EDIT
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ndia is changing, and changing at a fast pace. The rapid rise of digitally enabled business models has completely altered the way enterprise technologies are deployed or consumed. In the digital era, speed to market is of huge importance, and hence, most enterprises now think of a cloud-first and mobile-first strategy. Enterprise IT too is getting hugely consumerized. No longer do employees have time to learn complex enterprise IT systems. If an enterprise IT system or app has to succeed, it has to be simple and intuitive enough with no training or minimal training required. Enterprise app vendors are hence spending huge amount of time and effort to create user interfaces which have the simplicity and ease of use that is comparable to social media platforms. As Indian enterprises adopt new ways of doing business, traditional enterprise IT is undergoing a massive IN THE DIGITAL ERA, change. Banks are SPEED TO MARKET IS helping Indians open OF HUGE accounts through IMPORTANCE, AND social media. Some HENCE, MOST enterprises have gone ENTERPRISES ARE a step ahead. Federal NOW THINKING OF A Bank, for example, CLOUD-FIRST AND allows opening of MOBILE-FIRST accounts through a STRATEGY selfie. Indian enterprises are also innovatively using data at their disposal to create customised products. HDFC Bank, for example, has launched a product that allows it to process loans in just ten seconds using algorithms. Quicker approval of loans at a faster pace with the required checks
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WHY ENTERPRISE IT IS UNDERGOING A DIGITAL MAKEOVER translates into more business for the bank. As one can see, the core enterprise IT backbone is built on the premise of reacting fast. Similarly, at Godrej, the HR department is experimenting with an app, which gives feedback on the go, instead of waiting for appraisals at periodic intervals. Chitale Dairy uses IoT to capture vital health-related information about its animals, and uses this information effectively to increase the total milk yield. JCB India, a firm which manufactures construction equipment, provides an IoT-based service to its clients, which ensures proactive maintenance of its equipment. Hero MotoCorp is using 3D printing to create quick prototypes of its
products. As the above examples show, the IT function is going beyond its support role, and assuming the role of a business driver. In our anniversary issue, we have explored how the digital era is truly changing the way enterprises do business. Every technology is undergoing a digital makeover. CIOs are now change agents, and are no more just supporters of business. This is an exciting era for CIOs in Indian enterprises as there are huge opportunities for CIOs to show how businesses can be transformed using technology. srikanth.rp@expressindia.com
MARCH, 2016
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CONTENTS
76
THE INDIAN PASSPORT MAKEOVER Over the years, getting a passport has been an arduous task for the citizens, but with the intervention of IT, the time taken for police verification and issuing the passport has gradually gone down, despite the surge in the number of applications. Muktesh K Pardeshi, Joint Secretary & Chief Passport Officer, Ministry of External Affairs speaks exclusively with EC’s Mohd Ujaley.
feature
UPSWING CONTINUES IN INDIAN DATACENTER MARKET 8 4
STRUCTURED CABLING MARKETRECEIVES A DIGITAL BOOST 14
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GOLDMINE REMAINS FOR ENTERPRISE SECURITY, SEARCH FOR SILVER BULLETCONTINUES 20 MARCH, 2016
www.expresscomputeronline.com
feature 30
HOW SMAC IS CHANGING THE INDIAN ENTERPRISE STORAGE MARKET
38
DIGITISING INDIA THROUGH DMS
54
CONSUMERISATION OF ENTERPRISE APPLICATIONS: A CXO PERSPECTIVE
58
INDIAN BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE MARKETEVOLVES TO MEET REALTIME NEEDS
70
OPINION 28
44
THE CLOUD’S TRANSFORMATIVE AVATAR
62
HOW IOT IS TRANSFORMING INDIA INC
DEMAND FOR UNIFIED COMMUNICATION SOLUTIONS ON THE RISE
68
MARICO’S PLAN TO LEVERAGE IOT IN 2016
AUTOMATING THE CLAIMS MANAGEMENT PROCESS
EVENT 80
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BUSINESS IT SECURITY IN 2016
INTERVIEW 75
48
HOW ENTERPRISE MOBILITY IS ENABLING VIRTUAL OFFICES
HOWANALYTICS CAN TRANSFORM GOVERNANCE
MARCH, 2016
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Vol 27. No. 3. March, 2016 Chairman of the Board Viveck Goenka Sr Vice President - BPD Neil Viegas Editor Srikanth RP* Chief of Product Dr. Raghu Pillai Delhi Mohd Ujaley, Ankush Kumar, Rashi Varshney Mumbai Jasmine Desai, Abhishek Raval DESIGN National Art Director Bivash Barua Asst. Art Director Pravin Temble Senior Graphic Designer Rushikesh Konka Senior Designer Rekha Bisht Layout Designer Vinayak Mestry, Rajesh Jadhav Photo Editor Sandeep Patil MARKETING Regional Heads Harit Mohanty - West and East Prabhas Jha - North Dr. Raghu Pillai - South Marketing Team Shankar Adaviyar Ranabir Das Ajanta Sengupta Amit Tiwari Mathen Mathew Navneet Negi Circulation Mohan Varadkar
MUMBAI Shankar Adaviyar, Ranabir Das The Indian Express (P) Ltd. Business Publication Division 2nd Floor, Express Tower, Nariman Point Mumbai- 400 021 Board line: 022- 67440000 Ext. 527 Mobile: +91 9323998881 Email Id: shankar.adaviyar@expressindia.com Ranabir Das Mobile No. +91 9820097606 Email: Ranabir.das@expressindia.com Branch Offices NEW DELHI Prabhas Jha, Navneet Negi The Indian Express (P) Ltd. Business Publication Division, Express Buliding, B-1/B Sector 10, Noida 201 301, Dist. Gautam Budh Nagar (U.P.) India. Board No : 0120 6651 500, Ext:270 Direct No : 0120 665 1270 Fax No : 0120 4367 933 Mobile : 91-9899707440 Email id: prabhas.jha@expressindia.com Navneet Negi Mobile No. +918800523285 Email: navneet.negi@expressindia.com CHENNAI Dr. Raghu Pillai, Mathen Mathew The Indian Express (P) Ltd. Business Publication Division 8th Floor, East Wing, Sreyas Chamiers Towers New No.37/26 ( Old No.23 & 24/26) Chamiers Road, Teynampet, Chennai - 600 018 Email id: raghu.pillai@expressindia.com Mathen Mathew Mobile No. +91 9840826366 Email: mathen.mathew@expressindia.com
BANGALORE Dr. Raghu Pillai, Amit Kumar Tiwari The Indian Express (P) Ltd. Business Publication Division 502, 5th Floor, Devatha Plaza, Residency road, Bangalore- 560025 Mobile: +91 9886293667 Email id: raghu.pillai@expressindia.com Amit Kumar Tiwari Mobile No. +91 9840826366 Email: amit.tiwari@expressindia.com
COIMBATORE Dr. Raghu Pillai, Mathen Mathew The Indian Express (P) Ltd. No. 205-B, 2nd Floor, Vivekanand Road, Opp. Rajarathinam Hospital, Ram Nagar Coimbatore- 641 009 Mobile: +91 9886293667 Email id: raghu.pillai@expressindia.com Mathen Mathew Mobile No. +91 9840826366 Email: mathen.mathew@expressindia.com
HYDERABAD Dr. Raghu Pillai The Indian Express (P) Ltd. Business Publication Division 6-3-885/7/B, Ground Floor, VV Mansion, Somaji Guda, Hyderabad – 500 082 Mobile: +91 9886293667 Email id: raghu.pillai@expressindia.com
AHMEDABAD Shankar Adaviyar The Indian Express (P) Ltd. 3rd Floor, Sambhav House, Near Judges Bunglows, Bodakdev, Ahmedabad - 380 015 Mobile: +91 9323998881 Email Id: shankar.adaviyar@expressindia.com
KOLKATA Ajanta Sengupta The Indian Express (P) Ltd.. Business Publication Division, JL No. 29&30, NH-6, Mouza- Prasastha & Ankurhati, Vill & PO- Ankurhati, P.S.- Domjur (Nr. Ankurhati Check Bus Stop), Dist. Howrah- 711 409 Mobile: +91 9831182580 Email id: ajanta.sengupta@expressindia.com
BHOPAL Prabhas Jha The Indian Express (P) Ltd. Business Publication Division, Express Buliding, B-1/B Sector 10, Noida 201 301, Dist. Gautam Budh Nagar (U.P.) India. Board No : 0120 6651 500, Ext:270 Direct No : 0120 665 1270 Fax No : 0120 4367 933 Mobile : 91-9899707440 Email id: prabhas.jha@expressindia.com
KOCHI Dr. Raghu Pillai, Mathen Mathew The Indian Express (P) Ltd., Ground Floor, Sankoorikal Building, Kaloor – Kadavanthra Road, Kaloor, Kochi – 682 017 Mobile: +91 9886293667 Email id: raghu.pillai@expressindia.com Mathen Mathew Mobile No. +91 9840826366 Email: mathen.mathew@expressindia.com
JAIPUR Prabhas Jha The Indian Express (P) Ltd. Business Publication Division, Express Buliding, B-1/B Sector 10, Noida 201 301, Dist. Gautam Budh Nagar (U.P.) India. Board No : 0120 6651 500, Ext:270 Direct No : 0120 665 1270, Fax No : 0120 4367 933 Mobile : 91-9899707440 Email id: prabhas.jha@expressindia.com
Scheduling Ashish Anchan PRODUCTION
IMPORTANT
General Manager B R Tipnis
Whilst care is taken prior to acceptance of advertising copy, it is not possible to verify its contents. The Indian Express (P) Ltd. cannot be held responsible for such contents, nor for any loss or damages incurred as a result of transactions with companies, associations or individuals advertising in its newspapers or publications. We therefore recommend that readers make necessary inquiries before sending any monies or entering into any agreements with advertisers or otherwise acting on an advertisement in any manner whatsoever.
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Express Computer® Reg. No. REGD.NO.MCS/066/2015-17, RNI Regn. No. MAHENG/49926/90 Printed for the proprietors, The Indian Express (P) Ltd. by Ms. Vaidehi Thakar at Indigo Press, (India) Pvt. Ltd. Plot No. 1c/716, off Dadoji Konddeo Cross Road, Byculla (E), Mumbai 400027 and Published from Express Towers, 2nd Floor, Nariman Point, Mumbai - 400021. (Editorial & Administrative Offices: Express Towers, 1st Floor, Nariman Point, Mumbai - 400021) Editor : Srikanth RP (*Responsible for selection of News under the PRB Act.) Copyright © 2016 The Indian Express (P) Ltd. All rights reserved throughout the world. Reproduction in any manner, electronic or otherwise, in whole or in part, without prior written permission is prohibited.
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MARCH, 2016
DATA
CENTER
UPSWING CONTINUES IN INDIAN DATA CENTER MARKET BY MOHD UJALEY Amidst the debate on data security, data localisation and the increasing cost of managing IT infrastructure, the data center industry continues to see an upward swing and 2016 will not be any different
D
uring his keynote address at vForum 2015 in Mumbai, Sanjay Poonen, Executive Vice President and General Manager, End-User Computing (EUC), VMware, drew the attention of the audience to a big popped-up photo on the giant screen and said a lot of things have changed in the data center and security segments since the man in the picture spoke on security and privacy. Poonen was referring to 32 year old, Edward Joseph Snowden, whose disclosure on numerous global surveillance programs run by different governments led to intense debate on data security and privacy, and finally catalysed the concept of data 8
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localisation, leading to indirect growth of the data center industry across the globe. And, the story for India, which has always been on the forefront of using technology, is no different. The need to increase storage capacity, continuous rise of data usage, government focus on digitisation and the strategy of tech giants to diversify by establishing local data centers are propelling the demand for data centers across the globe. In India, this segment is also buoyed by the positive sentiments in the government projects such as Digital India, Make in India, Smart Cities and the strong resurgence of growth-related projects across different verticals such as manufacturing, e-commerce & retail, IT/ITeS, BFSI (primarily non-critical workloads) and emerging verticals like
education, hospitality, healthcare and communications & media. According to research carried out by Gartner, the value of the Indian data center infrastructure and solutions market will show a 5.2 percent increase year-on-year, totaling $2 billion in 2016. The research firm also believes that this segment will also be the fastest growing market, as spending is forecasted to increase 5.9 percent in 2016. “Increasingly, companies are becoming confident about adopting hybrid and cloud based solutions. Hence, we are going to witness a growing demand for data center infrastructure,� says Santhosh Rao, principal research analyst, Gartner India. Even on the global level, the current macro trends driving the growth of data, and in turn the data center industry, more MARCH, 2016
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or less remain same – proliferation of tablets and smartphones, coupled with the content required to satisfy the seemingly insatiable end users. Billions of dollars are spent on data center infrastructure in order to meet the growing demands of businesses and their customers. Having the right data center infrastructure in place has become a kind of new “arms race” for companies trying to differentiate themselves and meet the growing demand in this crowded technology driven market. Says Sanjay Poonen, “It is the most exciting time to be in technology. Cloud, virtualisation, analytics and security are coming together in such a way that it is the right time for companies to be ready for any trend.”
The growth drivers In India, around 2005, the trend shifted EXPRESS COMPUTER
from paper-based to digital information management and therefore data centers became common and essential to the functioning of business systems for enterprises and governments. Apart from private data centers, the Government of India also set-up many data centers in states under the leadership of National Informatics Centre (NIC). Since then, the overall segment has moved so far that today cloud, mobility and virtualisation are not any more the technology trends that enterprises seek. These trends have gradually become mainstream. “With technological advancement and most businesses expanding beyond geographical boundaries in the last couple of years, the generation and consumption of data has increased manifold, thereby creating a strong need for storage capacity.
Additionally, the growth in software adoption with the proliferation of the cloud has made the concept of software-defined another business reality, with businesses adopting this model in the quest for efficiency, scalability and security,” says Srikanth Karnakota, who heads the server and cloud business for Microsoft India as Director. Karnakota also believes that the advent of digitisation across sectors and convergence of the “Digital Enterprise” has further fueled the demand for data centers. Agreeing with the views of Karnakota, Ankesh Kumar who leads the product management & marketing at Emerson Network Power India as director says, “Cloud and virtualisation in the data center is no longer a myth with quite a few prominent players like AWS, Netmagic and Microsoft announcing extensive plans to invest in state-of-the-art data center facilities in the country.” Many experts we spoke with, were unanimously of the view that factors such as – companies consolidating their collection of server rooms and data centers into centralised regional sites to cut cost; virtualisation and compression technology enabling companies to deploy more and use more data heavy applications; exponential growth of cloud based solutions and the need of cloud vendors for more data centers infrastructure to support their offerings – are giving steady pace to data center business growth in the country. In India, the major demand is coming from the SMB and SME sector. They are mostly adopting hybrid cloud, which is a combination of on-premise and cloud offerings. Also, for reducing cost and risk, data center facilities are being designed and constructed from integrated, prefabricated modules. This approach enables organisations to develop fully customised, high performance data centers in far less time than it takes using traditional processes. Overall, the focus has shifted towards ensuring modularity with a razor sharp focus on maintaining energy efficiency. Post Edward Snowden's revelation, many countries including India are mulling MARCH, 2016
9
DATA
CENTER to bring legislation on data sovereignty popularly known as data localisation and hence multinational companies are setting up local data centers in advance. Recently, we have seen some announcements from Microsoft on this front. Analysts from International Data Corporation (IDC) expect the data center business to continue to increase for some time before these organisations also start looking at increased regulation and compliance issues. “Government approach in this regard would also matter with respect to the tenacity of regulations and verticals, going forward,” says Gaurav Sharma, research manager – enterprise & IPDS at IDC India. Ankesh Kumar of Emerson Network Power also believes that capital expenditure, operating expenditure, along with regulatory compliance and security guidelines impact the decision of enterprises in setting up data centers.
Who is leading the growth Many tech giants such as Microsoft, Amazon, IBM and NTT Communications, Tata Telecommunications and the government's own National Informatics Centre are now racing to set up data centers. Microsoft has commissioned three "hyper-scale" data centers in India. The firm has already started a private preview of these data centers with over 100 existing customers on board across different segments such as BFSI, government, manufacturing and start-ups. Microsoft will be spending Rs 1,400 crore on setting up these data centers. The company has already set up the cloud data centres in Mumbai, Pune and Chennai. Microsoft India's cloud business is growing at over 105% annually and with the establishment of the local data centers, it is expecting a further acceleration in its business. Amazon will establish multiple data centers in India in 2016 with an investment of millions of dollars. Amazon has 12,000 AWS active customers in India, across enterprises, small to medium size businesses, and startups. AWS is the pioneer in cloud infrastructure services and is the world's largest in the space, with 10
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revenue expected to be $6.2 billion in 2015, out of Amazon's overall revenue of over $90 billion (most revenues now come from the e-commerce business, but AWS is growing at 40-50% annually). Research firm Synergy estimates that AWS's revenue from cloud infrastructure services in the first quarter of 2015 was larger than the combined revenue of its four main competitors – IBM, Microsoft, Google and Salesforce. Its Indian clients currently mostly use its Singapore data center. IBM has already launched a 30000 sq. ft. cloud center in Airoli, Mumbai offering cloud services late last year and a second data center is expected to be ready later this year. NTT Communications plans to invest $100 million in developing a new data center in Mumbai through its subsidiary Netmagic Solutions. NTT acquired Netmagic, a managed services provider, in 2012. The new data center will be spread across 300,000 square feet and host up to 3,000 server racks with 20-28 MW energy capacity. The company is likely to announce global cloud services to facilitate multinational companies. Tata Communications will invest more than $200 million (Rs 1,200 crore) towards doubling its data centre capacity in India to 10 lakh square feet over three years. The company owns an undersea cable network and provides wholesale communication and data centre services to corporates. The Tata Group company leads the data centre market with a 31% share in India, and counts a global social media company among its customers. Google's investments in data centers in Asia are outside India. New investments will take Google's data center investments in Singapore to $500 million and in Taiwan to $600 million. US based, Pi Datacentres plans to invest Rs 600 crore to set up a facility in India and expects to start operations from March 2016. The data centre would be a purposebuilt green field facility with a constructed area of more than 5 lakh square feet. Nashik headquartered ESDS Software Solution is investing about Rs 335 crore to set up three data centres in India. The company will invest Rs 200
crore for the Navi Mumbai centre and Rs 100 crore for Bengaluru, while that for Nashik would be 35 crore. With this investment, the company will create a 2 lakh sqft data centre in Navi Mumbai, 1 lakh sqft data center in Bengaluru and a 50,000 sqft data centre in Nashik. On the other hand companies such as Oracle are also mulling to set-up a data center in the country. Recently, in an interview to Express Computer, Prashant Ketkar, Vice President - Oracle Cloud, Oracle said, “As we focus more and more on India, we will have to think about a data center presence in the country. We are in the process of figuring out how we can get more involved and how can we facilitate that. When is the right time to make the investment and how can we overcome some infrastructural challenges like shortage of electricity grids etc. We do see ourselves setting up a data center in the future.”
Key obstacles and hurdles Adopting efficient technologies and architectures for proper space utilisation; building an architecture and design for minimum redundancy; constant updation and skill building; maintenance and increased SLAs; optimisation and cost efficiency with converged infrastructure, Flash, SDI etc; getting more budgets and energy efficiency are some of the continuous challenges that every enterprise organisation needs to work on. However, one of the most challenging tasks has been security. In fact, in the recent past, it has proven to be both a boon and bane. On one hand, due to security concerns, companies are forced to open data centers across different locations and on the other hand, due to security fears, some companies are unable to move to cloud or adopt virtualisation. “This is true to a certain extent. Giving physical control over to a third party is sometimes challenging – especially in the context of security. The other way to look at it is that, now one has access to the best in class security frameworks as the capital expenditure is shifted to cloud operators. However, a combination of private and public cloud federation can alleviate most of the issues,” says Sajan Paul, director MARCH, 2016
8 Reduce
Cost and Unleash Stranded Power Using Shared Zero-U Space with VersaPOD® Deploying fewer Siemon VersaPOD cabinets instead of standard 600mm server cabinets within the same footprint allocates more power per cabinet to support more servers vertically without sacrificing floor space. Compared to 600mm server cabinets, the VersaPOD’s ability to share connectivity, patching and PDUs in the shared Zero-U space between bayed cabinets reduces stranded power outlets by 75% and results in a 46% savings due to fewer cabinets, PDUs and patch panels and the ability to use shorter patch cords.
