it place, but it wasn’t the best. “It would take four to five hours just to initiate the recovery process at the DR site,” says Anantha Padmanabha Upadhya,

ILLUSTRAT IO N BY MM SHAN IT H

100 % SECURITY 0% LOSS

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Case File Reader ROI:

assistant GM IT at

The impact of the Bank. “When disaster recovery we conducted DR on a business making

drills, the results revealed glaring l o o p h o l e s . ”A recovery time The importance objective of four of scalability hours was become unacceptable to the bank and Upadhya knew something had to be done. It wouldn’t be an easy problem to solve. The bank has multiple delivery channels including its branches, ATM, website and SMS banking and each channel housed its data separately. As the bank grew, the silos of data made consistency hard to achieve. Data back up and restoration operations also took hours and brought the bank’s database to a halt, affecting core banking operations. Upadhya had another worry. A poor recovery point objective left a window open for data loss. “Data lost in transit is irretrievable. This would seriously compromise our credibility,” he says. Upadhya realized that the problem lay at a fundamental level. The existing DR setup involved data replication at the application level, resulting in multi-application data copies. The bank’s applications, which included core banking, were slowing down the replication process. “What we needed was a consolidated IT infrastructure at the primary datacenter to facilitate centralized How a three-tiered storage solution can help

data replication at the DR,” explains Upadhya. This would reduce complexity, time and effort and shut out the possibilities of human error.

with concurrent multi-site replication capability and enhances data protection. Further, a split-mirror SNAPSHOT mechanism provides a rapid Karnataka Bank disk mirror of production data TURNOVER: by copying only incremental Rs 34,380 crore changes within the local THE PROJECT Weighing BRANCHES: storage system. The process all his options, Upadhya 456 rapidly creates multiple turned to a three-tiered EMPLOYEES: copies of critical data that can storage solution. The new 5000+ be recovered in a disaster. In setup created a bunker HEADQUARTERS: addition, it enables the logical site between the primary Mangalore partitioning of ports, cache datacenter and the DR and disk capacity. The system has built in site. This near-line datacenter operates redundancies at every point to ensure a synchronously with the main datacenter resilient storage based DR infrastructure. so that every transaction is updated in real time. The remote datacenter, in a different city, operates in an asynchronous mode, THE FIRST STEPS While the plan completing the set up. looked good on paper, the tough part was This three-way DR solution creates executing to deadline. The bank was up for a foolproof strategy against any sort of year-end processing in March, which left disaster. The near-line datacenter is located Upadhya with three months to implement in the same city as the primary datacenter to and stabilize the project. The challenge was avoid any latency, since data is transmitted amplified because the project had to be synchronously to both sites. When the implemented on a core banking system and primary datacenter goes down, the near the migration had to be seamless without line DR datacenter takes over and starts disruptions. Faced with these challenges, syncing with the remote datacenter and Upadhya called for back-up in the form of an incrementally replicates every last change outsourced partner. In addition, he would to the main DR site. upgrade his servers within a few months The system uses a universal replicator that to optimize the benefits of the new storage can work in a heterogeneous environment infrastructure. “We invested around Rs 10 and with multiple applications. In addition, crore in the project. I believe we are the only the re-sync feature provides the bank bank in India which has a DR plan of this scale and nature,” he says.

“Data lost in transit is irretrievable. This would seriously compromise our credibility.” — Anantha Padmanabha Upadhya, Assistant GM IT, Karnataka Bank

THE BOTTOM LINE Today, Karnataka Bank can assure it’s customers of zero data loss. With faster backups and data replication, the bank has reduced its recovery point objective to zero, and reduced its recovery time objective from about five hours to 15 minutes. Data backup and restoration processes have been cut from four hours to a few minutes. The efficiency this has triggered has seen the bank’s performance improve by 20 percent in the last year. And the system can support the bank’s growth over the next five years, without any fresh investments. CIO Varsha Chidambaram is trainee journalist. Send feedback on this feature to varsha_ chidambaram@idgindia.com

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EVENT REPORT

Presenting Partner

EXCEEDING

EXPECTATIONS Sensing the weight of growing expectations from lean IT investments, CIOs gather to discuss how to drive business value through better technology management.

f organizations are tied tightly to the rollercoaster economy, it’s their IT departments that are facing the brunt of ride’s sharp ups and downs. IT leaders have to deal with the fixed mindsets of their managements towards ROIs attached to IT investments, which are expected to be surer and shorter. The good news is that CIOs have proved that their departments are cost-saving centers; the not-sogood news is that expectations from IT are soaring high, as businesses demand that their infrastructure to be honed for the upturn. At a recent CIO roundtable, IT leaders from multiple verticals got together to discuss how technology could provide the push for their businesses to ride the economic upswing. Talking about the how business and IT aligned at his organization to help it sail through the economic turbulence, Sandeep Phanasgaonkar, president and group technology officer, Reliance Capital, said, “We have clearly identified business goals and have associated to them through both the consolidation and growth phase. At this stage, our IT is tightly melded with the delivery of business strategy.” Satish Pendse, CSO, Hindustan Construction Company said he used this approach and it made getting business to pay for IT investments

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much easier. “As long as we can demonstrate that we can increase business efficiency and add competitive advantage through an investment, we have a strong case for the funding.” The hard part for IT leaders is finding that balance between the IT budgets and priorities, that they know are important but the business does not. Dhiren Salva, CIO, Kuoni Travel India, achieves this by defining business goals instead of technology goals while his IT budget is being charted out. “If we focus on cost savings or getting more business for the organization then we can ensure favorable budgets for IT and it becomes easier to convince management,” he said. Despite this, CIOs must come to terms that some projects aren’t going to get through. But that’s okay, says Gopal Rangaraj, VP-IT, Reliance Life Sciences, because then only those projects that really make the cut “get filtered through,” he said.

RECOVERY AND RISK The slowdown, then, seems to have provided a good filtering mechanism. But that’s not the only good thing that’s come out of it. According to Phanasgaonkar, there’s another positive outcome of the financial

“As a repercussion to the recession, IT finally has a chance of moving away from giving every application its own dedicated set of resources.”

“The customer has become evermore demanding, so IT has to plan ahead keeping in mind the next generation of customers.”

— David Greene, Vice President-Marketing, BMC Software

—Chip Salyards, Vice President, BMC Software

11/13/2009 8:35:56 AM

meltdown: people have started putting in place formal systems to manage risks. And the risks are plenty. Rajesh Doshi, senior executive director, National Securities Depository, pointed to reputation risk. Ajay Kumar Meher, VP-IT, MSM (Sony Entertainment Television), added that risk mitigation is industry specific. At Reliance Life Sciences Rangaraj said that they have pushed risk mitigation by providing DR sites for some critical applications. This strategy, he said, has helped the company save costs and reduce risk. But it isn’t always easy to make risk a high-level concern. Sanjay Belsare, head IT infrastructure, Kotak Mahindra Bank, said that convincing management to invest in security or risk is difficult because it’s a grey area where returns are concerned. “Business will not spend money in DR or IT security projects,” he said. “They would rather like to invest in extending their branches, expansion and something that adds discernable value to the business."

A QUESTION OF MONEY Taking up on this budget theme, Anwer Bagdadi, Sr VP and CTO, CFC India Services, said, “More acquisitions are happening post-recession. And as a result new processes and apps need to be integrated. So the need for investment in IT from a budgetary point of view goes up multifold, but in that same budget you have to show huge cost savings.” This brings IT leaders back to an old question: whose responsibility is it to calculate ROI? According to Manoj Shrivastava, VP group IT, Reliance ADA Group, “The responsibility of calculating ROI for business related investments should lie with the business. Unless the business exploits these solutions to their full extent the required onus will not come,” he said. To this Joydeep Datta, CTO, ICICI Securities, added, “ROI in case of IT have generally been met, though it may not be measured in a very organized way. But if it’s related to business, ROI usually falls short in the end.” At Syntel, CIO, Murali Ramachandran, uses a straightforward method to figure out the ROI conundrum. “In order to ensure faster ROI realization, projects should be broken down into smaller components of implementation. This makes its easier to demonstrate and access the value of an investment,” he said. However, Pankaj Sindhu, director-IT, Fulford (India) and T.P. Anantheswaran, head-IT, Mumbai International Airport, pointed out a problem that most organizations face that Ramachandran’s approach does not solve. Organizations, they said, do not follow the ROIs end-toend. “It’s because when ROIs are set, the measurement mechanism is not thrashed out,” said Anantheswaran. FROM LEFT: DHIREN SALVA, CIO, Kuoni Travel India; ANWER BAGDADI, Sr VP and CTO, CFC India Services;HARNATH BABU, Sr. Asst. VP-IT, Star Union Dai-Ichi Life Insurance; GOPAL RANGARAJ, VP-IT, Reliance Life Sciences; RAJESH DOSHI, Sr. Exec. Director, National Securities Depository; JOYDEEP DATTA, CTO, ICICI Securities; PANKAJ SINDHU, Director-IT, Fulford (India); AJAY KUMAR MEHER, VP-IT, MSM; SANDEEP PHANASGAONKAR, President and Group Technology Officer, Reliance Capital; MURALI RAMACHANDRAN, CIO, Syntel; SANJAY BELSARE, Head IT Infrastructure, Kotak Mahindra Bank; SATISH PENDSE, CSO, HCC; MANOJ SHRIVASTAVA, VP Group IT, Reliance ADA Group; T.P. ANANTHESWARAN, Head-IT, Mumbai International Airport

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everything you wanted to know and more

Green Growth Phase

Illustration by MM Shan ith

Of late, sustainable computing been getting pooh-poohed as hype and marketing spin. But with new technology and green IT’s potential savings, can you really afford to ignore it?

