CIO February 15, 2015 Issue

MOBILE APPS MAKE A SPLASH

SeaWorld’s mobile app to personalize rides 13

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ANALYTICS FIGHTS FRAUD

Analytics keeps Virginia Credit Union safe 30 IT FOLKS WITH MORAL COURAGE?

Why you need to make unpopular decisions 40 WORKPLACE: NEVER A DEMOCRACY

B U S I N E SS T EC H N O LO G Y L E A D E R S H I P

The idea of democracy in the workplace is a farce 49

Customer

February 15, 2015

`100.00

How top IT shops model their business processes to get closer to their customers. 26

PLUS

Banking on IT

Arundhati Bhattacharya, Chairperson at SBI, on how new technologies are linking the bank’s wide network of branches across India. 20

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From the Editor in Chief 2 Trending 3 Quick Fix 4 Career Path 6 News Scan 8 World View 10

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Customer Connect

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A look at how top IT shops model their workflow and business processes to incorporate communication and interaction between IT and its customers, and how the setup benefits the business, and IT workers’ careers.

COVER STORY

Grow I N N OVAT I O N & B U S I N E S S VA LU E

13

SeaWorld designs app to personalize rides 13 This car is more Beetle than Porsche 14 Hey techie! There is more to a name 16 IT helps SBI manage country-wide network of branches 20 Tackling the security beast at HDFC Life 24

BY S TAC Y C O L L E T T

Run L E A D E R S H I P & O P E R AT I O N A L E XC E L L E N C E

Analytics comes to Virginia Credit Union’s rescue 30 Five things about prescriptive analytics 32 Computer matches the brain of a primate 33 Weather prediction is way easier now 33 Courage is a criteria for hiring 40 Will the Internet crash this year ? 41 A checklist before an IT rejig 46

30

Connect P E E R A DV I C E

Time for social media officer to enter the C-suite 47 Democracy is a distant dream at workplace 49 Is tech a female-friendly industry? 50 Technology aids HR train right 51

Customer

47

Finish

Be lazy. PC controls now on your watch 52

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PUBLISHER, PRESIDENT & CEO

FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

EDITORIAL EDITOR-IN-CHIEF EXECUTIVE EDITOR DEPUTY EDITOR FEATURES EDITOR ASSISTANT EDITORS PRINCIPAL CORRESPONDENTS VIDEO EDITORS LEAD DESIGNERS SENIOR DESIGNERS TRAINEE JOURNALISTS

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Five Predictions 2

Since the economic slump that began seven years ago, your organiza-

tions have rolled out more and more projects with fewer and fewer people in shorter and shorter time cycles.

These past years have also been those in which cloud, mobility, and analytics have become more important parts of your business-technology roadmap. Across all of which our research has shown consistent gaps relating to governance models, architecture and most critically, skills.

Filling these skill gaps fast enough has become a touchstone to whether business transformation is going to happen or not. A CIO at a software services outfit only takes on projects now, that can be delivered in 60-days.

And, it’s clear that he isn’t looking at talent only within the perimeter.

Many CIOs also need to deal with legacy apps and infrastructure.

That’s where the internal talent pool seems focused. When an automotive giant wanted to rapidly leverage the cloud, its CIO recently chose to deploy trainee engineers rather than involve the existing team.

Apart from emerging technologies, speed and attitude, there’s a fourth trend of simply not recruiting rookies or not replacing those that leave.

In this era of third-party IT delivery (the public cloud or managed services or strategic sourcing), I wonder how many enterprises any longer manage their own infra or write their own code? A year ago, I could still spot IT departments that attempted to build mobile apps on their ownsome, today, it’s a rare CIO who goes down that path.

I see significant shifts in IT department dynamics over the next two years: • IT teams will shrink, to just the CIO and a bunch of direct reports; • Multi-layered teams will exist only to service the legacy app and infra stacks; • CIOs will need business credibility not tech savviness to prosper; • CIOs will be more dependent on their direct reports than ever before; and, • Direct reports will transform into relationship managers—with lines of business as well as with third-party IT providers This is not a dystopian vision. This is what will make IT an embedded part of an organization’s business DNA. That is a good thing.

What do you feel?

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ADVERTISER INDEX Accenture Services Bharti Airtel

11 IBC

Canon India

15

Cisco Systems (India)

BC

Cyberoam Technologies HP Servers Huawei Telecommunications (I)

9 7 18 & 19

NetApp India Marketing & Services

IFC

Ricoh India

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SAS Institute (India) Schneider Electric IT Business India Vodafone India

5 17 Insert

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without rints to

TRENDING

Robot Takes a Spidery Walk

E-readers Can Trouble Your Sleep Science may have confirmed what parents of gadget-loving children

have long suspected: Using light-emitting gadgets just before bedtime can interfere with sleep.

Using an electronic book reader or another portable electronic lightgenerating device prior to going to sleep can disrupt regular sleeping habits, researchers at Pennsylvania State University have found.

“The take-away is, however unpopular, to avoid use of these devices before bedtime,” said Anne-Marie Chang, an assistant professor at Pennsylvania State University’s Department of Biobehavioral Health, one of the authors of the study.

For the study, 12 participants read iPads in dim light for four hours prior to falling asleep for five consecutive nights. Then, for five nights, they read a paper-based book in a similar setting. They were outfitted with instruments to measure their eye movements, heart rates, and other physical cues.

Compared to those evenings when they read books, participants who used the electronic devices prior to bedtime took almost 10 minutes longer to fall asleep, the study found. By reading on electronic devices before regular sleep time, the participants shifted their bodies’ typical circadian rhythms, the researchers posited. Circadian rhythms are the biological clocks that signal to humans, and other organisms, when to fall asleep. The researchers had collected blood samples every hour they were asleep to measure melatonin.

They also found that the light these devices emit has a higher concentration of blue light—with a frequency of around 450 nanometers— than the color balance we typically experience in natural light.

For those who feel they need to read electronically before slumbering, Chang advised using a device that does not emit light.

–By Joab Jackson

It’s more spider than snake, but a robot called Snake Monster can dial up the creep factor when it crawls around on six legs.

The latest creation to come out of the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Biorobotics Laboratory, Snake Monster can scuttle across the floor and clamber over piles of loose debris. When it wriggles around quickly, it might make you reach for a fly swatter.

But this overgrown robo-bug is an example of how machines based on a modular architecture of interconnecting parts can be put together quickly for various purposes, including possible rescue platforms.

As seen in a YouTube video, the hexapod has a simple design consisting of six multi-joined legs connected to a rectangular box body. It uses an alternating tripod gait to walk around, meaning at any time three of its legs are in the air—two on one side and one on the other—while the others are on the ground.

One hardware part that helps it remain stable is the series elastic actuator, which is a motor with a spring aligned with its output shaft.

Snake Monster is slated to be demonstrated in June 2015 at the DARPA Rescue Challenge, part of the agency’s series of competitions to foster the development of robots that can operate in hazardous situations such as disaster zones.

The CMU researchers used their know-how from building several snake-inspired robots with modular joints to develop the Snake Monster in about six months. They liken their modular architecture to the way Ethernet technology acts as an interface between modules, which can be computers working in any language.

—By Tim Hornyak

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oad,

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I M A G E S O U R C E : T H I N K S TO C K . C O M

,

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quiFIX ck Smartphones Go Ultra-secure

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It sounds like something out of old spy movies, but it isn’t.

4

I

t seems like something out of an old episode of Mission Impossible or Inspector Gadget—an ultra-secure phone that self-destructs. But such a phone might be close to reality.

According to Reuters (via Recode), Boeing and BlackBerry are currently jointly developing a super-secure smartphone geared toward governments and other groups or individuals who require high security standards. And if someone goes and tampers with the device, it’ll render itself inoperable.

We’re not talking about something that burns itself or explodes or anything like that, though; instead, Slashgear says that “all data will be erased” from the phone “if the tamper-proof casing is taken apart.” So it’s not as dramatic as, say, something from spy movies, but it certainly sounds effective.

– Nick Mediati For more articles, see: www.cio.in/article

WORTH READING B O O K Mid-career Crisis: Why Some Sail Through While Others Don’t

By Partha Basu Why do only some people reach the top while others fail? Himself a victim of a mid-career crisis (MCC), Partha Basu draws insipiration from real-life and tries to find answers to questions about the three stages of the MCC: Misery, confusion, and change. Amazon.in Rs 223

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How to Improve Your Professional Network ALWAYS network with business peers and others by making genuine personal connections—even if you use technology (e-mail, texting or social media) to make first contact. There is still no substitute for socializing.

If networking makes you uncomfortable, get some coaching and support that will improve your skills and help you get comfortable with this vital discipline. Commit to mastering the process so you can use continuous networking as a primary strategy for career building.

SOMETIMES attend senior-level workshops, classes or webinars that are more businessoriented and less technical. This will make you a better leader with broader management skills, and it will help you connect with influential networking partners.

Join prestigious professional organizations and associations and assume leadership roles to build your visibility and credibility. Seek opportunities to write and publish articles in your area of expertise. Speak at technology conferences and seminars. This additional exposure will expand your network and attract greater career opportunities.

NEVER spend all your networking or job search time in front of the computer or on your smartphone. Don’t limit yourself to networking only with other IT professionals.

Realize that being highly proficient with new technologies won’t necessarily keep you competitive in the market.

Be careful with your use of technical jargon and stop thinking of yourself purely as a “technologist” who happens to work in business. Recast yourself as a business person who uses technology as their primary tool for achieving business objectives.

Ford R. Myers is an executive career coach and president of Career Potential.

careerPATH

The Hunt Begins Now start

Job Seeking in 2015? Well, the time to get started is now as the first quarter hiring process is picking up. BY S H A R O N F LO R E N T I N E

6

Now is the time to start the search for your new job.

Don’t waste any time before putting your News Year’s career resolution into action. Actually, organizations’ Q1 hiring process is usually underway by the time the Thanksgiving leftovers are finished. This is an ideal time to prepare for job interviews and fill out applications, says Rachel Polhemus, senior partner at Witt/Kieffer, an executive search firm.

The best time to recruit is when others are idle and when the candidates are most available and receptive.

—JOHN SULLIVAN, HR THOUGHT LEADER

“To get ahead of the competition, start planning for your next position. Take this time to reflect on your achievements, set career goals, buff up resumes, and network with family, friends, and other acquaintances,” Polhemus says.

Resolve to Start Fresh in the New Year The start of the calendar year is a perfect time to take stock and get organized for a fresh start.

“This time of year is a great time to put together an action plan for landing new job opportunities. Make note of what you’ve achieved and how to present that in the best light,” Polhemus says.

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Network, Network, Network While you don’t want to spend every moment gathering networking and job-hunting, do make sure you’re taking advantage of these situations if work-related conversations arise, notes career consultant, job search expert, author and speaker Rick Gillis.

“We often don’t realize who our family members know and who they’re connected to. Uncle Bob knows a guy with connections in the IT department at that major firm you’d love to work at? Great— leverage that connection. Make sure your family and friends know that you’re searching, and have a general idea of what you’re looking for. It can be a great place to make

connections happen,” Gillis says. The same goes for acquaintances, says Polhemus, who advises job seekers to use their natural intellectual curiosity to make the most of every potential networking encounter.

“Don’t necessarily look at every social situation as a job interview, but certainly be inquisitive. Ask people to talk about what they do, what their roles are, their work background and their company,” says Polhemus.

Recruiters Are More Available If you act now you’ll be facing decreased competition, says John Sullivan, an HR thought leader, author, speaker, consultant, and a professor of management at San Francisco State University.

Top-performing recruiters are pushing hard to fill open positions, hiring managers are increasingly available and almost everyone who’s hiring is increasingly receptive to phone calls and outreach, says Sullivan. “The best time to recruit is when others are idle and when the candidates are most available and receptive,” Sullivan says.

In his own experience, Gillis believes the prime hiring season for businesses takes place in January, February and March, and so the time for candidates to ready themselves is now.

Sharon Florentine covers IT careers and datacenter topics for CIO.com.

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HP Launches Mobile Center

HP has launched its mobile center, an on-premise software solution for testing mobile applications.

The software allows users to test application functionality and performance across real-world network conditions on mobile devices.

HP said the solution is designed to allow customers to deliver high-quality mobile applications and ensure a consistent, positive user experience under any circumstance. It also supports simulated real-world testing to understand usability, design and defects across any device, OS or network; understand when transactional services are working securely and properly; measure and simulate impact of load using a combination of real devices and virtual users.

—ARN

Software AG Upgrades CERN’s Baby

Software AG has provided a new platform for CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, to monitor the Large Hadron Collider following a major upgrade.

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Samsung Partners ManageEngine in Mobility Deal

IT management firm, ManageEngine, has partnered with Samsung in a bid to provide better control and security for enterprise security for mobile devices.

The company’s Desktop Central solution now supports Samsung KNOX, a multi-layered security technology.

By partnering with Samsung to support KNOX, it bolsters the company’s desktop and mobile device management (MDM) software with advanced mobile device management capabilities that let IT personnel secure Samsung devices without invading user privacy.

Samsung has developed the KNOX platform to provide a comprehensive security solution for enterprise Samsung mobile devices.

—ARN

Google Teams Up with PwC on Military Cloud Bid

Google is adding its muscle to PwC’s bid to build a new cloud-based healthcare system for the military that would support its more than 9.7 million beneficiaries.

PwC announced that it will team up with Google on a bid that will go to the US Department of Defense (DoD) for what’s been dubbed the Healthcare Management Systems Modernization Electronic Health Record contract.

The DoD is looking to replace and modernize its online health system, enabling doctors and other healthcare providers, working both inside and outside of government, to easily and securely access medical records for military personnel, retirees and their families.

—Computerworld (US)

AMD’s Chip Chief and Other Execs Depart

AMD chip chief John Byrne has left the company, accompanying AMD’s chief strategy officer and its chief marketing officer out the door, according to the company.