Siemon VersaPOD’s Zero-U Space
Shared PDUs Between Bayed Cabinets
Shared Patching Between Bayed Cabinets
• Cuts the number PDUs and upstream power connections in half • Reduces stranded power outlets by up to 75% • Improves Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) • Supports vertical growth with more power per cabinet
• Cuts the number of copper and fiber patch panels in half • Saves 40% on patch cords by enabling shorter 1-meter connections • Eliminate horizontal cable managers • Frees up equipment mounting space
For further information including a white paper and webinar with a detailed cost analysis, please visit: www.siemon.com/versapod/savings
DATA
CENTER
Companies are becoming confident about adopting hybrid and cloud based solutions leading to growing demand for data center infrastructure Santhosh Rao
The demand for DCs is expected to grow on the back of data and application explosion
Cloud,virtualisation, analytics,securityare coming together.It is the right time for companies to be readyfor anytrend
Gaurav Sharma
Sanjay Poonen
Research Manager – Enterprise & IPDS, IDC India
Executive Vice President and General Manager,End-User Computing (EUC), VMware.
Principal Research Analyst,Gartner India.
systems engineering, India & SAARC, Juniper Networks. Adding to what Sajan opined, Rajesh Shetty, Vice President - sales - South, Cisco India, says “While considering the overall framework, security is a very important requirement as multiple mobile devices connect to the network, specifically with regard to the mechanism for these devices to connect wirelessly to the network.”
What lies ahead With proliferation of e-commerce, focus on digitisation and India being the nerve center for major IT activities, the demand for high storage will continue, resulting in phenomenal growth of data centers in the country. In India, Mumbai, Chennai, New Delhi, Bangalore, Kolkata are the most favourable sites for setting-up data centers. In fact, Mumbai's location facing the west coast is perfect as it is well connected as multiple submarine cables land in this region, going through the middle east to Europe and the other way through South East Asia. On the other 12
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hand, Cochin longer down the coast is also connected to multiple of submarine cables, which also makes it an attractive destination. “In the future, large enterprises will continue to invest in infrastructure replacement and growth related projects covering enterprise mobility, cloud and big data solutions. Also, they will be focusing on building intelligent data centers that focus on optimising existing hardware assets by using additional software capabilities. This will drive increased attention on newer trends such as public cloud and integrated systems,”opines Paul of Juniper Network. While data security and regulatory concerns pose a big challenge for many enterprises in the global data center industry, it is also creating a massive opportunity for those firms that are able to help customers manage the compliance risk and shape this through their data center strategy. Like global CIOs and CTOs, the strategy of many of the Indian tech heads revolves around a hybrid data center approach that involves a blend of
many strategies such as renting data center space, turning over some applications to a Software as a Service (SaaS) vendor or disaster recovery (DR) to an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provider, and continuing to update and virtualise their own data center infrastructure and develop an internal cloud. As IDC observes, the future continues to lie in a hybrid data center. In the future, the growth will be primarily driven by data center hosting players, high speed Internet bandwidth service providers, hardware vendors, power and cooling solution providers, and system integrators. As the market expands, some new players other than IBM, Microsoft, AWS, Netmagic, Tata Communications, may also move into the data center investment market. And as the market continues to mature, it is likely to see greater creativity and complexity being used in terms of the investment structures and options available. mohd.ujaley@expressindia.com
MARCH, 2016
ADVERTORIAL
UNLEASHING STRANDED POWER AND REDUCING COSTS USING SHARED ZERO-U SPACE WITH SIEMON VERSAPOD® CABINETS Many data centres use narrow 600mm server cabinets,assuming they can maximise spacewith more cabinets.This is a definite misconception as substantial savings can be achieved by deploying wider cabinets with shared vertical zero-u space between bayed cabinets.
A Closer Look at Cabinet Choice The total power of a spaceis allocated across all cabinets housing active equipment.When fewer wider cabinets are utilised,the power supplied to each cabinet can be increased and more servers supported per cabinet. Most cabinets contain two power distribution units (PDUs)for primary and secondary power. The cost to connect a PDU to main power is approximately US$565 per PDU.With fewer wider cabinets, Figure 1: 10 narrow600mm-wide 5kW cabinets the number of PDUs and 8 wider VersaPOD 6.25kW cabinets equal the and main power same overallpower allocation occupying connections are approximately the same footprint. reduced for cost savings. Wider Siemon VersaPOD cabinets designed with recessed corner posts/mounting rails that create a vertical zero-u space between bayed cabinets and at end of row can offer even more savings.This zero-u space can be shared between equipment in two cabinets for patching,cable management and PDUs. Locating PDUs in the VersaPOD’sshared zero-u space means that the PDUs need only be installed in the zero-u space between every other cabinet,further cutting the required number of PDUs,mounting brackets and related power connections in half.When PDUs can be shared between equipment in two VersaPOD cabinets,the number of unused receptacles is reduced.This helps to reduce stranded power,which occurs whenever the power distributed to a cabinet exceeds the power actually consumed by the equipment. Shared zero-u space between bayed cabinetsoffers additional savings on cabling and connectivity.Copper and fibrenetworking connections can belocated in the zero-u space and alsoonly need to be installed every other cabinet.In addition,when shared patch panels are located in the zero-u space directly adjacent to servers,shorter,less expensive 1-metre copper patch cords and fibrejumpers can be used for the connections and horizontal cable managers are eliminated.
Proof is in the Numbers To illustrate the decrease in stranded power and cost savings of using VersaPOD cabinets with shared zero-u space versus 600 mm selfcontained cabinets,one data centre conducted a cost analysis that compareda row of 8 wider VersaPODsto a row of 10 600mm cabinets. The 8 VersaPOD cabinets each contained 15 servers at 6.25kW per
cabinet,while the 600 mm cabinets each contained 12 servers at 5kW per cabinet.The 8 VersaPOD cabinets share two 30outlet PDUs between every two cabinets for primary and secondary power while the 600mm cabinets used two 24outlet PDUs per cabinet for primary and secondary Figure 2: Wider VersaPODcabinets with shared power. zero-u space between bayed cabinets allow The connectivity for PDUs and patch panels to be installed in every the servers in the row of 8 other cabinet,while enabling better PDU VersaPOD cabinets was utilization and shorter patch cords and jumpers. achieved using Siemon’s combination fibre-copper vertical patch panels placed in the shared zero-u space every other cabinet.The connectivity for the 600mm cabinets used typical rackmounted copper and fibre patch panels in each cabinet. The row of 8 VersaPODs with 600mm Wide SelfComponents Per Row Shared Zero-U Space contained Cabinets VersaPODcabinets with # Cabs in a row 8 10 shared zero-u space saved Linear Dimension of Row 6.1 m (20 ft.) 6 m (19 ft. 8 in.) a compelling 46% # Available Rack Unit Spaces 544 450 compared to narrow self# Servers per Cab 15 12 contained 600mm Vertical Copper/Fiber Panel 4 N/A cabinetsdue to the # Standard Rack-Mount Patch Panels 0 10 reduced number of # Standard Rack-Mount Fiber Panels 0 10 cabinets,PDUs,mounting # Horizontal Wire Managers 0 20 brackets and patch panels, # PDUs 10 20 Total PDU outlets 300 480 as well as the ability to use Stranded PDU ports 60 240 shorter patch cords and PDU Brackets 5 20 jumpers. 1m Patch Cords/Jumpers 480 0 VersaPODcabinets with 2m Patch Cords/Jumpers 0 240 shared zero-u space also 3m Patch Cords/Jumpers 0 240 reduced the number of Total Cost per row $ 81,013.76 $ 150,361.20 stranded power outlets by 75%.There was also Figure 3: Compared to 600mm server additional savings on the cabinets, VersaPOD cabinets with patching main power connections and PDUs in shared zero-u space between to the PDUs,which was bayed cabinets reduces stranded power not included in the outlets by 75% and provides a 46% savings analysis. due to fewer cabinets,PDUs and patch panels Taking all of these and the ability to use shorter patch cords. savings into consideration, it became clear that housing more servers in wider VersaPODcabinets with shared zero-u space cuts data centre costs substantially while unleashing stranded power, saving both CAPEX and OPEX for the data centre.
STRUCTURED
CABLING
STRUCTURED CABLING MARKET RECEIVES ADIGITAL BOOST BY JASMINE DESAI With an improvement in telecom infrastructure and availability of high speed devices and networks, the demand for structured cabling solutions is rising rapidly
I
ndia is on the verge of a huge digital revolution. With an aggressive government pushing projects to strengthen the digital backbone of the country, the market for products that can help create this backbone is also finding huge demand. For example, under the Digital India initiative, the government has planned a 14
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project overlay of Rs 1 lakh crore, with an ambitious target of providing broadband connectivity to 2.5 lakh villages. With an improvement in telecom infrastructure and availability of high speed devices and networks, the demand for structured cabling solutions is rising rapidly. Structured cabling solutions play a vital part in data centers and enterprise telecom networks. Gartner, for instance, predicts that the
Indian data center infrastructure market will total $2 billion in 2016, a 5.2 percent increase from 2015. Gartner says that mobile, and the proliferation of data will have a big impact on the supporting infrastructure and operations (I&O) infrastructure. Additionally, with more and more applications getting provisioned and more offices getting connected, there is a huge need for advanced structured cabling solutions which promise better MARCH, 2016
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data transmission rates.
Demand surges for pre-terminated solutions With huge demand for data centers, there has been a corresponding rise in pre-terminated solutions which promise quick installation and reduced time for upgrades. As pre-terminated solutions are modular in nature, they can be quickly installed and scaled as per the business need. In addition, the high density design of pre-terminated solutions ensures reduction in total cost of ownership. Agrees Gaurav Ahluwalia, Managing Director at R&M India, “This is one of the biggest trends in the structured cabling market. Pre-terminated cabling systems offer a number of advantages for a variety of different network installations, and are particularly suited to data center environments as they can save time, space, and are more energy efficient and secure.” Ahulwalia, however, cautions that a pre-terminated solution needs serious amount of planning, which needs to be carried out prior to installation. Attention to detail in the site survey process and the ensuing plan is critical for the benefits of pre-terminated solutions to be realised.
Energy efficiency and higher bandwidth accelerating adoption of smarter solutions
WITH HUGE DEMAND FOR DATA CENTERS,THERE HAS BEEN A CORRESPONDING RISE IN PRE-TERMINATED SOLUTIONS WHICH PROMISE QUICK INSTALLATION AND REDUCED TIME FOR UPGRADES.AS PRE-TERMINATED SOLUTIONS ARE MODULAR IN NATURE,THEY CAN BE QUICKLY INSTALLED AND SCALED AS PER THE BUSINESS NEED. EXPRESS COMPUTER
As more data is getting carried over the network, there is an increase in demand for high speed networks, whose backbone is built on efficient structured cabling solutions. Says Sitaramaiah Alamuri, Managing Director, CommScope Solutions India, “There is an increase in adoption of higher bandwidth switches which are primarily due to high speed applications. We are increasingly seeing deployment of CAT6A to the disk, 40 gig ethernet and escalation of Wi-Fi access points. Wi-Fi networks are getting more business critical among organisations in various verticals. This is leading to more powerful ways of designing the network. MARCH, 2016
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CABLING “In addition, many organisations are also consolidating their networks, which in turn is driving the growth for advanced structured cabling solutions. CommScope is witnessing huge demand from sectors such as IT and BFSI. Energy efficiency is a vital component of data center planning, and structured cabling solutions are becoming an integral part of this planning. “With the right network cabling and an intelligent infrastructure management, data centers can cut their network energy needs by as much as 10%. Based on our customers’ experience, up to 40% of all switch ports simply disappear over time because they are forgotten in the documentation or their status is not correctly recorded,” explains Ahluwalia.
SWISSN SS R&M, a Swiss Company, offers high performance copper cabling solutions for Cat.5e, Cat.6 and Cat.6 A systems. R&M offers a complete range of fiber-optic cables and components for singlemode (OS1, OS2) and multi-mode (OM3, OM4) fiber solutions.
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Tel: +91 80 4079 2600 | Fax: +91 80 4079 2604 | Email: ind@rdm.com
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There is an increase in adoption of higher bandwidth switches which are primarily due to high speed applications Sitaramaiah Alamuri Managing Director,CommScope Solutions India
One of the biggest trends in the structured cabling market is preterminated solutions GauravAhluwalia Managing Director,R&M India 18
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AS MORE DATA IS GETTING CARRIED OVER THE NETWORK,THERE IS AN INCREASE IN DEMAND FOR HIGH SPEED NETWORKS,WHOSE BACKBONE IS BUILT ON EFFICIENT STRUCTURED CABLING SOLUTIONS. IoT is another big trend which is posing as a catalyst of change. Gartner predicts that 30 billion devices will be connected to IP networks by 2020. According to I.H.S. Global/IMS Research, 160,000 new industrial Ethernet nodes are connected every single day. Point-to-point cabling lacks
the flexibility, reliability, manageability and performance required for the exploding number of connections within today’s networks. Structured cabling is diligently addressing this issue with steady changes. jasmine.desai@expressindia.com
MARCH, 2016
www.dlink.co.in/its
ENTERPRISE
SECURITY
GOLDMINE REMAINS FOR ENTERPRISE SECURITY, SEARCH FOR SILVER BULLETCONTINUES BY MOHD UJALEY While corporations claim of robust security policies in place, the sustained ascendancy of cyber attacks is continuing to put most defense mechanisms out of place. Hence, for specialist information security firms, enterprise security will continue to remain a goldmine as enterprises search for the elusive silver bullet in 2016
W
hether you trust the voluminous threat report published by security companies, technology giants, research firms and independent organisations quarter after quarter or not, but more or less few things remain common -- Cyber attackers are continuously making tactical shifts in their strategy and despite the tall claims made by Sony, 20
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Ashley Madison, NSA and other firms who were recently breached that they had robust security systems in place, the fact is that these firms failed to safeguard the critical data and even today there is no silver bullet to security. Similar is the case in India too. The landscape, here is not very different. Many major cyber security breaches have come to light in the recent past. The most recent case has been the hacking of the official web portal of the Indian Revenue Service (IRS) by suspected
Pakistan-based groups who posted the message “Pakistan Zindabad” and “we are team Pak cyber attacker”. In a similar incident, a few months back, the website of the Indian Space Agency’s commercial arm, Antrix Corporation, was hacked. The hackers succeeded in defacing the home page with an article about 300 kids from Cape Town getting American Major League jerseys at cheap prices from China. Press reports also cited the case of the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC) which allegedly lost MARCH, 2016
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criminals, but hackers continue to experiment with new attack methods across mobile devices and social networks to reach more people, with less effort. The report also says that cyber criminals are relying on lucrative and aggressive attack methods like ransomware, which rose globally by 113 percent. India reported the third highest ransomware in Asia, with an average of more than seven attacks every hour. A more vicious crypto-ransomware attack style has evolved which holds a victim’s files, photos and other digital content hostage without masking the attacker’s intention. In India, a staggering 86 percent of all ransomware was cryptoransomware, claimed the report. Interestingly, experts say that they have brought awareness among people, enterprises and government departments. As a result, for security companies, the overall market size for enterprise security has increased manifold. “Risk management is a challenge in many geographies but the willingness to address the challenges is not there in many countries. This is not the case with India. In the last five-seven years, we have seen dramatic change in the willingness of Indian companies to address the issue,” says Stephen DuBravac, Executive Vice President, Marketing, Security Weaver.
Growth drivers
Rs 197 crore after cyber criminals duplicated the public sector firm’s official e-mail address with minor changes and used it to convince a Saudi Arabia-based client, Aramco, to transfer payments to their account. These incidents are a grim reminder to the government as well as to businesses that a lot needs to be done when it comes to cyber security. With the government embarking on the creation of digital highways and building of smart cities, the surface for cyber EXPRESS COMPUTER
vulnerabilities has also increased as hackers can use the same digital highway and smart platforms to steal vital information. According to American security giant Symantec's Internet Security Threat Report, the India landscape is not very different from the global one. In fact, in 2014-15, 60 percent of targeted attacks were aimed at large enterprises and a third (34 percent) were targeted towards small businesses. Email remains a significant attack vector for cyber
From a vertical standpoint, banking & financial services and IT & ITES are the key drivers of the Indian IT security market. In addition, manufacturing especially pharma, engineering design, government including defense are also contributing to overall demand significantly. Analysts from International Data Corporation (IDC) estimate the India security software market to grow at around 12% in 2016. “Even faster growth is expected in the security services space. On the security appliance side, our estimates indicate growth in higher single digits. The outlook for the overall MARCH, 2016
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Lack of proper understanding of complex data flows and interoperability with traditional IT systems is a huge challenge Anmol Singh Principal Research Analyst,Gartner India
The outlook for the overall enterprise security space is quite healthy for 2016 Vivek Gautam Research Manager, Software & Services,IDC India 22
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enterprise security space is quite healthy,” says Vivek Gautam, Research Manager, Software & Services, IDC India. Gautam believes that segments such as network security, end point security including mobile and identity & access management will lead market growth. “Similarly on the services side, we are seeing good uptake of managed security services,” he adds. Also, in its 2015 report, research firm Gartner predicted that security spending (hardware, software and services) in India was on pace to reach $1.11 billion in 2015, up 8.3 percent from $1.02 billion in 2014 and the firm expected security spending continue to grow in 2016 when revenue was projected to reach $1.23 billion. Security services (that includes consulting, implementation, support and managed security services) revenue accounted for 57 percent of this total revenue in 2014, and this proportion will increase to 60 percent by 2019, Gartner’s Analysts predicted. Even on the global level, the current macro trends driving the growth of enterprise security business remain same. More and more enterprises are deploying cloud, mobile and social solutions and channels to engage with their end-customers and drive better efficiencies. Some are even going further to enable IoT devices such as smart watches, fitness trackers, Internetenabled TVs and media players, and so on. As a result of the evolution of mobile, social, cloud and even analytics, enterprises are increasing the importance given to security and risk management technologies and solutions. On the other hand, the anti-virus market is shrinking for everyone. Even for the key players like Kaspersky Lab and Symantec, the anti-virus market is smaller. Most of the sale depends on the total number of sale of PCs. As more people now prefer to use mobile devices like tablet and smartphones this has decreased the overall demand for antivirus solutions which has lead to renewed focus on enterprise security, which has always been a goldmine for majority of the security companies.
Says Global CTO of Trend Micro, Raimund Genes, “I can’t speak for others but enterprise market is always a goldmine for us. We have been focusing on this segment since our inception. Most of our revenues come from the enterprise segment. As far as the consumer market is concerned, we focus on them, but the market is smaller.”
