: InformationWeek India – November – (Government) by Viraj Mehta

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5 ways to succeed in e-governance projects n the past two years we have witnessed many welcome changes/introductions in citizen services, government administrative processes and public infrastructure. For instance, those who recently applied for a new passport or passport renewal would have been taken aback with the speed of processing and the new-found efficiency of the Regional Passport Office. Our Principal Correspondent, Vinita Gupta, led the editorial team to bring you an update on the latest e-governance projects in India. I suggest five ways to make such projects successful and effective.

If a particular state has successfully implemented an e-governance project, is it really necessary for another state to start all over and re-invent the wheel?

#1. Long-term partnerships

Rather than having a tendering process every time government needs to do a project, it should establish lasting partnerships with trustworthy and proven partners. Public-private partnerships are also important for the success of e-governance projects. The government can leverage on the experience, skill, and expertise of the private sector.

#2. Reduce bureaucracy and CUT red tape

Project proposals and tenders must pass through an established channel in government for approval. While this ensures complete accountability and transparency, it also has a downside. The involvement of more entities opens up more doors for graft and it can also lead to intermittent delays. This can be avoided by implementing a task force and a lean project team, with the project head reporting directly to the concerned IT secretary, who is empowered to take spot decisions.

#3. Eliminate redundant processes and avoid silos

If a particular state has successfully implemented an e-governance project, is it really necessary for another state to start all over and re-invent the wheel? One state can act as a consultant to another and share its expertise.

#4. Listen to the customer (citizens)

The most successful companies in the world listen to their customers and create products and services tailored to customer needs. The government can lend an ear through citizen forums and social media â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and take feedback from its customers (citizens) to improve services.

#5. Try m-governance

It has been proven (read some case studies in this issue) that the fastest and most effective way to reach out to citizens is through mobile phones (not the Web) and SMS-based services. Multi-lingual Interactive Voice Response Systems are also helping the government to bring services to citizens living in the rural areas. I am looking forward to discussing these and other suggestions with officials at the InformationWeek Government IT Leadership Forum in Gurgaon between 16 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 18 November, 2011. u Brian Pereira is Editor of InformationWeek India. brian.pereira@ubm.com

informationweek november 2011

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contents Vo l u m e 3 | I ss u e 0 6 |

November 2011

Cover Design : Deepjyoti Bhowmik

cover story

M-governance will usher in new era of governance

Across India, government departments are aggressively using the mobile platform to quickly deliver effective services to the masses

m-governance case study

How Andhra Pradesh is detecting diseases early using SMSes

The state of Andhra Pradesh is showing how the power of a simple SMS can be used to quickly track and prevent disease outbreaks

interview percent of our business comes 23 ‘20 from government initiatives’ Dr Alok Bharadwaj Senior Vice President, Canon India

To ensure transparent, timely and hassle-free delivery of citizen services, the government of India has undertaken many e-governance initiatives and many are in the pipeline

Case study

hope to create a private cloud 24 ‘We by the next year’ Shankar Aggarwal, Additional Secretary - E-governance Group (Overall Head), Department of Information Technology

Innovative application shows the way to prevent female foeticide

Real-time complaint monitoring application can improve governance

Do you Twitter? Follow us at http://www.twitter.com/iweekindia

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Find us on Facebook at http://www.facebook. com/informationweekindia

Kerala enhances coastal security with ReALCraft

Empowering the state through e-education

If you’re on LinkedIN, reach us at http://www.linkedin.com/ groups?gid=2249272

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THE BUSINESS VALUE OF TECHNOLOGY

@ 33 Cloud computing – A change in business model 34 Lessons from India’s toughest projects 34 Dabbawalas: The masters of supply chain management 35 Will CISOs ever be on board? 35 Enterprise journey to the cloud 36 Social Media: Not a matter of choice anymore 37 Social media for corporate espionage 37 Big Data Analysis set to be a key differentiator for businesses 37 Walking in the clouds: CIO perspective 38 IT consumerization and work-life integration 38 How SMBs can grow in the virtual era?