Byrne, as well as chief marketing officer Collette LaForce and chief strategy officer Raj Naik, have left to pursue other interests, according to AMD and a report from Reuters. AMD announced Byrne’s departure in an 8K filing that noted he’ll stay on until the end of March to assist with the transition. Chief executive Lisa Su, a well-regarded executive who has held a variety of executive positions at AMD before being named CEO in October, will take over Byrne’s role, according to reports.

—PC World (US)

NSA Saw Signs of Sony Attack

The US National Security Agency has had a secret foothold for years in North Korea’s networks and saw signs of the Sony Pictures Entertainment attack but only in retrospect grasped its reach and depth, The New York Times reported.

The spy agency has worked for at least four years to infiltrate networks inside North Korea and those in China and Malaysia favored by the country’s hackers, the newspaper reported, citing former US and foreign officials and a newly disclosed NSA document published by Der Spiegel.

The revelation explains why the US quickly blamed North Korea for the attacks despite widespread skepticism from the computer security community, which said only circumstantial evidence pointed to the country’s involvement.

—IDG News Service

Memory Prices to Fall This Year

After more than a year of holding steady, memory prices could fall this year as competition heats up between DRAM makers and excess inventory floods the market.

If prices shrink, semiconductor revenue will take a hit in 2015, according to Gartner, which is forecasting year-on-year growth of 5.4 percent, down from a previous projection of 5.8 percent. A key factor leading Gartner to cut its 2015 forecast is the expected price drop of DRAM price drop, which is a significant part of overall semiconductor revenue.

—IDG News Service

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world Fresh Ideas from Around the Globe

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Uber Promises European Cities 50,000 New Jobs

M U N I C H Uber Technologies has promised 50,000 new jobs in Europe from its service in 2015 alone, in an overture to get more cities on the continent to approve its ride-hailing service. Uber CEO and co-founder, Travis Kalanick, said his company could take 400,000 cars off the road this year, and reduce congestion and emissions in Europe, by expanding its ridesharing service, UberPool, and by efficient routing of cars. Highlighting the role of Uber in creating jobs, Kalanick said that the company had 1.6 million unique riders in San Francisco, which has created the equivalent of 7,500 full-time jobs, while in New York City 1.9 million users provide 13,750 jobs. IDG News Service

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Shutters Down on Canadian Bitcoin Exchange ONTARIO Canadian Bitcoin exchange Vault of Satoshi is

shutting down in the latest bad news to hit the cryptocurrency. The operators of the exchange said they are focusing on another business project that began six months ago, one that is not related to cryptocurrency.

Run by Global CryptoCurrency Solutions, the Brantford, Ontario-based exchange is no longer accepting new deposits.

Its closure comes as European Bitcoin exchange Bitstamp said in a post that some of its operational wallets were compromised January 4th, leading to “a loss of less than 19,000” bitcoins. IDG News Service

E-commerce Boom Leaves Hangover

ROME Italy’s e-commerce sector has celebrated a bumper Christmas. Among those not celebrating, were the online clients of Italia Digital, which sold technology products. On December 13, the portals closed, publishing an announcement that they were undergoing maintenance, and customers received e-mails informing them that the company was in crisis and unable to provide them with either the goods ordered or a refund. IDG News Service

China Expands Internet Backbone to Improve Speed

BEIJING Even as China cuts access to some foreign online services, it is laying more fiber optic cables to improve its connection to global Internet networks.

China recently added seven new access points to the world’s Internet backbone, adding to the three points that connect through Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, the country’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced. To expand its Internet backbone networks, China laid over 3,000 kilometers worth of fiber optic cable. Driving the project were the country’s three state-owned telecom operators, which provide most of China’s Internet broadband. IDG News Service

–Compiled by IDG News Service from CIO magazine affiliates worldwide

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Cloud Computing

EVENT REPORT AMAZON WEB AMAZON SERVICES WEB SERVICES

Gains Ground

In the last few months, there’s been a visible shift in the number of CIOs moving to an IT environment that uses both on-premises datacenters and cloud computing. A roundtable held in Chennai brought home that point and threw light on why Indian CIOs are turning to the cloud.

By Ishan Bhattacharya

O

ver the last few years, there’s been a remarkable transformation in the way the cloud is perceived. Once, onpremise applications and infrastructure were the only conceivable way to go.

No longer. Perspectives have evolved, mindsets have changed, and, today, cloud computing is truly seen as a strategic way to build IT—not merely as a nice alternative—across many organizations.

In order to better understand this transformation Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Intel, in association with CIO Magazine, conducted a roundtable in Chennai.

One of the most important pieces of proof that the cloud has arrived is the size of the companies going on the cloud.

A few years ago, the cloud was a place for relatively small companies, those with little IT infrastructure or with greenfield projects, and therefore with little to lose.

That’s changed. Take Ashok Leyland, for instance.

“Like most other manufacturing companies, we used to run on homegrown solutions. In 2009, Ashok Leyland underwent a complete technology refresh. Now, we are five years down that journey and we are looking at areas which can be moved to the cloud,” said Venkatesh Natarajan, special director-IT, Ashok Leyland.

“The cloud is the way forward, and that is where the future is. But for a large organization like ours it will take some time to make the shift.

The hybrid IT environment is the way ahead. Connectivity in India remains a challenge to a hundred percent cloud adoption. Nevertheless, we are seriously looking at moving our DR to the cloud,” Natarajan added.

Bikram Singh Bedi, Head of India, Amazon Web Services India, agrees with that approach. “Cloud adoption has to be a phased approach. When you talk about the cloud you talk horizontal scale. A lot of applications have been written in a way that they depend on other applications. Therefore, it is important to identify the low-hanging fruit and which applications can be moved first. We will probably see a hybrid IT environment for a while.

Connectivity in India will improve and organizations will soon go all in with the cloud. In fact, there are organizations which have already done that,” he said.

The popularity of the hybrid IT environment running cloud and onpremises datacenters among Indian CIOs is gradually gaining ground.

According to CIO research, in 2014, 47 percent of Indian CIOs said they were using or planning to use a hybrid IT environment. That’s compared to 35 percent in 2013.

Like all trends, this is not a uniform one and not everyone is as gung-ho about using the cloud as the numbers point to.

A case in point is Apollo Hospitals. “From a services industry point, I’d say that cloud adoption remains expensive,” said Arvind

Sivaramakrishnan, CIO, Apollo Hospitals.

“And talking from the perspective of a healthcare player, can clinical data reside in some other country? Given the fact that we need to store vital clinical data for a long time, I feel a cloud for clinical healthcare is not a very real proposition at this point,” he said.

At the opposite end of the cloud adoption spectrum there are companies for whom the cloud is a life-line.

One of them is Ramco Systems. “For us, we have no choice but to adopt cloud computing. We have moved our complete ERP from on-premise to the cloud. It is horizontally scalable as the solution is truly multi-tenant. We look for every opportunity to move to the cloud,” Raghavendra Tripathi, VP, Ramco Systems.

Summing up the optimism in the room, Tripathi said, “Bandwidth costs are coming down in India, reliability is growing, and better vendors are also coming up, all of which strengthens the cloud’s case. From a business perspective, it brings cost benefit also. Moving to cloud takes away a lot of headache.”

This event report is brought to you by IDG Services in association with Amazon Web Services and Intel

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Mobile Apps Make a Splash

SeaWorld visitors can use the park’s new app to view personalized rides and set up one-step payments. By Mary K. Pratt

After three years of poring over how customers used its first mobile app, SeaWorld Parks and Entertainment rolled out a new set of apps designed to engage park visitors with a more personalized, interactive experience.

SeaWorld, a $1.5 billion (about Rs 9000 crore) company that runs Busch Gardens and Sesame Place in addition to its famous marine-life theme parks, found that customers liked some features in the app’s first iteration, such as using it to find their car after a long day. But overall, visitors wanted a more responsive app than the one SeaWorld began offering in 2011, says CIO Darla Morse.

The new Discovery Guide mobile apps can display up-to-the-minute ride wait and show times.

Users can get alerts about exclusive offers and can filter the list of rides by height requirements, so they see only the ones their kids can ride.

Interactive maps use a smartphone’s GPS to suggest routes between attractions with estimated walking times. The apps also include scavenger hunts as a way to gamify engagement and

•••••••••••••  78% of Indian CIOs say, in 2015, they expect to spend most of their time designing and optimizing business processes SOTC 2015 •••••••••••••

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education. This past summer, SeaWorld added a mobile wallet for one-touch purchasing: Visitors can enter credit card information into the app, then buy items quickly all day.

“This is our park in your pocket,” Morse says.

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Out in the Open

There are plenty of reasons why Indian CIOs are wary of moving to the public cloud. Here are five of their top most concerns.

Vendor lock-in Unauthorized access to or leak of customers’ information

55% 52%

Give the People Apps They Want Unauthorized access to or leak of proprietary information 49% SeaWorld spent significant time figuring out Security defects in the technology itself 48% what visitors want and tailoring the new apps Integration of the cloud data with our internal systems 45% to their tastes. Along with usage data from the old app, the company surveyed guests and gathered feedback through social media.

S O U R C E : S TAT E O F T H E C I O 2 0 1 5 That’s an important lesson for all organizations, says Nisha Sharma, a managing director at Accenture. “You need to include users in requirement gathering,” Sharma says.

“We learned we needed a platform that integrated with our back-end system [for rides and shows] to make this a more interactive, real-time functional place “We wanted to for our guests,” Morse says.

Another lesson learned: The make a more app needed a strong foundation. Morse’s team mapped out interactive, the design to understand which real-time systems would be affected and functional place If you were hoping for a cooler look for what changes would be necesGoogle’s car, you’ll have to settle for cute. for our guests.” sary for the new features. “A lot The search giant has unveiled a finalized of companies get scope creep —Darla Morse, CIO, SeaWorld version of its self-driving concept car, which because they’re pouring cement Parks and Entertainment it calls “our first complete prototype for fully autonomous driving.” While it gave before the design is finished,” few details about the changes it has made Morse says, noting that her team used a waterfall development to its initial prototype over the past seven methodology to build the foundation but will use agile developmonths, the completed vehicle seems to ment to quickly add new capabilities. have working headlights and a somewhat SeaWorld worked with vendor TE2 to manage and secure more streamlined LIDAR (light detection real-time connections between core systems such as ticketing, and ranging) sensor on its roof. Overall, e-commerce, park scheduling, content management, and its though, it still looks like a toy. Sensors are Discovery Guide apps. one reason for the car’s rounded looks.

Building that strong foundation led to another crucial Google said its engineers will continue to lesson: The need for IT to work with other teams within the try out the vehicle on a test track and will take it on the streets of Northern California organization. The team met daily and updated key stakeholdin 2015. ers monthly, Morse says. “This cannot happen without every Researchers at GoogleX, the company’s single group we have: Marketing, operations, merchandizing, moonshot lab, have been tinkering with culinary, IT. We work very closely with all these to ensure that the vehicle since the two-seater without a what we do drives value.”

Google Goes Cute With Prototype Car

steering wheel was first shown off in May.

Send feedback to editor@cio.in

—Tim Hornyak

•••••••••••• 49% of Indian CIOs say inadequate in-house skillsets in areas like cloud, mobility, analytics and security is one of the biggest challenges in 2015. SOTC

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HERALDING THE ERA

ADVERTORIAL CANON

OF DIGITIZATION With its expertise and experience in digitization, Canon is helping organizations go paperless.

And at the same time, it’s increasing security, enhancing profitability, and saving costs.

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s the world forays into the digital medium and is being ushered into the digital age, digital media consumption too has increased by leaps and bounds. There is also a greater thrust on electronic modes of data transfer.

Increase in business value, enhanced turnaround time, cost reduction, and serviceability have become the keywords for survival and enterprises across business verticals are aiming for the same.

Digitization has several benefits.

Security and traceability are just a few of the major benefits of going digital.

Digitization also combines existing hardware and software products to provide a unified service that allows migration of paper-based processes to paperless workflows. A direct outcome of digitization is the eventual increase in the profitability of an organization.

With the help of Canon, Hamburg in Germany, in the process of automating its workflows, digitized its paper records. This move is expected to help the city enhance savings.

The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) has initiated a digitization process to convert its information on paper to a structured, digital format. A direct benefit of the move has been its ability to provide an efficient information integration mechanism across multiple departments of the company.

However, in today’s world, it is of paramount importance to reduce the amount of physical paper for improving the efficiency of business processes.

But many industries, namely banking,

finance, and insurance still rely heavily on paper for their business processes.

Organizations are often jittery about digitizing data. But that’s where Canon can help organizations with its proven experience and expertise in digitization.

In a digitized setup, once the input from a client is received in a paperbased form, the document is scanned and converted to a digital format.

This, usually, is a two-step process.

First, a digital image is created from paper, and then this digital image is converted to text via optical character recognition.

After converting the paper-based information into a digital format, the information can be secured, shared, updated, and provided to different workflows, which might be automated

Digital Drivers l Cuts down the cost of operations. l Cuts down the time taken to search for data. l Ensures adherence to security and privacy regulations. l Makes business processes more efficient.

or manual. The rest of the business processes can then be efficiently carried out on this digitized platform.

Cost saving has been the biggest motivation for organizations to digitize in the past. Now, businesses are adopting digitization for optimizing workflow-based processes and content management.

Canon has brought digitization solutions that provide end-to-end managed services depending on the needs of the organization.

To further strengthen its position, the company also has a bouquet of products with hard discs that have high capabilities and can act like mini

file servers.

Canon believes the recent emphasis on digitization is expected to create more responsive, agile, and flexible organizations, which in the long run, foster a growth-driven and profitable business environment for all stakeholders.