Technology trends According to experts, in 2015, cyber security got heightened attention from businesses and governments alike. Most of the experts we speak with, believed that increasingly business leaders beyond CIOs became concerned about data security in their organisations. As a fall out, the security budgets swelled. Also enterprises started realising that having best-of-breed security products doesn’t mean they can’t be breached. Not only they need to continuously monitor threats, but they also need to be prepared to swiftly respond to contain the severity and length of attacks. From products or technology perspective, two key trends were noticeable. Firstly, security features are increasingly being architected or embedded into products. For instance, Windows 10 has Windows Hello, a biometric technology that uses fingerprint, iris, and face recognition as an alternative to passwords. Similarly Cisco announced new offerings with embedded security across the network. Secondly the notion of security as a platform, as against series of point products or devices on network, gained traction. However to the question of why people would need security companies like Symantec at a time when companies such as Microsoft are bringing in embedded security with products, Amit Jasuja, Senior Vice President – enterprise product, Symantec told Express Computer, “Large companies have been doing security since a long time but with the evolution of cloud, smartphone and apps, there are different devices in an enterprise environment. Hence, a company needs a unified security MARCH, 2016
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SECURITY strategy and therefore security companies like Symantec are better placed to serve the enterprise goals.” Technology shifts such as cloud, mobility, virtualization, BYOD have also impacted the overall enterprise security business in India and globally. As more enterprises adopt digital workplace strategies such as BYOD and consume
cloud based services, a pattern of challenges and potential failure modes have begun to emerge. According to Anmol Singh, Principal Research Analyst, Gartner India, “This is creating pressure on IT security leaders, both in India and globally, to evolve security controls to adapt to the changing business requirements and provide
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sd/VAIDEHI THAKAR Publisher
capabilities that bring situational awareness to security events by gathering and analysing a broader set of data, such that the events of relevance that pose significant threat to the organisation are identified and prioritised with greater accuracy.” Adding to the views of Singh, Vivek Gautam of IDC India says, “Adoption of this new style of IT characterised by cloud, mobility, social, analytics etc, have waned the traditional boundaries of organisations. With more applications being put on cloud and BYOD trends emerging, IT administrators may not always have full visibility and control of security policies and practices being followed by employees and third party providers. For instance, most often information or data traffic from mobile workers don’t even cross corporate networks. All this have added to the complexity of managing security and in turn pushed the market growth higher.” From an enterprise IT demand perspective, the growth in fintech innovation aided by digital business imperatives is disrupting the traditional security approach for the financial industry and raising concerns around balancing security needs with improved user experience and mobility. On the other hand, with an accelerated growth in IoT deployments to support the smart city and smart government initiatives, more government agencies and public sector organisations are adopting a converged security approach that address these issues. Also, as the critical infrastructure industries such as telecommunication and utilities embark on IoT initiatives, they will be required to address the emerging security challenges with approaches that address OT (Operational Technology) security issues, including dealing with regulatory compliance and performing risk assessments across the OT and IT systems. In addition, other regulated industries such as healthcare and energy are also looking at acquiring new cyber security skills, vendor products and services to MARCH, 2016
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Sectors which are highly dependent on innovation and IPwill need to have securityat the top of their agenda for their verysurvival
embrace an adaptive security architecture for better protection of their information assets and consumer interests from the emerging threats. Says Muthu Raja Sankar, MD, Accenture Security, Accenture India, “The healthcare sector, which offers much promise in terms of leveraging technology to benefit people with cost-effective treatments and reaching last-mile penetration, has become a prized target for cyber-attackers. One of the key reasons attributed to this is the inadequate investments made by the sector in cyber security. Stolen medical records are said to hold nearly 10 times the value of stolen credit card data, and in a black market, this information is very lucrative.” He also adds that sectors which are highly dependent on innovation and IP for their sales and revenues will need to have security at the top of their agenda for their very survival.
Muthu Raja Sankar
The road yet to cross
Managing Director,Accenture Security, Accenture India
There are many challenges to enterprise security but the most prominent is the lack of skilled security professionals. Shortage of qualified personnel puts pressure on IT departments to recruit, train and retain critical staff. So managing an in-house team of security
professionals can be a costly affair, especially for SMEs with limited financial resources. To overcome this, organisations are increasingly relying on managed security services. Such services not only provide access to a trained workforce but are also cost effective. Managed Security Service Providers are able to spread investments in security software, hardware and facilities across multiple clients, which reduces the cost per client. “Along with the shortage of skilled resources, a lack of proper understanding of complex data flows among applications and systems, interoperability with traditional IT systems, and achieving an appropriate balance between the security needs and user experience are some of the challenges that the enterprise security sector faces today,” states Singh. Adds Shrikant Shitole, Managing Director- India, Symantec, “Internet security relies on the human element as much as it does on technology. Unintentional causes, such as employees losing devices or accidentally exposing critical data, are still the most common causes of security breaches. The understanding of the CIOs and CXOs as to how security can be built into
Cybersecurityis no longer an issue that concerns ITand securityprofessionals alone,but is also an important topic for boardroom discussions Shrikant Shitole Managing Director,India,Symantec 26
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MARCH, 2016
AUTHENTICATION FOR IOT DEVICES AND OTHER SMART DEVICES LIKE WEARABLES WILL EMERGE AS A CHALLENGE AS IOT BECOMES A REALITYAND FORCES MORE CHANGES TO THE WAY RISK AND SECURITYTEAMS OPERATE AND DELIVER VALUE TO ORGANISATIONS their IT practices to effectively manage the ecosystem is also limited in many cases.” According to Shitole, another challenge faced by organisations is of overworked and understaffed security teams that have so far been stitching together “good enough” security point products that were originally not designed to work together. Not only do these practices make an organisation more vulnerable to breaches, but it also increases operational complexities which indicates a need to engage in unified security.
What lies ahead Gartner believes that contextualised and risk-based adaptive security approaches including online fraud detection and user behavior analytics are some security trends that are going to take the center stage in 2016 as enterprises step-up their efforts to secure new business models emerging from the digital industrial revolution. Similarly authentication for IoT EXPRESS COMPUTER
devices and other smart devices (like wearables) will emerge as a challenge as IoT becomes a reality and forces more changes to the way risk and security teams operate and deliver value to organisations. “We will continue to see the enterprise security market evolving alongside the new requirements evolving from IoT, cloud computing and mobility. We also predict that more and more large scale IoT implementations will require cloud-based security services to operate within acceptable risks in 2016 and beyond,” says Singh. The importance of cybersecurity is highly strategic today. “Cybersecurity is no longer an issue that concerns IT and security professionals alone, but is also an important topic for boardroom discussions,” states Shitole of Symantec. In the future, as new devices and new business models backed by technology emerge, expect cybersecurity to be at the center of every discussion. mohd.ujaley @expressindia.com
Enterprise market is always a goldmine.We have been focusing on this segment since our inception Raimund Genes Global CTO,Trend Micro
SECURITY FEATURES ARE INCREASINGLY BEING ARCHITECTED OR EMBEDDED INTO PRODUCTS AND THE NOTION OF SECURITYAS A PLATFORM IS GAINING TRACTION MARCH, 2016
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OPINION
KASPERSKY LAB
BUSINESS IT SECURITY IN 2016 2016 is going to be a challenging year in the field of corporate IT Security, both for vendors and customers. The constant evolution of the threat landscape calls for new protection technologies. At the same time, businesses have to alter their perception of threats and come up with new strategies to detect and respond to attacks. Significant turbulence is expected, and in order to succeed, both vendors and customers have to focus on developing their security intelligence BY ALTAF HALDE, MANAGING DIRECTOR–SOUTH ASIA, KASPERSKY LAB
I
n 2015, for the first time, we saw a decrease in the overall number of malicious programs detected, suggesting that cybercriminals have needed to apply cost-cutting measures, just like the rest of us. However, this in no way means that the threat levels have decreased. In fact, the overall number of users attacked actually increased by 5% compared to 2014. Corporations have been targeted with even greater force, and criminals are looking to steal corporate funds more actively, via ransomware, by targeting Point-of-Sale terminals or even compromising entire networks of financial institutions. Evolution of the threat landscape defines the need for new approaches to business security. But before we delve into the details, let’s observe the reasons behind the change.
Three major trends in corporate IT security The next targeted attack against your 28
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business will not necessarily be sophisticated, but it will still be dangerous. Does it matter if threat actors use a unique zero day or not? Not really. What matters is how fast you can spot a successful breach and how well you can react. Based on intelligence about the most recent attacks, our report indicates that the people behind them meticulously plan their steps. They may use a vulnerable point in your corporate perimeter and lure your employee to click a specially crafted malicious link. Therefore, the only solution to reduce the risk of such attacks is to foresee them before they happen, based upon up-todate threat intelligence.
Ransomware, PoS attacks, and other specialized cyber threats are on the rise We saw rapid development of ransomware threats in 2015, targeting mostly small and medium business to extort money and put their data at risk.
Although enterprises are usually better prepared for such attacks, ransomware is an example of a specific threat exploiting weaknesses in the corporate security strategy and trying to get closer to corporate funds. The next big thing could be attacks on Point-of-Sale terminals, large-scale DDoS attacks and other threats targeting your money or that of your clients and partners, which can put the very existence of your business at risk.
Generic malware is still the main headache of your IT department According to our statistics, 58% of corporate computers were attacked by malware at least once in 2015. Those who say that traditional anti-malware technologies are preventing traditional attacks are outdated and must think again. If your IT department is busy fighting widespread malware, does it have the resource to detect and protect against a targeted attack? Likewise, before a security vendor starts to MARCH, 2016
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develop a solution designed to spot targeted attacks, it has to make sure all traditional attacks are already detected and blocked.
The next big thing for the IT Security industry The security industry has recognized that customers need more than just security software. Clients would like to know if their IT infrastructure is protected well enough and where the potential vulnerable points are. How can they address the mistakes of their employees? How could they protect their data when it’s being processed and transferred outside of the corporate security perimeter? How should they manage the fundamental flaws in the basic IT technologies they use? New security solutions are emerging to address these challenges. Last year we have been focusing our attention on security for virtual environments, EXPRESS COMPUTER
solutions for data centers, and technology to secure sensitive financial transactions. But a security vendor cannot address all business demands only with software. Even if it’s possible to block a certain highly sophisticated attack, the technology designed to repel it takes a while to develop, with customers demanding protection today. This is, by far, the major challenge that every security company faces today. The solution is to share intelligence. It is time to speed up the transformation of this knowledge into real protection for corporate customers. What they demand from us is a combination of tools and actionable expertise to help protect them from all kinds of cyber threats. Some aspects of the threat landscape can only be addressed by intelligence sharing and offering security consultancy in the form of a service. Some threats require new technology, and the majority of attacks can still be repelled with existing methods.
Thus, it’s not only a matter of delivering a new security solution anymore. It’s the combination of solutions, expertise and services that makes a business truly protected from the full spectrum of cyber threats. The question is – who will present the right mix of these ingredients to the market? Will corporate customers be ready to accept it? When Apple introduced its first iPhone in 2007, it did not invent something radically new. Instead the company took all the latest technologies and mixed them in one brilliant device that reshaped the entire smartphone industry. In 2016, the IT security industry will face the same challenge of packaging existing and new technologies and expertise into something new. There will be winners and, inevitably losers, but in the end the entire industry, as well as corporate customers, will find themselves in a better protected environment. MARCH, 2016
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STORAGE
HOWSMAC IS CHANGING THE INDIAN ENTERPRISE STORAGE MARKET BY ABHISHEK RAVAL SMAC is making companies, big and small, more data heavy. As data volumes grow, companies are looking to integrate their isolated storage platforms. The business is also demanding optimisation of the usage of the currrent storage. Express Computer takes a look at the major trends shaping the Indian storage market
T
he continuing trend of Social, Mobile Analytics, Cloud, (SMAC) is weighing-in on the enterprise storage platforms. As a consequence the market for storage has seen a surge. IDC’s Asia/Pacific Quarterly Enterprise Storage Tracker says that India’s external storage market saw a jump in year-on-year growth (in vendor revenue) and stood at $73.9 mn, 30
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up by 16 percent, in the third quarter of 2015. Further, IDC India forecasts the external enterprise storage systems market will grow in single digit in terms of CAGR for 2014-2019. According to a recent Frost & Sullivan study, the APAC region is among the fastest growing markets for enterprise data storage in the world. The market for enterprise storage is expected to expand at a 3.2% CAGR between 2014-2018 with revenues nearing over $41 bn mark from $36.4 bn in 2014.
Impact of SMAC on enterprise storage A CIO would do well in assessing the impact SMAC will have on the enterprise storage portfolio. “The emergence of SMAC and especially cloud has had and will continue to have a significant impact for the businesses that have adopted it. Many organizations are making massive investments in developing applications and technologies to meet the requirements emerging from SMAC in order to improve the overall business MARCH, 2016
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“In the last eighteen months, there has been a lot of initiatives by traditional companies. We have also seen a lot of new companies emerge in this market segment,” says Santhosh Rao, Principal Research Analyst, Gartner. The traditional storage vendors are trying to integrate their products with the public cloud provider vendors, who realise that in the absence of it, they will lose customers because the customer wants to look at the cloud storage seriously, which is an alternative option to store data in order to reduce costs. “Given that, enterprises are looking at a hybrid cloud deployment, thereby moving in-house architecture to the public cloud. So, that is one thing that is worked upon by a lot of vendors.” Another development is the emergence of new vendors providing security solutions for the data being accessed by the mobility devices. “They realise that a lot of activity is happening on the edge (data accessed on mobility devices), which is essentially going unprotected and the enterprises need to hold that data and control it because the traditional back up mechanisms are inefficient or insufficient,” says Gartner
How DR is driving demand for storage
outcome”, says Neeraj Matiyani, Director, Storage Solutions, Dell India. The demand for storage has grown substantially from what it was a few years ago, and the manner of storing data has also changed in a way that the traditional ways of storing and managing data is no longer sufficient for enterprises. “Social, mobile, analytics, cloud, and IoT can be expected to drive more than 26% of the total enterprise software market revenue,” forecasts Mehul Doshi, Country Head of Technology, Server, Storage CCD EXPRESS COMPUTER
& Datacenter Solutions, Fujitsu India. Going forward, as more and more data is generated in the data centre, the traditional enterprise storage architecture (SAN and NAS) is no longer enough to accommodate the data overload. More and more data is generated and being read out of the end users’ laptops, mobile devices or even on the cloud and web pages. So, in that regard, the traditional storage companies are reinventing their storage architectures to assimilate this storage.
Apart from SMAC, stricter regulation in the form of Disaster Recovery (DR) norms is also driving the demand for storage. Interestingly, due to various natural calamities that have hit in recent times, many organizations have realised the importance of having a DR mechanism installed so that businesses can continue to run without any disruption after recovering from the natural calamity. “With regulations getting stricter, we are also seeing higher adoption of DR in co-operative banks as well. If we consider the SMB / SME segment, there will be higher adoption of DR by the cloud service providers to ensure that there is absolutely no data loss of their customers,” says Dell’s Matiyani. Enterprises are now implementing bimodel IT practices to develop traditional MARCH, 2016
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Apart from SMAC, stricter regulation in the form of DR norms is also driving the demand for storage Neeraj Matiyani Director,Storage Solutions,Dell India.
IT infrastructure as well as to adopt and develop cloud-based models. “Disaster Recovery is at the forefront of this investment in new skill sets, in new objectstorage solutions, and in releasing greater potential to increase time-to-recovery and to maintain round the clock global business availability,” says KB Ng, Product Marketing Director, Asia Pacific , HGST. While SMAC vehemently continues to push the boundaries for the storage stack, the CIOs before investing in new storage infrastructure want to get the best out of their resident storage infrastructure. Optimisation and productivity enhancement remain the key business priorities across organisations. Adoption of technologies like software defined storage and virtualization are getting increased acceptance to achieve these priorities, says the IDC’s Asia/Pacific Quarterly Enterprise Storage Tracker.
Optimising the usage of the current storage system
Social,mobile, analytics,cloud,and IoTcan be expected to drive more than 26% of the total enterprise software market revenue Mehul Doshi, Country Head of Technology,Server, Storage CCD & Datacenter Solutions, Fujitsu India. 32
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Most of the CIOs are running initiatives wherein it involves modernising the IT. Either adopting newer technologies like SMAC or newer ways of delivering the technology. “The focus also involves maximising RoI, thereby not spending more but optimise on the same budget without any percentage growth in the overall budget. The IT spend is not growing as fast as it used to. Some of them are not cutting it but keeping it flat,” says Nilesh Patel, VP, Product Management and Marketing, Sphere 3D Corp (Tandberg Data). The objective now is to do more with less. SDS and storage virtualization helps pool physical storage from multiple devices into a single, centrally managed system. “More and more enterprises are considering employing software-defined storage (SDS) as it helps reduce overall storage costs for enterprises, and improves automated management of storage infrastructure,” says Doshi. The SDS concept itself is just gaining traction and mindshare in the enterprise but “there hasn’t been a lot of deployments
in India because the vendor landscape is also very immature, “ says Rao. Dell has partnered with other vendors like Microsoft and Vmware to design solutions to fulfill multiple storage related requirements from a single solution. “At Dell, apart from having our own solutions which can meet the business requirements of our customers, we are also focused on leveraging co-engineered solutions which have been developed with players such as Microsoft and VMware. These coengineered solutions are designed to meet a variety of requirements the customer might have – which in some cases might not be fulfilled with a single vendor only solution,” informs Matiyani. Many enterprise databases require shared storage access. Good examples of this are single instance Oracle Databases and Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC). RAC uses Oracle’s Automatic Storage Management (ASM) as the volume manager for the database. ASM uses disk groups to store data files and enables flexible server-based mirroring options.
Businesses should come out of siloed storage imbroglio The traditional problem of siloed storage infrastructure still persists in many organisations, big and small. “The problem existing today and is acknowledged but nothing much has been done about this. Storage continues to be operated in silos by even large enterprises,” observes Rao from Gartner. The IT decision makers have a conservative approach towards the storage infrastructure. They fear that creation of a shared service pool and a shared storage infrastructure will hinder their ability to serve a particular application on-demand because they do not have the skill sets or the automation tools to do that. “The perception is, rather than suffer on-application performance by integrating the siloed storage platforms, they are better off creating such silos and putting more and more storage to a specific application or a business unit. However, it’s further complicating their architecture. “The IT MARCH, 2016
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STORAGE THE IDEAL STORAGE STRATEGY
The ITspend is not growing as fast as it used to.Some enterprises are not cutting it but keeping it flat Nilesh Patel VP,Product Management and Marketing,Sphere 3D Corp
Disaster Recoveryis at the forefront of investments in new skill sets and new object-storage solutions K B Ng Product Marketing Director, Asia Pacific ,HGST 34
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Santhosh Rao,Principal Research Analyst,Gartner.
F
irstly,the IT manager or the storage architect has to closely work with their individual business owners to understand the criticality of the application,the data protection requirement etc.because by taking those specific details as the baseline, they will have to architect or re-architect the whole storage solution. A matrix has to be created,on: ◗ What’s the value of the data ◗ Can the data be deleted ◗ How long should it be retained for ◗ How frequently should it be backed up and ◗ What is the IOPs and latency requirements and the rate of storage growth Storage needs have to be studied on an application by application basis.All these aspects have to be first considered.Then a storage solution has to be designed,which has to be followed by creating a storage analytics platform.The team has to run tools in the DC to understand when was the data last touched (by using file analytics), which file was last used. For example,if a file was used 4/5 years back, then can it be
managers don’t look at storage related purchase decisions as an aggregated solution,” opines Rao. The vendors have a role to play here and provide effective mechanisms on licensing. As Rao observes, “The problem is in the instance of purchasing a large storage system which will act as a
deleted or moved to a cheap storage platform like SATA drive (in case if it is occupying space in the flash storage medium). Subsequently,the IT manager can create something known as storage tiering. It’s called auto-tiering.Most of the storage vendors offer this product.Auto-tiering automatically moves old data to a lower cost storage platform.So,storage tiering should be looked at seriously. Finally, a complete automation of the storage architecture must be attempted. Without automation and creating a shared services model around it, the operational cost will increase. So whenever the data is ageing and it’s not been used, a system triggered email has to go to the application owner asking,“Can this data be deleted, what is the value of this data?”.This process has to be automated. Storage has to be divided into tiers. Gold, Silver, Bronze etc like a private cloud storage architecture and depending on the value of the data, storage policies have to set around each of these applications and map it to these storage tiers. If the organisations are able to drive automation,they will be able to achieve atleast 30-40% cost reduction. In fact today,the net storage utilisation in large enterprise is even less than 60-65%,so 40% of storage is unutilised. So,a manual effort is required,initially by the IT manager in doing storage requirement evaluation of the different business units,which is then backed up by tools that fit the respective companies.Just acquiring more and more storage boxes will not solve the problem.
platform on which the siloed systems will be made to work as one unit, where the plan is to migrate the different storage platforms in phases as each of these systems are in a different time of the contract period with the vendor.” abhishek.raval@expressindia.com
MARCH, 2016
OMC - THE GOLDEN INITIATIVES
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Odisha Mining Corporation On The Growth Path
OMC is committed to fulfill its obligation under Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Other than undertaking development works itself in the vicinity of OMC Mines, huge amount of funds have also been placed with various district administrations for development activities in the concerned districts.
ore which cater to the requirement of mineral based industries such as steel, sponge iron, pig iron, ferro-manganese, ferro-chrome, etc. Besides, headquarterd in Bhubaneswar, OMC has regional offices in the districts of Jajpur, Keonjhar, Sundargarh and Rayagada.