Deep Dive Articles case study Green Datacenter: The Real Deal ��66 features Be the Green Guru You Need to Be ��70 7 Green Technologies to Watch ��78 Put a Ceiling on Your Power Use ��82 Green Conversation Starters ��86 test center The Clash of PC Power Managers ��73

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green IT

case study

Green Datacenter: The Real Deal

This datacenter shines with top-down green design and gets money for it. By Tim Greene

Companies looking for a green datacenter model should take a look at the new facility Internap built in Somerville, Massachusetts, just outside Boston, which is so environmentally efficient the local power company wrote it a rebate check for $453,000 (about Rs 2 crore). A renovated warehouse building that most recently housed a 5,000-member church, the collocation facility is optimized to economically meet demands for cooling, humidity and power consumption that are common to all datacenters. Internap expects that the datacenter will save another $400,000 (about Rs 1.8 crore) every year by using less power than it would have had it not built to green specifications, says Mike Higgins, vice president and general manager of Internap's datacenter services. That is helpful to its bottom line as well as keeping down rates it charges customers, he says. To meet increasing demand for power in datacenters, the facility is designed to provide 150 watts per square foot across

The design of the Internap site gave Carbonite confidence that its environmental needs â&#x20AC;&#x201D; power, cooling, humidity â&#x20AC;&#x201D; would be met, says Rob Rubin, vice president of engineering for Carbonite. Heat and humidity have a direct impact on how long disk drives last, he says, and the better those factors are controlled, the longer their storage disks last, he says. That has a direct impact on Carbonite's bottom line. The 45,000-square-foot Internap building has 16,300 square feet of usable datacenter space built so far and has a separate section ready to build out into a second space of the same size, according to Karl Robohm, principal with Transitional Data Services, which consulted on the project.

Design Basics One key to efficiency was deciding well ahead of time what equipment to install and only then turning building design over to architects and engineers, says Robohm. That meant

Gartner says that by 2011 datacenter power consumption could double from 2005 levels if steps are not taken to make them more efficient. the entire raised floor space, and that is upgradable to 300 watts per square foot. Typical customers actually have access to 240-280 watts per square foot because aisles and common areas draw not power â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a significant boost to the 60 watts per square foot specification widely used a few years ago. Datacenter power consumption in the United States doubled between 2000 and 2006, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, so paying attention to efficient use of power helps address wider concerns about the ability to provide enough electricity to meet general demand. Gartner says that by 2011, power consumption could double again from 2005 levels if businesses don't take steps to make datacenters more efficient. Efficiency and reliability at the Internap datacenter are key to Carbonite, the first customer to rent space in the facility. Carbonite is a venture-backed start-up that sells cloud-based backup services to consumers and soon to small businesses. 66

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taking the time to find which gear would best serve efficiency goals. "We didn't pay any more money, we just went out and did some research," he says. The first step was finding the six rooftop cooling units that keep temperatures in the datacenter space at 70 degrees Fahrenheit, plus or minus 2 degrees. He looked at gear from six vendors but found only one that met the rebate specifications of the power company, NSTAR. NSTAR has a program for paying rebates to its customers that use energy-saving infrastructure in their new construction. Internap saved money by buying the units itself rather than having the contractor buy them at a markup, he says. That also ensured that they would be on hand so construction wouldn't grind to a halt waiting for them to be delivered. The units, which currently have traditional air-based cooling coils for capital budget reasons, will be upgraded to more efficient water coils and chiller plant later on, says John

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Where’s the Green Pressure Coming From? until recently (and even now among many companies) iT leaders have not been concerned about the power their datacenters consume. But there’s growing pressure for them to change. Here are the top eight people pushing ciOs’ green buttons.

cFOs

The no. 1 reason CIos are greening up their IT operations is to save money. By reducing the PRESSURE GAUGE READING amount of electricity or chilled water used in their datacenter operations, CIos can contribute money straight to the company's bottom line, and that's what the CFo wants to see.

ceOs

CEos are under increasing pressure to PRESSURE GAUGE READING use natural resources — energy, water, land — in a more responsible, sustainable way. Urged on by outside directors and shareholders, CEos are expected to understand their carbon footprint and start taking steps to reduce it.

iT Vendors

Green IT is one of those movements where PRESSURE GAUGE READING vendors have been ahead of most CIos and IT buyers. That means IT buyers are seeing a lot of hype from hardware and software manufacturers about why they need to go green. Green IT initiatives such as Climate Savers and The Green Grid are being driven by manufacturers including Intel, Google, Dell, IBM, hP, Microsoft and others.

The media

IllUST raTIon By MM Shan ITh

Going hand-in-hand with the pressure that CIos feel from the IT industry is pressure from PRESSURE GAUGE READING the media. The mainstream media, trade journals and bloggers have all focused on the connection between datacenter’s, computing and energy use.

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competitors

Generation y

Companies always feel pressure about what their direct competitors are doing, and PRESSURE GAUGE READING green IT is no exception. "Microsoft, Google and yahoo — all three have declared plans for carbon neutrality…now we're jockeying for the position of being the greenest company out there," says Erik Teetzel, renewable energy manager at Google.

Teens and 20-somethings are fired up about environmentalism, and that is increasingly PRESSURE GAUGE READING putting pressure on companies to green their operations. Many CIos are parents, too, and their kids are learning about global climate change at school. Kids are pushing recycling, switching out light bulbs, and unplugging computers and other electronic devices at night.

employees

Many C-suite executives are PRESSURE GAUGE READING just beginning to see bottom-up efforts from employees to make their companies more environmentally friendly. Whether they are launching recycling programs or turning off lights at night, employees can exert peer pressure on each other to change wasteful behavior at work.

The community

Community leaders are starting to apply pressure to local corporations to improve PRESSURE GAUGE READING their sustainability. although that's not a big pressure on CIos today, these efforts are likely to increase. "Cities, nonprofits — I do think that is a growing source of pressure with respect to people thinking a bit more about this topic," says Google’s Teetzel.

—By Carolyn Duffy Marsan

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green IT

To improve the efficiency of humidity Willard, president of Complete Energy control, the entire inside of the building Solutions, another consultant on the was sealed by plugging up obvious air project. At that time, Internap will gain spaces and spraying a vapor barrier on the efficiency across a wider range of outside walls so moisture doesn't escape through air temperatures and will still have the them. "You want the air to go where you air-based units available for backup and want it to go," Robohm says. redundancy. "It's green today, but it can get Internap wants the cool air pushed even greener in the future," Willard says. from the roof to a three-foot space below The simple choice of roof color saves the datacenter floor, where air pressure money as well. Making it white reflects forces it up through vents in the flooring. more light, which means the roof is The vents are evenly spaced in rows cooler and doesn't generate heat that that allow placement of standard-sized seeps into the building just to be pumped equipment cabinets between them, out and cooled. creating cold aisles. Also in the cooling mix are enormous The front sides of the servers face these vents called economizers that can let in Source: Green IT Report, Symantec cold aisles and their fans draw the cool air outside air as part of the effort to keep across their heat-generating components. temperatures down in the datacenter space. The heated air is pushed out the back to hot The economizer can also be used to eject aisles that have return gratings in the ceiling directly over them. hot air directly out of the building rather than cooling it through The gratings lead to a six-foot space above the ceiling where the the rooftop units. But proper use of economizers requires careful hot air is ejected or sucked into the rooftop units for cooling. calculations, Robohm says. The Internap facility further reduces heat generated Cool outside air has relatively low humidity and low in the building through use of harmonic-mitigating humidity encourages build up of static electricity that can wipe transformers to step down the voltage to usable levels. These out servers. So using the economizers has to be coordinated harmonic transformers operate 25 percent more efficiently with generating humidity within the building to keep down than conventional K-factor transformers in datacenter static charges, Willard says. environments. By operating at 98 percent to 99 percent To handle this calculation, the facility has an energy efficiency, very little electricity is wasted in the voltage management system (EMS) that he calls the brains of the building. conversion process saving on both electricity and cooling. The system's sensors measure inside and outside temperature, Even the lighting in the facility is low powered and turns on inside and outside relative humidity and air pressures within with motion sensors. If Internap collocation customers want more the cooling ducts and the space below the datacenter floors where light for their space within the datacenter, it can be added later. the cool air is delivered. "You have to have the whole building The high performance lighting reaps an additional 10 percent to thinking as one," Willard says. 15 percent savings in power and will earn another rebate from the Preventing inside humidity from dropping below 40 power company, Willard says. percent, plus or minus 5 percent, falls to ultra-sonic humidifiers Overall design of the facility makes it possible to have a widethat generate a cool mist. The alternative way to provide the open datacenter floor free of any gear needed to deliver power, moisture is use of steam canisters that heat water to create control temperature and add humidity, all of which would steam that humidifies the air. generate heat within the space, Robohm says. Freestanding The savings of the cool humidification system are dramatic, cooling units also eat up floor space for their footprints plus buffer using 93 percent less energy than the steam gear, Willard zones around them. says. In another Internap datacenter facility that formerly Internap wants to retrofit some of its other eight datacenters used somewhere between 90kW and 135kW to power steam with technologies used in its new facility, but it is difficult to humidifiers, switching to the ultra-sonic technology cut that make wholesale changes in operating datacenters that are full number to 9kW, he says. of customer gear, Higgins says. But the lessons learned at the The ultra-sonic gear doesn't use energy to heat the water; it's Somerville location will be used as the company builds its sprayed out at the temperature it arrives from the tap. The mist future sites, he says. CIO actually absorbs some of the heat generated by electronic gear in the datacenter, and because it's mist not steam, doesn't add heat to the equation.

24%

Of CIOs say they are willing to pay an additional 19 percent for more energy efficient products.