The key enabling factors to digitization—a concept that has been in existence for over two decades now—include faster network speed, increased accuracy of image to text conversion, smarter machines, and better search and archival mechanisms.

Canon is armed with all of these and thus, is a company which is at the forefront helping organizations digitize their data and go paperless.

For many large organizations, printing and digitization are not at the core of their operations.

Companies such as Canon have helped them restructure, be efficient, decrease administrative work and cost overheads.

Canon’s clients are experiencing better quality document workflows, reduced costs, improved security, and more efficient regulatory compliance besides securing valuable information assets post their digitization drive.

Canon Business Services, a division of the company, offers digitization services, and business cloud services.

Canon has realized the importance of SMBs and has designed specific solutions for sales automation, HR management, customized workflow automation and records management, for this sector.

This feature is brought to you by IDG Services in association with Canon

CIO LEADERSHIP

What’s in a Name? Lots grow

CIOs need to be out among the people. Meeting these ‘people’ can backfire if you can’t remember their names. Here’s how to change that. BY TO M K A N E S H I G E

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o you know the name of the marketing the-cat running around a bunch of PCs, since I’m a tech associate handling targeted e-mail camreporter frantically trying to hit my deadline. paigns with Marketo? How about the name If Palazzolo learned that I like skiing, she would add skis of the human resources assistant with the to Tom-the-cat. It’s important to make the image about the Workday account? person whose name you’re trying to remember, she says, CIOs can ill afford to hide in their offices these days. They both professionally and personally. need to be where technology is being used— “The more exaggerated the image, that is, inside marketing, human resources, the more unusual, the more likely you’ll When you finance, sales and other departments. Truth remember it,” Palazzolo says. “You should have a habit is, CIOs and IT staff are the new internal repeat that image and the name in your of forgetting technology consultants, which means they mind so that it sticks with you,” as well as names, you need to become sales smart and people savvy. describe the image in the notes section of tend not to A big part of salesmanship is being able your contacts app. to remember people’s names. Unfortunately, want to be most people are terrible at names, especially around people. Applying the Name Game introverted techies. When you have a habit Sounds simple enough, right? Not exactly. of forgetting names, you tend not to want to Let’s say the CIO has an initial meetbe around people. The underlying message is that you don’t ing with the marketing team—a half-dozen people. Over the care enough to remember their names. course of the hour-long meeting, the CIO will have to conjure up images, associate them with names, add to those images and repeat the names and images of each individual before No Other Name Sounds as Sweet the meeting ends.

“A principle that Dale Carnegie put down many years ago “The first time, you may remember three out of five,” that still applies today is that a person’s name is to that Palazzolo says. “But the more you practice this, the faster person the sweetest and most important sound in any lanthe images come to you.” guage,” says Piera Palazzolo, senior vice president of marketWhile all of this seems like a lot of work, it’s worth it. ing at Dale Carnegie Training.

“When you’re a little shy or introverted, you tend to get But there are tricks to remembering and recalling names anxious when you meet new people, and when you can’t that play to the strengths of a techie’s problem-solving mind. remember their names, you feel overly stressed and it’s even A full-proof technique for remembering names is to associmore difficult to start conversations,” Palazzolo says. ate the name with an image.

“The name is a way to begin an open, warm dialogue with Here’s how Palazzolo would remember my first name, someone. When you have that type of engagement, when Tom: Upon meeting me, she would repeat the name in her you’re able to show that you care about them, then it makes head the moment she heard it. Then she would associate the working relationship so much easier.” my name with a well-known character, such as the cat from the cartoon series Tom and Jerry. (If the person’s name is unusual like her name, Piera, then the default is to associate the name with something that sounds similar, such as the famous Italian clown character, Pierrott.)

Tom Kaneshige is a senior writer for CIO.com. Send feedback to Next, Palazzolo would conjure up an image of Tomeditor@cio.in

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Ensuring Safer Datacenter Facility Operations Ever wondered how to design a training program for operating a mission critical datacenter facility efficiently and reliably throughout its life cycle?

Schneider offers a comprehensive, high-level overview of the elements.

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anaging and operating a mission critical facility is very different from managing a commercial office building or a factory.

For most datacenters, failure is not an option. Some organizations liken it to maintaining an airplane while flying it. Today, businesses are often either wholly dependent on their datacenter or the datacenter is the business.

A poorly organized datacenter business program, quickly undermines the design intent of the facility— putting its people, IT systems, and the business itself at risk of harm or interruption, a fact Schneider helps its clients realize well.

Increasingly software defined data centers and workload movement combined with short IT refresh cycles make for a challenging management environment.

These challenges require careful coordination and planning with the facilities team.

A properly designed, implemented, and supported operations and maintenance (O&M) program will minimize risk, reduce costs, and provide a competitive advantage for overall business the datacenter serves.

Realizing this to be a dire issue, Schneider employs a proven methodology for providing the bestin-class critical facility operations programs, tailored to a client’s requirements.

The company uses its extensive experience in critical facility management to enable its clients evaluate their requirements for staff size and makeup, along with a schedule.

This way it is easier to deploy the workforce in an optimal configuration for emergency response, equipment maintenance, and vendor management.

Another major area of concern for organizations is when a facility is built, training is commonly provided by the vendors and contractors involved with the site construction. The training is often provided by tradesmen and technicians with no appropriate background.

Studies reveal that 70 percent of datacenter outages can directly be attributed to human error. This figure only strengthens the case for having an effective O&M program.

Human error and distraction can compromise the performance of any datacenter design. Mitigating these threats and their effects requires an efficient operations and maintenance program that focuses on elements essential to an effective O&M program.

At Schneider, training is provided at progressive levels of expertise.

Individuals passing through the program get certifications to perform specific tasks that are matched to their level of training.

The very foundation of that program rests on having a facilities

operations team that manages and acts with a mission critical mindset.

This operational philosophy is focused on risk mitigation, preparedness, standardized processes, and continuous improvement.

A well-constructed and managed program reduces operating expenses while maintaining a high level of performance expected by the design of the facility.

Schneider Electric Recommends: Ensure proper training of the personnel.

Ensure the facilities operations team acts with a mission critical mindset.

Implement stringent process controls and documentation systems.

Have optimal staff size and composition for equipment maintenance and deployment.

This feature is brought to you by

For more information and stories, visit: http://www.greenenterpriseit.com/ Contact Us: Email: indiainfo@apcc.com Phone: 1800 4254 272

IDG SERVICES

Connecting Together,

Creating Tomorrow Huawei Enterprise held its first Annual Enterprise Summit to engage with channel partners, and showcase Huawei’s growth in the Indian ICT ecosystem.

By Madhav Mohan

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N today’s competitive market place, it has become important for businesses to engage with partners and develop sustainable relationships.

Huawei, a leading global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider hosted its first Annual Enterprise Summit 2014 for the Huawei Enterprise Business Group in Bangalore, India from 18-20 Dec 2014. To reiterate its commitment to

the partner community, which has been spearheading the growth of Huawei’s enterprise business in India, the company came together with over 300 partners from all over the country.

On the first day partners were given the opportunity to engage and network with their peers as well as Huawei’s team members at the welcome dinner.

An interactive group activity, Drums Café, based on the theme ‘connecting

together, creating tomorrow’ was conducted with the audience, as a live band entertainment.

In his welcome address, Ernest Zhang Lin, president, Southern East Asia, Huawei Enterprise Business Group, spoke about India as a growing market for the company. “India is one of the most important and fastest growing markets for Huawei Enterprise, and Huawei intends to continue to make

SPECIAL EVENT COVERAGE HUAWEI

large investments in the market in the coming year,” Lin said.

Additionally, Lin mentioned that Huawei Enterprise hopes to continue its growth and become an innovation partner as an ICT solutions provider across segments such as ITeS, media, BFSI, etcetera.

Derek Hao, VP-Solution, Huawei Enterprise Business Group, Southern East Asia, delivered the keynote offering an overview of the Huawei Enterprise product and solution line, to keep the 300+ attendees keyed into the innovations offered by the group in India.

At the same time, William Chuck, VP-Channel, Huawei Enterprise Business Group, Southern East Asia provided a detailed insight into the channel strategy of Huawei EBG in India in his keynote address.

The three-day summit saw partners attending a thought leadership address from Vijay Ramachandran, editor-inchief, IDG Media.

This was followed by a panel discussion for key partners, moderated by Ramachandran, which talked about how Huawei and its partners are connecting together, and creating tomorrow through successful collaboration and how they are helping translate Huawei’s credentials and innovative R&D experience into business growth and profitability.

Selected partners and customers with long standing relationships with Huawei EBG were invited to share testimonials via video, to explain what works for them as Huawei partners, and how they perceive Huawei in the enterprise space.

“Huawei has got a very high turnaround capacity. They have given us access to biting technology if I may call it so. Huawei has fulfilled our requirement towards the delivery of very high speed switches on-ground in almost all the cities that we operate in. It has enabled us to provide our customers with speeds of 50 MBPS and 100 MBPS at their homes,” said Partha Choudhury, chief financial officer, You Broadband.

Huawei also gave away awards in 11 categories to partners who contributed immensely to Huawei’s business in the year 2014. The Best Network Solution Partner title was awarded to

Huawei Enterprise attributes a large part of its growth to the expertise of its channel partner network in the Indian market. Sustaining relationships with partners has always been our priority.”

Daniel Jiang,

President, Huawei Enterprise Business, India

Sify Technologies, and the Proficient Smart Hotel Solution partner award was conferred on ABS India and GMP Technical Solutions.

Best Growing Partner in the North region was awarded to Zest Systems while in the West region it was awarded to Smartnet Infotech & Services. In the South region it was awarded to Protech Microsystems India.

Finally, partners visited Huawei’s new R&D campus during the course of their stay at the event which is a state-of-the-art product experience facility that showcases enterprise culture construction, business objective alignment and alliances which are conducive to building a growth environment in a mutual learning scenario.

This event report is brought to you by IDG Services in association with Huawei

VIEW from the TOP ARUNDHATI BHATTACHARYA, Chairman, State Bank of India

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Banking on IT

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Arundhati Bhattacharya, Chairperson at SBI, explains how technologies added teeth to the bank’s wide network of branches across India. BY YO G E S H G U PTA

What is the IT blueprint of SBI and how closely it links to the business units of the bank?

I believe we have a pretty extensive IT unit. Currently, most projects at our end have IT as their backbone. At this point in time, where schemes like the financial inclusion program are being Arundhati Bhattacharya added a few more laurels to her three-decade-old announced by the government, leaning career when she assumed office as the chairman of SBI in October 2013. on technology and its effective use is the With this, she became the first woman chairman and MD of the country’s only way forward. largest bank. In her role currently, she leveraged IT across over 20,000 Given the extensive client base, branches of SBI in India to ensure better customer service, execute more nothing is feasible in today’s modern business, and steer ahead of competition. Excerpts from the interview: banking organizations without IT. If we look at other differentiated products At the helm of India’s largest bank, what is your top that deliver better risk agenda for 2015? management capabilities The top priority is to adopt and implement cutting-edge Given the and good customer expetechnologies with the help of our IT team. In terms of risk management, I really want it to be understood, extensive client rience, everything meshes the IT platform for met, and mitigated at every level in the organization. As base, nothing into proper delivery. we have frequently received both positive and negative is feasible in feedback, I want to better enhance customer experience. We would like to have a more uniform customer today’s modern delivery for everyone to have a good experience.

What about tapping

Was the migration of 20,200 SBI branch networks to MPLS done to deliver better customer service or to become IT savvy like other competing banks?

banking organizations without IT.

We were not looking at this project only from a competition perspective. With the kind of applications that are in our system and the way we have increased our business, the project became a business imperative. Branch networks needed to run applications which earlier were not as detailed. Today, we need to capture more things for a better risk management strategy as we continue to execute business in a much greater volume.

We chose this route to help our IT deliver better customer service and uniform customer experience. We wanted to do more on the network like bringing in more speed, more security, and reducing the cost and the downtime. All of these get accomplished by taking on this kind of a migration project.

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the big potential area of customer engagement through mobile devices?

We are delivering more and more IT-led initiatives every day.

At the start of 2015, we launched the prepaid RFID card with Amul and prior to that we started the quick banking (or SMS banking) initiative. By January 12, 2015, we already had one lakh transactional hits for quick banking. The sheer force of numbers compels us to consider IT in anything we do.

Send feedback to yogesh_gupta@idgindia.com.

CUSTOM FEATURE RICOH

CASE STUDY

Ricoh’s Document Management System

Digitizes Artemis Hospital Artemis Hospital digitized and unlocked the power of patient information by deploying Ricoh’s cloud-based document management system (DMS). By Madhav Mohan

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rtemis certainly isn’t the first hospital to implement a document management system (DMS), but it is one of the very few hospitals that has been able to execute it effectively, says Kapil Mehrotra, CIO, Artemis Hospitals.

A few months into his job, Mehrotra realized that the hospital was spending more than Rs 25 lakh a year for storing medical records in a rented space.

Worse, these files no longer needed

Mehrotra realized that with the solution, the company would enjoy a host of benefits such as patient-friendly data access, secure patient records, reduced costs, and improved decision-making to name a few. “The solution is cost effective and has great features. For instance, there’s a search option, where users can input a patient’s ID and retrieve all the information of the patient,” says Mehrotra. The solution is user friendly and users don’t need to click several

The solution is cost effective and has great features.

The solution fit our budget and has saved the hospital a lot on physical storage cost annually.”

– Kapil Mehrotra, CIO Artemis Hospitals

to be stored as hospitals require to store medical records only for up to five years. “But we didn’t want to destroy patient data which crossed the fiveyear deadline,” says Mehrotra.

Thus began the tryst for a DMS which would be simple to use and would digitize medical records effectively.

“We wanted a solution that would be reliable, manageable, secure, and cost-effective,” says Mehrotra. And that’s why, Artemis turned to Ricoh.

tabs to get to the information they need.