Sri. R K Sharma, IAS Chairman Odisha Mining Corporation
O
disha Mining Corporation Limited (OMC) was set up in 1956 as a joint venture Company of Govt of Odisha and Govt of India to explore and harness mineral wealth of the State of Odisha and make value addition. Later in 1961, OMC became a wholly state-owned corporation of Govt. of Odisha. The major minerals mined by OMC are chrome, iron and manganese
Robust Growth
The growth of the professionally managed, 100% debt-free OMC has been impressive over these years and today it stands as the largest State PSU in the mining sector of the country. It recorded the highest turn-over of Rs. 2756 crore in FY 2010-11. Till December 31, 2015 OMC posted a turnover of Rs. 1,210 crore (provisional) for the current financial year 2015-16. OMC has at present 35 number of mining leases (Chromite – 11, Iron -11, Iron & Manganese – 5, Manganese – 3, Limestone – 1 and Gemstone -4). Besides, four mining leases (Iron -1, Manganese – 1, Bauxite – 1 and Tin – 1) and six of PL (Chinaclay – 1, Graphite – 1,
Chromite – 2 and Tin – 2) have been granted in favour of OMC though the leases are yet to be executed. In addition to this, OMC has applied for a number of MLs which are pending at Govt. level for consideration. Over the last five years, OMC has shown consistent growth in the production of ore and ore concentrate. The production of iron ore has increased substantially from 3.4 million tonnes in 2005-06 to about 8 million tonnes in 2008-09. Similarly the production of chrome ore and chrome concentrate has been fairly consistent in the last 5 years. At the present rate, OMC is producing about 10 % of total iron ore production of the State and about 30 % of the total chrome ore production of the State. Presently Daitari, Gandhamardan and Kurmitar (Khandadhar) are the major Iron ore Mines of OMC whereas South Kaliapani is the main Chrome ore Mine of OMC. Bangur Chrome ore Mine is the first and only underground mine of OMC.
OMC - THE GOLDEN INITIATIVES
NChrome ore is sold to Ferro-chrome units, Chemical units and Refractory units
Strong Financials Due to consistent good performance, OMC has recorded substantial profit in the last few years. In the process, it has contributed substantially to the exchequer of Govt. of India as well as Govt. of Odisha.
Key initiatives Sales & Marketing Domestic Sale: NThe rates for domestic sale of Iron and Chrome Ores are decided on e-auction basis. NThe Sale of ore to buying units/industries is restricted to their capacity. NVerification of the units/industries is done to ascertain their requirement of Ore. NNo ore is sold to traders except iron ore fines. Iron ore sized by Government and non-moving items NIron ore is supplied to various units/industries
New Projects of OMC: Following huge accumulated profits, OMC is in a position to undertake new Projects which are essential to sustain its good performance in the long run.
JV initiatives a) Odisha Thermal Power Corporation Limited - a joint venture company of two State Public Sector Undertakings namely, the Odisha Mining Corporation Ltd (OMC) and The Odisha Hydro Power Corporation Ltd (OHPC) having equal share. b) Angul-Sukinda Railway Limited - To develop, establish, finance, con struct, operate and maintain the 104 KM long new rail-line between Angul and Sukinda in Odisha.
OMC - THE GOLDEN INITIATIVES iron ore rich areas in Odisha. Own Projects A number of Projects have already been taken up/are being taken up by OMC to enhance the present performance level of the Company. They are as follows: a) Design, Engineering, Supply, Construction, Erection, Commissioning & Performance Guarantee test of a new 1000 TPH Ore Handling Plant with 3200 TPH Mechanized Wagon Loading System including related railway infrastructure for Iron Ore mine at Daitari. b) Installation of a new Chrome Ore Beneficiation Plant (COBP)at South Kaliapani c) Modification of existing COB Plant, Kaliapani. d) Construction of a tailing pond for both the COB plants at S. Kaliapani e) Development of a commercially viable flow-sheet to establish a small scale beneficiation plant to recover Chromite values from the tailings of COB plant. f) Mechanized Production and Evacuation System at Kurmitar Iron ore Mines. g) Setting up of an Ore Handling Plant for production of 8.5 Million tonnes per annum of Iron Ore at Gandhamardan Iron Ore Mines.
Social responsibilities
c) Haridaspur Paradip Railway company Limited, a SPV was incorporated by Rail Vikas Nigam Limited and Essel Mining Limited. Haridaspur Paradip Railway Company Limited is a Non-Government Public Limited Company. For developing, financing, construction operation and maintenance of 82 Kms. Broad Guage Single Line between Haridaspur to Paradip in Odisha to establish a direct link between the
OMC is committed to fulfill its obligation under Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Other than undertaking development works itself in the vicinity of OMC Mines, huge amount of funds have also been placed with various district administrations for development activities in the concerned districts. OMC has also contributed about Rs.359 crores to the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund in last 5 years. OMC has contributed Rs.5 crores to Odisha Environment Management Fund to fulfill its commitment for a ‘Clean and Green Environment’. OMC is the largest State Govt. owned PSU engaged in Mining Sector in India. OMC is committed to environment friendly mining. OMC has planted saplings through State Forest Department at the rate of 1 tree for every 10 MT of ore extracted in the periphery of the mining leases located in the district of Sundargarh, Keonjhar, Jajpur & Kalahandi District of Odisha. 10.37 lakh seedlings were planted during 2015-16 and it is proposed to plant 10.00 lakh saplings during 2016-17 against which OMC has so far deposited Rs.321.04 lakhs to the State Forest Department. The above plantation programme covers 90 acres of plantation in the Medicinal Plant Park in the district of Dhenkanal. OMC has adopted 5 villages annually from the financial year 2015-16 to provide among others the following basic entitlements: Drinking water through pipes, electricity, sanitation (IHLs), internal roads/drains, plantation in the village and pucca houses. ADVERTORIAL
DOCUMENT
MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
DIGITISING INDIA THROUGH DMS BY ANKUSH KUMAR With an aim to eliminate paper-based systems that take time to create, search and transfer files from one department to another, many public and private organisations are adopting Document Management systems
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n consonance with the Indian Government’s Digital India vision and to improve efficiency and transparency within the department, many public and private organisations are completely shifting to a paperless office environment. This means digitisation and movement of office files electronically which ultimately helps in substantial reduction of processing and delivery time. The role of Document Management System is therefore becoming more 38
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crucial as it helps organisations to manage tasks effectively and streamline processing of their documents across all departments. A case in point is Kirloskar Electric Company, which has improved its efficiencies significantly by implementing a comprehensive document management system. “Our corporate document management system (CDMS ) project deals with safeguarding intellectual property of the company, improve the coordination and efficiency of engineering, production, planning and quality department in conjunction with
other units, vendors and customers," says Hemant Kulkarni, Deputy General Manager - Corporate IT, Kirloskar Electric Company Ltd. Kulkarni explains that before the implementation of CDMS in his company, users were using indents, memos, paper copies and registers to maintain information. The tracking of these documents was difficult and users had to take multiple follow-ups with the end users/departments. The output of engineering couldn’t be measured due to manual processes. “After implementing CDMS, we have moved a step closer to paperless office. As all the processes and MARCH, 2016
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workflows are mapped in CDMS, there is complete traceability and accountability on respective stake holders. The time taken for the approval cycle has come down significantly and the users are happy with respect to the transparency and automation brought by CDMS. Now it is a single source of truth for all the departments with respect to intellectual property and designs.” In the Indian market, the need to increase efficiency has been the key driver. Organizations today need to be able to easily manage and access all structured content and documents using one piece of software. EXPRESS COMPUTER
Underlying Challenges There is a fundamental structural change happening in the market where more and more companies are shifting from paper to electronic document management systems thereby benefiting from lower costs, enhanced productivity, better user controls and stronger security features. But there are definite challenges to this growth part, of which awareness is one, shares Vijaykumar Rajendran – Product Manager, Zoho Docs. “Many firms in India still do not realise that the cost and risk of having a fragmented, decentralized document strategy is staggering. Even
today, most companies neglect document management, in spite of the crucial role it plays in contributing to productivity and collaboration within teams. Most of the times, the reason behind this is that the costs are not visible and impact on organizational efficiency and productivity is not measured,” says Rajendran. Most users are also not aware of the long term benefits of document management. “People are looking at immediate returns on their investments and ease of use. There are also challenges in terms of identifying and digitising large volume of information in paper based documents which is scattered across various departments and locations of an organisation,” states Rahul Kubadia, Managing Director, Primeleaf Consulting. Increasing compliance requirements by multinational companies is another big trend that is driving the growth of document management adoption. As a DMS can manage the entire set of employee-related documents through the lifecycle of an employee (recruitment stage, association with the company, separation/exit and post-exit settlements), it is becoming more strategic in nature. “The onus of managing employee documents is normally spread across several departments within an organisation - the HR department, Learning team, Operations team, Travel team, Finance team, CRM, etc. Many organisations underestimate the legal and compliance requirements of employee documents and more often than not, the HR and labor litigation teams of organisations scramble to dig up emails, old folder archives and collect feedback from many stakeholders in the organisation. Till date, most companies don’t have a single repository of employee information. Today, many newage and progressive companies understand this need not just from a compliance perspective, but also as a tool to manage business operations and talent management. If we add the employee related document management, the MARCH, 2016
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DOCUMENT
MANAGEMENT SYSTEM industry size will become more than double and most of the growth for future will come from this segment,” asserts Srinivasulu Mallampooty, Co-Founder & CEO, Employee Experts.
DMS moves towards the cloud
Manyfirms in India still do not realise that the cost and risk of having a fragmented, decentralised document strategies is staggering Vijaykumar Rajendran Product Manager,Zoho Docs
Alot of organisations are getting their documents digitised but theyhaven’t done the proper indexing K Bhaskhar Vice President - Business Imaging Solution Division,Canon India 40
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Cloud based document management solutions are gaining maximum popularity as users do not have to worry about infrastructure management and related issues. More and more organisations are preferring a completely browser based solution. This eliminates the desktop management and other related concerns. Says Sunil Mehra, Vice President, Middleware, Oracle India, “Companies across industries are moving towards paperless documents and embracing digital platforms via cloud computing to build a robust, secure and collaborative work culture. They are using cloud based content collaboration solutions to integrate and assimilate content on the cloud as the documents can be accessed on-the-go.” Harsh Tikku, Director, SoftAge believes that the next technology that will have seminal impact on DMS has to be the hybrid cloud. Data management will open up with new hybrid cloud cases. Says he, “As organisations move to a cloud delivery model to reduce costs and increase flexibility, they will shift from being builders and operators of their own data centers to being brokers of services than span both private and public cloud resources.” Tikku predicts that the next wave of technology advancement in the sphere of Document Management will focus on Digitisation and Analytics.
Indexing key to retrieving documents quickly Organisations have a lot of information and timely availability is always a big question mark. Therefore they should have all their documents properly digitised and index it in such a way that it will be retrieved faster. “Wherever you store your files, be it in-house, server or into the cloud, how
soon you retrieve that information is the key word. And that can be done with proper indexing. A lot of organisations are getting their documents digitised but they haven’t done the proper indexing. Therefore, we are helping them with indexing. We take their entire documents, we index it properly, create a workflow and give it back to them. The organisations then start doing the process automatically. It helps the organisations move to a different level. Even if the documents are digitised and stored in servers, there’s no use, as it still takes ample time to retrieve it and find it. Organisations should start considering these factors instead of looking at document management solutions in isolation,” says K Bhaskhar, Vice President - Business Imaging Solution Division, Canon India. Canon has recently launched a solution called Powerscan, which is from an organisation named IRIS. This software is more into effective capturing, indexing and retrieving documents. “The most important thing is that it can even compress an image to a large extent. This would help an organisation to download huge files quickly from anywhere. For example, through IRIS, a 30 GB file can be compressed to as small as a 2 GB file,” states Bhaskhar.
Accessing documents on the go Thanks to a huge surge in enterprise mobility adoption, most organisations have started giving mobile printing and mobile scanning options to their users, where a document can be scanned and moved easily on the mobile phone. “We are providing these features on our products. Also, users can download drivers on the mobile phones from play stores, and then the documents can be scanned and stored. These elements are happening in mobile phones also because, Bring Your Own Device is becoming the need of the hour,” asserts Bhaskhar. The social element is also playing a role in document management software. Says Virender Jeet, Sr. VP – Technology, Newgen Software,"A lot of companies are communicating on their social channels MARCH, 2016
DOCUMENT
MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
Rahul Kubadia
Companies are using cloud based content collaboration solutions to integrate and assimilate content on the cloud as the documents can be accessed on-the-go
Pharma is an interesting segment in DMS market while compliance management for manufacturing is very important
Managing Director, Primeleaf Consulting
Sunil Mehra
Virender Jeet
Vice President,Middleware,Oracle India
Sr.VP– Technology,Newgen Software
these days. You even have data coming in from sensors or business centers which is in context to customers. Hence, this information has to be retained. If you look at mobile content management - the mobile is becoming the primary device to deliver information. So, we have products like ZapIn for servicing customers for whom the core is mobile.”
management for manufacturing is very important. Segments like education, hospitality are relatively slow. With the entire era of digitisation, cloud has become more popular and mainstream, and the entry barrier which is the cost to acquire will go down,” informs Jeet. Although the need for digitisation and document management is felt across verticals, there is a huge need which is being generated and consumed by organisations in verticals like telecom, BFSI, manufacturing, retail and education. “These verticals still heavily rely on paper based processes like new customer registration through KYC (Know your customer) forms and are looking to embrace simpler and efficient digitisation processes,” says Parikshet Singh Tomar, Country Category Leader, Printing Systems, HP Inc. India. Large enterprises too are looking to take complete advantage of the
There are challenges in terms of identifying and digitising large volume of data and information in paper based document
Key business verticals and growth drivers For Newgen, BFSI is the largest spender in terms of content management but the government vertical has also started catching up in the last 5 – 6 years with customers like LIC (Life Insurance Corporation of India) which happens to be the world’s largest content management deployment for the firm. “We have a lot of projects in the government space. Pharma is an interesting space while compliance 42
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digitisation drive and thereby transitioning to more agile and efficient office environments in order to grow their global businesses. From an enterprise standpoint, Tomar informs that HP’s document management solutions address three major trends in enterprise printing: workflow digitisation, cloud and mobility. Workflow digitisation reduces the burden of a paper-heavy document system in several ways. It saves storage space, decreases paper consumption, reduces costs, saves time and makes document processes more efficient overall. Going forward, as more organisations accelerate on the path of digitisation, one can expect document management systems to become more leaner (to be accessible on mobile platforms), social (tuned for collaboration) and cloudenabled. ankush.kumar@expressindia.com
MARCH, 2016
CLOUD
COMPUTING
THE CLOUD’S TRANSFORMATIVE AVATAR BY JASMINE DESAI The cloud has become mainstream, and is now adopted by Indian enterprises, as a stepping stone to transformation
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ow can the IT infrastructure keep up with fast paced growth with minimal capital expenditure? IT services firm, Cognizant, which was growing faster than the industry, was facing this issue, as it contemplated scaling up its IT infrastructure. Cognizant wanted a more agile IT environment -- one that would support and catalyse business innovation. Their existing infrastructure included about 7,000 servers, and was growing at an unsustainable rate. Rising maintenance and power costs, and management time were an additional woe 44
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to handle. And procure-to-production cycles for new servers took up to eight weeks. The company addressed this issue with server virtualisation and a private cloud, which enabled the company to provide Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), and achieve much faster cycle times for server provisioning. “We addressed the need for faster cycle times for server provisioning by implementing server virtualisation and a private cloud which enabled us to provide Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). This has helped us in achieving faster deployments. Our plan is to build our IT around a SDDC. Short-term goals include moving to virtualised storage and
virtualised networking,” says PR Devaraj Global Head, Network and Systems Services, Cognizant. Post the implementation, physical server numbers were cut by 90%. Server utilisation rates have doubled close to 80%. New servers are now provisioned in minutes and not weeks. The organisation also has a defined roadmap for software-defined data center adoption. Such cases of application of cloud or virtualisation are becoming more diverse with increased complex nature of businesses. It is also a no-brainer that companies leading in the use of cloud are gaining a competitive advantage by simplifying their MARCH, 2016
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operations, rolling out new business initiatives more quickly, and efficiently leveraging information. The IaaS segment will remain the fastest-growing segment in 2016, which is forecast to reach 22.4 billion. "IaaS continues to be the strongest-growing segment as enterprises move away from data centre build-outs and move to the public cloud," says Sid Nag, Research Director at Gartner.
Public cloud adoption demonstrates high rates of growth According to Gartner, the worldwide public cloud services market is projected to grow 16.5% in 2016 to total EXPRESS COMPUTER
$204 billion, up from $175 billion in 2015. The highest growth will come from IaaS which is projected to grow 38.4% in 2016. “The market for public cloud services is continuing to demonstrate high rates of growth across all markets and Gartner expects this to continue through 2017,” mentions Nag from Gartner. “This strong growth continues to reflect a shift away from legacy IT services to cloud-based services, due to increased trend of organisations pursuing a digital business strategy.” Cloud application services (SaaS) is forecast to grow 20.3% in 2016, to $37.7 billion. As software vendors shift their
business models from on-premises licensed software to public cloud-based offerings, this trend will continue. In addition, the entry of some major software vendors into the public cloud last year will fuel growth of the SaaS market moving forward. The push for cloud usage is not only coming from private sectors, but public sectors as well. Says Prashant Gupta, Head of Solutions, Verizon Enterprise Solutions India, “The Prime Minister’s initiatives on smart cities, and Make in India, will drive innovation. Cloud computing and mobility will drive the India IT landscape. Soon, financial inclusion will be driven by cloud enabled mobility applications.” Platform-based companies are increasingly capturing more of the digital economy’s opportunities for strong growth and profitability. Mohan Sekhar, Senior Managing Director – Delivery Centers for Technology in India, Accenture, says, "Rapid advances in cloud and mobility are eliminating the technology and cost barriers associated with such platforms, and also opening up this new playing field to enterprises across industries and geographies. We are already seeing disruptions in industries like transportation with cab aggregators who are using cloud platforms to create an end-to-end customer experience. Digital broadcast companies are offering streaming content across devices such as TV, mobile and tablets. In BFSI, payment banks have the potential to disrupt the traditional banking industry." One such example is the launch of State Bank of India’s sub-brand called “InTouch”, a digital banking program that re-made the branch environment and re-modelled customer engagement to attract young customers. In 2015, SBI launched a mobile wallet app called “SBI Buddy” in collaboration with Accenture and MasterCard, which can be used for money transfer, bookings such as movies, flights and hotels, as well as shopping. MARCH, 2016
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CLOUD
COMPUTING Digital adoption accelerating cloud usage
IaaS continues to be the strongest-growing segment as enterprises move awayfrom data centre build-outs and move to the public cloud. Sid Nag Research Director,Gartner
With enormous network automation APIs,rolling out a cloud system will be a lot faster. Sajan Paul Director,Systems Engineering - India & SAARC,Juniper Networks 46
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Cloud already has a seat at the table providing organisations a huge competitive advantage including scalability, flexibility and access to mission critical information. According to Gupta of Verizon Enterprise Solutions India, "The biggest trend we see in the cloud space is being driven by digital disruption. Some of the key elements driving its adoption are business agility, flexibility, cost saving, and faster go-tomarket timelines. Part of this growth is because security concerns are not as pervasive as they once were." According to the latest trends for 2016, released by Verizon, the future is going to be about a world which is not only ‘connected’, but also supported by artificial intelligence and virtual reality. Interaction will extend beyond M2M to encompass machine to human interface as well, and all this will not be possible without the foundation of cloud. Sajan Paul, Director Systems Engineering - India & SAARC at Juniper Networks mentions, "With enormous network automation APIs, rolling out a cloud system will be a lot faster. The key here however, is the model of a looselycoupled, yet tightly integrated system for inter-operability and scale, which enables customers to adopt cloud frameworks with ease." As enterprises start demanding greater flexibility and scale at lesser costs, this could further lead to greater adoption of software defined data centers. According to an IDC report commissioned by VMware, customers in India are expected to save an estimated US $4 billion between 2014 and 2020 by adopting a software-defined approach to managing IT. Swapna Bapat, Director for Systems Engineering, Brocade India mentions, "Going forward, enterprises are likely to adopt a hybrid approach to enjoy the best of both worlds. With a hybrid approach, enterprises can have security of a private cloud and economics of the public cloud. Cloud will become a delivery vehicle for
other emerging technologies such as mobility, analytics, and M2M (machineto-machine)." There have been remarkable technical advances in converged infrastructure, to the point where infrastructure solutions now are more scalable, offer greater functionality and deliver greater cost efficiency. This generation of converged solutions called hyper-converged infrastructure is altering the rules of the game for IT companies. Outlining the trends, Avinash Garg, Senior Director, Cloud and Infrastructure Services, Unisys India says, "SDDC (software-defined data centre) is geared toward modern applications. Virtualisation is central to the software-defined data centre. Enterprises will be able to use it to innovate with greater utilisation, resiliency, and to lower TCO. Examples of adoption of virtualisation are becoming more intricate with consistently changing business needs.” One such case in point is that of Infosys which needed to augment its physical infrastructure supporting its SAP HANA RDBMS and applications running at the Infosys HANA CoE in India. Infosys collaborated with VMware and Hitachi on this by deploying VMware vSphere on Hitachi Unified Compute Platform (UCP) for the SAP HANA platform and leveraged Hitachi’s SAP HANA VM templates. Infosys gained the ability to rapidly provision new SAP HANA virtual machines and SAP Applications in a few minutes, which previously used to take days. This has also reduced the total cost of delivery by 85%. “We thought of scaling up the hardware used to run our SAP HANA RDBMS. We also wanted to purchase hardware that could be virtualised so that we could maximise the utilisation of our resources and minimise our costs. Had we chosen to continue deploying SAP HANA instances in a nonvirtualised environment, we would have needed many more appliances. VMware vSphere was the only product certified by MARCH, 2016
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SAP to deliver virtualisation featuring capabilities such as dynamic scalability and rapid provisioning through cloning and template based deployment," states Devesh Dadhich, Principal Technology Architect, Infosys.