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green IT

Be the Green GuruYou Need to Be From facilities design to carbon management and international law, here's what you need to learn to become your company's green go-to person. By Mary K. Pratt The push is on for companies to go green, and IT professionals will likely feel the pressure to deliver. Although most ITers don't have specialized eco-skills, there are ways to develop this knowledge, and to parlay what you already know. Businesses often see IT as a natural pick to lead their sustainability efforts, says Simon Mingay, the lead green IT analyst with Gartner. IT touches every area of an organization, with data already collected — or available to be mined — about green opportunities and other information needed to make smart decisions, he says. Meanwhile, many businesses don't have environmental specialists on staff. Taken together, this is an opportunity for IT to take the lead. This will require some in IT to acquire expertise in additional areas. "These are new skill sets that extend the traditional domain of the IT professional," says Eme Onuoha, director of sustainability for Xerox Canada.

As companies try to cut their carbon footprints, they're turning to their IT leaders to help develop the systems needed to track carbon. Be warned, though: There are few green-IT certification programs and degrees. One of the first green IT college-level program, a two-year associate's degree, was co-developed by IBM and is being offered both online and at the Metropolitan Community College in Omaha, Nebraska. With few exceptions, "a lot of this is learning is on the fly. There is no standard curriculum," says Adrian J. Bowles, vice president with Datamonitor Group of London and founder of SIG411 LLC, a green consultancy. That means you'll be 70

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learning this on your own — often at the same time your bosses are asking you to deliver some green results. We asked several enterprise IT leaders, and here are wfour new skill sets that they listed as valuable to know. Learn one or more if you want to be the green go-to person at your company.

Facilities Design and Management Organizations of all stripes are trying to create more sustainable work environments, with some aiming for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification from the US Green Building Council. As such, IT professionals are being asked to help create a more green footprint for their companies. "That's not something we've traditionally done before as IT professionals," says Brad Gammons, vice president of global energy and utilities for IBM. IT leaders will have to think about how their decisions impact sustainable design and, in turn, how the building's design impacts the IT infrastructure. "It has a lot of impact on the type of devices you use, where you locate people and how you design work spaces. You have to look at how you cluster computers, bodies and servers," Gammons explains. IT will also need a better understanding of the complex infrastructure used to maintain smart buildings, where IT monitors all sorts of infrastructure related to the physical space, from security and access control to the heating and ventilation systems, says Clay G. Nesler, VP of global energy and sustainability at Johnson Controls, which provides energy-related products and services for buildings. "In the old days, building management systems were islands. They had their own infrastructure, and vendors would build their own computers," he says. "Today more of that is sitting on IT infrastructure." IT will increasingly need to understand the metering and monitoring systems going into green buildings and how the buildings' computerized infrastructure has requirements different from other computer-related systems, Nesler says. "You don't reset a large centrifugal chiller the way you would reset a server," he adds. "There are health and safety issues to the equipment, and if you're looking at a system console, you might not know this."

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carbon management

recycling and recovery targets for electronics throughout the European As companies try to cut their carbon Union. Similarly, China has the Measure footprints, they're turning to their IT on the Control of Pollution Caused by leaders to develop the systems need to Electronic Information Products (more calculate and track carbon throughout commonly called China RoHS). the organization and its sometimes And because so many companies vast supply chain. Thus, someone in IT have global operations, many in IT needs to know about embedded carbon have to know these regulations. Hipes and how to measure it in the products and NEI marketing vice president Jeff and processes throughout the company, Hudgins say IT leaders must understand Bowles says. environmental compliance issues so Consider, for example, something they can ask vendors the right questions as seemingly straightforward as app regarding specific state, national or development. As companies track their international environmental standards carbon figures, CIOs should know how before buying, deploying and disposing app development contributes to the Source: Green IT report, Symantec of equipment. company's overall numbers. You'll have "They have to spec all the to ask whether an app will require new requirements around the environmental hardware to test and run, or how much safety component. You have to have a strategy from cradle to additional server space (and thus energy) it will require â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and grave. And the IT person had better have done that research. how those translate into carbon output. In the past, IT might have called maintenance to just haul off Bowles says IT will have to work with other business units [old] equipment. Now, if there still is a maintenance worker to calculate, capture and report on the activities, purchases to haul it off, he's likely to ask, 'What do you want to do with and output made by their departments, too. it?' " Hudgins says. "It's understanding the economics and the implications of carbon management: What do we track today, what should we track and what will we be asked to produce in the future? Because energy management you can't manage what you can't measure," Bowles explains. IT leaders must develop a better understanding of their entire organization's energy needs as well as a better relationship with their electrical utilities, says John The Law Skinner, director of marketing, eco-technology, at Intel and IT leaders are encountering state laws and international an alternate board member and marketing co-chairman at regulations that impact everything from the IT products they Climate Savers Computing. buy, to how they dispose of them, to their company's carbon Skinner acknowledges that many companies have facility footprint, says Austin Hipes, director of field engineering at workers or energy procurement officers who handle electricity Network Engines, an application-appliance maker. bills, but emerging trends will force IT to get more involved. Some of the most well-known laws in this area include Skinner sees several reasons for gaining electrical expertise. the European Union's Restriction of Hazardous Substances First, energy management systems are becoming Directive, or RoHS, and the Waste Electrical and Electronic increasingly sophisticated, prompting the need for IT to better Equipment Directive, or WEEE, which sets collection,

39%

of large Indian enterprises say they are already implementing green IT initiatives.

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green IT

understand how to use the monitors and sensors to make smart consumption decisions. Also, more and more utilities are establishing an expertise on how to develop energy-efficient IT departments; CIOs will want to tap into that expertise to better their own department's energy performance â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and will need to be conversant in electricity to have meaningful discussions. Additionally, utilities are offering incentives to commercial customers that take certain steps, such as enabling computer power management across their PC networks or designing energy-efficient datacenters. In India, some utilities are starting to offer variable rate incentives depending on when companies use electricity and how much they use. All of this requires IT systems that can regulate electricity use. More utilities are establishing an expertise on how to develop energy-efficient IT departments; CIOs will need to be conversant in electricity to have meaningful discussions. Some see IT playing an even greater role in energy management. Vuk Trifkovic, a senior analyst at Datamonitor Group, says that as the electric power supply grid becomes increasingly taxed IT must understand how that effects its

into sustainable initiatives takes work, says Bill Griffith, Ph.D., a professor of management at Antioch University New England, which offers a green MBA. Xerox Canada's Onuoha explains that green initiatives often require people to change longstanding behavior; some might resist and resent the change, particularly if they don't understand the reasons behind it. In that regard, green initiatives are like most other IT projects in that they require you to sell them using clear objectives that your colleagues will understand, get buy-in and then help the workforce to adopt them with as little stress as possible. For example, "How do you convince that person who for 10 years has had the privilege of a scanner or an inkjet printer under their desk that they shouldn't have it any more?" Onuoha asks. "If you can't articulate that, then they can't influence the culture and they won't influence behavior."

Telecommunications "IT is crying for people who are experts in telecommunications," says Brad Gammons, VP of global energy and utilities for IBM, because many green initiatives

Power utilities, like some serving New Delhi, are starting to offer variable rate incentives depending on when companies use electricity and how much they use. infrastructure needs. For example, there are areas in London, he says, where IT has the floor space for a datacenter but cannot buy enough power.

Recasting Existing IT Skills in a Green Light But being a green leader isn't all about acquiring new knowledge. Sustainable initiatives will require IT professionals to retool some of their existing skills as well. Here's a look at several common IT skills that can be recast with an eye toward being green.

Business Analytics Companies have traditionally used analytics to drive down costs and increase revenue, and Datamonitor Group's Bowles says IT should harness business analytics to drive green projects. To do that, they'll have to determine what to analyze â&#x20AC;&#x201D; he sees energy consumption and carbon emissions as starting points â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and then decide how to present and use that information to get results.

Change Management Sharpen up on these skills, because getting everyone to buy 72

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call for more flexible work environments that reduce travel needs. As more companies promote home-based workers and hoteling options (where remote workers have space when they need it in the office), companies will need experts who can not only implement the technology needed to support such scenarios but also understand the security required to make it work effectively.

Total Cost of Ownership As companies start to analyze the products they choose based on green criteria, IT leaders must consider new factors as they calculate the TCO of their assets, Onuoha says. They'll have to look at the amount of greenhouse gases it takes to produce and transport the products they buy, how much energy they use once deployed and how much it costs to dispose of them in the end. Moreover, IT will be asked to provide systems to analyze other areas of the corporate supply chain in the same way, Onuoha says. "If you can apply a lifecycle assessment to as much of your supply chain as possible, it gives you a better understanding of what impact your enterprise has on the environment and sustainable development," he adds. CIO

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GReeN IT

TesT cenTeR

The clash of Pc Power managers autonomic, BigFix, and Symantec altiris solutions offer a wealth of potential power savings, but also differences in policy depth, granularity, and ease. By LOGan G. HaRBauGH Companies are anxious to reduce power usage these days, both to save cash on energy bills and to reduce their environmental impact. One area that's ripe for power savings is the desktop. But keeping a PC running 24/7 can cost as much as Rs 7,700 (Karnataka rates) per year, depending on the type of computer and monitor, as well as energy rates in your region. Shutting down a PC for 16 hours or so per day can cut those costs by 66 percent. That translates to potential savings of more than Rs 25 lakh if you have 500 machines. Rather than relying on end-users to power down their machines and monitors each night, then reboot them in the morning, organizations are increasingly turning to power management offerings, products capable of powering machines on and off at pre-determined times to ensure that they're awake when it's time for work, backups, or patches. Otherwise, they'll be asleep so as not to waste energy and money. I had a chance to test three power management softwares aimed at the enterprise desktop market, from vendors Autonomic Software, BigFix, and Symantec. Notably, all three software products are part of suites intended to provide a great many more PC management functions beyond control over power usage, such as remote desktop support, configuration and patch management, vulnerability assessment, and endpoint protection. Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7 already come with tools to put machines in a low-power state (from standby and sleep to complete shutdown) at a set period of time or a predetermined amount of inactivity. So why do you need a separate power-management tool? Because these tools offer several useful features not available in Windows. For example, they can locate systems with hibernation disabled and re-enable it.