EDITORIAL..............................4

Acknowledging CIOs in the making INDEX.......................................8 news..................................... 10

Meet Global CIOs 2011

news analysis.................. 14 opinion............................... 30

event................................... 66 EDGE honors India’s finest business technology leadership

technology & risk.........67 Global cio........................ 68

50 65

Impressions

Edge Awards

practical analysis.......69 down to business...........70

november 2011 i n f o r m at i o n w e e k 7

Imprint

VOLUME 3 No. 06 n November 2011

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ADVERTISERS’ INDEX

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Person & Organization

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Editorial index

Website Sales Contact

2 www.interop.in pankaj.jain@ubm.com 3 www.interop.in surajit.bit@ubm.com 5 www.SEreply.com 9 www.trendmicro.co.in sales.in@trendmicro.com 11 www.escanav.com marketing@escanav.com 13 www.tycoelectronics.com in.netconnect@tycoelectronics.com 19 www.india.emc.com aman.kapoor@redington.co.in 31 www.emcforum.in 39 sanket.karode@ubm.com 49 nigel.brown@ubm.com 57 71 www.ManageEngine.com/it360 india-sales@ManageEngine.com 72 Juniper@dnbindia.in

Sanjay Vijayakumar, MobMe Wireless Solutions ��18 Seema Gaur, IFFCO ��65 Sesanka Pemmaraju, Sierra Atlantic ��65 Shankar Aggarwal, Department of Information Technology ��24 Uma Ramani, IDFC ��65 V S Parthasarathy, Mahindra & Mahindra ��65 Vivek Sharma, Wipro Infotech ��17

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News S o f t wa r e

internet

Social presence and mobile apps to generate 50 percent of web sales By 2015, companies will generate 50 percent of web sales via their social presence and mobile applications, according to Gartner. At the Gartner IT Symposium, Gartner analysts discussed the future of e-commerce and said that since the availability of mobile phones is overtaking the number of PCs, customers will use mobile browsers and applications as the main points of interaction. Vendors in the e-commerce market will begin to offer new context-aware, mobile-based

application capabilities that can be accessed via a browser or installed as an application on a phone. “Customers are clamoring for new and easy ways to interact with the organizations they deal with, and no company should think itself immune to this new business dynamic,” said Gene Alvarez, Research Vice President at Gartner. “In time, e-commerce vendors will begin to offer contextaware mobile-shopping solutions as part of their overall web sales offerings.” Industries such as entertainment, software development/publishing and media are being driven by fastmoving changes in their businesses, such as mobility, and the increasing number of mobile devices available to their buyers. Others are finding that sales of additional services and products can be added to their

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customer-service-focused websites. Due to consumerization, sites in all industries are being impacted by customer experience delivered in the retail space, as customers continue to use their online experiences as the benchmark. “As more people use smartphones, they will expect an extension of their customer experience to be supported by this kind of device while demanding social aspects of the web to be intertwined with this experience. At the same time, organizations are looking toward new countries and regions for growth. As a result, it is time to take a fresh look at your organization’s web sales capabilities to ensure that social software, mobile technology and globalization are part of your organization’s online future,” said Alvarez. Gartner predicts that by 2013, 80 percent of North American and European online sellers will expand into Brazil, Russia, India, Africa, Japan or China. Organizations based in North America and Western Europe are already launching websitebased sales operations in new countries, in the hope of expanding to new markets. These organizations believe that untapped countries can spur growth by enticing potential customers who have never purchased from the organization, but who have a desire for its products. “The increasing availability of access to the Internet via PCs, laptops and mobile devices is creating new sales channels in countries, because entry barriers are lowering, thereby increasing the number of online shoppers. By entering these countries via the Internet sales model, organizations can establish a presence in locations without having to create a physical sales location,” said Alvarez.

Essar Group to deploy SAP HANA platform Essar Group has chosen the SAP HANA platform and the 4.0 release of business intelligence (BI) solutions from the SAP BusinessObjects portfolio to strengthen its existing investments in SAP software and gain real-time visibility into businesses across verticals. The announcement was made at SAP TechEd 2011 event in Bangalore. Essar Group has also selected mobility solutions from SAP and Sybase to mobilize its critical business functions. The company has selected Sybase Unwired Platform to standardize mobile enterprise application development and the Afaria mobile device management solution to manage multiple devices on a common platform for mobile users. “As a conglomerate operating in various industries globally, we needed a powerful solution to help us reign in and make sense of a vast amount of information as well as have this data easily accessible on mobile devices,” said CN Ram, CIO, Essar Group. “Our plan to augment our existing investment in SAP software will allow users to analyze data by customer, region or product whether in the office or while traveling.” Vishal Sikka, Member of the SAP Executive Board, Technology and Innovation said, “Together with mobility solutions from SAP and Sybase and our BI solutions, SAP HANA is bringing a new real time to Essar Group.” —InformationWeek News Network

—InformationWeek News Network

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Timeline

A look at some key Steve Jobs moments and innovations Across the Internet, fans and competitors expressed sadness at Jobs’ demise and admiration for his accomplishments. Let’s look back at some notable Jobs moments and innovations.