A choice of multiple clouds Going forward, we will continue to see services mature and an increased trust on a shared infrastructure to provide resilience and security. “There will be a multitude of models and architectures based on the industry and each company’s business model. Not all clouds are created equal, and many are not enterprise class. Just as when deploying on premise IT, conventional hosting, or outsourcing projects, care must be taken to address issues such as business continuity, security, and system integration. If you want the rewards of cloud, there’s no shortcut. You need the right partner and you need the right plan,” says Sekhar of Accenture. Gupta of Verizon Enterprise Solutions India states, "Cloud is already mainstream. Standardisation across workloads will be of key focus as customers will like to move workloads between the cloud providers." Digitisation of enterprise data and prolific increase of user generated content (on social media, cloud, IOT etc.) has resulted in an explosion of data. With this increasing scale of big data, foundations of erstwhile data management and linear analytics are shaking up and words like “Yotta Byte” are commonly heard. This new digital universe calls for machine intelligence to manage information structuring and drive a logical abstraction to given actionable intelligence. Today, we are already seeing Machine learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) slowly getting into the mainstream, with more and more applications embedded with ML and NLP for mainstream business users. With increased access to computing power and cloud adoption, EXPRESS COMPUTER
we see exponentially diverse application of these concepts.
Network Virtualisation market seeing small green shoots of growth In India, there has been growing momentum in the adoption of network virtualisation. Just as server virtualization changed the paradigm for server operations and management, network virtualisation is set to change the paradigm for network operations and management. According to BS Nagarajan, Senior Director – Systems Engineering, VMware India, “Current network and security solutions are rigid, complex and often vendor-specific. This creates a costly barrier in realising the full agility of a software-defined data centre. In the current operational model, network provisioning is slow and workload placement and mobility is limited by physical topology and manual provisioning. Limitations of physical networking and security tie an increasingly dynamic virtual world back to inflexible, dedicated hardware, creating artificial barriers to optimize network architecture and capacity utilisation. In 2016, the ability to provide networking and security services to a range of endpoints will move to another level.” There are a series of fundamental trends, beginning with a redefinition of mobility itself, that are accelerating the cloud and virtualisation transformation. Nilesh Goradia, - Head, Workspace Services & Government Business, India Subcontinent, Citrix giving his views says, “It is not just a tablet and a phone anymore, but every device that an employee uses to access corporate resources. Businesses will be able to leverage all the enterprise assets and data that are available on premise, or in the public cloud, and bring them together, delivering users the right information, at the right time, for better insights, better decision-making, and actually, a thoughtful, enjoyable experience.” jasmine.desai@expressindia.com
Cloud will become a delivery vehicle for emerging technologies such as mobility, analytics and M2M Swapna Bapat Director,Systems Engineering, Brocade India
We are alreadyseeing disruptions in industries like transportation with cab aggregators who are using cloud Mohan Sekhar Senior MD – DeliveryCenters for Technologyin India,Accenture MARCH, 2016
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UNIFIED
COMMUNICATIONS
DEMAND FOR UNIFIED COMMUNICATION SOLUTIONS ON THE RISE BY ANKUSH KUMAR Fueled by rising demands for workforce optimisation and increased efficiencies across enterprises and the public sector, Unified Communications and Collaboration solutions continue to gain sustainable momentum in India
w
ith increasing demand for workforce optimisation
and interaction, the unified communication and collaboration market is poised for strong growth. In India, as companies explore newer geographies to create substantial impact for their services or products, there has been a constant need to remain constantly in touch with the sales force and get real-time information from them. This has accelerated demand for unified communication and collaboration-based tools. 48
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According to a report by researchandmarkets, the India Unified Communication market is expected to reach $1,506.2 million by 2018, growing at a CAGR of 12.4% from 2013-2018. The report also reveales that the increasing operational cost, growth of enterprise mobility and increasing Internet penetration are some of the factors that are driving the market of the unified communication market in India. Sandeep Mehra, Director, Collaboration Sales, Cisco India & SAARC believes that in today's time the top priority of customers is to use technology to drive growth and productivity, manage risk, and gain
competitive advantage. "In today’s digital world, work is more interconnected than ever before. Customers and employees are more empowered and want greater freedom in how and where they can get the work done. At the same time, they need to collaborate more frequently, with more people, inside and outside the organisation and across geographies.�
Rising demand from Government To ensure better collaboration between the far-flung offices of different departments and institutions, the government is deploying video conferencing in a major way. The Digital MARCH, 2016
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29 states for the distribution of its products. With a staff base of over 6,700 spread across five mega plants and 80 marketing offices, over thousand employees used to travel to the company’s corporate headquarters based in New Delhi each year for their appraisals, which resulted in lost productivity and substantial travel and downtime costs. Looking for a way to streamline operations and save costs, IFFCO used telepresence solutions from Polycom. The solution has enabled the employers to conduct appraisals over video and as a result, the company was able to reduce travel costs and downtime substantially, in addition to improving the overall operations of the business and enhancing productivity. IFFCO was also able to achieve savings of over $US 200,000 in travel and lodging costs in six short months, equating to a 200 percent return on investment year-on-year.
Emerging trends and innovations
India initiative, which seeks to connect 2.5 lakh villages with high-speed broadband, is expected to bring further growth to the unified communications and video conferencing market. Says Sai Pratyush, Additional Vice President - Managed Services - Tata Teleservices, “We believe that the demand for UC in India will come not only from the private sector, but also from government agencies. This technology can be leveraged to ensure better collaboration between the remotely located and geographically dispersed government departments and institutions. We are at a stage wherein UC is all set to redefine EXPRESS COMPUTER
what it means to collaborate because not only will it increase business efficiency and productivity, but these solutions will also help in enhancing an organisation’s connect with its key stakeholders i.e. employees, partners and customers.” One example which highlights how collaboration solutions can help government organisations in minimising cost and boosting efficiency is that of IFFCO - a leading player in the fertilizer industry in India. The company works closely with the Indian government to increase food grain production in the country, utilising 40,000 cooperative outlets and 158 farmer service centres in
Unified Communications in the recent times is being driven by key trends like Access & Device Agnostic Communication, consumption from cloud and adoption of video. Considering the huge impact of cloud on unified communications, “UC As-a-Service” is fast evolving and maturing, shares Sudip Singh, SVP - Head Global Services Engineering Services, Infosys. "Hybrid consumption models with seamless integration of on-premise and cloud UC is becoming critical for large enterprises to derive the best of the both worlds while protecting existing investments. Consistent and compelling user experience is an important theme that is heavily influencing the product strategies of UC and Collaboration technology vendors. With consumption of the UC service increasingly shifting to mobile devices, “user experience” is moving from the fringes to the centre of the UC solution strategy. These are exciting times when leading UC product vendors are trying to unify their product suites to provide a holistic solution for enterprise communication and collaboration. This is triggering a transformational change in MARCH, 2016
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The engagementled enterprise complements how customers and employees already interact and collaborate Arun Shetty
Major challenges in UC are mainlyposed byinfrastructure issues which is preventing customers from adopting video collaboration
Director of Collaboration Solutions India,Avaya
Minhaj Zia
enterprise UC strategies across verticals.” A global ecosystem is also driving the growth of UC. “The global impact of an engagement-led enterprise is a new reality of convergence that enables secure borderless businesses. Further, open, scalable platforms, tools and applications inspire cooperative competition among vendors and partners. This in turn, creates collaborative ecosystems for elevating the value of individual contributions by contributing to effective team outcomes. The engagement-led enterprise complements how customers and employees already interact and collaborate,” says Arun Shetty, Director of Collaboration Solutions - India, Avaya, Shetty further informs that customers are being innovative in how they integrate video in their business processes and in engaging with customers. They are often using video 50
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Managing Director – India and SAARC, Polycom
either to speed up the processes. For example, this could be in used in insurance claims settlement. Video based collaboration solutions could also be used to make deeper connections with customers and suppliers, or in functions such as branch banking and distance learning. “Businesses are beginning to offer a true “omni-channel” support experience to customers and are seamlessly providing service via the customers’ choice of voice, video, web chat, email and mobile channels. As a result, customers are self-selecting channels based on personal preferences. Even as video gains momentum as a high-touch channel, companies will continue to use web chat as the relatively low-expense way to initiate the customer experience from a web site, to triage that experience and to direct customers to other support
We believe that the demand for UC in India will come from private as well as from government agencies Sai Pratyush Additional Vice-President,Managed Services – Tata Teleservices
resources and tools,” asserts Shetty. Significant technological developments in the arena of communications such as voice-overinternet-protocol (VoIP) or integration of Public Switch Telephone Networks (PSTN) are enhancing the mobile Unified Communications and Collaboration solutions segment. Says Alok Lall, Director – Apps & Services Marketing, Microsoft India, “Organisations are keen on transitioning from their legacy meeting and phone systems and replace the same with innovative services. A wide gamut of video-capable UC clients, webconferencing platforms, and consumer applications are now being used in the workplace. Users are more familiar with videoconferencing software than ever before, and are demanding access to it.” In line with the market trends, Microsoft has recently announced the MARCH, 2016
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Customers and employees are more empowered with communication tools and want greater freedom in howand where theycan get the work done Sandeep Mehra Director,Collaboration Sales,India & SAARC,Cisco
availability of Microsoft Office 365 E5 which includes several new Office 365 communications services designed to modernise voice, video, and meeting experiences, while saving companies substantial costs in their communication infrastructure. It replaces the legacy systems with the familiar Skype for business experience, which is also integrated within Office 365. Its new suite also incorporates new security and analytics capabilities aimed at improving the customers’ ability to protect their organisations and glean insights from data. Microsoft’s unified communications offering includes Skype for business, online meeting, messaging, modern voice with cloud PBX and Skype for Business - broadcast meetings for up to 10,000 people, who can attend a meeting over a browser on nearly any device. EXPRESS COMPUTER
Considering the huge impact of cloud on unified communications, “UC As-a-Service” is fast evolving and maturing Sudip Singh
Awide gamut of videocapable UC clients, web-conferencing platforms,and consumer applications are now being used in the workplace
SVP - Head Global Services Engineering Services,Infosys
Alok Lall
Barriers to Growth While the above trends make a stronger proposition for businesses to adopt UC, there are challenges for Indian enterprises, both at an infrastructural and organisational level. “Internet is the bedrock of new-age communication tools such as UC. As a result, for many Indian enterprises, the experience of such solutions is limited owing to lack of strong connectivity,” states Lall of Microsoft India. Minhaj Zia, Managing Director – India and SAARC, Polycom shares that the major challenges for today are mainly posed by infrastructure issues. “In Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, network availability has considerably improved, but quality is not as good as it should be. This poses a huge bottleneck particularly for SMBs in these cities, and prevents customers from adopting technology and innovations such as video collaboration, which in today’s
Director – Apps & Services Marketing, Microsoft India
world has a huge overall impact on progress.” Despite improving cellular networks, users in smaller towns do not get a good experience and calls get disconnected several times during meetings due to bandwidth and connectivity issues. Zia believes that if the infrastructure issues get resolved, then there are lots of opportunities in in verticals such as education.”So many schools in the country do not have a network connection, let alone availability. There is so much more potential to implement digital classrooms and extend the reach of education to rural populations through technology,” says Zia. If the idea of Digital India truly reaches its full potential and scale, then expect UC to transform every industry - from education to healthcare. ankush.kumar@expressindia.com
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CONSUMERISATION OF ENTERPRISE APPLICATIONS: ACXO PERSPECTIVE As more and more youngsters enter the workforce, they are changing the way traditional enterprise applications are deployed or designed. No longer are people ready to wait for getting trained on how to use an enterprise application. People today want the same experience and ease of use from enterprise apps, as they experience it with other social networking websites. Enterprise app majors have recognised this trend, and have accordingly focused their efforts on creating user friendly interfaces.
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The final objective - make enterprise application software easy to use, and one that does not require an army of people to train and use. To gauge the impact of consumerisation on the enterprise applications market, Express Computer’s Abhishek Raval, spoke to key CxOs, to understand their perspective on how the market has changed from an end user and service provider point of view. Presented are some of the select perspectives, in a first person account:
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SHAILESH JOSHI HEAD, CORPORATE IT & CIO, GODREJ GROUP
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rom an enterprise application standpoint, each company is at a different stage of evolution. SAP is the ERP across the group. However for each company, it’s kept on separate instances, so it’s not a merged or an integrated infrastructure for all of them. This is because of the fact that we are growing exponentially and this growth could be inorganic and organic. So, if in the coming years, we have to merge or demerge a company, the IT landscape should also be segregated or merged accordingly. Hence, we have maintained five separate instances. Post that, to go to the next level, we have implemented analytics to make use of the data generated by the transactional systems like ERP and CRM. The management at Godrej is also using it for effective decision making. For example, in the properties business, we scout for land, to build properties and then when we are buying or leasing land, there are many factors such as profitability and revenue which are just assumed. In the normal conditions, it would not have been possible to review, three-four years after the project is over, whether the assumed achievables were realised. However the analytics systems do really give us that insight. The data is collated from the past years ever since the project started and tells us whether the forecast was right or wrong. This then gives us an ability to change our forecasting mechanism for the ongoing projects and new projects. This infrastructure was earlier on-premise and now we are starting to look whether we can migrate to the cloud. So, we have not taken the cloud plunge with SAP, our email system is on the cloud. We are on Office 365 for the last three years. We are probably one of the early adopters in the country to move on Office 365. We have implemented an HRMS system, i.e. SAP SuccessFactors EXPRESS COMPUTER
which is again on cloud across the group. We also have Salesforce.com as the CRM for one of the companies, which is again cloud based. So, as a technology parameter, we are gung ho on the cloud but only as long as it makes a business and a financial sense. So, if there is something, which is critical and confidential, then we decide to keep it on premise and not on the cloud but otherwise we are open to moving systems on the cloud. One more thing that we have now initiated is making the enterprise applications available on mobile, and as a hygiene factor again, a policy decision we have taken in the IT function is that any application which we implement should be available on the mobile and if possible in all the three operating systems. Some of our SAP modules are mobile enabled. We truly believe that an era of consumerisation of apps has begun. Also, from our context, the average age of an Godrej employee is going down. All the new age employees want everything to be available on mobile and something that is easy to use. In fact, if something is very complicated to use, then we are flooded with suggestions about making
applications more user friendly, to have a better UI and to make the data available between platforms. Whether we like it or not, we have to make it happen for them to be more productive. So, consumerisation is a huge area of priority here at Godrej. If the demands are not met, then it results in an absolute aversion towards using these tools.Even on the the performance management front, the discussions are on to be more real time rather than continuing with a long drawn process as is done now. This is also an indication of consumerisation. The penchant to be more fast and instant. At Godrej, a quarterly appraisal system is followed. We believe that appraisal is not the only way to give feedback to employees. There is a small system which is currently under discussion of giving feedback on the go. The HR has asked us to develop a small application to provide feedback on-the-go. All the feedback systems will be recorded, which can be used also during the final appraisal. We also have Yammer implemented. It’s an internal collaboration platform, which has a social interface. However we haven’t done much in integrating public social media with our tools. MARCH, 2016
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APPLICATIONS SHASHI MOHAN EVP, UNMAIL, CTO & CIO, INTELLECT DESIGN ARENA LIMITED
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he enterprise applications space has evolved significantly in the last 10 years. Because of added complexities in business, enterprise applications are expected to simplify the life of business users by a simple ‘one click’ transition from ‘Information’ to ‘Transaction’. Static information or FYI has absolutely zero value. Unless I add value to the information provided to me, the information sent to me has no value for me. Analytics has become integral part of all enterprise applications. This is not to confuse with tons of reports that used to be generated and spread across. Now, all information must lead to decision and action. Likewise those stringent workflows are getting replaced by simpler and faster (or so called social) workflows. Embracing social within the organization is becoming more of a basic hygiene. Another extremely important aspect is mobility. Applications not available on mobile, get very little adoption with new age employees. Enterprise applications
are being aligned to be made available on multiple channels, available anywhere anytime. Static intranet portals are considered dinosaur-age and the shift is happening towards interactive social platforms that act as a one-stop shop. Niche applications like ERP, HR, CRM, Finance, and all custom applications are getting blended into a one-stop-shop for employees, managers and stakeholders. In simple words, SMAC is driving the roadmap for future enterprise applications.
Social flavor to any enterprise app makes it far more usable 'Your network defines your net-worth', is so true. With the advent of socialall over us, a social flavor to any enterprise app makes it simple and therefore more usable. In fact organizations with social in their DNA have an edge over its competition, by having more employees aligned with organizations' goals, mission and vision, and increase in their productivity. Adoption of Enterprise Social Network
is becoming an inherent advantage to these companies. Companies which are late to catch-up on this will fail to retain its workforce. Employees use good technology at home and expect the same at the workplace too. The millennial workforce expects all enterprise apps to be available on mobile, a more social, simple and agile way of working rather than a very rigid transactional working with data entry forms of the 90s.
RAMESH VANTIPALLI DIRECTOR – EUC, VMWARE INDIA
T
he legacy desktop is going through significant change. End users are more remote than ever before, often working from home, on the road, or via branch offices. End-user applications are evolving as well, with traditional and cloud applications being delivered from private and public clouds. IT is also under immense pressure to enable this new mobile workforce without sacrificing security and control. IT must ensure that corporate data and applications are secure and they also must control the costs associated with the management of end user devices. With the cloud now being a viable business option, the time is right for companies to take advantage of cloud-hosted desktops and 56
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apps to transform end-user computing into next-generation workspaces.