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They can shut down apps and save files before powering down the system. Admins can set different durations of inactive time before hibernation is triggered. Admins also can use the tools to automatically restart PCs at pre-determined times, such as in the middle of the night for software updates and patches.

enter Power mode There are several modes of power saving, depending on the OS, motherboard, monitor, and power strip or UPS. When Windows powers down a monitor, for instance, power usage on the monitor doesn't drop to zero; rather, it enters a powersaving mode defined by the manufacturer, generally using less than 3 watts. Even if the monitor is turned off, its power supply may be using some electricity. This is true of PCs as well; even when shut down, they still draw some power to keep the clock running. Notably, a new type of power strip/UPS from APC can eliminate much of this wasted power. The P7GT power strip and the BE750G Back-UPS model both power off up to three peripherals when the attached computer shuts down or goes into hibernate mode. This means that the power supplies for the peripherals are completely powered off, rather than using standby power or full power when the computer is shut off. Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7 offer three degrees of power saving: sleep (standby in XP), hibernate, and shut down. Sleep saves system state to RAM to resume very quickly and hibernate saves state to disk, taking longer to resume but puts RAM off. Standby in XP is essentially the same as sleep mode in Vista and Windows 7, except that standby saves system state only in RAM whereas Vista and Windows 7 also save it to disk.

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GReeN IT

30% 30% Autonomic Software ANSA Platinum Suite

20%

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10%

Overall Score

Value

Symantec Altiris 7.0.354

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Go, Go Power savers

Test Center Scorecard Effectiveness

Rather than focusing on the technical differences of these modes, it is useful to examine the recovery times to full operational. Booting from shutdown takes the longest. Restoring from hibernate is generally quicker, and restoring from sleep is quickest of all. Particularly during the day, shutting down a PC is not economical. If you power down a user's PC while he or she is at lunch, the little electricity you save will be wiped out by the five minutes the user wastes waiting for the PC to boot up.

7.8 VERY GOOD

8.8 VERY GOOD

All three software products in my test help 30% 30% 20% 10% 10% admins locate PCs that aren't using power management; and, they all enable policy8.4 BigFix Enterprise Suite 7.2 8 8 9 9 9 VERY GOOD based enforcement of power-saving settings by remotely deploying agents to each PC on the network. Additionally, they offer considerably more flexibility than trying to use Group Policy in Active Directory, plus they deliver other Once Autonomic's ANSA agent is deployed, the PC's power features unrelated to power management â&#x20AC;&#x201D; although at a cost. policy can easily be managed from one screen. The system can wake PCs during the night for patching, put them back to sleep afterward, and then rouse them in the morning autonomic software ansa Platinum suite as users arrive. The agent can also execute command-line utilities, A small company, Autonomic seems very responsive to customer enabling it, for instance, to use a computer manufacturer's utility requests. Based on comments I made during the process of getting to change BIOS settings on the motherboard or network interface the system integrated into my test bed, Autonomic made changes card, assuming that the manufacturer provides such a utility. The in the code, adding features I'd suggested in passing, and sent me included asset-management part of the suite can discover all the an updated version within a week. Neither BigFix nor Symantec devices on a given subnet, and it collects SNMP and WMI data are likely to be this responsive, especially to small customers. from each system. The Autonomic ANSA management system is quite flexible, Autonomic offers a unique pricing model for the powerallowing policy-based management by user or group that can take management portion of its ANSA suite; rather than charging many variables into account. Thus, if you have groups that come a set price per seat, the company takes 25 percent of the in at nine and leave at five on the dot, you can develop different savings you reap by implementing PC power management. policies for them than you might for developers who work at all The company will help customers calculate their projected hours of the day and night. savings; plus, it will work with you to apply for rebates from Admins have the flexibility to treat laptops differently from your local utility, offered by some as an incentive to reduce desktop PCs. You can apply different policies for plugged-in power consumption. Moreover, the company has information laptops versus ones running on batteries, for example. The agent on tax incentives and carbon-trading programs that may apply also allows for if-then-else scripting, which lets administrators in your area. create flexible policies that take into account the day of the week, Autonomic sees the power management piece of its suite whether there are files open on the PC, which software packages as a loss leader. The strategy is to give companies a reason to are installed, and so forth. install the suite, then upsell customers on additional features, Some other things, such as enforcing password protection such as remote desktop control; remote monitoring of network, when the screen saver is on, are easier to do in ANSA, which often devices, servers, and workstations; remote management with provides a simple check box where the other systems require help-desk functionality; patch management; configuration hunting around in the policy editor. The administrator can easily management; software distribution; workstation backup; hide the power management control panel from the user as well, enterprise reporting; vulnerability assessment; and managed thus preventing anyone from tampering with the settings. 74

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services. Given the relative ease-of-use of the system, this is a good deal for both Autonomic and its customers. The ANSA reporting tools let you easily quantify savings obtained through power management as well as which PCs have which policies.

BigFix enterprise suite 7.2 Like the Autonomic and Symantec products in this roundup, the BigFix Enterprise Suite 7.2 runs on a Windows server and has the same sort of SQL Server requirement. It proved easy to install and deploy, and rolling out the agents to Windows Server 2003, Vista, and XP systems was a snap. In addition to Windows agents, BigFix has agents available for multiple varieties of Linux, as well as Solaris, HP-UX, Mac OS X, and AIX. BigFix integrates well with Active Directory, making it easy to find the systems to which you want to deploy agents. The agent can also be deployed manually, using an installer on a network drive. Once the agent is installed, you have an array of management options. You can set a policy to enable any of the power management options available through Windows, from always-on to hibernating after any desired period of inactivity. You can apply different policies to different users or groups, either policies already existing in Active Directory or new policies created within BigFix. You can also create a policy that wakes PCs at night to receive software updates and patches, then puts them back to sleep afterward. Creating power management policies for individual PCs or groups of PCs is fairly straightforward in BigFix. Like Autonomic, BigFix can manage power options not available through the Windows power management control panel, such as the suspend sleep state or CPU state used in hibernation, if the hardware supports it. BigFix gives you most of the flexibility in creating and applying power management policies that Autonomic provides, save the if-then-else scripting that allows you to incorporate the day of the week and other variables beyond time of day. Moreover, you can track power usage, save and close open documents before powering down, and track the amount

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of time that the computer is idle during the day. Reporting tools allow the administrator to estimate how much power is being used by all systems, and how much can be conserved by implementing a power savings plan. BigFix can also deploy a utility to track real-time power usage on each managed system. In addition to the power management functionality, BigFix has a multitude of other management features, including inventory of PC hardware and software, managing software updates and patches, setting the desktop configuration and controlling settings for any control panel software, and even locking down password policies and keeping the user from installing unauthorized software. BigFix can manage power options not available through the Windows control panel, such as suspend sleep state, if the hardware supports it.

symantec altiris 7.0.354 Like the other vendors in this roundup, Symantec offers powermanagement features as part of a greater PC management suite called Altiris Client Management Suite. The company offers a freely downloadable evaluation version of Altiris. My demo version installed fairly easily, although the basic installation required agreeing to 33 end-user license agreements, due to the modular nature of the product. Altiris supports a wide variety of hardware and operating systems, including many versions of Windows and Linux and several varieties of Unix. However, BigFix still beats out Symantec in terms of supported platforms. Once the framework was installed, I was able to easily select systems from Active Directory and download agents to them. From there, I took an inventory of the current power management scheme and deployed a new one. One caveat: You should not try to run the server and management interface on an older computer. On my 2.8GHz Xeon single-core system with 1GB of RAM, it often took upward of a minute to select a single item from a list. A quadcore system with 8GB of RAM proved much peppier. The inventory I looked at was specific to power management, though Altiris has a great many other inventory capabilities and reporting tools to gather information about what hardware is

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Pathways to

GReeN IT

the Future

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age to P

e Dir

COMMUNICATION Presenting Partner

Associate Partner

BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION Associate Partner

STORAGE Associate Partner

installed on your network as well as what versions of software and drivers you're running, what the patch levels are, and so on. Setting a power management policy in Altiris is straightforward, and policies can be created that affect Active Directory groups or groups specified by attributes such as OS version or hardware type. Altiris gives you six power schemes — always on, home/ office disk, max battery, minimal power, portable/laptop, and presentation — to apply to different users and groups, defined either in Active Directory or through the product itself. Each scheme is pre-configured with time of inactivity settings for turning off the monitor, turning off the hard disk, and putting the system into sleep and hibernation modes. Unlike in Autonomic and BigFix, the policies don't go beyond pulling the levers in the Windows power management control panel. Nor do you get the flexibility in applying these policies that Autonomic and BigFix provide. Each scheme can be modified — but once a scheme is modified, the new version applies to all systems that subscribe to that scheme. Further, you can't create new schemes, like something halfway between max battery and home/office; you have six and only six schemes to work with. This is much less flexible than the other two products, which let you define any number of schemes or policies for different users, and have the option of passwordprotecting the system after it's brought out of hibernation. Altiris does offer a Wake On LAN setting, which will let you wake systems at night, apply patches, then put them back to sleep. It doesn't provide a way to save files before turning a system off. Most organizations wouldn't deploy Symantec's Altiris framework just for the power management piece. It offers a host of other features, including PC management functions for controlling desktop settings, installing software, taking inventory of software and hardware installed on the PC, locking down a system to keep the user from changing settings or adding unauthorized software, and many more. The complete feature list of the Altiris management framework is quite extensive. Organizations that already use the framework can deploy the power management capability at no additional cost. All three suites help admins locate PCs that are wasting power and configure them to hibernate or shut down, then start up before users arrive in the morning. Each offers similar functionality in creating and applying power management policies. Autonomic is the most flexible, and it promises — literally — to pay for itself. BigFix provides an uncomplicated licensing model, support for a variety of platforms, and a highly capable product. Symantec's offering is a mature, enterprise-class platform with more management features beyond power management than the other two, but at a much higher price per seat. Altiris' power settings can be updated multiple times per day, so that systems go into hibernation more quickly after hours. CIO 76