Mehrotra says that Ricoh defined good security parameters to ensure the safety of critical data. “Users are given different roles so that the documents cannot be downloaded, saved or printed without appropriate permission,” he says.

One of the main challenges was to find order in the chaos. There was data as old as eight years, and Artemis didn’t want to digitize everything at once. It chose to digitize medical

records from 2007 to 2010. The hospital digitized a total of 27,000 files, or roughly one crore pages. The entire process was carried out with little or no manual intervention. Once the records were fed into the system, the rest of the process— from converting pages into a PDF format to storing files in a cloud-based, central, digital, repository and then indexing them—was mostly automated.

The new system was customized to use six parameters—doctor name, patient identity, date of birth, name, location, and the treatment category— which simplifies search and gives results in just three seconds. “Ricoh’s DMS helps to configure automated workflows. The finance department shares information with the users and multiple people can work on the same documents at the same time,” he says.

Once the hospital was done with the humongous task of digitizing all patient data, Mehrotra realized what a fruitful investment it had been. Mehrotra says that the solution fit his budget and it has saved the hospital a lot on physical storage cost annually.

As the cloud is all about archiving and retrieval, Mehrotra said that the solution offers full proof archives with off site backups. After seeing the benefits of digitizing medical records, Artemis’ finance and HR departments also have expressed interest. And the fact that the project was completed in just four months—thanks to Ricoh—egged them on.

This case study is brought to you by IDG Services in association with Ricoh

Simplifying Datacenter

Complexities

With customer interests in the datacenter on the wane, CIOs discuss the complexities involved in maintaining datacenters, the immediate need to simplify them, and how to adapt to the effected changes. By Mayukh Mukherjee

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he complexity within the datacenter has been a talking point for some time now. In the last two years, there has been significant migration from private cloud to the public cloud, or in other words, a move out of legacy infrastructure.

And the reasons cited for the shift are: Lower TCO, higher business agility, and greater business responsiveness. Another major factor add-

ing to the complexity of datacenters is the task of managing boxes with multiple management consoles from numerous OEMs. But the changes made within the datacenter have a widespread impact and raise questions over an organization’s business agility.

“Every time we effect changes within the datacenter, we want to link it to an end-user experience, but

that doesn’t happen always,” said Natarajan, chief technology officer, Murugappa Group, at a roundtable, organized by Dell in association with CIO magazine.

Dell has always been consistent in saying that the datacenter is a hub for innovation. “My personal experience is, today, when a customer builds his own datacenter his energies are directed towards power, cooling, and

SPECIAL EVENT COVERAGE DELL

physical infrastructure and less on server, storage, and networking,” said Neeraj Matiyani, director-Storage Business, Dell.

Additionally, many CIOs had an interesting take on a different but rather familiar trend in datacenters: Outsourcing.

“In the last few years, customer interest in learning about enterprise infrastructure has fallen. A key reason for this is that the server and storage architecture has not fundamentally changed in the past decade. This however is no longer true.

Today, with the advent of SDE there are options which are architecturally different. These are strategic decisions and I recommend customers to take keen interest,” said Matiyani.

V. Srinivas, executive VP-IT, Sanmar Group, said that nowadays, datacenter and infrastructure are viewed as commodities, and differ from applications. “Applications are more business specific and have tremendous impact on business processes.

Therefore, they should be kept under control,” Srinivas said.

Besides, CIOs believe that with respect to infrastructure, they are not the ones keeping a tab on technological changes. Therefore, companies outsource their infrastructure needs while keeping the responsibility of applications in-house.

However, Matiyani added that with the changes happening on the infrastructure front, customers should take keen interest in the issue. This is important as there are strategic choices to be made which will have a lasting impact on the business.

Another point CIOs broadly spoke about was the immediate deployment of the necessary datacenter applications. “We have experimented on the cloud—that is on IaaS, SaaS, and PaaS. We are managing a private cloud for our entire group of companies. The question I face from the management and LoBs is in the age of instant deployments on mobile, why are datacenters lagging behind?” said Sendil Kumar Venkate-

san, deputy vice president, Shriram Value Services.

Today, datacenter largely revolves around two aspects: Cost and the driving factors for the growth of the datacenter and the cloud business.

Understanding the pulse of the mar-

With the advent of SDE there are options which are architecturally different.

These are strategic decisions and I recommend customers to take keen interest in their enterprise infra evaluation.”

Neeraj Matiyani,

Director-Storage Business, Dell

ket and working accordingly has always helped Dell to stay ahead of its competitors. Arijit Chakraborti, regional head—Sales, Dell India, says the focus on the end user experience is driving a change in the datacenter business. “When I look from an enterprise perspective, cost and performance are the primary factors. They come into play even before other factors such as compliance and security even come into question,” said Chakraborti.

Dell believes that the complexity involved in maintaining and running a datacenter needs to be simplified.

However, the biggest challenge CIOs face while migrating to a new system is that of businesses refusing to come out of their comfort zone to implement new changes. But, changes are inevitable for simplifying datacenter complexities. Hence, higher business agility and adaptability will go a long way in helping enterprises drive the change.

This event report is brought to you by IDG Services in association with Dell and Intel

[Q+A]

Tackling Threats

Thomson Thomas, SVP-Business Systems & Technology at HDFC Life, believes that information security faces a paradigm shift today, and organizations must look for strategic ways to handle this beast.

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BY S H U B H R A R I S H I

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How is HDFC Life making use of new technology trends?

At HDFC, we believe that mobility will change the way we do business. As apps start exploiting more and more capabilities on the phone, there will be unlimited opportunities.

Mobility is a game changer. With regard to the SMAC stack, we have a very active employee social network with over 400 communities.

CIOs should stress on the significance of preparing against new security threats.

We have deployed social listening tools that help us track conversations about HDFC Life across social networks. We have also deployed a hybrid cloud as well as video conferencing services.

Traditionally, HDFC Life has been using analytics to support core business processes, and now we are also identifying big data sources that will bring valuable and rich insights on consumer behavior.

Rise in new technologies has increased security threats which has greatly impacted the role of a CIO. Do you agree?

The digital world is seeing a break-

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through with a new set of technological innovations. The need for business agility has also gone up.

Earlier, CIOs and their technology teams used to focus on projects keeping ROI in mind. While security was important, the approach to tackle it was more tactical as new threats were occasional.

Today, information security faces a paradigm shift as organizations must look for strategic ways to handle this beast. The role of the CIO has become more important as he stresses on the significance of preparing against new security threats. Businesses are adopting new technologies like social, cloud,

mobility, big data, and IoT that help in combating them.

A PwC security survey indicates that financial losses associated with incidents jumped to 24 percent in 2014. Clearly, security is the biggest challenge that banks face today.

At HDFC Life, we have a clear vision for security. We have deployed the latest technologies to ensure that business is conducted with an appropriate security cover. We have a comprehensive data leakage policy and relevant security technologies and processes in place. We continuously scan the landscape for new threats and plan counter-measures.

In order to avoid a trade-off between security and accessibility, how can CIOs best ensure a mix of both?

In order to meet customer demands, businesses continue to push the security controls of the company.

In the BFSI sector, internal security teams have to play a balancing role by ensuring customer data protection and at the same time, servicing their needs effectively. For us, customer is the most important entity and every such trade-off is evaluated on the basis of finding a secure and best possible way to serve customer needs.

Send feedback to shubhra_rishi@idgindia.com.

Unified Communications:

Transforming the Workplace

Top Indian CIOs discuss why Unified Communications is a powerful tool to succeed in today’s dynamic business environment.

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oday’s business environment requires effective communication channels to help people inside and outside the organization. Many organizations have already made investments in Unified Communications (UC) platforms to give their employees the choice to communicate the way they want to.

UC aids in sharing ideas and information, using chat, instant messaging, Web, video, telepresence, document sharing, and more, all on the same platform.

The result? More productive employees, seamless interactions, lower costs, and higher profitability.

To gain a deeper understanding of how UC can help CIOs add value to their organizations, Tata Communications, in association with CIO magazine recently conducted a roundtable discussion with some CIOs at the CIO Year Ahead 2015 event in Chennai The adoption of conferencing has improved and is finding a new place in the Indian enterprises. Implementing a multitude of conferencing solutions and communications services enhances the communication capabilities of businesses, large or small.

“For example, if I am working with a customer in the US, it may not be possible for my employees in India to be present in the

office at that time. I need to find a solution for people to work from home or when on tour,” said Subramanyam Putrevu, CIO, Mindtree.

Putrevu added that the company is also trying to address this problem so that employees can join conferences, no matter where they are. “We are trying to ensure that people use audio, Web, and video conferencing on their mobile phones,” he said.

“Videoconferencing was implemented in our organization because people wanted to have face-to-face conversations with peers in remote locations. After experiencing its benefits, we have now extended video conferencing to all our branch offices,” said N. K. Verma, General Manager–IT, Rashtriya Chemicals.

The discussion also revealed real challenges enterprises face today, like mandates to lower business travel costs. A case in point is Vardhman Polytex. Amresh Attri, head-IT at the firm said, “We have been able to cut travel costs by 60 percent using different communication technologies.”

And at RPG Enterprises, Group CIO, Suneel Aradhye, reported that, “the demand for conferencing has been going up significantly.”

The discussion also brought into focus the barriers to UC adoption like leveraging existing investments, challenges using legacy equipment with newer technologies, getting

people outside your company onto your UC platform, or while building a converged communications environment by adding video and voice to existing UC platforms.

“Tata Communications has taken great strides to solve these challenges. Jamvee™ conferencing from Tata Communications makes all your existing video hardware work together seamlessly–join video meetings with existing room-based systems, desktops, telepresence systems, PCs, Macs, Android or iOS phones, and tablets, or even with a simple browser. With Jamvee™, your investments will continue to pay dividends and you can utilize all video-enabled devices and existing UC platforms to expand the reach of your video network. It gives more choice to the end-user and builds a truly Unified Communications environment,” said Rajesh Menon, VP-Business Development, Global Enterprise Solutions, India & APAC, Tata Communications.

“We’re currently evaluating our internal UC processes and believe that jamvee would be the right solution for us as it syncs well with Lync which means that we do not have to change our existing client,” said Ajay Kumar Meher, SVP-IT and post production, Sony Entertainment Television.

Tata Communications can help businesses that take a best-of-breed approach to UC, bring everything together to create solutions including contact centers, calling services, networking, telephony, and videoconferencing. “We can walk our customers through a decision process that is solution-centric, not vendor-centric, and that enables them to leverage their existing investments while benefiting from new solutions in the market,” said Rajesh.

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COVER STORY :: IT Strategy

CUSTOMER

A look at how top IT shops model their workflow and business interaction between IT and its customers, and how the IT workers’ careers. B Y S TA C Y C O L L E T T

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I

f you walk by an IT office these days, the only sounds you’re likely to hear are the dull whir of laptop fans and the gentle hum of servers— barely a warm body to be found.

The IT staff is on the loose.

In many cases, IT’s first order of business is to get closer to customers. Progressive IT shops are achieving that mission in several different ways. Jamie Cutler believes that embedding IT personnel in business units is the most critical move any IT department can make. “It’s the difference between having a technology department that’s perceived as a group of guys who run servers” and one that’s regarded as “a group of people who are valued as true contributors to the top and bottom lines of a company,” says Cutler, CIO at QEP Resources, a Denver-based independent crude oil and natural gas exploration and production company.

IT workers who truly understand the business are better able to design systems to support and advance the organization’s mission.

And what better way to help IT

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workers gain that understanding than by bringing them together with the users they serve?

In fact, according to Computerworld’s (CIO’s sister publication) 2015 Careers Survey, IT professionals report that the ability to interact with business colleagues is the top skill outside of technical expertise that will make them more valuable. Here’s how leading IT shops model their workflows and business processes to incorporate communication and interaction between IT and its customers, and how that setup benefits the company—and the careers of IT professionals.

1. Assign IT Business Partners At QEP Resources, Cutler has assigned 20 IT employees to serve as “business partners” with each business unit and backoffice function. The technical professionals ultimately report to Cutler in IT, but their sole purpose is to solve problems and drive better efficiency for the business unit they partner with—whether its specialty is drilling, geology, or accounting.

“We take the people, process, technol-

COVER STORY :: IT Strategy

R CONNECT

ss

processes to incorporate communication and setup benefits the business, and

27 ogy approach,” Cutler explains. “Can we solve a problem by bringing in smarter people, [devising] new processes or, lastly, improving the technology we have or [adding] new technology?” As his list indicates, he prefers business partners who turn to technical solutions last. The attributes he values most are communication skills and critical thinking capabilities. “If they have those things, I can teach them technology,” he adds.

QEP’s business partners walk a fine line in their relationships with the business, he says. On one hand, they don’t want to be seen as a roadblock or a drag on the process. On the other hand, he doesn’t want a business partner to fall victim to a business unit’s every demand.

“We call it going native,” Cutler says. “If they advocate too much for what the unit wants without thinking about the right solution, that’s not the right answer. The right answer is, ‘Let’s step back and think about this.’”

Cutler uses scenario coaching to reinforce the idea that “our goal is to help [the

business unit] understand there may be a better opportunity to get where they want to go.”

The best advice for IT employees who want to take a walk on the business side is to “look for those projects that will give you exposure,” Cutler says.

“Tell your manager that you want to learn, and offer to take a portion of your time and get exposure to a business unit to really understand it” while keeping up with your current responsibilities, he explains. “Then ask for some formal training—classes that help you understand business process development and good communication skills.”

2. Create Centers of Innovation At University Health Network in Toronto, each of the nine specialty programs in the hospital has its own center of innovation that runs independently of centralized IT, also known as the shared information management services unit.

When the Business Hires Away IT People

W

hen a business unit steals one of your IT staffers, are you losing talent or gaining an ally?