Business apps must match consumer app experience There is a growing realisation across organizations that with the advent of cloud services, the focus of enterprise applications is shifting to really useful apps that simplify business workflow and increase productivity, while still delivering a consumer-like experience. Virtualising critical enterprise applications improves their health and administration to get maximum use of hardware resources without compromising application performance. Applications are becoming more mobile and easily migrated to any
server in the environment, without downtime in many cases. MARCH, 2016
BUSINESS
INTELLIGENCE
INDIAN BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE MARKET EVOLVES TO MEET REALTIME NEEDS BY JASMINE DESAI As businesses become more complex and demand increased agility, current BI and analytics tools are evolving to add visualisation and self service features
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usiness analytics has become increasingly strategic to most businesses. Presently, data originates from far more sources than it ever has and exists in a variety of formats and types. According to Gartner, the BI and analytics market is in the final stages of a multi-year shift from IT-led, systemof-record reporting to business-led, self-service analytics. 58
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"The shift to the modern BI and analytics platform has now reached a tipping point," says Ian Bertram, Managing VP at Gartner. "Organisations must transition to easy-to-use, fast and agile modern BI platforms to create business value from deeper insights into diverse data sources." As a result, the modern business intelligence and analytics platform has emerged to meet new organisational requirements for accessibility, agility and deeper analytical insights.
According to IDC, the business analytics software market in India will grow at 9.6% year-on-year through 2019, reaching $583 million (roughly Rs 3,442 crore), as compared to 6.8% across AsiaPacific region.
BI gets visual As needs of organisations have been evolving, so have ways of leveraging BI and analytics. A case in point is Housing.com, one of the fastest growing real estate platforms in India. The firm is MARCH, 2016
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warehouse and provide insights in a visual format. The company’s 52-member sales team began using Tableau to track sales data such as planned versus actual sales, Year on Year growth rates, sales trends, profitability of each Line of Business (LOB), geographical distribution of sales, etc. Additionally, the team used the BI solution to study trends relating to customer buying patterns and cash-credit ratios. Later on, Eveready extended the use of BI software to its supply chain team. With its usage, the supply chain management team could get a real-time view into inventory trends, ensure adherence to stocking norms in storage areas, and track materials in transit. After just seven months of using a visual analytical tool, Eveready increased sales by about Rs 15 crore, lowered inventory costs by Rs 10 crore, and achieved over 500% ROI.
Digital era demands faster decision making
leveraging visual analytics tools from Qlik to enable its customers have a smooth and effortless experience in finding their dream homes. Similarly, Eveready Industries India, one of India's largest selling brand of dry cell batteries, is using visual analytics tools from Tableau to quickly analyse its sales data. The company already had a data warehouse in place to store data generated from its ERP system, which was installed in 2005. It also had supply chain management and Salesforce EXPRESS COMPUTER
systems in place, which generated considerable data. In totality, the company had about three terabytes of data – most of it stored in an Oracle database. In addition, it also had some financial data stored in Microsoft Excel worksheets. The company was keen to use its existing data to gain valuable insights, which would aid in better decision making. With this in mind, the company decided to invest in a tool that would analyse data from its existing data
The rise of the digital customer, coupled with hyper competition, and enabling data-driven technologies are significantly disrupting several industries. Mihir Kittur, Co-Founder, Ugam, says, “Online retailers are aggressively investing in data and analytics tools across functional areas such as customer acquisition, distribution, customer experience, inventory planning and assortment. In the future, mobile will be key and play a more central role. Algorithms as a service will also slowly emerge. However, big data talent will be in short supply.” The Indian e-commerce industry, which is on the path of rapid growth, is heavily investing in Big Data and analytic tools. “Regular retail has always had a huge element of demand generation being driven by retail analytics, and this trend has continued and intensified in the online e-commerce space. Online additionally affords the ability to do behaviour analytics. This behaviour data is, perhaps, more difficult to capture say in a store. As a consequence, one can MARCH, 2016
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Algorithms as a service will slowly emerge.However,Big Data talent will be in short supply Mihir Kittur Co-Founder,Ugam
While organisations are increasingly looking to compete in the marketplace based on analytics,theymust ensure that theyhave updated data to ensure success. Deepak Ghodke Country Manager,Tableau Software 60
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really apply predictive analytics in the online context to influence conversion rates at a far more granular level,” opines K Jayakumar, VP & MD, WalmartLabs India. Another trend in retail has been to go multichannel. A transaction may begin online, be investigated in depth at a store and complete on mobile. One can imagine any permutation or combination of the preceding interaction. The difficulty is in tracking such multi-channel transaction across all the channel interfaces. Companies are now beginning to touch the level of sophistication required to be able to collect the data around such multi-channel transactions and subject them to analytics to derive insights, all the while adhering to the strict privacy norms required at each stage. There is also increased focus on enabling decision-makers throughout an organisation to independently explore and analyse data in the channel-of-choice. Kaushal Mody, MD– Delivery Excellence & Innovation, Analytics Lead, Accenture Operations outlines few trends in this area,"Democratisation of data is going to be vital. Business users expect interactivity, multi-channel delivery and self-service BI. We are seeing an increased focus on advanced visualization, better identification of complex trends and faster decision making.” It is imperative that traditional BI tools and techniques have taken a huge maturity improvement primarily due to business demanding agility. Traditional business intelligence tools had focused a lot on descriptive analysis and rear-view mirror like dashboards and KPIs/Metrics validations. Today, there is increased focus on advanced analytics as organisational needs are shifting from structured reporting (“what happened”) to actionable intelligence and predictive insights (“what will happen”). Datadriven point-of-interaction decisions are shifting to the front line. Hybrid models are quickly becoming the new reality. Soumendra Mohanty, Senior VPDigital, Mindtree, states, “The current business demands much more agility to
slice and dice data, in-memory processing and virtually no involvement from IT. Business is driving these scenarios and continue to challenge the status quo with IT delivery mechanisms of the past.” Citing a customer example of BI morphing itself to meet agile business needs, Roger Nolan, Director – Solutions, Informatica says, "Prior to Indian Oil Corporation’s IT architecture transformation from a distributed to a centralised model supporting 6,500 distributors across India, the detection of diversion of subsidized LPG of a domestic connection to a commercial establishment could only be determined from a post-facto analysis of their distributors’ operations. Today, by leveraging technology to put in place business rules and processes that deliver real-time information, Indian Oil Corporation has been able to detect malpractices and irregularities and thereby ensure prompt enforcement.” Led by an internal IT team at Indian Oil Corporation, a centralised architecture built on Informatica’s data integration platform enabled data synchronisation between thousands of distributor sites as well as with external data providers and consumers such as other oil marketing companies and state banks for critical government projects, such as direct cash subsidy. Another example is India’s biggest automobile company – Maruti Suzuki, which is leveraging Qlik to analyse and provide business insights and improve operational efficiency across the enterprise. With Qlik's solution, Maruti Suzuki has been successful in streamlining its sales and distribution management. It has also been able to monitor supplier and dealer performance more effectively; manage complex aftersales and service opportunities efficiently and improve the process of spare parts management. “Intelligent” organisations know that smart decisions come from the use of data, but where that information comes from matters. To truly gain context MARCH, 2016
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ACCORDING TO IDC,THE BUSINESS ANALYTICS SOFTWARE MARKET IN INDIAWILL GROWAT 9.6% YEAR-ON-YEAR THROUGH 2019, REACHING $583 MILLION (ROUGHLY RS 3,442 CRORE), AS COMPARED TO 6.8% ACROSS ASIA-PACIFIC REGION. around trends and industry happenings, organisations must look into both internal and external data sources. Simply focusing on their own data, and shying away from the accelerating data boom, is a mistake. Organisations who utilise comprehensive solutions to process the information from multiple sources and in multiple views, are able to stay ahead of the game. Explains Jaydeep Deshpande, Regional Marketing Manager, QlikTech India, "BI can only be meaningful if it caters to the questions that business users across the enterprise have. In the past BI tools were used to capture a description of what was occurring within an organisation. More organisations today are looking for “diagnostic” analytics to not find what is happening, but to ask questions and find out why.” Another trend that will gain ground is the shift in BI platform requirements, moving from reporting to analysis. This will enable companies to get insights at a glance. Visualisation is key as users need to be able to understand their data in a way that is natural to them, breaking down the barriers between people and their data. Says Anuradha Saihgal, Head – BI Practice, Blue Star Infotech, “When analysis is done in silos, it can be difficult to share findings with others to drive a consensus. BI is no longer about collecting reports, it’s about interactive decision making. Therefore, data storytelling will be very critical to create a compelling narrative to convince team members and executives to take action. However, static stories can lead to unanswered questions and the end of a successful meeting. The option to dive into the data to answer questions in real-time is key to one’s success.” EXPRESS COMPUTER
What the future holds for BI Visualisation and self service analytics will be the norm, rather than the exception. One more trend that is fast gaining traction is the concept of 'Data Lakes'. “Organisations are using the data lake for innovation and testing out new ideas. Once Big Data analysis proves useful, organisations will look to operationalise that analysis. That means, they will make the analysis repeatable and ensure that it is based on trusted data with structure, metadata, data quality, data governance and security,” explains Nolan of Informatica. While the BI landscape changes dynamically, the importance of clean data will remain as critical as ever. “While organisations are increasingly looking to compete in the marketplace based on analytics, they must ensure that they have updated data to ensure success,” observes Deepak Ghodke, Country Manager, Tableau Software. One can also expect development of browser-based dashboards. “Simple graphical elements on mobile devices and tablets will be the highlight of the features offered by BI/Analytics platforms. The conventional reporting involving rows and columns will gradually be phased out,” predicts Jayakumar from WalmartLabs India. Mobile-analytics tools are also expected to be a dynamic part of the analytics process. Industry experts believe that a mobile-first BI platform will be used by more enterprises as the combination of cloud and mobile can help enterprises analyse more data faster. jasmine.desai@expressindia.com
In the online context, one can applypredictive analytics to influence conversion rates at a far more granular level KJayakumar VP& MD,WalmartLabs India
We are seeing an increased focus on advanced visualization,better identification of complex trends and faster decision making Kaushal Mody MD– Delivery Excellence & Innovation, Analytics Lead for Accenture MARCH, 2016
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HOWIoTIS TRANSFORMING INDIAINC SRIKANTH RP In an increasingly connected economy, Indian enterprises are using IoT in innovative ways to significantly improve their competitiveness
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hile India has always had the scale, achieving the efficiency metrics comparable to global standards has been a traditional problem. Be it a sector like agriculture where the yield per acre is dismally low compared to other countries, or be it a sector like power where total transmission and distribution losses are more than 25%, India has traditionally struggled to 62
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improve its efficiencies to levels established by developed countries. How can India as a nation become more competitive and can technology help? Among other emerging technologies, IoT, is one promising technology, that can help Indian enterprises raise the bar for productivity and efficiency to a different level. A case in point which illustrates how IoT can be used to improve yields significantly, is Chitale Dairy, a dairy which sells over 60 million liters of milk
annually. The dairy uses RFID tags to capture vital information about each cow or buffalo and transmits this information back to the dairy's data center. Farmers can access this information about their animals from the company's database using their mobile phones. Armed with this information, they can use this information to track behaviour and the expected levels of milk or when vaccinations have to be given. "The use of IoT in Chitale Dairy’s case, is simple yet powerful considering the fact MARCH, 2016
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that they have managed to increase their yield and hence their market as well. The feeding and breeding of animals is now monitored by computers and by automating the collection of data from each farm, they have improved animal health, leading to increased milk yield per animal. This was possible by tagging every animal with a radio-frequency identification (RFID) tag that, when scanned, transmits unique information on each cow and buffalo back to the data center,"states Murli Mohan, Director and EXPRESS COMPUTER
General Manager, Dell Software Group. By making use of realtime information, Chitale Dairy has managed to completely automate its entire milk production process.
Embedding IoT in business processes With a focus on driving more value, Indian enterprises are focusing heavily on leveraging IoT in their business processes. In many manufacturing firms, IoT is being leveraged to check for continuous monitoring of critical assets,
while many private sector energy power producers are using IoT to better manage and predict supply and demand. In the logistics industry, players like SafeExpress are using IoT to keep track of their trucks and better manage delivery schedules. With the increasing need for automation of business processes, the demand for IoT is rapidly rising as it significantly enables reduction of manual intervention. With growing cellular network coverage, connectivity challenges are greatly reduced, which in turn, is giving a fillip to IoT usage and deployment. "Indian service industries have a great growth potential in terms of IoT. IoT would not only help the services industry in reducing costs but also prevent in downtime of machines, improve efficiency, reduce energy consumption and enhance customer service. Hence with the maturity and proliferation of IoT, the service industry across India is poised for transformation," states Sudip Singh, SVP, Head Global Services - Engineering Services, Infosys. Singh says that IoT will also create automation opportunities in sectors where human intervention is difficult due to hazardous environmental conditions, such as mine fields. As the landscape for technology providers in IoT is vast and fragmented, Infosys is looking to play the role of an ecosystem integrator, wherein the firm would guide and help enterprises in their IoT journey. Automotive players such as Hero MoroCorp, Maruti Suzuki and Tata Motors are actively using IoT in different forms. In a previous interview with EC, Jagdish Belwal, Chief Information Officer at Tata Motors, had stated that his firm was doing some experiments to find out how IoT could help its firm in improving the maintenance of plants. “The technology vertical is working jointly with the manufacturing teams to identify all the opportunities where further efficiency can be brought by making the processes simpler through the use of new solutions from IoT," said Jagdish Belwal, Chief Information Officer at Tata Motors. MARCH, 2016
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INTEROPERABILITYAMONG IOT PRODUCTS AND SOLUTIONS IS A KEY CHALLENGE,AND INDUSTRY EXPERTS BELIEVE THATAS INDIA TRAVELS FURTHER ON THE PATH OF IOTADOPTION,THERE WILL BE A SIGNIFICANT PUSH TOWARDS MAKING INTEROPERABLE AND SECURE PRODUCTS.
We are seeing a great impact of IoTin the Government’s vision of smart cities,which will be built on the backbone of devices in the IoTspace Purushottam Kaushik Managing Director,Sales,Cisco India & SAARC
Usage based insurance byusing wearables can change howinsurance companies design their policies Sudip Singh Senior Vice President and Global Head of Engineering Services,Infosys 64
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Most automotive firms have GPSenabled their fleet for getting real-time information of their trucks, which in turn helps dealers to get updated information on location of material. Similarly, JCB India, a firm which manufactures construction equipment, provides an IoT-based service to its clients, which ensures proactive maintenance of its equipment. JCB India's telematics service allows users to remotely monitor the overall health and performance of machines in the field. Statistics such as fuel consumption, idle time and equipment usage can be studied and analysed, which in turn, can lead to better productivity. Moreover, a geofencing feature ensures that the machine does not go outside defined boundary conditions. Today, JCB has successfully connected over 10,000 construction machines, which are deployed for its customers, across India. Infosys is using IoT-based solutions in its own campuses for monitoring the performance of various assets like chillers, air handling units, gensets and other critical assets. Energy consumption of each asset is monitored and optimised over the years realizing substantial energy savings. Another interesting case of IoT deployment is demonstrated by Kerala Water Authority. Due to aging pipes and unauthorised usage of water, the department faces a huge challenge in ensuring equitable water supply to a population of more than 3 million people. The firm has deployed sensors, which when used in conjunction with a customised solution from IBM helps the firm in receiving alerts related to
irregularities in water supply or repairs. The firm uses sensors to measure water turbidity, salinity and chlorine levels. If there is a change from accepted norms, then the team can immediately take corrective action.
What is driving IoT usage in India The promise of real-time monitoring and tracking of services and systems has helped in boosting the demand for IoT. A recent TechSci Research report on the IoT market in India predicts that the IoT market in India is projected to grow at a CAGR of more than 28% during the period from 2015 to 2020. The firm estimates that the growth in the market is anticipated due to demand for real-time monitoring and tracking of services and systems across diverse industry verticals to reduce operational and manpower costs. Additionally, the research firm believes that government projects such as smart cities, smart transportation, smart grids are also expected to further propel use of IoT technology in the country over the next five years. Agrees Purushottam KaushikManaging Director, Sales, Cisco India & SAARC, "We are seeing a great impact of IoT in the Indian Government’s vision of smart cities, which will be built on the backbone of all devices in the IoT space. The entire ecosystem of smart cities – healthcare, education, infrastructure, agriculture and other industries would get a fillip. State governments are also working on blueprints and competing with each other to stay ahead of the curve." The Government of India will be a key player in pushing IoT, as it can help in MARCH, 2016
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monitoring service delivery. "Governments both state and central through all the proposed digital initiatives are likely to see the biggest transitions which will not only just help in reducing costs and improve revenue by plugging all the leakages, but will also help improve the experience of service delivery tremendously," states Kaushik. As the Indian government is actively pushing the concept of Digital India and smart cities, there will be a huge focus on IoT. "One of the main initiatives under 'Digital India' is smart cities, and the Indian government plans to use almost 1.6 billion connected things. In the larger cities, the cost of management, energy, and maintenance can be extensively brought down with the implementation of IoT. Additionally, India has the 3rd largest smartphone market in the world, and is expected to progress from 200 million Internet users in 2013 to 500 million by 2017. This growth will soon be extended to other devices as well, and with the ease with which IoT connects devices like PC, tablets, cars, and wearables, IoT can be expected to be the largest device market. All in all, the digital transformation going on in India will be one of the biggest contributors of growth for IoT in India," states Andy Stevenson, Head of Middle East and India, Managing Director for India, Fujitsu. Stevenson believes that a country like India, which is rapidly developing and already at the precipice of connectivity and mobility, can reap huge benefits from IoT as it brings about the convergence of various technologies. Looking at the growth opportunities in India, Cisco has partnered with Electronics City Industries Association (ELCIA) in Bangalore to set up Asia’s first ‘Internet of Things (IoT) Innovation Hub’. This project will lay the foundation for a new ecosystem to help Electronic System Design & Manufacturing (ESDM) companies to develop solutions for City Infrastructure Management (CIM) including Smart Parking, Smart CCTV Surveillance, Smart Street Lighting, Smart Water Management/Leak Detection and Community Messaging. EXPRESS COMPUTER
THE ROLE OFIOTIN SMARTCITIES
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he draft policy on Internet of Things by the DeitY,points out to several interesting applications or prototypes that need to be developed,to create a smart and responsive city.For example,under the Smart City umbrella,the policy points out to the need for developing facilities such as smart lighting,
smart traffic management,smart buildings, smart health,smart parking,city surveillance, solid waste management,smart metering, water quality and water clogging management in cities.We take a look at some of the tools and solutions suggested by DeitY in its draft policy,in enabling a smart city.
Function
Benefits
Smart Water
IoT tools and solutions can be used for monitoring the quality of water and for real-time detection of leakages. This technology can also be used for monitoring of water level variations in rivers, dams and reservoirs, for proactive disaster management
Smart Environment
IoT tools and solutions can be used to alarm and control of CO2 emissions of factories, pollution emitted by cars and toxic gases generated. Similarly, IoT can be leveraged to create alarms based on distributed control in specific places like buildings, bridges.
Smart Waste Management
In line with the Swach Bharat mission, IoT-enabled trash cans can be used to alert sanitation crews whenever a bin is full
Smart Agriculture
IoT can be used for monitoring of soil moisture or pests to detect dangerous patterns in land conditions and create an online update mechanism for farmers. IoT can also be used to enable farmers to monitor online, the temperature of grain bins and receive an alert if the temperature rises above an acceptable range to help them preserve grains in storage areas. Similarly, IoT can be used to create unmanned tools for spray of pest control and other insecticides
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The huge number of interconnected devices will lead to significant focus on development of securitysolutions for IoT Murli Mohan Director and GM,Dell Software Group
Similarly, Dell has launched the Dell Edge Gateway 5000 Series, specifically for IoT. This device is designed to aggregate, secure and relay data from diverse sensors and equipment. The device has the capacity to perform local analytics so that only meaningful information is sent to the next tier, which could be another gateway, the datacenter or the cloud. From an Indian perspective, where bandwidth can be expensive, this solution is aimed at helping enterprises in minimising the consumption of expensive network bandwidth and in reducing overall solution latency. The explosion in the number of banking and mobile related services has led to huge deployment of ATMs and cellphone towers across various developing countries. These firms see in IoT, a great technology to help in managing assets. Says Prabhu Ramachandran, Director, WebNMS, "As enterprises start to realise the importance of optimising operational cost of fixtures, the focus has now shifted to investing in technology that could help minimize operational expenditure and improve the bottom line. IoT technology would be a catalyst in facilitating this transition." In India, WebNMS is closely working with companies in the power and utilities, energy and lighting, real estate, banking (ATM) and telecom industries to remotely monitor energy consumption, utilisation, performance, security and efficiency of assets.