1976

Launched Apple Computer with high school buddy Steve Wozniak in a garage 2011

2001

Introduced iCloud at one of his last major public appearances

Introduced the iPod digital music player, which could hold 1,000 songs in a pocket-sized device

2010

2003

Introduced the iPad tablet that every other tech company tried — and so far — has failed to copy

Introduced the iTunes music store, providing an easy way to legally download music for a nominal price august 24, 2011

2007

Launched iPhone, which transformed a mere phone into a powerful pocket computer

informationweek november 2011

Stepped down as Apple CEO. His resignation letter read, “I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.”

2006

Joined with band U2 to introduce Apple Red iPod Nano that held up to 2,000 songs

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News Analysis

iViz Security looks to redefine ethical hacking with cloud-based model An Indian company has quietly sprung on the global map with a string of more than 150 customers who are using its cloud-based penetration testing service By Srikanth RP Unlike traditional penetration testing or ethical hacking, which is driven by security consultants such as PwC or a KPMG or any known security firm, iViz Security claims to be the industry’s first cloud-based penetration testing company. The cloud-based model is working well for iViz as it has signed up more than 150 customers and 20 global partners. The customers who are using its services include some big names, such as Sony, Oracle, ING, HSBC, Aviva, Vodafone, Airtel, Fiat, CNN IBN, CNBC, MakeMyTrip, Yatra and Indian Defence. iViz claims that the cloud-based model offers significant advantages over a traditional model. “Conventional penetration testing or ethical hacking is driven by consultants and hence is time consuming, costly, non-scalable and lacks uniformity in quality. Compared to this, a SaaS-based model offers scalable penetration testing with easy compliance to standards such as SOX, HIPAA, ISO 27001 and PCI DSS. Our technology simulates a human hacker, and has the capability to simulate all possible attack scenarios,” claims Bikash Barai, CEO, iViz Security. The firm has already won numerous awards from organizations such as the US Navy, US Department of Homeland Security, Intel, University of California, Berkely, Red Herring and NASSCOM. The ability to simulate all possible attack paths is crucial, as most standalone technology solutions are not able to understand the big picture behind multiple small attacks. For example, in complex security threat scenarios, attackers exploit multiple security weaknesses that individually are not critical, but in the aggregate, they allow an attacker to compromise business critical data. iViz’s solution uses artificial intelligence techniques to address this issue. Barai explains this with the help of an example. “While conducting one conventional penetration testing exercise during the year 2006, it dawned on us that even as a security expert; we cannot comprehensively detect all multi-stage attack path possibilities. Especially, once a network is successfully broken into, we tend to become complacent and the mental incentive to find all and every ways to penetrate diminishes. To overcome this barrier related to basic human

informationweek november 2011

instinct, we explored the usage of artificial intelligence to simulate all multi-stage attack possibilities. We have developed a technique to compute all possible permutations and combinations of attack paths in a complex network or a system. Such a simulation process has high complexity and demands very huge infrastructure and huge amount of time. We optimized the process using different techniques, which has made it possible for us to detect such attacks.” iViz has partnered with security consulting firms to lower their operational cost and increase their scale of operations. Many organizations have already partnered with the firm since they can now operate business at any scale while maintaining almost zero operational cost. As the cloud-model is built for scale, it scores heavily over traditional models. “Any known security firm can conduct penetration testing using consultants and tools. However, the problem is with the cost, scalability, uniformity in quality and manageability of vulnerabilities. Most of the security firms would not be able to

“Our vision is to build a 100 million USD company in the security testing market”