At University Health Network in Toronto, it’s common for specialty units to hire IT staffers away from the shared information management services unit, while functional experts in specialty groups sometimes request a move to the central IT group.

CTO Jim Forbes takes a positive view of the situation. “It works both ways, and that works for us and for them,” he says.

At biotechnology firm Genentech, one of the best compliments Cindy Elkins, a vice president and head of IT, receives about her team occurs when an IT employee is courted by business units.

“I deeply believe that it’s most important to keep these great talents within Genentech rather than lose them to the outside,” she says.

In September alone, three IT employees were hired into business units and have become customers of IT. “We need to really think about ourselves as being a pipeline of talent into the business,” Elkins says. And once IT adopts that mindset, she says, the question for IT managers becomes, “How does that change our hiring or our development or opportunities that we want to present [to employees]?”

—Stacy Collett

28

The transformation began more than a decade ago, when the healthcare organization realized that a central IT unit wasn’t the best solution for its needs. For starters, clinical departments needed more innovative systems, and creative clinicians wanted to contribute to the process of developing technical tools.

Meanwhile, the IT department often had 160 projects going on at one time, and its staff was spread thin. “Specialty programs started to build up their own IT expertise largely to fill the niche aspects that central IT was too busy to deal with,” says CTO Jim Forbes. “We can’t be everything to everyone. So at UHN this model makes sense.”

Today, each specialty program includes two to six functional specialists who have backgrounds in IT or project management. UHN has built a governance framework to support IT standards, policies and change management practices for all groups, while giving specialty programs the freedom to develop new technologies and practices.

Each month, representatives of the specialty programs meet with the central IT unit to present their groups’ road maps. Central IT then “makes sure they align with our [centralized] road map and that we understand what they’re experiencing in the business area,” Forbes says.

For instance, the unit that runs the operating room had been requesting an upgrade to its scheduling and booking system.

IT was struggling to determine why the change was needed.

The group had no functional IT expert at the time. But then network specialist Krishna Bhoutika joined the surgical information systems group. After determining that the OR system was several upgrades behind and would be incompatible with a new hospital-wide initiative to integrate systems, Bhoutika created a road map for getting it done.

Learning the complicated workflow, people, and processes of the OR took time. “It was a big learning experience for me when I joined the group,” Bhoutika says. On the clinical side, the margin of error is very low because any system problems can directly affect patients, he says.

Bhoutika, who was a software developer for half of his career, says he’s working on developing his people skills. “Customer service was never my forte,” he explains. “But as you work and

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develop your skills, you start to see that, to move things forward, you really need to bond with people. That’s something I’ve had to learn over time, and I’m still working on it.”

IT employees who want to work on the business side usually get their foot in the door by participating in the governance component of projects or operations. “We have committees set up on just about every project we have,” Forbes says. “Individuals get the opportunity to showcase their expertise and knowledge, and the business can make sure there’s a fit.”

3. Help Connect the Dots Cindy Elkins believes that her company has a big competitive advantage when it comes to finding IT employees who want to connect with the business. As vice president and head of IT Americas at Genentech, a South San Francisco-based biotechnology company that develops medications for people with difficult-to-treat diseases, she often hears personal stories from job candidates about how they or a loved one has been affected by a serious disease that Genentech medicines target.

“They want to take their IT skills and literally help people who are helping patients,” Elkins says. It’s her job to help Genentech’s 550 IT employees connect the dots between technology and patients.

One way that Genentech makes this connection is through its annual Full Spectrum IT event, which brings employees face to face with some of the patients who have benefited from Genentech products.

It’s not uncommon to see IT staffers tagging along with sales reps who visit physicians to explain Genentech’s medications.

This gives the techies a chance to see the entire sales process firsthand—from preparing for the pitch, to dealing with office managers at healthcare facilities, to presenting scientific data to doctors. “That’s really a big deal,” Elkins says. “We can sit here and build tools in a vacuum, or we can get out there and learn how they do that.”

IT employees also regularly visit business units and help their colleagues with day-to-day tasks. An IT business analyst, for instance, recently spent a few weeks processing orders with the order management team to get a better idea of how the tech-

COVER STORY :: IT Strategy

nology works for them.

With hands-on knowledge, sometimes they even find that a solution needs to be less, not more. “We can say, ‘I’ve watched five sales reps do this, and I haven’t seen anybody needing that [feature].’ And it helps us push back,” Elkins explains. She acknowledges that “letting IT out of their box” can sometimes be intimidating to business people, especially at a time when consumerization of IT is making everyone feel like they’re techsavvy. “That’s a challenge,” she says. “The bar for the speed of

companies. At Valco, a manufacturer of farming equipment in New Holland, IT employees spend 60 percent of an average week interacting directly with the company’s 350 employees in every area of the business.

“There are probably larger places where they can stay in the back room. But in small to midsize companies, you have to be able to interact with the business,” says Mark Robinson, director of IT. Some IT employees work at least a half-day alongside ship-

IT workers who truly understand the business are better able to design systems to support and advance the organization’s mission. innovation is now set by consumer-facing vendors like Apple, Google, Salesforce.com and others. The business side comes to the table with an experienced point of view. So we’re both in each other’s yards now, and I think that’s bringing up some new conversation” about capabilities and the pace of change.

Elkins advises IT employees who want a seat at the business table to listen more and talk less. “We need to not be on a mission that all of our systems are the right ones or the best ones,” she says. “Be prepared to change.”

Moreover, “we’ve got to get out of our techie talk,” she adds.

“That’s always a challenge. We need to be able to push back in even better ways. Use much more of the phrase ‘tell me more’ rather than ‘did you know?’”

Elkins also recommends short-term rotations in business units, one- or two-year assignments “or really getting out of IT.” Techies have to “see what it’s like to be a customer of IT,” she says. “Get out of your own stew and take a look at it that way.”

4. Hit the Shop Floor Connecting with the business is a big deal for IT shops at small

IT’s Most Valuable

The top nine skills outside of IT that are most valuable to an IT professional: 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

Connecting with customer Analytical thinking Leadership/strategic thinking Collaboration/team building Managing projects Ability to innovate Managing people Marketing skill Social media skill

ping clerks or customer service reps. More informally, Robinson will bring developers and network engineers into meetings with users. For example, IT workers may get to hear about a business problem directly from the source in an initial design meeting. There are also impromptu walkabouts. “It doesn’t take much of an excuse to grab our safety glasses and get out on the shop floor,” he says.

Generally, business people now see that IT has more empathy for what they do and what their problems are. Because the two sides now have a rapport, users feel comfortable discussing problems openly instead of complaining about IT in private.

That gives IT staffers a chance to do something about problems they might not have known about in the past.

The relationship also helps spawn some of the smaller projects that benefit Valco, such as an initiative that added a couple of columns to a report for the shop floor. “If they didn’t think IT would care, they would decide not to fight for it,” Robinson says. “Once they know IT cares about how the business works, about efficiencies and ultimately service to the customer, then they’re probably going to be more inclined to ask.”

It’s not always easy to coax the softer business skills out of his technology-minded staff, he concedes, citing his efforts to foster the art of “patient listening”—hearing all the facts before formulating an opinion.

“For IT people, their minds are running so far and so fast ahead that they already know what the solution is before the sentence is complete from the business person,” Robinson says.

“We need to not do that. It’s kind of tough at times.”

To keep listening top of mind among IT people, Robinson often holds debriefings after customer meetings to go over what transpired and suggest ways that his staffers can improve their interpersonal skills.

But there are also pitfalls to constantly driving IT people to interact with business people. “It does tend to thin the herd of your IT people,” Robinson explains, noting that some techies will always prefer staying in the back office. He urges managers to cultivate curiosity among IT employees. “Ask IT staff, ‘Why are you doing this? How does this help our end customer?’” he suggests. “It’s that curious nature that drives everything.”

2015 Careers Survey Source: 2015 CareersSource: Survey www.cio.in

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leadership and operational excellence

Analytics Fights Fraud

The credit union used agile development to build an analytics system to stop fraudsters who, with only a bit of personal information, can con call center workers. BY M A RY K . P R AT T Financial institutions use many technologies to fight crime, but much of the work comes too late, focusing on suspicious activity, like uncharacteristic charges or money transfers, after it happens.

Virginia Credit Union has software to do that kind of after-the-fact analysis, but CIO Chris Saneda says his company saw a chance to actually prevent theft. The credit union built an analytics system to stop fraudsters who, with a bit of personal information, can con call center workers.

“We’re trying to get in front of it before real fraud happens,” Saneda says. Virginia Credit Union, with 570 employees and an IT department of 38, earned a CIO 100 award (US) for the project.

Using an agile approach, the fraud-risk-management team, a staff developer, and

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a contract developer started building the analytics system last year. They identified scenarios that could indicate fraud, based on input from the fraud-riskmanagement department and the contact center at the credit union, which has $2.5 billion (about Rs 1500 crore) in assets. The system, called Fraud-Fighter, starts working as soon as a call comes in to the contact center, using algorithms to analyze the interaction and historical information associated with the account.

Challenges arose in accessing some of the required data, Saneda says. First, the credit union did not have all the information in its warehouse at the project’s start. The team also had to forgo some information it wanted to gather from its online banking system—specifically IP addresses from recent logins. The vendor that hosts the online banking system couldn’t provide the data without additional development work.

Saneda declined to disclose details about which elements of a customer interaction would raise red flags; he doesn’t want to educate potential criminals.

But, he says, general tip-offs include uncharacteristic online activity followed by requests for address changes or multiple calls to the contact center in quick succession. If these or other warning signs show up, the system provides a yellow or red alert to the call handler. The software also suggests steps employees can take, such as calling a manager or invoking additional authentication procedures.

In the first three months after Fraud-Fighter launched last September, the system flagged four cases of potential fraud, where someone who hadn’t been authorized by the real account holder contacted the credit union.

The system alerted front-line staff to take extra precautions to authenticate each caller’s identity.

Each time, the caller failed increased authentication tests and the transaction was halted. Fraud-Fighter recouped what it cost to build in those first three months, Saneda says.

Tim Phillipps, a global consultant at Deloitte Analytics, says many call centers improve customer service and increase sales through analytics, but he hasn’t seen many companies adopt analytics to fight fraud. “It’s a really interesting way to combat an ageold problem,” he says. “I’d be surprised if this doesn’t become more common.”

Virginia Credit Union plans to make the system more sophisticated to keep up with evolving social engineering and fraud tactics, Saneda says. He sees Fraud-Fighter as a tool to protect his company’s 235,000 credit union members “from monetary loss and endless personal grief.”

Send feedback to editor@cio.in

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Things You Need to Know PRESCRIPTIVE ANALYTICS

1

IT’S THE NEXT STEP IN ANALYTICS. First there was descriptive analytics, using data to describe current or past circumstances. Then came predictive analytics, analyzing data to predict a future outcome.

Prescriptive analytics suggests the best option for handling that future scenario. “Prescriptive tells you the best way to get to where you want to be,” says Anne Robinson, director of supply chain analytics at Verizon Wireless and a past president of INFORMS, a society for analytics and operations research professionals. “If you want to differentiate yourself, the next step is the prescriptive tool box.”

2

IT REQUIRES MORE DATA INTEGRATION. Data scientists typically spend about three-quarters of their time preparing data sets and only a quarter running analysis, says Forrester Research analyst Mike Gualtieri. That imbalance could worsen with prescriptive analytics, he says. CIOs can help by making it easier and faster to compile the required data.

3

THE CIO ROLE: EVANGELIST. Strategic-minded CIOs should study the technologies and then sell the opportunities. “CIOs need to become evangelists on how the business can bring improvement through prescriptive analytics,” says Tom Davenport, a Babson College professor and author of Big Data at Work.

The organization needs to be strategic in its approach to prescriptive analytics—which requires collaboration among senior executives, says Rajeev Bukralia, an associate lecturer in the computer science department at the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay and the university’s former CIO.

4

THERE’S A NEED FOR SPEED. The results of a prescriptive analytics program could facilitate long-range planning, but they might also be needed to determine immediate actions in business processes. “There are some situations where we need to execute those prescriptive analytics in real time,” Gualtieri says. Consequently, the IT infrastructure needs to be capable of analyzing information and delivering findings almost instantaneously.

5

IT WON’T REPLACE HUMAN JUDGMENT. “Prescriptive analytics isn’t about technology,” Bukralia says. Instead, it’s about people asking the right questions and knowing how to react to the findings. So if a prescriptive analytics program is to be successful, the organization must have the right people in place and get buy-in from those affected. CIOs can help by lending their change management skills—and by knowing how to balance technology-driven information and human judgment.

— Mary K. Pratt

POPULAR SCIENCE

Computers Match Primates

A team of MIT neuroscientists says it has built a computer model that can match the primate brain in terms of visual recognition. BY S H A R O N G AU D I N

S

cientists at MIT have designed a computer network that can visually recognize objects as well as a primate.

While researchers have struggled over the years to build a computer model that can match the primate brain in terms of visual recognition, a team of university neuroscientists says it has finally done so by building what it calls deep neural networks.

Neural networks are based on computers that are designed to work more like a brain than does a traditional computer.

Neuro-based computers should be better at handling big data problems and complicated analysis, making them well-suited for handling the millions or billions of sensors needed for the Internet of Things, robotics, and big data.

The advance in MIT’s latest neuro network’s ability to better recognize objects suggests that neuroscientists have gained what they’re calling “a fairly accurate grasp” of how object recognition works, according to James DiCarlo, a professor of neuroscience and head of MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.

The advance is also possible thanks to recent increases in processing power and larger datasets of images that can

Predict in a Breeze To better anticipate the next Sandy-size hurricane, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is upgrading the supercomputers it uses for predicting the weather. By October 2015, the agency will have 10 times as much computing power to devote to predicting the weather as it does today, thanks to the upgrade of two supercomputer systems now being carried out by IBM and subcontractor Cray.