Future of IoT in India
In large cities,the cost of management and maintenance can be extensivelybrought down with the implementation of IoT Andy Stevenson Head of Middle East and India,Managing Director for India,Fujitsu 66
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India is on the cusp of a huge digital revolution, and the Indian government's focus on developing smart cities will lead to further adoption of IoT in India. The smart city initiative by the government requires seamless digital and physical infrastructure to be shared efficiently across devices and applications to enhance end services and optimize costs. IoT can play a critical role in fulfilling this vision. “India is in a perfect sweet spot to leverage the market opportunity emerging through IoT. By virtue of a strong ecosystem of IT organizations,
huge growth in mobile internet usage, renewed focus on manufacturing and tremendous potential of opportunities in education, healthcare and agriculture, India can time investment into this opportunity very well,” believes Kaushik. In the case of sectors like healthcare and insurance, IoT can be a potential game changing technology. “In healthcare, IoT would create the opportunity of remote patient monitoring that would change the dynamics of healthcare treatment. Similarly, usage based insurance by using wearables or dongles can change how insurance companies design their policies – both in life and non-life insurance domains,” states Singh. Interoperability among IoT products and solutions is a key challenge, and industry experts believe that as India travels further on the path of IoT adoption, there will be a significant push towards making interoperable and secure products. "The growth of data along with huge number of interconnected devices will also mean that there will be significant focus on development of security solutions for IoT. Administrators across different verticals will focus on keeping their data safe while managing through the minefield of interconnected devices," opines Mohan. Understanding the critical importance of IoT in enhancing growth for the country, NASSCOM has setup a special CoE for IoT under DEITY (Department of Electronics and Information Technology). This will not only act as an incubation center for startups but will also help in brining technology innovators, technology adopters and service providers under one single forum that can lead to increase the pace of adoption. The applicability of IoT in monitoring service levels and in predictive maintenance of equipments can lead to improved efficiencies. As India is primarily a services-led economy, even a small difference in enhancement of productivity levels can significantly improve India's competitiveness in the global landscape. srikanth.rp@expressindia.com
MARCH, 2016
BUSINESS AVENUES
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FEATURE IoT AT MARIC
MARICO’S PLAN TO LEVERAGE IOT IN 2016
The company is using the SAP Manufacturing Integration and Intelligence (MII) for IoT related data BY ABHISHEK RAVAL 68
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he FMCG behemoth is in the process of adopting Internet of Things (IoT) to generate and use quality data at its manufacturing locations. The company is looking forward to speed up this project in the next fiscal. It will be a major shift from strategic decision making to predicting actions at an operational level, with the help of real time data. “I see this culminating into action points in 2016. It’s just a matter of time,” says Girish Rao, Head IT and Business Analytics, Marico. From a fiscal year perspective, 201415, was the year of analytics for Marico. The year was also about rolling out the enterprise mobility project. MARCH, 2016
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The analytics project started off with the data acquisition and slowly moved on to analysing and using data for business purpose. This shift will further accelerate in 2015-16. Having said that, the focus will continue to remain on data mining and acquiring more accurate data. “At the operational level, we require more accurate information. The quality of information we got from the earlier systems was only enough for us to make tactical and strategic decision making but may not be really available from an operational decision making perspective. The frequency at which we were getting the data was also not real time and at a transactional level. IoT helps us in addressing this issue,” says Girish Rao. The FMCG behemoth is in the process of adopting this new age technology to generate and use quality data at its manufacturing locations. “We are looking forward to speed up this project in the next fiscal. It will be a major shift from strategic decision making to predicting actions at an operational level with the help of real time data. I see this culminating into action points in the second half of 2015-16. It’s just a matter of time," says Rao. The company is using the SAP Manufacturing Integration and Intelligence (MII) for IoT related data. The implementation partner will be finalised soon. One more product will be coupled with MII. It includes some amount of Big Data analytics at the local level i.e at the plant level and leveraging the current analytics platform at the central level. It would look something like this. Typically, looking at IoT from a manufacturing perspective, the temperature of a boiler can be captured on a minute to minute basis and in some cases, it could even be second and milliseconds. “The temperature of a boiler is a strong determinant of the quality and the final yield of the output. The sensors fitted on the boiler capture the information. "The observations will empower us to arrive at better operational decisions in terms of what should be the ideal boiler temperature for getting the right yield or maximising the EXPRESS COMPUTER
The FMCG behemoth is in the process of adopting Internet of Things (IoT) to generate and use quality data at its manufacturing locations.The company is looking forward to speed up this project in the next fiscal.It will be a major shift from strategic decision making to predicting actions at an operational level yield. We will also be able to determine what kind of boiler temperature has resulted in what kind of changes in quality of output,” says Rao. Currently, the data is captured at the end of the shift, which means that the variations within the shift are not recorded or noticed. Additionally, as the data is captured manually, it is prone to
human errors. While the shift end production data is captured, the intra shift data remains out of hands. The next- in-line initiative for the IT team at Marico will be to move from standalone products to platforms. Effectively, moving to cloud based platforms, will make much broader sense rather than looking at only products or point solutions. It helps Marico in getting the best of the features and secondly, it also brings in best in class processes. Additionally, the benefit is that it is cost efficient. The costing for the cloud-based solution is based on use / no of users / features. “We have already moved our HR portals on the cloud. It takes care of all the models that we have developed, internally over the years. Marico is also looking at travel management to be moved onto a single cloud platform to better manage the entire travel ecosystem, which includes accommodation and local travel,” informs Rao. As the service providers mature their offerings, Marico will look at cloud platforms being adopted for other processes too. The procurement solutions may also be run from cloudbased models. But specific business requirements will be retained internally and keep running on the same niche platforms designed in house. abhishek.raval@expressindia.com
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MOBILITY
HOWENTERPRISE MOBILITYIS ENABLING VIRTUALOFFICES BY RASHI VARSHNEY With the number of mobile internet users in India projected to double and cross the 300 million mark by 2017 according to a report by KPMG, business mobility is emerging as a top priority for Indian enterprises.
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very firm today wants to improve effectiveness apart from efficiency of the executives in order to increase its market share, and revenues globally. Since mobile technology plays an important role owing to its growing popularity and adoption, enterprises are capitalising on ‘not in office’ norm with innovative enterprise mobility solutions. Thanks to effective enterprise mobility solutions, enterprises are now comfortable with the concept of virtual offices. The benefits of enterprise mobility could be multiple and 70
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extraordinary, which cannot be performed otherwise sitting in the premises of an office. Looking at the exponential benefits of mobility, private enterprises as well as Government departments are adopting enterprise mobility in a big way. A case in point which showcases how enterprise mobility can bring in huge efficiencies is Jagran Prakashan (JPL), the publisher of leading Hindi daily Dainik Jagran, which publishes a total of 11 newspapers and a magazine from 37 different printing facilities across 13 states in five different languages. The firm is also the owner of FM Radio
Station ‘Radio City’. The firm has deployed Oracle WebCenter Portal to create a dynamic, secure, and intuitive self-service enterprise portal and integrated it with Oracle’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system and other applications, such as the organizational mass mailing system, business intelligence, and management information system. Jagran Prakashan wanted to diversify its businesses in multiple geographic locations and needed to implement a centralised and user-friendly enterprise portal to increase business agility and improve document sharing and collaboration across device platforms. MARCH, 2016
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and in providing speedy updates to the transport management system and in improving its efficiency by tracking the company’s workforce. “Mobile environments have emerged to be one of the key areas of focus for businesses in India. Companies are evolving at a rapid pace and are engaging with prospective customers to provide engaging mobile app experiences. Multichannel, mobile environments were the new normal in 2015,” says Mitesh Agarwal, Vice President, Sales Consulting & CTO, Oracle India. Agarwal says that workers and customers alike are untethered, which is enabling new business models and transforming industries. If we look at Uber, SnapChat, or even Facebook, 400 million of their users log in only with their mobile devices. “In other words, mobility is now becoming the primary way for consumers to interact with a brand and get things done. To adapt to this changing paradigm, businesses are adopting a ‘Mobile-First’ strategy. In 2015, we witnessed that companies were focused on making mobility a core part of their business, and the primary channel by which they engage with customers,” opines Agarwal.
Tablets replacing laptops
The Oracle WebCenter Portal helped the firm in optimising mobile experiences for Jagran Prakashan’s target devices. They were able to embed the approval workflow processes into the enterprise portal and this provided its users with an integrated and intuitive interface. Now, about 30% of JPL’s sales staff members have tablets and because of application mobility, they no longer need to return to the office, which has significantly improved efficiency and increased business agility. Similarly, Safexpress, India’s prominent logistics and supply chain management company, which provides door-to-door delivery services for EXPRESS COMPUTER
commercial goods and cargo throughout India wanted to streamline its internal processes, and provide decision making and communication tools to its sales force and operations teams. The company sought to deploy tablets and rugged handheld terminals to 1,500 delivery vehicle drivers. It also sought to provide communication and CRM tools to its business development and customer account management teams, and arm its operations managers located throughout India with mobile devices to enhance decision making. The deployment of AirWatch-VMWare helped the company to enhance its delivery operations by capturing real-time data
With the number of mobile Internet users in India projected to double and cross the 300 million mark by 2017 according to a report by KPMG, business mobility is emerging as a top priority for Indian enterprises. “We are shifting to newer systems of engagement and though enterprises were a little apprehensive in going all out, today, they seem to have come to terms with it as something which cannot be ignored. With proliferation of IoT into enterprises, the significance of mobility transforming the business is integral and most companies are building or have already built a roadmap for their strategic mobility initiatives,” says Deepak Kadambi, Director – Marketing for Product Engineering Services, Happiest Minds Technologies. MARCH, 2016
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Todaynobody questions the need for a web presence. Similarlytime has come when it is imperative to have a mobile presence Mitesh Agarwal Vice President,Sales Consulting & CTO, Oracle India
Data is no longer locked to a particular device,it needs to be available with people to work on it Indrajit Belgundi Director & General Manager,End User Computing,Dell India 72
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He said that mobility is transforming the enterprise, and this is leading to a plethora of native cloud platforms being launched, and tablets are already replacing laptops in enterprises. “Last year, enterprises spent around 40% of their time on native apps, and around 30% on hybrid apps (according to Forrester & Gartner). This clearly shows the focus on native apps and the emphasis on delivering the same experience to employees and customers alike. By 2017, we predict that 25% of enterprises will have an enterprise app store for managing corporate-sanctioned apps across their organisation,” elaborates Kadambi. Take the case of NBFC, Magma Fincorp. The firm offers a bouquet of financial products, and operates through 232 branches in 25 states, employing over 9,000 people. Sales executives at Magma were spending a lot of time capturing customer requirements, collecting KYC and other documents, responding to queries from the operations and credit teams, while commuting between customers, dealer locations and Magma offices. In order to accelerate the process, Magma Fincorp implemented a mobile based loan sourcing and CRM solution that was provisioned on Android devices for the team on the field. By using VMware’s AirWatch, the IT team at Magma Fincorp were able to setup a highly scalable mobility management platform to secure and manage their complete fleet of over 4000 mobile devices. The firm had also a single management platform for securing and provisioning the devices with device level configurations.
Chargers of Enterprise Mobility Indrajit Belgundi, Director & General Manager, End User Computing, Dell India believes that enterprise mobility ensures the best way to complete the job and hence it is a must in today’s world. “We believe there are only two things which are mobile, i.e., people and data. Since we know that people are mobile, we
need to give them the best available tools to complete the job. The tools can be laptops, notebook, tablets, or hybrids. Now, many years back, data used to be locked in a secure environment or only on the server. But now, data is no longer locked to a particular device, and data needs to be available with people to work on it,” says Belgundi. In India, organisations are seeing enterprise mobility as a tool for enhancing productivity and efficiency of the organisation as a whole, and their employees. Mirroring the same view, Oracle’s Agarwal says that in many cases the drive towards mobility is driven from within the organisation, as innovative users and line of business managers accelerate the need for a mobile strategy. “Line-of-business users want to be able to extend their enterprise applications to mobile devices because keeping the workforce connected empowers everyone to make decisions, take action, and stay informed. IT developers and architects want to be able to extend their current skill sets and tools to embrace mobile paradigms, develop new types of mobile apps, and spearhead strategic, innovative endeavours for the enterprise.”
Driving factors India recently surpassed United States in the number of smartphones, and became the second largest smartphone market in the world, according to a new report from market research firm Counterpoint. India's smartphone user base increased to 220 million by the end of last year. Overall, for the complete year of 2015, smartphone shipments crossed the 100 million mark, which represents a yearon-year growth of 23%. Besides the growing number of mobile devices in India, factors such as application adoption, and a huge number of startups too are fuelling the growth in India. “There are many factors driving this movement in India. For example, the sheer size of this market and the potential to grow has already made it a hotbed for mobility initiatives -- both enterprise and MARCH, 2016
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consumer. Rise of 3G / 4G LTE, smartphones, increased PC penetration including usage of many mobility related applications by startups have fuelled this mega trend. The subcontinent will also be fuelled by disruptive Technologies such as SMAC. Some of the areas where we see this happening are across infrastructure, applications and end users,” says Happiest Minds’ Kadambi. In some ways, mobility is taking the same trajectory as that taken by the web when it came into being. “Today nobody questions the need for a web presence. Similarly time has come when it is imperative to have a mobile presence for all applications and services,” says Kadambi.
India Inc and Enterprise mobility Speaking about CIOs in India adopting enterprise mobility, Sangeeta Giri, Sales Director – AirWatch, VMWare says that while CIOs rank mobility as one of their highest priorities, Indian businesses today are in varying stages of maturity when it comes to mobility. “Top sectors witnessing the adoption of a mobility strategy ahead of others are BFSI, IT/ ITES, Telecom and FMCG,” says Giri. She further said that India represents one of the top growth markets for VMware when it comes to end user computing. Mirroring Giri’s views, Dell’s Belgundi says that BFSI, pharma, and health are the potential adopters of enterprise mobility in India.
How enterprise mobility is bringing in a new focus for the government The Narendra Modi government’s focus on Digital India and e-governance has encouraged tech projects in states and the centre. The government is not only bringing mobility solutions for citizens but also for officers to bring in more efficiency for better and transparent governance. For instance, the Passport division of India recently launched an mPassport Police mobile app for police force. The police department plays an important role to deliver passports and related services such as Police Clearance EXPRESS COMPUTER
Certificate (PCC) to the citizens. The verification process essentially includes exchange of physical documents (PP Forms) across District Police Headquarters (DPHq), Criminal Investigation Department (CID)/ Local Intelligence Unit (LIU) and Field Verification teams, and contributes mostly to the delays in the overall police verification report processing time. The custom mobile application (mPassport Police App) which has been launched recently will enable the team to improve the overall processing cycle time. “Under the Passport Seva Project, the MEA has been working on streamlining the police verification system by digitally integrating 685 of the 731 police districts in the country,” says Muktesh K Pardeshi, Joint Secretary (PSP) and Chief Passport Officer, Ministry of External Affairs. Pardeshi says that this initiative has helped in cutting down on the number of days taken to complete the police check from 42 days in 2014 to 34 days in 2015. Similarly, the Bihar State Building Construction Corporation Limited (BSBCCL), a state enterprise established in 2008 by the Government of Bihar under the Building Construction Department, has used enterprise mobility in a significant way to improve its efficiencies. To smoothly manage and track its field force, the firm decided to implement a location tracker solution from Vodafone. The ‘Vodafone Location Tracker’ (VLT). The solution is a GSM network-based location tracking service where the location of the SIM or mobile number is identified on the basis of the cell tower it is latched on to. Currently, the BSBCCL is using VLT, to monitor the status of employees and projects. All the 2G connections of the corporation have been mapped with this application and the real time status of the project and the workforce is available instantly. The application has helped in monitoring each and every scheme with respect to fund allotment, work status, expenditure, contractor assignment and work details. In addition, the leave request is now being managed with the
As the datacenter becomes more cloud enabled, the endpoint will become more mobile Sangeeta Giri Sales Director – AirWatch,VMWare
By2017,25% of enterprises will have an enterprise app store for managing corporate-sanctioned apps across organisation Deepak Kadambi Happiest MindsTechnologies
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MOBILITY help of this application. An employee can apply for leave and see the status of the request on the mobile app. Also in Maharashtra , taking a lesson from the previous year’s performance where only 25 per cent of the budgetary allocations were utilised until January this year, civic chief Ajoy Mehta has promised maximum implementation of the budget in this financial year. Taking measures to avoid the occurrences of multiple scams such as the Rs 150-crore drain desilting scam and the irregularities in road contracts worth Rs 2000 crore, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is planning an application-based monitoring of expenditures. The civic body has created an application that will reflect real-time updates on the expenditures made for projects and the information will be accessible to additional municipal commissioners.
Watchout for mobility roadblocks Like any other technology, enterprise mobility too comes with its own set of challenges. Some of the major challenges according to Kadambi are, lack of a solid road map for mobility or a strategy; the complexity of the enterprise mobility ecosystem; connecting the expectations between the demands of an enterprise user in a predominantly consumer marketplace with related lifecycles; addressing the right security concerns which matter and real time access to information and data. To understand the mobility market better, VMWare surveyed nearly 1,200 organisations, globally, to probe their level of comfort, gauge how far they have come, and understand the obstacles that are holding them back. The survey found out that security and data loss remain top concerns for organisations as they look at business mobility. Moreover, customers equate the experience they get via a mobile or tablet app with the quality of the brand behind it, according to Oracle’s Agarwal. “The design, functionality, performance, and security of apps today have become the new weapons in the 74
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battle to attract and retain customers, and businesses that do not arm themselves appropriately have little chance of coming out on top,” says he. The major challenges according to Agarwal, that businesses face include poor app performance and speed; impact of mobile traffic and load on backend systems and data security. “Mobile and security are strongly connected in any IT conversation. Mobile email, applications and browsing have their own risks. Shifting revenue generation and business operations to mobile carries even greater risks, along with greater returns,” says AirWatch’s Giri. However, she affirms that challenges of mobility bring out new opportunities for firms. For example, Data Leakage Protection (DLP), can be used to ensure that all data from any app that the user chooses to use will be protected by the company without the end user even knowing it.