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EXECUTIVE VIEWPOINT

CIOs need to enable a global team environment. Effective collaboration enables organizations to gain a competitive edge. People and processes need to seamlessly interact to support customer needs. JOHN SAMUEL

Country Manager – India, Verizon Business Samuel has more than 20 years experience in the field of management, sales and training. As a country manager, his main focus is the growth of Verizon Business in India. His responsibilities include growing the customer base and revenues in this region and ensuring significant market presence. What challenges do Indian organizations face today? The pressures on today’s businesses are unrelenting; whether from competitors or customers; in domestic markets or abroad. Customers, suppliers and shareholders expect ever faster service, in ever broader geographies. And economic turbulence makes it important to bring new products to market quickly and effectively than ever; yet, companies are under tremendous pressure to do more with less. Tech-

Are there any specific verticals that you are interested in? Our customers span across all verticals. We focus on tailored IT, security and communications solutions for key verticals such as finance, retail, government, and education; increasingly on healthcare and energy, in the U.S. In India we have particularly strong interactions with companies that are operating in the global markets, and proportionately these tend to fall more into the specific vertical

We help customers update infrastructure to enable anytime, anyplace communication or implement collaboration solutions to help improve productivity. nology is increasingly playing an integral role in enabling companies to do just this. The key is to create a global team environment where people and processes can seamlessly interact to support customer needs. Effective collaboration enables organizations to gain a competitive edge. What is Verizon Business’ strategy in India and globally? Verizon Business is a global leader in communications and IT solutions. We securely connect today’s extended enterprises of widespread and mobile customers, partners, suppliers and employees — enabling them to increase productivity and efficiency and help preserve the environment. Our sweet spot is our multinational corporation that operates in three and more countries. Our strategy in India is consistent with our global strategy. We’ve made significant investments in our capabilities to serve enterprise customers with operations in India.

Exicutive View point _verizon_Page 77.indd 27

markets of financial services, high-tech and business process outsourcing. How do you address the needs of your clients? Our focus is on helping all our customers to do business better, through the effective use of our solutions. We combine our expertise, reach and solutions with the right technologies to deliver what our customers need. We have a strong focus on professional services and solutions to help assess, address and resolve our customers’ real business challenges. Whether it’s about helping customers gain visibility into applications to improve their performance and create a better user experience, or improve server and application efficiencies to help control costs; we ensure they meet compliance requirements in all their global markets, build a secure extended enterprise environment to connect employees, customers and partners.

What makes Verizon’s Business different from competition? Verizon Business combines professional expertise with one of the world’s most connected IP networks to deliver efficient communication, IT, information security and network solutions that help our customers do business better. Our global reach, extensive solutions and robust network infrastructure, combined with the extensive skills and expertise of our global team, enable us to support our customers whenever, and wherever they need us, and help them drive their business forward. We are committed to delivering innovative solutions that really make a difference to our customers’ business; thousands of companies and governments around the world already trust us as a partner in their business growth. We help our customers update infrastructure to enable anytime, anyplace communication or implement collaboration solutions to help improve productivity and reduce expenses and environmental impacts. We also investigate opportunities to improve systems and processes, while focusing IT resources on things most strategic to the business success. Our team has the expertise, global reach and skill-sets to make a difference.

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Illustration by M M S ha nith

green IT

7 GreenTechnologies toWatch Forrester picks seven green IT offerings that will flourish â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and one whose future is less bright. By Ted Samson

Companies seeking to embrace greener practices have a seemingly endless list of technologies from which to choose, from server virtualization to telepresence to EPEAT Gold-rated desktop computers to business intelligence software for streamlining the supply chain. One question well worth exploring is which green technologies are poised to thrive over the long term and deliver the most value to organizations. In a recent report titled TechRadar I&O for Professionals: Green IT 1.0 Technologies, Q2 2009, Forrester analyst Doug Washburn addresses the very question. Based on interviews with various industry experts, he discusses the potential short- and longterm success of more than a dozen green IT 1.0 technologies. Washburn delineates two approaches to green IT: "For green IT 1.0, organizations seek to reduce the environmental impacts related to the IT asset lifecycle, such as toxic chemicals used in the design and manufacture of IT, energy-related carbon emissions from operating IT equipment, and electronic landfill waste from disposing of IT equipment. For green IT 2.0, technology is applied to reduce the environmental impacts deriving from broader business activities, such as energy-related carbon emissions from retail store lighting, fuel-related carbon emissions from truck fleets, or materials waste from product manufacturing." To narrow the scope of the report, Washburn focused only on green IT 1.0 offerings. The following is a list of seven green IT products and services that Washburn identified as having potential for "significant success" â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and one that will enjoy only minimal success.

Green tech No. 1: Cloud Computing Services Not everyone agrees on a definition for cloud computing. Some people define it as an updated version of utility computing, essentially virtual servers available over the 78

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Internet. Others argue that anything you can consume outside the firewall is 'in the cloud', including conventional outsourcing. However you choose to define it, the green appeal is evident. Rather than investing in the installation, powering, and cooling of IT infrastructure for processing, storage, or what have you, you pay a third party to provide the computing services you require. You can pay to use more or fewer resources as your needs change over time â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and you can make those changes quickly without having to pay for new gear. The green benefit, Washburn explains, is that you have fewer associated carbon emissions, as your cloud service provider is powering and cooling the IT gear, plus you have less e-waste to dispose of. It's not as though all carbon emissions and e-waste associated with your IT services disappears entirely just because another organization is providing them. However, given the shared resources of the cloud computing model, it's conceivable that cloud computing providers can deliver services more efficiently to customers (using less electricity and fewer machines overall) than would be necessary if customers run their services in house.

Moreover, by having a place to park their servers and storage equipment, companies can postpone or cancel plans to expand existing datacenters or build new ones, which can be taxing on the environment (not to mention time-consuming and costly), Washburn notes. Though the collocation industry is mature, Washburn says, "its use as a green IT tactic is low since service providers struggle to offer service-level agreements that tie to reducing environmental impacts or reporting that quantifies their success in doing so." In another barrier to wider adoption, datacenter outsourcing and collocation services also require complex and long-term contracts, Washburn says.

Green tech No. 3: IT Energy Measurement There's an ongoing mantra associated with green technology: You can't manage what you can't measure. Thus, I'm not surprised to see IT energy measurement among Forrester's green-tech picks for significant success. "IT energy and environmental measurement technologies â&#x20AC;&#x201D; such as energy meters, sensors,

A solution poised for significant success is storage capacity optimization (SCO) technology, such as thin provisioning and data de-duplication. That's not a guarantee, though, Washburn notes: "Servicelevel agreements do not ensure cloud service providers are doing all they can to reduce environmental impacts or quantifying these environmental benefits for customers." Beyond requiring assurances that cloud services are greener, organizations are hesitant to embrace cloud computing due to security and privacy concerns, as well as doubts that providers can deliver an acceptable level of service.

Green tech No. 2: Datacenter Outsourcing and Collocation Speaking of shared resources, datacenter outsourcing and collocation is also poised for significant success as a green 1.0 service, Washburn says, with your paying a third party to own and operate your entire datacenter or to manage your IT infrastructure within a third-party datacenter facility. Here, you enlist datacenter experts (hopefully) to manage your facilities and/or IT equipment, using their knowledge of the tricks of the trade to reduce environmentally unfriendly waste. Further, if your gear is housed in a shared facility, it means CRAC systems and other infrastructure are being shared. That, in turn, is more environmentally friendly than it would be for each customer to have their own datacenter facility with separate power-distribution and cooling equipment.

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thermostats, and computational fluid dynamics â&#x20AC;&#x201D; will help IT organizations develop their green IT baseline: an annual estimate of the energy consumption, carbon emissions, and dollar costs of operating IT," Washburn writes. Indeed, a host of established vendors and upstarts have rolled out tools for measuring energy consumption of IT gear and associated equipment. HP, for example, has developed Dynamic Smart Cooling sensors to monitor the temperatures of individual server racks and adjust to meet their respective cooling needs. SynapSense has devised a solution that uses wireless sensors to gather various types of data on temperature, humidity, and energy consumption. Sentilla offers devices that measure electricity being consumed by individual servers. The list goes on. Washburn identifies this technology as a mature one in which companies are already actively investing.

Green tech No. 4: PC Power Management Software PC power management software puts computers into a lowpower mode when they're not being used, thus saving energy. Most, if not all, support Wake On-LAN technology, meaning computers can be roused from their slumber remotely for patching, backing up, and the like, then put back to sleep. REAL CIO WORLD | N o v e m b e r 1 5 , 2 0 0 9

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green IT

More, if not all, are also capable of quantifying environmental and financial returns. PC power management software also happens to be one of my personal favorite green technologies, simply because I view it as relatively non-disruptive (once you get the settings just right to match end-users' computing habits) with an easy-to-measure ROI. I'm glad to see Washburn has identified it as another green technology poised for significant success — one that offers a high level of "business value-add" to boot. He predicts it will enjoy further adoption as vendor interest in the technology increases.