Part of the cost of the upgrade has been funded by the allocation from

feed the algorithms and ‘train’ the computers. “The fact that the models predict the neural responses and the distances of objects in neural population space shows that these models encapsulate our current best understanding as to what is going on in this previously mysterious portion of the brain,” said DiCarlo, in a written statement.

Charles Cadieu, a postdoc at MIT’s McGovern Institute and a researcher on the project, noted that the new technology should lead to more powerful artificial intelligence and, someday, to the ability to repair visual problems in humans.

The university explained that vision-based neural networks are based on a brain-like hierarchy of information delivery, mimicking the way information flows from the retina in the eye to the brain to be processed.

For the digital network, designers created multiple layers of computation in their programs. Each level, according to MIT, performs a mathematical operation.

At each successive level, the representations of the visual object become more and more complex.

Send feedback to editor@cio.in.

the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act of 2013, after Sandy hit the East Coast in October 2012. The severity of the hurricane surprised many meteorologists, and NOAA’s National Weather Service was criticized for not predicting the storm with as much accuracy as did a European weather agency.

When the upgrade is finished, the two NOAA supercomputers will each be able to execute more than 5 petaflops (quadrillion floating point operations per second). The new gear will allow NOAA to update its weather forecasting software to achieve greater accuracy. Today, the agency can predict weather patterns up to 10 days in advance within an area, or what it calls

a resolution, of 27 kilometers meaning each prediction covers a 27 square kilometer area. With the new equipment in place, it can sharpen the resolution to 13 kilometers.

The smaller the area of resolution, the more accurate the forecast will be. Weather prediction is a computationally intensive task, one that involves the analysis of how many separate variables could interact.

On the software side, NOAA’s National Weather Service has been refining its forecasting models as well. The agency’s Hurricane Weather Research and Forecasting model accurately charted the approach of Hurricane Arthur last year.

—Joab Jackson

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MUMBAI AND GURGAON

EXECUTIVE

BOARDS

Preparing Future Businesses CIOs, today, are living in the 'post-PC era', and the confluence of emerging technologies is leading to new possibilities for consumers, enterprises, and technology vendors. CIOs are juggling between multiple technologies and trends, including mobility and cloud computing, in order to improve business agility. But CIOs are posed with different challenges such as the emergence of new work patterns making it necessary for IT

to look beyond control and security. In order to address this conundrum, CIO magazine launched a new series of events titled CIO Executive Boards: A two-city event series— Mumbai and Gurgaon—that brought together an elite group of top CIOs to discuss how they work with the business and leverage the power of these technologies.

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JANUARY 22, 2015 GRAND HYATT, MUMBAI

Today, enterprises are harnessing the power of multiple cloud environments. “We decided to deploy a core application on the public cloud. The major push came from the business," said Prakash Dharmani, global CIO, Essel Propack, at the CEB event in Mumbai. Sanjay Siboo, country manager, Cloud Services, Global Technology Services, IBM India, said that their Cloud for Business offering gives a view of what IBM can offer on the cloud for different customers. Sachin Saxena, VP-Cloud Business Operations, Blue Coat Systems, said that a single user interface allows better policy management.

A hybrid approach gives you a mix of physical datacenter and virtualized cloud environment. Today, we are successfully operating out of a cloud and haven't experienced any latency.”

INDUSTRY EXPERTS

Harnessing Agility and Security

GIRISH RAO Head-IT & Business Analytics, Marico

SACHIN SAXENA VP- Cloud Business Operations, Blue Coat Systems

SANJAY SIBOO Country Manager, Cloud Services, Global Technology Services, India /South Asia, IBM India

RITU MADBHAVI Sr. VP-IT, Draft FCB Ulka Advertising

CIO CASE FILES

Hybrid Power:

Top CIOs and solution providers discuss, debate, and share their experiences with cloud computing and how they can leverage the power of the technology.

PRESENTED BY

MANOJ SHARMA, CTO, Quikr.

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CLOUD JANUARY 23, 2015 THE WESTIN, GURGAON

Hybrid Cloud:

For applications, data and storage, we are no longer debating over a public and a private cloud. Instead, we are deploying hybrid environments to meet shifting workloads and changing needs."

VAMSICHARAN MUDIAM Country Manager, Cloud Solutions, IBM ISA

RAJESH UPPAL Executive Director-IT& CIO,Maruti Suzuki India

VARUN SOOD CIO, Fortis Healthcare

CIO CASE FILES

The changing business landscape has forced CIOs to leverage different cloud models. "The pace at which I can deliver certain applications using a hybrid model is far greater than that on an on-premise environment," said Rajesh Uppal, executive director-IT and CIO, Maruti Suzuki, at the CEB event in Gurgaon. The reason is increasing cloud maturity.“A single pane of control provides the ability to integrate on-premise workloads with multiple chipsets and off-premise workloads with multiple cloud providers,” said Vamsicharan Mudiam, country manager, Cloud Solutions, IBM ISA.

INDUSTRY EXPERT

Easing the Enterprise Route Ahead

Top CIOs and solution providers discuss, debate, and share their experiences with cloud computing and how they can leverage the power of the technology.

HITESH ARORA, CIO, Yum! India.

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MOBILITY JANUARY 30, 2015 THE WESTIN, GURGAON

Enterprise Mobility:

A lot of organizations might have a number of native, customerfacing and public apps. With a proper mobile strategy, all the accessibility and securityrelated issues can be addressed.”

SRIKANT SHITOLE Senior Director, Symantec India

VIJAY SETHI VP-IS,CIO,and Head-CSR,Hero MotoCorp

RAMANDEEP VIRDI Vice President-Group IT, InterGlobe

CIO CASE FILES

Mobile adoption is gaining ground in India and each company has a different strategy around it. "The extent of adoption and the implementation will vary, depending upon the need of the business. Therefore, it's important to have a business case and carry out an assessment before taking the mobility route," said Vijay Sethi, VP-IS, CIO, and head-CSR, Hero MotoCorp. Srikant Shitole, senior director, Symantec India, added that an enterprise mobility solution must address diverse use cases “without compromising on protection and management.”

INDUSTRY EXPERT

Gaining Ground, Driving Innovation

Top CIOs and solution providers discuss, debate, and share their experiences with mobility, and how they can leverage the power of the technology.

PRESENTED BY

PARNA GHOSH, SGM & ICT Head-India, Far East & Japan, CNH Industrial Group.

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EXECUTIVE VIEWPOINT

CLOUD

STRENGTHENING SECURITY ON THE CLOUD Blue Coat Systems’ cloud-based security service ensures that the enterprises are always protected from advanced threats.

Sachin Saxena,

By Shubhra Rishi

VP-Cloud Business Operations, Blue Coat Systems

How can a CIO secure the enterprise cloud against malware, viruses, and advanced threats?

We have had a long history of protecting organizations, their data, and employees from cyber security malware, viruses, and advanced threats. Traditionally, organizations have used an appliancebased solution for securing all these three assets. However, over the years, we have seen enterprises moving their critical and peripheral applications to the cloud, the onslaught of personal devices entering the corporate network, and the global user turning online 24*7.

All these factors indicate that an appliance-based solution wouldn't work anymore or serve enterprise needs.

Therefore, our cloud security solution recognizes all these factors and offers the same protection inside as well as outside the network.

Why is this superior to an on-premise solution?

At Blue Coat, one of our big differentiators as a cloud service is the ability to protect network assets. We serve over 75 million users, process a billion unique requests every day, and block close to three million cyber attacks. For instance, even when a single endpoint encounters a threat in an enterprise, we identify and resolve it, and also make sure that all the other 75

million users benefit from the resolution.

From a cloud service perspective, we offer enterprises an open, adaptable network security platform which gives them the power to integrate all their existing service providers. So, whether an organization's network asset comprises multiple routers, firewalls, or MDM solutions, our cloud security platform comes with pre-certified integrations

"Our cloud-based service tracks hundreds of malware such that we can identify the threats and protect organizations before an attack is launched" and works with what you already have within the network.

How does Blue Coat Cloud Service provide Negative-Day Defense?

At Blue Coat, we believe that the Web is a lucrative platform for everyone including cyber criminals. The new mafia lives on the cloud and is extremely agile. From our research, we have seen that two-thirds of the attacks are launched

using existing infrastructure. Therefore, since 2011, Blue Coat Cloud Service leverages realtime intelligence from the Global Intelligence Network, which harnesses data from more than 75 million users worldwide in order to provide Negative-Day Defense, and secures enterprises from any attacks before they occur.

How do Blue Coat Cloud Service datacenters stay fully-meshed, highly available, and fully-redundant?

Blue Coat Cloud Service datacenters are based on fully-meshed, fully-redundant, and multitenant infrastructure. All datacenters are interconnected, resulting in the highest level of redundancy, and therefore, users experience the highest performance available, regardless of the services being used. We also believe that security is a combined responsibility, and a continuous journey for everyone to take. As a security vendor, we look at improving our security offerings constantly. As the security spectrum continues to evolve, we will continue to stay agile and offer a zero-footprint, no-compromise, cloud-based content security service.

This interview is brought to you by IDG Services in association with Blue Coat

EXECUTIVE VIEWPOINT

MOBILITY

UNLOCKING THE POWER OF MOBILITY To address the changing requirements of the mobile workforce, Symantec is leveraging a single integrated solution.

Srikant Shitole,

By Shubhra Rishi

Senior Director, Symantec India

What can you tell us about Symantec’s enterprise mobility offering?

The massive adoption of smart devices and an unrelenting BYOD trend is compelling enterprises to take up several mobility initiatives. Within these initiatives, there are certain use cases where enterprises control corporate-owned devices completely. While in others, enterprises may only want control of specific corporate apps and data but not the whole device. However, depending on different use cases and business objectives, an enterprise mobility solution must address diverse use cases and ownership models, and help enterprises take full advantage of mobility without compromising on protection and management.

Five years ago, when enterprises were still warming up to managed services, organizations started providing a ready desktop or a laptop for the workforce. So, the end-point devices were pre-configured.

Organizations, today, constitute a workforce that is using a multitude of devices on a network which may or may not be controlled by IT. The companyowned devices may contain personal apps. These scenarios were rare a couple of years ago.

Today, companies may require full control of the applications residing on a device. Therefore, Symantec’s application

suite applies a security and policy management layer around mobile apps and content with the help of a unique application wrapping technology. As a result, it enables a clear separation of enterprise and personal data on the device.

We are one of the few security players who are addressing the enterprise mobility space. If you look at the entire management suite today, it’s not just

“A good enterprise mobility solution must help enterprises take full advantage of mobility without compromising on protection and management.” about mobile device management (MDM) or mobile application management (MAM) anymore. At Symantec, we have introduced a mobile management suite–a single solution consisting of five vectors namely MDM, MAM, content management, threat protection, and identity and access control.

How modular are these solutions?

Our solutions are modular in a way that

allows customers to deploy MAM or threat protection on top of an existing thirdparty MDM solution, giving enterprises maximum protection and flexibility. Our MDM offering includes support for a broader set of mobile platforms such as OS, Android, Windows Phone, and Samsung SAFE capabilities, to give IT the power to manage employee-owned devices.

How interoperable or integrable are these solutions with other MDM, networking, and security products?

We want to make it easier for our customers to implement and deliver enterprise mobility offerings. With multi-tenancy capabilities and additional integration APIs, our partners can easily plug Mobility Suite into their infrastructure and streamline management of services.

Therefore, we spend some time to assess the situation, make sure that the user experience doesn’t get compromised, and are able to protect customer’s existing investments in mobility.

This interview is brought to you by IDG Services in association with Symantec

HIRING MANAGER

IT Folks with Moral Courage?

Hiring managers should ask probing questions to discern whether job candidates have the integrity to make unpopular decisions. BY K R I S T E N L A M O R E AU X

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ost of us have physical courage,

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Military officers are trained “to be able to explain the retired Marine Corps Col. Anthony rationale of your decisions and how to have the spine to Wood told a recent gathering of CIOs. identify and correct things that are wrong,” Abano says.

“But there is another type of courage, “It’s harder in the current corporate America culture to one that in my experience is less call out something as wrong if your boss is explosive or if common: Moral courage.” you don’t feel safe.”

Wood knows something about courage: He led the US But Abano maintains that leaders must create evacuation of Saigon in 1975 (remember the pictures of a culture where employees are held accountable, helicopters on rooftops?). His lecture was, for me, one of empowered to innovate and feel safe enough to those “Aha” moments. Everything we talk about today as acknowledge mistakes. key to being a good leader—accountability, integrity and Michelle Tillis Lederman, author of The 11 Laws of conviction, balanced with empathy and humility—was Likability and a new book for veterans called Heroes Get summed up in those two words: Moral courage.

Hired, says interviewers often neglect to evaluate moral As hiring managers, we tend to assume that the courage, “but the skill should not be undervalued.” personable applicant before us will She notes that moral courage takes have all of those characteristics. But different forms in the battlefield and Ask the question: there’s a danger that we’ll fail to ask the in the boardroom. “In the civilian “What’s the probing questions that could confirm the workplace, moral courage means you most unpopular candidate has those traits. know when to speak up and stand up decision you “I don’t think people hold soft skills for something you feel strongly about. in high enough regard. They get too made and why?” It means taking a risk, and thinking caught up trying to hire the biggest outside the box, when the easy and egghead in the store,” says retired safe thing is not the right thing for the military officer Salvatore Abano, who company or client.” is also senior vice president and global CIO for insurer Whether candidates have honed these skills in the Tower Group Companies. military or in the corporate ranks, hiring managers need How can a hiring manager assess a candidate’s moral to identify and assess those attributes that are vital to courage? Abano listens for clues that the applicant will fit successful leadership at their company.