The next frontier for enterprise mobility The total addressable enterprise mobility solutions industry in Asia Pacific, which includes applications, devices, security, middleware, and professional services, is expected to grow from US $22B in 2015 to
US$26.7B by 2017. The market in India is also slated to grow from US$1.7B in 2015 to US$2.3B in 2017 over the same period. “We see it as a game changer and Enterprise Mobility is well-positioned to help organisations achieve their mobility goals with a holistic approach to planning, implementing, and managing mobility environments. We are seeing increased traction in the areas of ERP, CRM, SCM, Fleet Management, and Workforce Management among a few others in India. Considering the sheer size of the market with potential expansion patterns, there is a very promising future for Enterprise Mobility in India,” said Kadambi. Predicts Agarwal, “Being able to leverage mobile technology and make it meaningful by finding significant links to multiple, varied sources of data (for example linking biometric values with environmental factors, or calendar data with home control and monitoring) is what will lead to promising developments for enterprise mobility in 2016,”. The next frontier for enterprise computing will see the convergence of the Internet of Things with mobile computing to create the connected enterprise. rashi.varshney@expressindia.com
MARCH, 2016
INTERVIEW SANJIV KUMAR DWIVEDI
IT can automate the entire claims management process Sanjiv Kumar Dwivedi, VP, Investigation and Loss Mitigation, Bajaj Allianz General Insurance in conversation with Abhishek Raval, on the role of IT in insurance claims management and investigation What is the role of IT in fraud management at Bajaj Allianz? In claims proposals regarding motor insurance cases, our field team uses iPads to prepare the report, take photographs of the damage to the vehicle and send it to the central server. Earlier, this process was manual and time consuming. IT provides fast intelligence gathering on red flagging of cases out of the total claims proposals and in separating the possibly fraudulent cases from the genuine. The claims proposal may be regarding motor insurance or health insurance. The investigation process consists of the field team and the backend team. The former team works on the ground. They are surveyors who visit the place of accident for motor insurance claims, health insurance claims etc. and the latter threshes out the suspicious cases out of all the claims proposals. IT systems help us in the process of zeroing on these cases. The field work is planned with reference to the information provided by the IT systems. In the absence of such systems, the field team does not have any clues to work on. Thus the backend team using technology, lines up only the potentially fraudulent claims and avoids any instances of investing time in going after the false positives thus irritating genuine customers. IT helps us to identify cases having higher possibility of fraud. How can IT crunch the process of identifying fraudulent customers? We are looking forward to technology helping us in the area of predictive analytics. This includes the possibility of running customer profiles across industries or other insurance companies that the customers have bought policies from. As a regular process, just before the customer is acquired, if IT systems can scan their profiles and history with respect to various parameters, such as say, 'claims statistics', it can enable us to gauge the chances EXPRESS COMPUTER
Are you looking to implement Big Data solutions? As a company, we are actively looking for a Big data solution.It will help us in predictive analysis,and in processes such as claims management, underwriting and fraud management. The next step for us in technology adoption will be in the Big Data space.In our last management meeting,this was considered as one of the most important topics.
of customers coming up with claims in the coming three-four months and what is the percentage of those customers being fraudulent. Moreover, there are many suspicious cases, where the customers goes scot-free in the absence of any substantial evidence. IT solutions can reference check the potential fraudsters on various social networking platforms to see if they are associated with other fraudsters or syndicates, who have made a living out of such activities. The solution can also lookout for whether the same customer has filed for claims in health insurance, motor insurance, motor third party insurance, fire insurance, home insurance and so on. So, all this put together helps us in corroborating evidences that he is a fraudulent customer by nature. This eventually helps us in preparing a water-tight case against this type of customer. What are your suggestions on how IT can play a role in a typical motor accident case? In a motor accident case, we are looking for IT solutions, which can give reliable information on the authenticity of the customer's reporting of the nature of his injury during the accident. For example, we could look at, 'What are the chances of the the correctness of the nature of the injury as claimed by the customer' or 'What is the probability of the customer having exaggerated the information about the injury to get a higher claims amount?'. We could also take a look at the information as mentioned by the customer in the injury certificate. It will help us in further building evidences. This is apart from IT playing a role in red flagging suspicious cases, saving leakages and helping in customer service etc. In my opinion, the entire process of claims management can be automated by IT. abhishek.raval@expressindia.com
MARCH, 2016
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INTERVIEW MUKTESH K PARDESHI, GOVT OF INDIA
The Indian
PASSPORT
MAKEOVER Over the years, getting a passport has been an arduous task for the citizens but with the intervention of technology, things are changing quickly. Although the number of applications have increased substantially, the time taken for police verification and issuing the passport has gradually gone down. In an exclusive interview with EC’s Mohd Ujaley, Muktesh K Pardeshi, Joint Secretary & Chief Passport Officer, Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, shares insights into how the Indian Passport department has leveraged technology to significantly improve the process of issuing passports 76
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How was the year 2015 for the passport division? It was a great and productive year. It was productive in a sense that we have been able to achieve the target of 20% growth. In 2014, we had setup the extremely ambitious target of issuing 10 million passports and after having crossed the mark, we are the third country in the world after USA and China to have issued more than 10 million passports. We crossed this milestone in 2014. But we also wanted to sustain this momentum. Therefore, in January 2015, we have collectively set the target of 12 million passports to be issued. We take pride in saying that we collectively met this target for the year 2015. What does this mean? It means that efficiency in the passport offices has improved and there is ease of access to passport services. Thus it’s interesting that Kerala is no longer the number one state which once used to have maximum passport applications and issuance. It has been replaced by Uttar Pradesh. In Uttar Pradesh, we have seen 40% growth and in a period of three-years, the passport numbers have doubled. In 2013, it was around 6.5 lakh and in 2015 it touched 13.5 lakh. This development is indeed incredible as we could not have thought of this number two years earlier. More interestingly, the growth has come from semi-urban areas such as Gorakhpur and adjoining districts of Varanasi, Bareilly and some rural districts attached to Ghaziabad. So we have been startled by this development. In fact, Kerala is now at the number three position. For the first time, four states— Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Kerala and Tamilnadu—have crossed the mark of more than a million passports. What could be the reasons for this development? I think ease of doing business at passport offices could be one of the foremost reasons for this development. Since, I have been in this job for over five years now, I perhaps can give you some insight on why this is happening. In earlier days, EXPRESS COMPUTER
until and unless it became necessary for a person to have a passport, the person would not apply for it. But that trend is now clearly changing. Young people are very enthusiastic and they are applying in large numbers. Recently, I interacted with a group of youngsters in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh and I was amazed to know that when a young person from his village got his first passport, there was a celebration among his friends. After some days, some more friends of his came together to Gorakhpur and they applied. Fortunately, they also received their passport. So the first guy automatically became a kind of brand ambassador of passport seva in his village. So every time somebody has to apply for a passport, he helped them and for that he got a free ride to Gorakhpur and at times a free movie ticket to watch with his friends. This kind of small but impactful things are happening on the ground leading to a huge growth in the number of the passport applications. In 2015, you achieved the target of issuing 12 million passports.What is your target for 2016 and is there any special plan to achieve these numbers? Focus on ease of doing business at Passport Seva Kendras (PSK) will continue as it is crucial for the growth and that is also the idea of the Ministry of External Affairs. We know that we have been able to achieve handsome growth of 20%. So even in 2016 we are targeting 1520% growth in the number of the passports. But more than anything else for the sustainable growth, it is important to simplify the process so that people should be able to get the passport in as less time as possible. Reducing the timeline to deliver the passport will be the focus in 2016. In the last couple of years, we have improved our efficiency. Ease of transaction at passport offices has also improved but the third focus factor for us is to improve accessibility. We initially had 77 passport seva Kendras (PSKs). This went upto 85 and by the end of this
financial year (2015-16), the number of PSKs will go up to 90. We expect this number to go up to 95 by the end of 2016. Once upon a time, there used to be only two passport offices for NorthEast—one in Guwahati which used to cover six North-East states and Kolkata used to take care of Sikkim. Now each of these states have a PSK. We are also setting up PSKs in Nagaland, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh in the current month itself. Also, there are pockets that are remotely located like Leh or Bhimavaram in Andhra Pradesh. By the second half of this year, we will reach out to all such places. So overall, in the year 2016, you will see increased focus on accessibility. Are the 95 Passport Seva Kendras enough for the entire country? Big states like Bihar have only one or two PSKs. Is there any plan to open multiple PSKs in states? We have thought of a couple of solutions. Firstly, we are increasing the number of PSKs from the present 75 to 95 by the end of this year. Secondly, the ministry is going to have another feasibility study to setup PSKs for the period from 2018. Questions such as whether these 95 PSKs will be adequate enough in the next stage of passport seva will be addressed. A study will be commissioned shortly and depending on the study recommendations, we will decide the next course of action. In the meanwhile, we are conducting passport camps at the district level, especially in those places which are remotely located. In the year 2015, 125 such camps at very inaccessible and remote locations were organised. We had camps in Leh, Daman & Diu and Lakshadweep. In Lakshadweep, we camped in a place called Agatti, which has a total population of about 10 thousand. I have personally visited this region. People were so happy that they said they had never expected the Ministry of External Affairs to land in Agatti Island with merely a population of 10 thousand and organise a passport camp for them. MARCH, 2016
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INTERVIEW MUKTESH K PARDESHI, GOVT OF INDIA
The Ministry of External Affairs has recently decided to accept police verification after the passport has been issued.Will the number of passports go up? Yes, the number should go up. What government has done is that now for welldocumented citizens, getting the passport has become hassle free. By welldocumented citizens, I mean a citizen who has a legitimate Aadhar Card, PAN Card and Voter ID Card. They will be issued passport first and police verification will happen later. But there are large number of people who may not have all the documents. They will have to go through regular procedure. When you compare our country to countries like Singapore, getting a passport in our country is a little tough because people usually do not have all the documents. They try to get it when they have to apply for passport. But this is completely different in Singapore. Getting a passport is a much easier exercise because from the time of birth 78
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itself, each citizen makes sure that all the necessary documents are in place. Among all the MMPs, the Passport Seva service stands very tall. How do you think technology has played a role in helping the department achieve its objective? This project has become the role model for e-governance. Among all the MMPs under NeGP, the Passport Seva has been one of the most successful projects. This has been possible because of full digitisation of the documents. Earlier files were manually processed, but not any more. The first thing is that when you visit the Passport Seva Kendra, we digitised your file and then we throw the paper. Its all paperless and now there are no more cases of missing files. Now, we are issuing 12 million passports every year, and we would not have come across a single case of missing passport as everything is digital. This is the best example of true Digital India. For digitisation, we are taking the
photographs ourselves. Earlier, we used to take the photo from applications. However, these photos could be substituted. But, now with digitisation, it cannot be. We are also leveraging mobile phones. Applicants can track the progress of the passport application via SMS. Now we also have an application for the police department. This is part of e-governance which has been taken to the next stage of m-governance. We are also focusing on a true integrated government model. Most of the government agencies work in silos but at the passport seva we have an integrated government—we are linked with the police districts, the Aaadhar, India Post, and and with all the embassies. So we have taken e-governance to the next level called m-governance, which ultimately helps in realising the vision of integrated government (i-government). So the whole operation for the government as well as for the citizen has become seamless. In MARCH, 2016
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addition, the process has also become secure for the country. Twelve million passport in an year means that your department is dealing with large number of personal data. How does your department ensure security and privacy of the data? Has there been any case of data breach in the last couple of years? We have a very robust security mechanism in place. Passport data has been declared as extremely sensitive data. In the National Security Council (NSC), there is a mechanism to ensure cyber security of these sensitive data. In the last five years, we have seen many attacks, but we have been able to deal with it because of the robustness of the system that we have created. On the privacy part, we are very conscious about it. All the data that we collect is in the safe hands of the government. Although, we work in the public private partnership (PPP) mode with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), they are not the custodian of the data. The data center and disaster recovery centre is owned by the government. We have two-key system in place like the bank locker. The citizen may think that they have gone through the TCS counter at PSK but the moment the data is submitted, they cannot open it. Like in a case of bank locker, there are two keys—one with the bank and the other with the customer. To open a locker, you need both the keys but the moment it is locked, the bank cannot open it. Similarly in our case, the moment data is submitted, it becomes the sovereign property of the government. Are you also using some data analytics tools to understand the trend emanating from the data of passport applications? Yes, we do use data analytics in a significant way. In fact, it has been very helpful in the projection of our annual growth, pocket growth, demographic growth and understanding seasonal fluctuations. The huge data we have created in last five years is very beneficial. They give us solid EXPRESS COMPUTER
In terms of maximum passport application and issuance,Kerala is no longer the number one state.It has been replaced by Uttar Pradesh. In Uttar Pradesh, we have seen 40% growth and in three-years time,the passport numbers have doubled.
understanding about different trends leading to better efficiency and productivity. For example in UP, we are better placed now because of data analytics. The moment we saw the trend of growing demand, we geared ourselves adequately. Had we followed the old system of operating, we would not have been able to achieve the kind of growth that we have seen in UP. So, we diverted people, created more counters and camps and allocated more resources to UP. This all has been possible because of timely analysis of data. The data analytics will also help in projecting future growth and accordingly the government will also know the pockets where the demand will be high. This helps us in setting-up the new PSKs. The government was mulling of issuing biometric passports. Is there any progress on that and what are the future plans to make the passport more smart? The work is under tendering stage for biometric passports. Right now, it is not mandatory for the countries but it has
been recommended by International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a Montreal, Canada headquartered civil aviation body that is responsible for setting-up norms for international air travel. The one mandatory norm which is now operational was that by November 2015, everybody should carry only machine readable passport and must not carry handwritten passports. From last two years, we have been issuing machine readable passports. We also ran a campaign sensitising people if they have a hand-written passport, they should get it replaced. Most of the people have already replaced their passports. Some hand-written passports may still be present, but if the owner of these passports do not want to replace, the government cannot force them to do. But the fact is that they now cannot travel on that passport. However, through your medium, I would like to request if any of them still possess the hand-written passport, they should get it replaced from the nearest PSK. Actually in mid-nineties, hand-written passport was issued for 20 years. So somebody who got a handwritten passport in the year 1997, his passport is still valid till 2017. However, if this is handwritten, they can't travel on it. The e-passport that we are envisaging will have an invisible chip in which data will be stored electronically. So even if somebody tries to play around the data of the passport, they won't be able to change the data inside the chip. So the passport will become more secure. For biometric passports, our target is to do it by the end of 2016. In many airports there are e-gates. A time will come when you may not have to go through the manned immigration counters. With an e-passport, the e-gate could read your passport by showing the passport and you will be allowed to go. Of course, these are futuristic things that require infrastructure upgradation but surely one day it will happen. mohd.ujaley@expressindia.com
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HOWANALYTICS CAN TRANSFORM GOVERNMENTFUNCTIONS The Government Analytics & Information Summit, organised by Express Computer and SAS saw some of the industry’s most prominent thought leaders sharing their perspective on the role of analytics for improving governance BY RASHI VARSHNEY AND ANKUSH KUMAR
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he 'Government Analytics & Information Summit 2016' was recently organised by the Indian Express Group in partnership with SAS Institute (India). The event witnessed talks on analytics from some of the top decision makers in the government. Some notable thought leaders such as R S Sharma, Chairman, TRAI; Sanjeev Singh, ADG (Systems), Income Tax, Government of India and Muktesh K Pardeshi, Joint Secretary (PSP) & Chief Passport Officer, shared their views on the critical role of analytics.
Analytics for good governance In the event's first keynote, R S Sharma, shared how the power of analytics could be used for accelerating decision making for the government, and remove inefficiencies across the ecosystem. "Big Data can lead to unlocking of a lot of value, as the government has data in huge volumes," said R S Sharma. RS Sharma, spoke on the experience of building Aadhar, which has undoubtedly given the Indian government a base 80
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R S Sharma, Chairman, TRAI
foundation for all future government related analytics projects. Today, Aadhar is already being used for preventing
revenue leakages in PDS and LPG subsidy. He also shared more details about the Government of India's online platform, MARCH, 2016
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data.gov.in, which is a Open Government Data (OGD) Platform India supporting the Open Data initiative of Government of India. The portal is intended to be used by ministries and departments in the Government to publish datasets and other related documents. Sharma said that the data sets available on the portal could be analyzed by anyone, which would help in accelerating good governance in India. “Government departments have to collaborate. Agencies specialised in analytics need to engage with policy makers. Additionally, major firms can volunteer and invest in analytics to demonstrate the value of data analytics to the government,” Sharma said. Analytics is useful for drafting policies, decisions and identify trends. There is a huge opportunity in data analytics, as analytics can to transform the way we work. He also spoke about the Internet of Things (IoT), and said that IoT was another promising area for big data analytics when seen in the context of smart cities.
Analytics can change the future of work In the second keynote, Sanjeev Singh, ADG (Systems), Income Tax, who has been instrumental in setting up the Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence solution for the Income Tax Department, asserted that analytics was not merely about getting insights, but more importantly, it was about bringing about a paradigm shift in changing the way we work. “'Digital is Default'. It's becoming the new norm. Some of the other changes sweeping both corporate firms as well as the government include mass customisation and aggregation,” said Sanjeev Singh. Speaking to a full house, Singh said that use cases were more important than analytics tools. He also shared concerns over challenges and limitations of big data analytics in India. India does not have data policies which are up to the speed with the latest developments. However, he was optimistic that the governance model in India will evolve. “The way departments EXPRESS COMPUTER
Sanjeev Singh, ADG (Systems), Income Tax, Government of India
are approaching and looking at integration of data in multiple business procedures, the ecosystem is building up,” said Singh
How analytics raised the passport application attendance rate India is the third largest passport issuing country in the world, with 65 million valid passport holders, said Muktesh Pardeshi, while kicking off his keynote speech. Talking about how analytics has helped the passport services division, he recalled the time when online appointments for passports were given in 2012, and the passport applicant would not turn up at the office. But today, with the help of analytics, the passport office can identify these issues proactively. A rescheduling service has been launched, with a fee valid for one year. “The results have been clear. 75 percent appointments were not wasted, and chances of not at all turning up became very low,” said Pardeshi. He also shared details of other successful services at the passport division which have improved due to data analytics. He cited the example of mPassport Seva, an app that provides specific details on areas such as location of centers, fee application status, contact information and other general information related to a citizen's passport. Users can track status of their passport applications using a file number and date of birth. For dispatched passports, the
Muktesh K Pardeshi, Joint Secretary (PSP) & Chief Passport Officer
delivery status can also be tracked. In another interesting technology presentation, Jacqueline Long, Principal Technical Architect, SAS Institute touched upon how data analytics can be used in real time on the basis of the ever changing data streams. She said that analytics is more about reporting and finding out the solution to real life issues.
Interactive panel discussion highlights gaps and successes A panel discussion around 'Digital India: Opportunities for leveraging analytics for a billion citizens', highlighted the key successes, best practices and the gaps that need to be addressed for ensuring that data analytics projects are effective. The panelists included Government luminaries, Piyush Gupta, Associate VP, National Institute for Smart Government (NISG); Panchanan Dash, Deputy Director General, Ministry of Statistics and Prog. Implementation Government of India, Shyam Bihari Singh, Deputy DG, NIC and Vineet Khanna, Director, Practices and Risk Management Specialist, SAS Institute. This panel discussion was moderated by Srikanth RP, Editor, Express Computer. Panchanand Dash, Deputy Director General, Ministry of Statistics and Prog. Implementation Government of India gave an example of an epidemic, and how analytics was used to control it when a large number of soldiers were dying and MARCH, 2016
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the doctors were finding it increasingly difficult to control the spread of the disease. He highlighted that most of the projects like Start-up India and Stand-up India require well analysed information to succeed. “All data loaded in the in the data servers should be exposed for use. Data is still not connected and the money spent for social schemes is not accountable,” said Shyam Bihari Singh, Deputy DG, NIC. Singh said that the justice delivery system can be improved through valuable assessment of data. Adjournment of court cases can become transparent through insights drawn from analytics tools. Policies need to be worked out as to how data can be integrated. Adoption of analytics is truly very transformational and has grown in the last few years. Piyush Gupta, Associate VP, National Institute for Smart Government (NISG) was of the view that the traditional way of banking is not practiced now. “Although some of the Government departments like taxation and policing have started using analytics in a big way but a lot of other
Jacqueline Long, Principal Technical Architect, SAS Institute
Satyajit Dwivedi, Director, Process, Sensor and IoT, Global Practices, SAS India
departments need to understand the difference it can make,” stated Piyush Gupta. He said that the mindset of sharing data needs to change within the government. Vineet Khanna, Director, Practices and Risk Management Specialist, SAS Institute was of the view that risk assessment of data sharing was missing from the entire system. “Adoption and compliance of eGovernance continues to reel under
its own set of challenges. There is a strong need for data driven citizen engagement through cloud platforms. A lot of unstructured data from social platforms should be incorporated,” said Vineet Khanna. In a separate talk, Satyajit Dwivedi, Director, Process, Sensor and IoT, Global Practices, SAS India spoke on the topic of how IoT could be relevant for planning and monitoring service delivery in the context of smart cities.
[L-R] Panchanan Dash, Deputy Director General, Ministry of Statistics and Prog. Implementation Government of India, Shyam Bihari Singh, Deputy DG, NIC, Piyush Gupta, Associate VP, National Institute for Smart Government (NISG) and Vineet Khanna, Director, Practices and Risk Management Specialist, SAS Institute 82
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