Green tech No. 5: Server Virtualization Over the past two years, server virtualization has shaped up to be one of the most widely used technologies. It's a perfect example of a green technology, enabling organizations to get more processing power out of servers, thus reducing energy consumption, cooling requirements, and investments in new hardware. Further, it can allow companies to postpone costly, time-consuming, resourceintensive datacenter construction projects. Given server virtualization's various merits, Forrester has pegged the technology as poised for significant success and one that offers a high business value-add. According to Forrester, server virtualization is already being used at 46 percent of enterprise organizations. Nearly 10 percent more are expected to adopt virtualization in the next 12 months. As companies become more comfortable with the technology — which can be complex at first blush — it will become ubiquitous within the next three years, Forrester predicts.

Green tech No. 6: Storage Capacity Optimization (SCO) Storage waste abounds in the enterprise as end-users cling to old files they likely will never need. Meanwhile, according to the report, "storage environments are plagued with low utilization rates (around 40 percent) and highly redundant data (with de-duplication ratios around 20 to 1)." Thus, companies find themselves having to invest in more and more storage equipment, which means higher energy bills, leading to higher carbon emissions and more e-waste down the road. A solution poised for significant success, according to Washburn, is storage capacity optimization (SCO) technology, such as thin provisioning and data de-duplication. Thin provisioning increases storage utilization by only reserving storage when data is written; data de-duplication solutions reclaim capacity by eliminating redundant data, he writes. Overall, Washburn sees SCO technology as delivering a high business value-add in that it reduces costs, it's inexpensive or free, it's relatively easy to implement, and "it doesn't require buy-in from no-storage stakeholders." He expects it to become a commonplace technology within the next five years. 80

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Green tech No. 7: IT Asset Disposal and Recycling Services There are plenty of good reasons to dispose of electronic waste in a careful, environmentally manner. For an Earthfriendly perspective, e-waste is the fastest-growing segment of global landfill waste, according to The Natural Resources Defense Council. IT equipment is also highly toxic, containing hazardous substances such as cadmium, lead, and mercury. In addition to helping protect the planet, disposing of IT assets in a responsible manner can help prevent sensitive data left on the hard drive of a discarded machine from falling into the wrong hands. Finally, there are laws requiring the safe disposal of IT assets. Properly recycling and disposing of e-waste can be complicated, however. For that reason, Forrester predicts that IT asset disposal and recycling services — which are already quite mature — will continue to enjoy success for years to come. "The landscape of highly reputable IT asset disposal and recycling service providers is mature, with a variety of hardware vendors like Dell, HP, and IBM, and specialists like Intechra, Redemtech, and TechTurn," Washburn writes. "These firms will properly recycle and dispose of end-of-life IT assets — or even better, give these assets a second life by donating or reselling them — in compliance with the complex web of environmental and data security and privacy regulations."

Server Power Management Among the 15 green-tech 1.0 technologies and services that Washburn discussed in the report, he deemed only one as poised for "minimal success": server power management. The concept behind server power management is similar to that of PC power management; it puts machines into a low-power mode when they're not being used. Vendors such as VMWare, Cassatt, Microsoft, IBM, and others offer server power management products or features. However, they don't appear to be enjoying a high rate of adoption. One of the most likely reasons for this, Washburn explains: "Administrators perceive the potential risks of powering down servers to be too high to justify only minimal energy savings." Overall, Forrester doesn't see a bright future for server power management, compared to technologies such as server virtualization. "The business value of this technology is limited since it will not expand beyond organizations with significant test and development labs with no 24-by-7 servicelevel commitments," Washburn concludes. CIO

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green IT

Put a Ceiling on Your Power Use Cap the amount of electricity your servers guzzle and find new ways to lower your datacenter’s costs. By Ted Samson Over-provisioning and over-allocation often leads to overspending in the datacenter. There's certainly something to be said (such as, "I don't want to lose my job") for ensuring that your facility has sufficient power, computing hardware, and backup equipment to maintain precious uptime. However, the trade-off can be thousands — if not millions — of dollars wasted on excess gear that eats up precious white space and costly electricity. Datacenter operators are tackling the problem is numerous ways, such as turning down or eliminating CRAC units, hunting down zombie servers, and employing virtualization to reduce machine count. Some are taking their efforts a step further, employing an emerging technology called power capping that boosts server density and saves on space and power. As the name implies, power capping refers to the practice of limiting how much electricity a server can consume. Typically, the power allocated to a server is steady and fixed, based on a worst-case scenario: how much power the server needs when running at maximum utilization. In reality, most servers in the datacenter don't come close to reaching maximum utilization. That means that most datacenter operators are setting arbitrarily low limits on how many servers they can deploy.

Stuffing the Power Envelope Let's say you have a max power envelope of 1MW. For the sake of argument, let's say 400,000 watts of that megawatt goes to power, cooling, storage, and networking equipment, which leaves 600,000 watts to allocate to your servers. You decide to stick to the power allocation printed on the nameplates of your machines, which is 400W. That means that your budget allows 1,500 1U servers in your datacenter. But what if, in reality, your servers never need more than an average 300 watts of power to maintain their required performance level? If there was a way to ensure you didn't exceed your 1MW power limit, you could pack 2,000 1U servers into the same amount of space — with little to no need to add power and cooling infrastructure.

That's where the power capping comes in. With power capping and complementary management software, you could ensure that no server draws more than 300 watts at once. Some companies, such as Intel, have developed power capping technology that can be applied at the rack level. Intel's power capping magic is called Intel Dynamic Power Node Manager Technology. Designed for servers running Intel's Xeon 5500 chips, Node Manager is an out-of-band power management policy engine, embedded in the Xeon's chip set, that works with BIOS and OS power management (OSPM) to dynamically adjust platform power to achieve maximum performance per watt at the server level. Among its features is Dynamic Power Monitoring, which measures actual power consumption of a server platform, providing real-time power-consumption data. The Platform Power Capping feature sets platform power to a targeted power budget while maintaining maximum performance for the given power level. The Power Threshold Alerting feature monitors platform power against a targeted power budget. When the target power budget cannot be maintained, Node Manager sends out alerts to the management console. Intel also has developed a software add-on to Node Manager called Intel Datacenter Manager, designed to monitor and control power for a group of servers. Intel Datacenter Manager depends on Intel Dynamic Power Node Manager. Datacenter Manager features include group-level monitoring of power consumption, log querying for trend data, group power limiting, and grouplevel power alerts and notifications.

Baidu Racks Up Savings Baidu, China's largest search company, reports success using Intel's power-capping technology. Based on a proof-of-concept study of Baidu's application of the technology, the companies report that a datacenter using the technology could save up to 40 watts per system — without performance impact. This translates into as much as 20 percent additional datacenter capacity within

Baidu, China's largest search company, reports that power-capping technology saves it up to 40 watts per system — without performance impact. 82

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Pathways to

GReeN IT

the Future

8 age P o rn t

u s, T

For

VIRTUALIZATION Presenting Partner

n ctio e r i D

ENTERPRISE INFRASTRUCTURE Presenting Partner

Associate Partner Associate Partner

SECURITY Associate Partner

the same rack-level power envelope, and a potential rack-density improvement of 20 to 40 percent. Baidu’s predicament before deploying power capping was pretty typical: it was leasing racks at a datacenter, and each rack was power limited. The company sought to save money by cramming as many machines as possible into the fewest number of racks. Testing Intel’s power-capping wares started at the individual node level. Step one was to measure power consumption and performance and various levels of CPU use to identify the sweet spot for power management — that is, where the server achieved the maximum power reduction with the minimum performance loss. The testing revealed that the optimal workload was reached at a CPU utilization of around 50 to 60 percent with peak power at about 300W per server. Power consumption tended to stick at around 290W, with some spikes to 300. The next step was to test two levels of power capping: 260W and 200W. The minimum 40W power reduction was needed in order to add another server to each 5U rack, thus achieving the goal of increasing server density. The cap could not go below 200W, as that was the approximate amount of power the server needed simply to idle. From these tests, it was determined that they could add another server per rack by reducing platform power consumption to as low as 250W, all the while maintaining an acceptable performance level. The next test was at the rack level using Datacenter Manager. Rather than capping the power level of individual servers, they developed a power-capping policy of 750W for a three-server rack (250W per server). Without power capping, the rack level of power consumption hit 900W. With the power capping in place, power consumption was clumped down close to 750W. There was some fluctuation due to the dynamic nature of the Baidu app’s workload, but overall, performance remained at an acceptable level, despite the cap on power. In total, Intel and Baidu managed to reduce power consumption by as much as 50W at the server level, without significant impact on workload performance. At the rack level, they saw a potential for around 20 percent more capacity within the same power envelope and without performance impacts. Intel isn’t the only vendor out there offering power-capping technology. AMD, IBM, Dell, and HP have added powercapping features to their server-management software. I can see datacenter operators embracing this sort of technology with caution, as no one wants to be responsible for crippling businesscritical applications. (The same could be said for the practice of powering down servers when they aren’t in use.) At the same time, as datacenters continue to face limits on space and power, and as power-capping technology matures and proves its value in real-world applications, more companies should be amenable to at least giving it a test run. CIO 84

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SPECIAL SECTION

CIO EXECUTIVE VIEW POINT

Dish Out IT the Business Way Empowering business to benefit from the growth potential in recovery. Chip Salyards

Vice President, BMC Software Asia Pacific Salyards is responsible for developing, managing, and executing a comprehensive sales and services strategy across Asia Pacific to drive market growth and sales success across the region. Prior to BMC, Salyards held sales and management roles with several US software companies and worked extensively in the healthcare sector.