Tower’s culture, which requires high integrity and a “we, Abano was emphatic: “You can’t just do the job; it’s not I” mind-set. always more than that. You have to do what’s right. If Another approach is to ask the classic interview you don’t have a person with moral courage balanced question: “What’s the most unpopular decision you made with compassion, you’re just going to get someone who and why did you make it?” But Abano goes further, probing is going to punch a card, get along, and go home—and to discover a candidate’s thought patterns and motivations. that’s not the makeup of today’s leader.”

“I will test their humility by giving my definition of leadership and then gauging their body language and facial expressions,” he says. “If I get a ‘hmm’ answer or discomfort, I know they don’t get it. If I get a smile or an expression of calm, I start to think there’s opportunity for Kristen Lamoreaux is president and CEO of Lamoreaux Search, this person.” which finds IT professionals for hiring managers.

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TECH : : RADAR The Year the Internet Crashes

2014 saw the largest Internet attacks of all time. Fundamental network programs cracked like eggs. It will only get worse. B Y S T E V E N VA U G H A N - N I C H O L S

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n Internet joke that goes back at least

were available, 300,000-plus Web servers were still to the early 1980s consists entirely of vulnerable to that bug. the phrase: “Imminent Death of the Net I have no doubt that other security holes are hiding in Predicted!” Every year, even more often old, fundamental Internet protocol programs, and we’ll than you’d hear “This will be the year of find out about them the hard way in 2015. the Linux desktop!” someone would predict that the Finally, let’s not forget good old human error. Logins Internet was going to go to hell in a handbasket—and and passwords are also being swiped by cyber-crooks nothing happened. This year it’s my turn, but I fear I’m from companies all the time. As former FBI director going to be proved right.

Robert Mueller said this summer, “There are only two Here’s why. types of companies—those that have been hacked, and Take a good look at what happened to the Internet in those that will be.”

2014. In February, we saw the biggest distributed denialEven the tech elite are vulnerable. Earlier in Decemof-service (DDoS) attack of all time. It ber, ICANN, which oversees DNS, hit a high of 400 gigabits per second was hacked. The attacker got access Security is what (Gbps). That’s more traffic than the total you do after you’ve to user information, including email Internet bandwidth of a small country. been hacked and and postal addresses. ISC, makers of In October, Akamai reported that in BIND, the world’s most popular DNS you’ve fired your software, also got hit, but we don’t the previous quarter it had defended CIO. 2015 is the its customers, against 17 DDoS attacks know what, if any, information was year that attitude taken from the site. flooding targets with traffic greater than 100 Gbps, with the largest topEver since I got into technology, catches up with us. ping out at 321 Gbps. security has been an afterthought.

Who thinks we’ll see a petabit-perSecurity is what you do after you’ve second DDoS attack in 2015? I do. been hacked and you’ve fired your CIO. An attack of that magnitude may come from hackers, 2015 is the year that attitude catches up with us. such as Lizard Squad, going after gaming companies I don’t know how or when it will happen, but I do for reasons that will undoubtedly remain obscure. But know what will happen. There will be a DDoS attack, I think it’s much more likely that it will come from a probably exploiting some zero-day vulnerability of a nation state. fundamental Internet program.

Someone is going to pull the trigger on a truly giganIt will be big enough that it won’t just knock some tic DDoS in 2015. The only question is who. company or small country off the Internet; everyone How these attacks will be made isn’t so mysterious. in the world will feel its effects. And it may or may not Attackers only need to abuse long-existing problems in make use of information stolen from a major IT company such basic Internet protocols as Network Time Protocol or Internet service body.

(NTP) and Domain Name System (DNS). We are running 2015 will be the year our Internet security laziness the Internet using decades-old technology, and we’ve will catch up with us. Frankly, I’ll be happy if I’m dead been really, really lazy about upgrading it. wrong about this, but I don’t think I am.

For example, DNS-based attacks could be mitigated by the use of Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC). DNSSEC has been around since 2010, but it’s still being deployed by only a tiny number of companies.

In the meantime, we also saw in 2014 an absolutely core Internet security protocol, OpenSSL, ripped apart by the Heartbleed bug. Months later, long after fixes Send feeback on this feature to editor@cio.in

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EVENT REPORT AMAZON WEB SERVICES

THE OPPORTUNITY

CALLED THE CLOUD The first AWS Executive Summit in India featured incredible speakers.

Here are some you missed.

EVENT REPORT AMAZON WEB SERVICES

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ne of the many challenges CIOs face today is navigating their business through a period of industry transformation, an era defined by rapid changes driven by the Internet and technology.

Cloud computing is one of the technologies driving large scale transformation across the globe, in how organizations build and consume their IT. At the first AWS Executive Summit in India, some of Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) leading experts and India’s most important companies gathered, in Bangalore, to find out how to leverage the AWS Cloud. Chief among the speaker line-up was Dr. Werner Vogels, VP and CTO, Amazon.com. He spoke about the transformative power of the cloud and the future of both cloud computing and the Internet of Things.

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The event also featured Glenn Gore, Senior Manager, Solution Architect-APAC, Amazon Web Services, who shared the reasons behind Amazon’s ability to innovate quickly, and how to get IT teams cloud-ready.

The AWS Executive Summit also featured presentations around Understanding AWS Security, Why Scale Matters and How the Cloud is Really Different, Mining Information from Data on the Cloud, Managing Your AWS Cloud Assets, IT Extreme Makeover with Hybrid Scenarios, and a panel discussion on Cloud Adoption within Indian Enterprises: Drivers, Benefits and Considerations.

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KEYNOTE | DR. WERNER VOGELS

Dr. Werner Vogels, VP and CTO, Amazon.com, shares how the cloud can change businesses.

Transforming Businesses with the Cloud In his opening keynote at the AWS Executive Summit, Dr. Werner Vogels, VP and CTO, Amazon.com, re-iterated how AWS helps customers take their businesses to the next level.

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t the first AWS Executive Summit in India, Werner Vogels, VP and CTO, Amazon.com, opened with a statement that reminded everyone of the call of the cloud. “The cloud helps enterprises increase the speed and agility of their businesses. It helps companies go to market quicker, experiment swifter, and take decisions faster,” he said. To illustrate his point, Vogels shared examples of

businesses that depend entirely on the cloud to operate—and excel.

“One such company is Airbnb, which is a room and apartment provider. It has 400,000 customers each night, but because it is on the AWS cloud, its IT team consists only of five people. Airbnb is literally eating up the hospitality sector,” Vogels said.

The beauty of AWS is that it helps its customers dedicate as much time as they

AWS’ cloud has allowed us to experiment with technologies that were not a part of our ecosystem—and hence drive innovation.“ Jagdish Belwal, CIO, Tata Motors

can on building value-driven products— and spend as little time as possible on dealing with infrastructure. “CIOs should move to the cloud to shrink expenses, and cut out the heavy-lifting, and go global in minutes,” Vogels said.

To drive home the points he was raising, Vogels invited the CIOs of two Indian companies, which use the Amazon Web Services cloud, on stage with him.

Sharing his experience with the Amazon Web Services cloud, Jagdish Belwal, CIO, Tata Motors, said: “Our new corporate communication head wanted a video communication system to help connect with employees. We had to meet a twoweek deadline. We built a solution on Amazon Simple Storage Services (AWS S3), which allowed us to deliver video streaming across all our locations with low overheads,” he said.

Belwal also said that the company’s entire telematics architecture is being developed on AWS. The other CIO on stage was Aditya Berlia, member-management board, Apeejay Stya and Svran Group. “We are 100 percent on the AWS cloud.

This means that if you take any of our computers or servers from 52 locations in India, or from six locations outside the country, you will get nothing. When you click save on a document in our office, it saves directly to AWS’ Singapore region’s servers,” he said.

Berlia then explained why the company decided to take such a bold move with AWS. “Going all in is like a marriage. We went for Amazon because we needed someone that is strong and stable, somebody who cares about us, and is there when you need them,” Berlia said.

Amazon is strong and stable, cares about us, and is there when you need them. “ Aditya Berlia, Member Management Board, Apeejay Stya and Svran Group

AWS Enterprise Summit

IoT and the Future of the Cloud “This is the age of the Internet of everything, where everything is getting connected to the Internet and most of it is generating data. This data is, in turn, being analyzed in the cloud,” said Dr. Werner Vogels, VP and CTO, Amazon.com, in his closing keynote.

Vogels stressed that the Internet of Things is a reality now. “Many of our customers are building things on the cloud in a very realistic fashion. I term this approach “beyond the fridge”.

The typical example of IoT is the fridge,” Vogels said.

Vogels highlighted the fact that in the world of consumer technology a lot of fun things are taking place based on connected devices. He said that if the data being generated is properly processed and analysed, a lot of value could be derived from it. “Connected data requires so much processing that you cannot do it anywhere else but the cloud. The cloud enables data collection, data processing, and also connected data collaboration,” Vogels said.

Talking about the future of technology, Vogels said that in the past, scientists built models and theories. Today, it’s all about the facts. Therefore, all technology implementations should be based on facts and justified by the results it fetches and problems it solves. “You will build your science on hard-core facts. Even subjects like psychology and archaeology are now data driven.

It is very important to get some kind of information on data science. This will be part of your job even if you are a computer engineer,” Vogels said.

“This is the age of the Internet of everything, where everything is connected to the Internet and most of it is generating data.“ Dr. Werner Vogels, VP and CTO, Amazon.com

Key Takeaways Amazon Web Services enables customers to spend more time creating value-driven products and services and less time managing infrastructure.

Amazon Web Services develops services that help its customers derive and generate more value with data generated from the Internet of Things (IoT).

Amazon Web Services is focused on providing cloud services that will process and analyze enormous amounts of data to help its enterprise customers become more customer-centric.

Amazon Web Services provides scalability to small- and medium-sized enterprises to help them grow and compete against large companies across the globe.

How to Get an IT Team Cloud-Ready In his final session at the AWS Executive Summit, Glenn Gore, Senior Manager, Solution Architect-APAC, Amazon Web Services, spoke about how to get an IT team ‘cloud-ready’. He said, IT departments should be prepared for three things: Cultural changes, two types of skills, and new team structures. Talking about cultural changes, he said that to be cloud-ready teams need to imbibe a culture of urgency coupled with focused vision. It’s important, he said, to have curious and passionate people on the team. To make an IT team cloud-ready, Glenn stressed on having the right skills. “One needs primary and secondary skills to make a cloud-ready IT team.

Training, having security within the team, automation and integration skills are the primary skills. Performance optimization efficiency and knowing how to drive cost out of a platform constitute secondary skills,” he said.

Talking about structure, he was emphatic about how cloud-ready teams collapse project groups into a single team. Citing an interesting customer success story, Gore pointed to The National Australian Bank, which built a new team using all these practices and saw massive savings. “They migrated to AWS on time, on-budget, and achieved their goals,” he said.

“One needs primary and secondary skills to make a cloud-ready IT team.“ Glenn Gore, Senior Manager, Solution ArchitectAPAC, Amazon Web Services

Shake IT, Don’t Spill

run

Here are the key things to consider before you head for an IT department reorganization. BY R I C H H E I N

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T reorganizations are costly both in terms of resources and productivity. To minimize those costs, CIOs and IT leaders should understand the nature of the problems they are looking to solve, have a solid strategy, and be sure that business strategy is at the heart of the reorganization efforts.

Before going down the reorganization path consider other ways to fix what is ailing your organization.

“IT leaders should first ask themselves what they hope to accomplish,” says Julie Stansbury, CIO of GE Capital Treasury.

Determine Where to Start Communications with key stakeholders, IT teams, and C-level management is a must to find out where your organization is falling short and what you are doing right.

“I began by having conversations with my business partners. I gathered input from them on their experience working with the IT group, particularly around pain points or areas of potential improvement. I also gathered input from my IT leadership team around the same sorts of questions. I found that a frank dialogue was the key to determining the course of the reorg,” says Stansbury.

IT isn’t Delivering Results Is your IT department regularly missing deadlines and going overbudget? This is a real reason to consider a reorg, but leaders should again ask themselves, “Is there another way to fix these issues?”

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According to a recent survey from the Apigee Institute nearly half of all companies fail to meet expectations when developing mobile apps.

“These companies are seeing a key warning sign: Failure to meet expectations deploying something that’s becoming a necessity for any enterprise. IT, at a minimum, should do no evil—in this case, not be the obstacle to something essential to competing in the new mobile-centric mar-

to swamp traditional reasons to reorg like shaving costs a few percent,” says Kirschner.

Be Aware of Team Morale Once it’s underway there will be a lot of questions and perhaps anxiety. It’s hard to get things done in an atmosphere where people are worried about the unknown. Experts agree that communications is the key. Getting your IT workers involved and

It’s critical to keep your IT teams involved in the re-org process. That way, they have a stake in the re-org rather than feeling like changes are being put upon them. ket context,” says Bryan Kirschner, director of the Apigee Institute.

New Technology Changes Company Mission The world of technology has become firmly entrenched in most of today’s businesses. It’s forcing some companies to rethink the way they do business and that could mean big changes for IT. “We’re seeing demands to deliver modern digital experiences and capabilities for the business as a growing force. Let’s take the retail sector as an example: Walgreens has found that customers who shop in-person, online, and using their mobile app spend six times as much as single- channel customers. The upside of delivering great omnichannel experiences and the downside of failing to do so is going

onboard with your strategy is an important part of keeping morale high and workers engaged.

“Reorganizations can be stressful for employees–they’re waiting to see how things change and what that means for their day-to-day work.

It’s critical to keep your IT teams and IT leadership involved in the entire process. That way, they have a stake in the reorg rather than feeling like changes are being put upon them.

The sooner you can bring clarity around those questions, the better,” says Stansbury. The bottom-line is that leaders need to be upfront and transparent in regards to what the reorg means to their workers and the business as a whole.

