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■ maCRO VIEW | G Srinivasa Raghavan

With the Indian enterprises spending heavily on end-to-end IT solutions, top SIs have a vital responsibility in bringing value to the table.

By Yogesh Gupta

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G. Srinivasa Raghavan, Vice President of Strategic Initiatives, Country Head - India Business, TCS, emphasizes the company’s impetus to reign as end to end solution provider for Indian enterprises.

How is TCS helping enterprises to streamline their IT infrastructure?

India business at TCS is one of the most integrated units, which excels in end to end responsibility for account management of IT needs of an enterprise – acquisition, solution, conceptualization or implementation. Whether it is systems integration, outsourcing or cloud across verticals, clients have a single point of responsibility. That’s the amend we brought 18 months back and it had a significant impact with respect to the market acceptability. I think Indian clients need a face in which they can trust and they need the con-

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■ maCRO VIEW | G Srinivasa Raghavan fidence that it can be delivered.

There is clearly a want for newer business applications providing ‘time to market’ for an (Indian) economy growing at 8.5 percent.

What arsenal should a solution provider possess?A solution provider needs to bring domain capability which is India specific along with global experience. One needs to have wide range of business solutions which are fairly critical. Secondly, it’s about end -to -end ownership and accountability whether it is program management or delivery. It is important whether the solution provider is able to bring transformation alongwith the accountability of delivery.

From an infrastructure perspective, there is a greater need towards managed services where he not only provides cost efficiency but also proactive monitoring, which I call as ‘Infrastructure Assurance’.

Which technology trends are on top of the radar for TCS? We have made significant advancement in the cloud area. For us, cloud essentially is how to provide ‘time to market’ for new businesses to start. It is not about providing boxes on the cloud like Amazon. We launched ‘banking on cloud’, a first in India which focuses on regional, rural and co-operative banks and financial institutions. Today, it has more than 5000 branches and 10 million customers as we have established complete leadership in that space.

Our focus on cloud is more on SaaS model for entire business across a vertical. We also launched complete ‘HR on cloud’ offering in India. How do we get best of systems in place be it payroll management, workforce administration, benefits and compensations, competency management across each sector on the cloud so that we can charge per employee? We are more committed to business applications for cloud which also provides capex savings for clients to embark on it than ‘time to market’ proposition.

What best practices does TCS adhere to for services? For managed services, TCS infrastructure business globally is one of the leading businesses.

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It is fastest engine for TCS crossing half a billion dollars in revenues and growing. We have established best practices with respect to NOC, monitoring services, managed services to ensure wide coverage and application running. TCS expanded that to Indian clients who can receive best practices of RIM and enjoy the benefits of processes on Indian based projects. Secondly, the focus is on datacenter. The true value for TCS is that we are completely technology neutral. We do not have vested interest towards any particular hardware infrastructure. This helps to provide an optimal IT architecture or deployment architecture where the client does not have to spend an extra penny but at the same time continuously looks at opportunity to optimize the infrastructure. The third trend is how to drive energy management or Green IT as an asset with cost of power increasing.

Has the recession and an increasingly competitive landscape compelled enterprises to opt for stricter SLAs? I haven’t seen any SLA concession because of recession. SLAs have always been in demand. What is happening after recession is the focus on DR/ backup and security infrastructure where I thought there was a little bit of relaxation. Now, the overall situation is witnessing increased awareness and sensitivity to ensure ‘best in class’ security infrastructure.

The Government is a substantial rev-

It’s about taking complete ownership and accountability, whether it is program management or delivery.

enue churner for TCS. How different is its apporach to IT infrastructure vis-a vis private players? Public sector or Government are basically large transformational opportunities. For example, APDRP looks at whole enterprise automation whether we look at banking infrastructure or Shipping Corporation of India. There is enterprise wide transformation and hence they are large SI projects.

Whereas, private sector has a continuous improvement mechanism.

But in terms of project management and technology management, a change management perspective is needed as the environment and culture is different. The scale varies to a large extent otherwise I do not see much difference in both sectors.

Which are the other major verticals for TCS? Apart from the power sector, surround sectors like resources, oil and gas, water are emerging in big way. Retail which slowed in downturn is rebounding in a transformed model. There would be growth at TCS too but it will be very clearly business value led growth.

What key trends in the IT market can SIs capitalize. There will be uptake on the channels and devices which is linked to mobility. It will influence customer experience management, enterprise productivity and service delivery models of organizations significantly. It is not about only ERP going on mobile but the business processes tightly coupled with ERP to drive entire enterprise productivity. Anybody who says I will enable my applications on mobile would be a gross under valuation of the opportunity.

The second is integration. For organizations from India going global or organizations expanding business, they are still stand alone enterprises which demand a greater need to integrate these businesses.

With explosion of mobile and eCommerce, we still haven’t tapped the full potential of internet base. Lastly, it is cloud especially from ‘time to market’ perspective whether it is ‘Infrastructure as a cloud’ or ‘Business service as a cloud.’ 

Indian Channelworld february 2011

2/15/2011 11:02:11 AM