What key issues should enterprises consider when determining their IT investment strategy? Surprisingly, opportunities are hidden within today’s financial challenges. With the right approach, it’s possible for IT to provide higher-quality services at lower costs, while also empowering the business to take advantage of the growth potential when the economy rebounds. There are a variety of areas organizations can invest in that will improve the bottom line for IT. When considering an investment strategy, start with assessing your process framework, which should be in place before stepping in for automation. One should look for opportunities to automate among tasks that are manual, repetitive, error prone, and expensive. Though most IT organizations manage fairly large budgets, our research shows that a vast majority of CIOs and senior IT managers lack sufficient visibility into how money gets spent, so it’s important to manage the business of IT. What should CIOs do to ensure that business–IT alignment in their enterprise is on track? By aligning IT with the business, work can be prioritized based on business objectives, giving IT organizations the most value for their investment. To do this, CIOs need to examine a few key areas like reducing IT costs by serving only the highest-priority business needs. CIOs must consider increasing business impact by mapping IT investments and operational decisions to business priorities which will communicate to the business its service levels. One must strive to meet the expectations of the business by improving the quality of

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service. Risk exposure for business must be defined and controlled to manage risks, along with providing transparency that can be shared with stakeholders. Business Service Management (BSM) — a comprehensive approach and unified platform for running IT — has proven to be an effective way to meet these challenges. What issues do clients face with integrating disparate best-ofbreed platforms? Customers experience a lot of pain in this area as they are always looking to remove self-imposed complexity. Our advice to them is to select a platform early and then choose solutions that will easily integrate, as the IT environment evolves. An integrated suite of solutions is the best answer for today’s challenging business environment. How can the business and IT leaders standardize processes? The solution lies in implementing repeatable business processes and automating process workflows. Related processes need to interact with each other from a business perspective, and all IT processes need greater visibility and control over the infrastructure itself. They need to do this to manage technology better and also to effectively manage business requirements. The reality is that managing things well isn’t enough anymore. Processes need to manage the right things well. BSM helps achieve this by providing a real-time understanding of how business priorities are being supported or affected by the computing environment, and using that understanding to influence how technology is deployed and used.

How does increasing automation, drive business value in organizations? By automating manual back-end processes, labor costs can be drastically reduced and resources can be freed-up to contribute to more strategic projects. More importantly, automation can guarantee faster service restoration processes, error-reduction, and decreased risk. It’s been proven time and again that most IT outages are due to human error and automation eliminates this risk. Although reducing cost is critical, IT can often better serve the business by eliminating errors in the datacenter and mitigating risk. The most important element of automation is planning. Without proper planning, you can mistakenly implement automated processes that are more of a hindrance than a help. To successfully automate, you need to ensure that the implementation doesn't negatively impact the IT environment.

11/13/2009 8:36:39 AM

green IT

Green Conversation Starters You want your boss to pay more attention to green IT, but don't know how. Here's one way: throw an punchy fact at him.

A study by McKinsey found that among a total of 458 servers at four production datacenters, 32 percent (146 in all) were running at or below 3 percent peak and average utilization. These types of zombie servers are prime candidates for unplugging to free up space and power and reduce cooling needs.

Ninety percent of companies with large datacenters will need to add more power and cooling within the next two years. Are you one of them? If you are, isn’t time you took heed of the writing on the wall?

7 Companies can reap a 65 percent reduction in server count through virtualization — though your mileage may vary.

8 86

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Although e-waste accounts for only 1 to 4 percent of municipal waste, it may be responsible for as much as 70 percent of the heavy metals in landfills, including 40 percent of all lead.

Datacenters produce around 0.3 percent of the world’s CO2 emissions. The airline industry produces 0.6 percent, and the steel industry produces 1.0 percent.

Among high-end servers, midrange servers, networking equipment, and storage devices, storage devices have the highest power consumption growth rate (191 percent) and the highest overall power consumption (3.2 billion kWh), according to the EPA.

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4 Increasing the set point temperature in your datacenter by just one degree can reduce energy consumption by 4 to 5 percent (though there are caveats about going too high).

6 A PC with a screensaver going can use over 100W, compared with only about 10W in sleep mode. That’s why powering down PCs makes sense from both an environmental and costsaving perspective.

According to a study conducted by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, DC (direct current) delivery systems can be 20 percent or more efficient than current AC (alternating current) delivery systems, be more reliable, and potentially cost less in the long run.

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11 An NGO, Climate Savers says, the price difference between high-efficiency PCs and servers and standard systems is less than about Rs 1,400. It predicts that as volumes increase, these costs reduce to near zero. But even at modestly higher cost, more efficiency will pay for itself through reduced energy costs.

13 Google has a reported PUE of 1.21 across its six company-built datacenters.

15 Sun reports savings of nearly $68 million (about Rs 300 crore) in real estate costs through its Open Work telecommuting program.

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12 14

When it was launched in 2006, EPEAT (Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool) had three participating manufacturers and a roster of 60 registered products. The EPEAT system has since grown to include more than 30 participating manufacturers registering more than 1,000 eco-friendlier desktops, laptops, and monitors.

The average employee wastes printer paper and ink worth about Rs 3,800 each year through unnecessary printing.

Companies focused on eco-tech services received $4 billion (about Rs 18,000 crore) in venture funding in 2007, up 38 percent over 2006. Today, IT asset recovery is a $6 (about Rs 27,000 crore) billion-a-year business.

When transforming a former underground military bunker in Uitikon, Switzerland (outside Zurich), into a data-storage facility, GIB and IBM devised a direct heat exchange between the datacenter and local public swimming pool. The pool is kept warm, for free, by the datacenter's waste heat, saving approximately 130 tons of carbon emissions in the process.

In 2006, the EPA estimated that typical datacenters had a PUE (power usage effectiveness) rating of 2.0 or higher. (below 2.0 is better for the environment.) It predicts that state-of-the-art datacenters, using energy-efficient power and cooling technologies could reach a PUE of 1.2.

The average office worker goes through as many as 10,000 sheets of paper per year. That about an entire tree's worth of wood pulp.

In 2007, Google filed a patent for a floating datacenter that would be located three to seven miles from shore. The design incorporates the Pelamis Wave Energy Converter units, which use the motion of ocean surface waves to create electricity. Google's patent envisions combining 40 or more Pelamis units to crank out 40MW of power. Beyond the free source of power, there would be no real estate or property taxes for the facility.

If all commuters worked from home just one day every week, 5.85 billion fewer gallons of oil would be used each year.

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Y O U R L i F e & C A r e e r PA T H

Out of Your Mind BY KRISTIN BURNHAM When an Anthrax scare hit the Department of Human Services in Virginia's Arlington County in 2002, Christopher David, then the county's chief technology officer, sprang into action. "I knew there was a person who could help us [respond]," he says. "But I didn't remember his name or how to contact him." Rather than waste precious time searching through hundreds of documents housed on his desktop or in file cabinets, David opened his mind mapping application from PersonalBrain, entered a few keywords and, within moments, had the information he needed. Mind mapping — the diagramming of ideas and concepts to help streamline thought processes and organize information — has come a long way since the standard pencil-and-paper method of decades past. New applications now help users organize, house and link thousands of pieces of information, including reports, bookmarks and projects, in a personalized and visual way. And given the volume of complex information for which CIOs are responsible, mind mapping should be top of list in personal productivity tools, says Gartner Research Director Donna Fitzgerald, who writes about mind maps and uses one herself. "It allows you to make your thinking process and ideas concrete," she says. "It should be the first thing you pull up when you think through a new project."

teChNOLOGY

IllUST RATIoN BY AMRITA C RoY

thrive

Mind maps fuel productivity by taking what’s in your head and putting it at your fingertips.

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Keeping Track In many mind mapping applications, you start with a central thought or idea, then add branches — or sub-categories — to break down the topic. These subcategories could be thoughts or include links referencing more information, PDFs you can upload or reports to reference. There are plenty of applications to choose from out there, from Freemind to MindMeister. Brad Isaac, CIO at Breslow Starling Frost Warner, an accounting firm, uses a mind mapping application from Mindjet for project management. In situations like deploying a new server, mind mapping helps him keep track of the project and ensure he's covered the necessary bases: who's managing it, who will be using it, who needs training, he says. "You're able to address all these layers of a complex project in a visual manner and it only takes moments." Letting Thoughts Flow

In many mind mapping apps, you start with a central thought, and add branches to break down the topic.

Help ! My staff is stressed about job security, so work conflicts have intensified. How can I handle this? Coach: Sylvia Lafair, president, Creative Energy Options and author of Don't Bring It To Work: Breaking the Family Patterns that Limit Success.