Rich Hein covers IT careers. Send feedback to editor@cio.in

connect Up, close, and personal with all things IT

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Time for a CSMO?

If you want a strong social media presence, you should consider hiring a Chief Social Media Officer. By Sharon Florentine

A social media presence for your business is no longer optional. It’s a necessary part of your marketing, communications, and customer relationship strategy in today’s digital marketplace. It makes sense, then, to put this important function in the hands of an experienced, knowledgeable professional. Some experts even recommend creating a Chief Social Media Officer (CSMO).

The Case for a Chief Social Media Officer

I L LU S T R AT I O N B Y T H I N K S TO C K

“The days of putting an intern or entry-level employee in charge of a company’s social media presence have long passed. Companies and brands have realized—often through social media disasters—the importance of having trained communications professionals run their online presences,” says Xenios Thrasyvoulou, founder and CEO of PeoplePerHour, and SuperTasker. From a corporate perspective, social media is still a relatively new technological mouthpiece for reaching and communicating with customers, according to Kimberly Samuelson, a marketing and communications consultant who formerly served as director of electronic content management at ECM provider Laserfiche.

“Social’s still a relatively new technology. It is still difficult for businesses to figure out how to use this. Many organizations’ first pass was ‘let’s use an intern, or someone

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really young, because they’re digital natives and they inherently know how to do this stuff,’ but using social media in their personal life and using it in a professional setting are two different things and it quickly become apparent that wasn’t the way to do it,” Samuelson says.

Social media professionals occupy a space somewhere between the skills and experience of a CMO and a CIO, she says.

“You need a person who can build a community, who can bridge the gap between the business voice and the customer voice. What’s also critical is interpersonal skills, negotiation and in some cases, customer service skills,” says Samuelson. But in addition, these are highly technical platforms, so social media pros must also be comfortable with the use of this technology and have some tech expertise as well as experience with data collection and analysis, Samuelson says.

“They should be able to understand and navigate the ins-and-outs of search engine optimization (SEO), of different platform application programming interfaces (APIs), but also [have] some data analysis skills, to be able to look at all the social data collected and find out what excites your community—how to engage and energize them,” says Samuelson. Of course, some basic psychological knowledge helps, too, when understanding human relationships, motivations and the impact of marketing and advertising via social platforms.

Social Media Specialization Thrasyvoulou advocates for not just a CSMO, but for hyper-specialized social media roles reporting to that executive position to handle different social media platforms.

“I think a CSMO is needed to take a big-picture look at social overall and to direct the organization’s larger social media outbound and inbound strategy, but also needed are individuals hyper-specialized for managing specific channels—your Twitter expert, Facebook expert, Reddit expert, a LinkedIn expert, etc. Through hyper-specialization on these separate channels, greater attention and achievement is gained on each channel rather than having a single community manager being spread too thin trying to service all the social channels,” says Thrasyvoulou.

Teaching Social Media While some previous experience and knowledge are necessary for social media roles, the majority of skills can be taught, according to Thrasyvoulou.

Most marketing and advertising concepts remain unchanged, just transferred to a digital platform.

“There must be an emphasis, too, on continuing education as these platforms evolve, because the technology and social media landscape is not stagnant. But education should also include soft skills. What newer, lessexperienced workers often lack is the consistency, discipline and strategic vision for delivering marketing and advertising messages, which develops over time,” says Thrasyvoulou.

Regardless, without a solid social media presence and professionals to manage that, your business will lack a major mouthpiece to reach potential customers, communicate effectively with your customer base and risk being considered out of touch or obsolete. While you might not require a CSMO today, chances are you will in the near future.

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Social Media Marketing

WATCH Social media is making its presence felt in the tech world. And marketing has been smart enough to grab the opportunity. One such forwardlooking company is Cloud Nine which has leveraged social media’s most powerful tool, content marketing, to better target its customers. As it runs across platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and forums where consumers are active, it serves to their advantage.

Esha Tiwary, CMO, Cloud Nine talks about how the company successfully drove its social media strategies.

http://www.cio.in/cio-tv/use-technology-give-customer-service-eshatiwary-cloud-nine

Security’s Welcome Aboard ANALYZE The year 2014 wasn’t a banner year for security as many organizations grappled with thefts, vulnerabilities, and hacks. Though security threats are looming large, awareness hasn’t seeped in yet and the discussions around security haven’t elevated to the boards of organizations across the globe. But the Indian security scenario has something to cheer about as the board of directors in India are more active participants in security decisions of their organizations than their global counterparts. Read to know how well the boards in India are doing.

http://www.cio.in/by-the-numbers/ getting-security-board

Make in India: Indusface READ Indusface is an innovative information security company set up in 2004 as a consultancy firm to help organizations meet compliance requirements. Today, the Vadodara-based company caters to more than 700 customers, including Fortune 500 companies. Check out our Articles section as Ashish Tandon, Chairman and CEO, Indusface elaborates how the Indian bred product company combats large security vendors, both global and local.

http://www.cio.in/article/make-indiaindusface

IT STRATEGY

Workplace: Never a Democracy People in IT keep saying that they want democracy at work. But when you probe that idea, it completely falls apart. BY PAU L G L E N

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ne of the most persistent ideas I’ve heard Democracy is a political system because it is a method in my decades in IT is that we geeks want for a group to make collective decisions. But like politics democracy at work. Surprisingly, I’ve itself, democracy can take more than one form. In a heard it from managers and executives as representative democracy, the group selects its own often as I have from front-line geeks. leaders, either by majority vote or consensus. Those But when you scratch the surface, you see that we leaders then make decisions collectively, also by majority don’t really want democracy at all. We want a lot of other vote or consensus. In a non-representative democracy, things related to what we value and how we’d like our every decision is made by the entire group, by direct vote. workplaces to operate. Somehow this gets shorthanded to Now imagine what a representative democracy “We want democracy,” but what we really want are much would look like at work. Managers would no longer be more specific things: appointed through a top-down selection •We want our managers to listen If everyone had process. Instead, on some sort of regular to us. basis, each group or team would elect to have a say in •We want to feel that we have a a manager. The decision about who chance to influence the decisions that all decisions, will make decisions would come from affect us. the bottom up, a transfer of power the organization •We want to be able to prevent our from more senior management to managers from making dumb decisions. would become one subordinates. The elected managers •We want some type of recourse giant, sclerotic would form some sort of collective when our managers make those decision-making body. If that body were committee. dumb decisions. anything like the US Congress, decision•We want to dictate our own making would be chaotic and slow. And deliverables and deadlines.

I have trouble imagining a CEO ceding decision-making • We want more autonomy in setting our own priorities authority to this elected body of managers. Stripped of and approach to meeting goals. the right to select a leadership team, she definitely would The question we have to ask is, “Would a truly not feel responsible for the direction or success of her democratic workplace provide these things?” The answer organization. requires a clear understanding of what democracy is and If a representative democracy would be a disaster in how it would look at work. the workplace, a non-representative democracy would At its core, democracy involves politics. There is irony, be worse. If everyone had to have a say in all decisions, then, that geeks so often clamor for democracy, because the organization would become one giant, sclerotic politics is something that nearly all of them profess to committee. despise. It’s the process by which groups make decisions.

So let’s stop saying we want democracy at work. If Nothing more. what we really want is to change how our workplaces Some people approach group decisions as if the operate and to be given more influence, then we need to collective should cater to their personal concerns or be more articulate about those goals and how they could recognize their superiority by granting them the right be practically implemented. Calling what we’re seeking to make decisions for everyone. That’s the sort of thing “democracy” just makes us look naive or foolish. that causes geeks to hate politics, but politics need not be treated that way.

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LEADINGEDGE

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A Two Way Street 50

The industry’s attitude toward women has to change, just as much as women’s attitude toward the industry. BY T H O R N TO N M AY

The future of IT very much depends on our industry collectively being able to rebrand our discipline as a preferred place for women to work.

The attraction and retention of female IT executives is not just a “feminist” or “women’s studies” issue. It’s an IT industry issue—an issue all of us have to understand and take action on.

Becky Blalock, the recently retired CIO at the Southern Company and author of Dare: Straight Talk on Confidence, Courage & Career, provided data, frameworks and stories that started me on the path to understanding the real situation regarding women in IT. Becky explained to me that “men don’t know what they don’t know.” She is now tirelessly campaigning to portray our industry as it really is vis-à-vis careers for women and remove the systemic barriers that keep women from entering and remaining in our field.

“From the middle school computer lab to the upper echelons of Silicon Valley, the tech world has been a boys club for too long,” says Reshma Saujani, founder and CEO of Girls Who Code. The US Department of Labor projects says that by 2020, there will be 1.4 million computer specialist job openings. Yet US universities are expected to produce only enough qualified graduates to fill 29 percent of these jobs. Sixty percent of the people in college today are women. Yet women today represent just 12 percent of all computer science graduates. In 1984, they represented 37 percent. We appear to be losing ground. Our industry needs to do something to enlarge the IT talent pool.

Women make up half of the US workforce, but hold just 25 percent of the jobs in technical or computing fields. “You would never say, ‘I can’t read.’ That’s just unacceptable in society,” Saujani says. “But it’s acceptable in society for a girl to say, ‘I hate math’ or ‘I’m not good at math.’” This has to change.

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Middle school is thought by many researchers to be where the challenge of women in IT is most critical. Middle school girls need to be given the chance to sit with other girls and code. No judgment. No labels. No grades. Just turn on the computer and try this coding program.

The No. 1 barrier is familiarity; 77 percent said they just hadn’t thought seriously about a career in IT and didn’t know anyone who worked in the IT industry. As Becky Blalock explained, “It is very hard to be something you have never seen.” This is why strong female IT role models are so critically important.

The Athena Factor research project surfaced “antigens” in corporate cultures impacting the career trajectory of women with SET [science, engineering and technology] credentials. Women in technology can be marginalized by hostile macho cultures. Being the sole woman on a team or at a site can create isolation.

Female attrition rates tend to spike 10 years into a career.

Women experience a perfect storm in their mid to late thirties. Companies that step in with targeted support before this “fight or flight moment” may be able to lower the female attrition rate significantly.

So, in 2015, what will you do to make the IT department more female-friendly?

Thornton A. May is a speaker, educator, and adviser. Send feedback to editor@cio.in

[CXO AGENDA]

Technology to HR’s Aid

Elango R., Global CHRO and EVP, Emerging Geographies Business Unit, Mphasis, talks about developing capabilities around new technologies. BY SHUBHRA RISHI How do you juggle different roles at Mphasis?

I follow a few golden rules. I believe in the 80:20 rule. Focus on the first 20 percent of the things that give you 80 percent of the results, and focus on them relentlessly. Second, I surround myself with people better than me. If I’m the smartest guy in the room, I’ll be very close to failure, overwork, and burnout.

should be around developing capabilities around new technologies. I believe that we are probably the only company that doesn’t look for grades when we hire people.

Can you tell us about Mphasis’ technology adoption at the HR level?

HR has invested heavily in technology

Talent crunch is not a supply issue, rather a capability issue.

The third rule that I never violate is my time with family, or my fitness regime.

I think these simple rules just bring in a set routine.

Is it true that the IT industry is seeing a serious talent crunch due to a lack of internal skills?

There’s a talent crunch and it’s not because there aren’t enough people, but because there aren’t the right kind of people. Technology is changing rapidly. But people aren’t skilled enough to handle new technology as it’s not mature enough yet.

Therefore, it’s not a supply issue, but a capability issue.

At Mphasis, we focus on helping our people have a career roadmap. We believe that a lot of career conversations

to support all HR activities, from hiring to the retirement cycle of employees.

From sourcing to exit analysis, various technology tools help us in achieving our objectives in supporting our business. With an on-premise ERP solution and tools on the cloud, HR at Mphasis takes advantage of current trends in the technology space.

Analytics in HR is currently our biggest focus. From analyzing data on attrition to looking at the quality of our hire, we ensure that the business is enabled to take appropriate corrective actions. To provide special attention and emphasis on tools and analytics, we created specialized functions within HR—HR CIO and HR Analytics—under the broader umbrella of HR Transformations.

How are you using technology as a training tool to improve employee retention or hire new talent?

At Mphasis, we conduct a Learning Week for several thousand employees, where we cover so much ground in a week that we would typically do in six months. We use virtual training methods, webinars, video streaming, and social networks such as Twitter to engage our workforce. We also encourage peer learning and run an integrated leadership development program where one can gain credit points based on different sessions such as action learning and peer learning, that an employee can engage in. It helps us create an ecosystem of self-starters, people who make time, and people who take ownership of their destiny.

What are some of the hiring trends you see companies adopting in 2015?

In terms of hiring, I clearly see the whole social referral piece becoming bigger because I think sooner or later, recruitment agencies will become irrelevant. It will transform into more of a marketing function. Employer branding would gain more importance than ever. The new workforce will start looking for flexibility in the workplace. Today, flexibility is work from home, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I also see jobs becoming more specialized, and more freelancers and part-time workers will start contributing to the workforce.

Send feedback on this interview to shubhra_rishi@idgindia.com.

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leadership and operational excellence

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PC On Your Watch smartwatch to control your PC instead. The latest version of Unified Remote includes Android Wear support, letting you manipulate your PC’s cursor from your wrist and use voice commands to control specific programs and websites. Controlling a computer by a smartwatch could make a lot of sense for home theater PC setups, where touch-based smartphone controls are already quite useful.

Unified Remote’s Android Wear app doesn’t connect directly to a PC. Instead, it uses a Bluetooth connection to talk with your Android phone, which then relays commands over Wi-Fi to Unified Remote’s free desktop server app. Unified Remote is the first app to give it a try. Unified Remote includes a robust set of voice commands for various apps and websites.

—Jared Newman

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I M A G E B Y T H I N K S TO C K

If you’ve ever felt too lazy to reach for the mouse and keyboard, you can now use an Android Wear