Always: Be aware that when stress escalates and we feel under pressure to perform, the most ancient fight or flight part of our brain (the amygdala) kicks in. Our mission becomes survival and to achieve that, we either instinctively run away from the threat or move to save someone from it. At work this shows up in subtle ways: unanswered calls, slights masquerading as jokes, sharp tonality, blaming, ignoring or protecting others. Your task as a manager is to learn the warning signs that old survival patterns have taken over. Look for destructive behavior that is repetitive. For example, the drama queen is always gossiping; the martyr is first in, last out, complaining every step of the way; the superachiever is always doing a ‘one-ups’ about what they're doing in the office; the avoider won't stay around long enough to help solve a problem. Sometimes: A good tactic to try is to give your employees time to talk about their economic fears. When there is room to talk about concerns and express ourselves honestly with our work colleagues, there is a healthy capacity to "say it, see it and let it go." Then productive work can be accomplished. Never: Create an environment where survival patterns can fester and grow. Don't encourage a stiff-upper-lip culture where employees smile, seethe and won't talk. Shutting down the primal parts of our nervous systems eventually causes the emotional pot to boil over into angry conflicts. Finally, never participate in the see-all-tell-all workplace where emotions flow freely yet no real work gets done because gossip and rumors stall productivity. CIO

thrive

Others use mind mapping to archive and organize files that would typically be scattered in desktop folders. Tim Flemming, CIO at Ingersoll Rand, a manufacturer of industrial tools, started his first mind map in 2006, also using PersonalBrain, and says it has helped him relate to business-side colleagues more easily. "I'll be on a conference call with Europe, call up my [mind map] and I've got everything I might need — sales numbers, their backlog inventory, you name it," he says. "It allows me to have a business conversation with them in a way that they don't look at me like the IT guy, they look at me like a business partner." Some maps can grow to house tens of thousands of ‘thoughts’ — or points — over time. However, mind mapping users say that since the map is organized in a way that makes sense to you, it never feels overwhelming. David, now an assistant VP at the IT consultancy Catapult Technology, has 4,500 thoughts in his mind map, ranging from business contacts to budget proposals to his cell phone manual. Maintaining your map, he says, is like tending a garden, meaning if you tend it regularly, the maintenance is easy: "You weed out the stuff you don't need. Mind mapping is a process that grows over time, and the timemanagement and productivity benefits are priceless." CIO

threeminute coach

Kristin Burnham is associate editor. Send feedback on this feature to editor@cio.in Send feedback on this column to editor@cio.in

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Insights from Members of the CIO Governing Council

Manish Choksi

Chief of Corporate Strategy and CIO at Asian Paints, Manish Choksi is also a member of the group’s management board. He is responsible for new businesses, corporate planning and IT for India’s largest paint company. Under his aegis, the company has successfully adopted ERP, SCM and other new IT initiatives, and forayed into new services such as décor and while strengthening its industrial paints business.

Set Data Priorities Getting data integrity right is more key to an information management exercise than data classification. Information Management | Though considered simple and drab, information management can become quite a tricky exercise. That’s because it is fairly easy to end up being enamored by the tools and technologies that enable enterprise-wide information management and embark upon a project that could become a oneway ticket to failure. Why do I think so? Simple. At Asian Paints, we have engaged in rolling out an information management ecosystem. And, with a little prodding it is easy to figure out the way people generally look and approach a subject. I think people often focus too much on introducing the tools to address the issues they face with managing structured and unstructured data. But, if you ask me, this approach can actually complicate the entire exercise. And many have burnt themselves going down this road. We looked at this exercise beyond an attempt to classify information. I believe it should all start with one question: who will consume what type of information? Simply put, who is the consumer of certain information and what will they do with it when they get it? These are key questions that one needs to get the right answers to before planning an enterprise-wide project. I believe that you can get data classification right, but still end up with wrong information or data that’s not in the form your business users want. And then you would not have done a great job. 92

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Rather, I would worry more about data integrity. If classification goes wrong, somebody can point it out later and you can recover from the problem fairly easily. But, if you get data integrity wrong (in terms of a source not being validated) you may start introducing gibberish into your information management system. I think, knowing where information is coming from and how you will clean it is critical in handling external sources of data. Hence, it is paramount to be proactive in figuring out the integrity of data. This brings us to the subject of managing unstructured data that can be found all over the enterprise. One thing that was missing before service-oriented architecture came to the real world was relating the content of unstructured data to relevant processes. A process engine plays a very important role in this space because if I want to go beyond mere ‘dash-boarding’ and reporting, I will need to empower users with certain tools. These tools should enable data to be seen in a certain context and help users initiate a change or take a decision. You need to link information back to action to be able to bring about relevant changes, changes required by any

Information management should start with one question: who will consume what type of information? dynamic business. By marrying data to a process, information can lead to transformation. Obviously, the other piece I would want to add to this puzzle is collaboration. If I am not keen in tying information with a process to effect a big change, I may want to look at certain information together in a context and share it in such a way that allows people, functions and processes to work together. This entire gamut of information management tools, process tools, and collaboration tools put together form a basis of what I term an informationled transformation strategy. We’re embarking on that journey at our organization. CIO Send feedback on this column to editor@cio.in

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Annual Report Card

esp

What's Priority No. 1? In 2009, it was

In 2010, however

Lowering the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s overall operating costs.

Driving innovative new market offerings is key.

IT leaders are done with playing it safe. But what's it going to take to catch up with the new growth drive? All this and more inside. BY TEAM CIO

NOVEMBER 15, 2009 WWW.C IO.IN

THE STATE OF THE CIO 2009 is brought to you by

All About YOU AND YOUR Department What's the Money Like 45

(IN Rs LAKHS)

43 AVERAGE SALARY

What You're Worth 2008

40 30

IT / ITES

BFSI

2009 27

24 25

Company Size

Average Salary 2009

(in Rs crores)

(in Rs lakhs)

Below 100

101 - 1,000

Above 1,000

I.T. LEADERS WHO WORK FOR COMPANIES WITH NET SALES OVER RS 10,000 CRORE ARE PAID RS 43 LAKH ON AVERAGE.

Pharma / Biotech Manufacturing

Tenure In Office Your Average Tenure

Year

4 years, 2 months

2008

3 years, 3 months

2009

CIO + MBA

61% of IT leaders said they had a post-graduate management degree. But they get paid only Rs 1 lakh more annually than their peers who don't have one.

IT and Beyond 49% of CIOs said they have been entrusted with RESPONSIBILITIES OUTSIDE IT. Of these, a significant 41 % said they were PART OF A STRATEGY COMMITTEE OR WERE HEADING ONE.

Where You Spend Time

Higher Salary

Whom Do You Report To? 23.3%

12%

CEO

14%

21.1%

36%

15% 24%

Group CIO

13.7%

Director

13.7%

President

On an average, CIOs put in 52 hours a week at work. IT staff or team Your business executives Non-IT employees IT service providers External business partners

11.1%

CFO

6.3%

5.6%

COO

5.2%

Which Business Processes Did IT Improve? 2008

2009

Customer Service

SURPRISINGLY,

CUSTOMER SERVICE 2

Accounting/ Finance

Human resources

POSITIONS, DESPITE

Asset management/ Maintenance

PRESSURE ON THE

Inventory management

BOTTOMLINE.

HAS TUMBLED FIVE

With IT Budgets, Size Does Matter...

...And So Does Your Industry

IT Budget by Company Size

IT Budget by Industry 4.43%

IT / ITES

Below Rs 100 crore

Automotive

BFSI Manufacturing

2.7% Rs 100 - 1,000 crore

1.4% Above Rs 1,000 crore (companies above Rs 1,000 crore net sales, figures in Rs crore)

IT Headcount Vs. Entire Staff Employee Strength

Average Number of IT Staff

Less than 1,000

1,001 - 10,000

10,000 - 100,000

238

The number of IT staffers is largely dependent on the number of users that need to be supported. However, this doesn't hold true for knowledge verticals where IT is core to the business.

Who Holds the Reins to Your IT Spend? 6% 9% 54% 32%

Centrally controlled by IT organization Blended control by IT and business units or functions Centrally controlled by non-IT executive Directly controlled by business units or functions

Slowdown And THE YEAR AHEAD Was Deferring On-going IT Projects Important to Survive the Slump?

What Kind of Projects Were Most Affected by the Slowdown? 38%

23%

Very important 40%

Important 18%

18%

Infrastructure upgrades Enterprise software rollouts Unified communications Storage Network upgrades Telepresence 16%

27%

14%

Somewhat important

11%

10%

Not important

Has the Economic Climate Increased the Importance of Outsourcing? Increased

34%

No Change

40%

Decreased

26%

75%

of CIOs say they are not planning to bring back in-house significant functions that are currently outsourced.

What IT Did (and Will Do) for Your Business 2009

2010

1. Lowered the company’s overall operating costs

1. Drive innovative new market offerings

2. Improved end-user workforce productivity

2. Improve security and end user productivity

3. Improved security/risk management

3. Improve quality of processes

4. Improved quality of products and/or processes

4. Re-engineer core business processe

5. Re-engineered core business processes

5. Lower the company’s overall operating costs

Lowering the company's overall operating costs — at the top spot this year — is expected to go down to fifth position next year.

Major Challenges in the Year Ahead

Top 5 IT Management Priorities for 2010

Deploying technologies / applications

52%

1. Aligning IT and business goals 2. Business continuity/risk management

43%

3. Controlling IT costs

38%

4. Improving internal user satisfaction

36%

5. Measuring and communicating IT value

34%

Will Your IT Headcount Change in the Next 12 Months?

Supporting business expansion Governance risk and compliance Access to skilled resources Shrinking IT budgets

Has the Slowdown Affected the Size of Your Team?

4% Don't know

Not at all Decreased Increased

67%

6% Remain unchanged

49% Increase

27%

40% Decrease

69% OF CIOs FEEL THEREâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S MORE TO CLOUD COMPUTING THAN HYPE AND THAT IT'LL BE THE MOST DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGY IN THE COMING YEAR.

SURVEY Methodology The State of the CIO Survey 2009 was administered online in the last 10 days of October 2009. Three hundred and eighty one IT leaders participated in the survey. All were heads of IT, with over 85 percent responsible for enterprise-wide IT and the remainder for divisional IT. Fifty three percent were from organizations with annual revenues over Rs 1,000 crore; 36 percent represented enterprises with annual net sales between Rs 100 crore and Rs 1,000 crore and 11 percent were from organizations with annual revenues below Rs 100 crore. All responses were gathered using a secure server and then combined to develop a composite picture, with all individual data kept confidential. Percentages described within may not add up to 100 due to rounding. The degree of error is +/- 1 percent.