Bikash Barai

CEO - iViz Security

handle customers who have 600 applications that need to be tested four times a year. They will not be able to hire enough people to do the job,” explains Barai. Due to the high costs, customers do not test all their applications, which in turn, results in partial security. The cloud-based model enables firms to test hundreds or thousands of applications in parallel, which is not possible in the case of the consulting approach. For iViz, the scale of opportunities on the global stage is huge, as globally there are more than 165 million online websites that need protection. “The security testing market is more than 3 billion USD in size. Our vision is to build a 100 million USD company in this space,” says Barai. u Srikanth RP srikanth.rp@ubm.com

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Cover Story

To ensure transparent, timely and hassle-free delivery of citizen services, the government of India has undertaken many e-governance initiatives and many are in the pipeline By Vinita Gupta

Project to get completed by 2014

Project implemented in 2006

MCA21

IVFRT

Project to get completed by 2012

Project implemented in 2008

Income Tax

e-Biz

Form 16

Project implemented in 2010

600 million Indians to be enrolled by 2014

Passport Seva Kendra

UID

november 2011 i n f o r m at i o n w e e k 15

Cover Story

hen we hear the term government services, a picture of piles of paper, long queues and procrastinating officials automatically crops up in our minds. It is true that as compared to the other countries, India is quite late in getting into the e-governance ecosystem. But, one must not forget that India is a huge country and we are talking about serving a population of more than 1 billion and other entities involving multiple agencies, stakeholders/entities catering to over 35 languages and 150 dialects. Thus, implementing e-governance projects in India poses a greater challenge, but we are catching up. In accordance with the e-governance plans, the Indian government in 2006 initiated a National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) that takes a holistic view of e-governance initiatives across the country and helps improve public service delivery. The NeGP outlines 27 Mission Mode Programs (MMPs) driven by the central and state governments, with some programs involving joint execution of the central and state governments.

Citizen-centric approach

On its journey to improve the services for citizens, the government has undertaken several successful e-governance initiatives such as MCA21 (to improve the speed and certainty in the delivery of the services of Ministry of Company Affairs), online submission of income tax returns, Passport Seva Kendra (PSK) etc. These e-governance projects have drastically improved the quality of citizen services. Biswajeet Mahapatra, Research Director at Gartner shares his experience. He recently renewed

“I recently renewed my passport and was surprised to see a drastic improvement in the service”

Biswajeet Mahapatra Research Director at Gartner his passport and was surprised to see a drastic improvement in the services. “Nowadays, to get a passport, the citizens do not have to wait in long queues. The process can be done online, which has reduced the time of getting a passport from months to days,” Mahapatra observes. The government aims to further streamline the process of distribution and renewal of passports. Golok Kumar Simli, Principal Consultant & Head Technology, PMU, Passport Seva Project, Ministry of External Affairs at Government of India informs, “Under the Passport Seva project, by the end of this financial year, 77 Passport Seva Kendras (PSKs) will be opened all over the country in a phased manner. Till date, 18 PSKs have already been rolled out. The rise in demand from the citizens has fostered the government to focus on e-governance initiatives and provide efficient services to the citizens.” Apart from this, the government is on the road to implement projects like Immigration, Visa and Foreigner Registration and Tracking (IVFRT), e-Biz and the much talked about Unique Identification Number (UID). IVFRT project aims to keep a strict record of the immigrants coming to India on a regular basis. The mission of e-Biz initiative (piloted) is to strengthen and streamline the Government-toBusiness (G2B) services.

“E-governance projects should be citizen centric and not technology centric”

Neel Ratan

Executive Director, PwC 16

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Also, to roll out all the planned 1,100 e-governance services by 2014, the government is making huge investment — up to ` 40,000 crore. This investment will cover the cost of all kinds of hardware and software that will be required for capacity building. However, many feel that the government has done a lot on the infrastructure side, and now they must focus on services. Neel Ratan, Executive Director, PwC says, “E-governance projects should be citizen centric and not technology centric. To improve citizen services the government needs to collaborate. As the major challenge is that each department works in silos with its own infrastructure — data centers, network etc.”

State level projects

Several state governments have also taken various innovative steps to promote e-governance and have drawn a roadmap for IT implementation and delivery of services to the citizens online. The applications that have been implemented are targeted towards providing Government-to-Business (G2B), Government-to-Citizen (G2C) and Business-to-Consumer (B2C) services with the emphasis on the use of local language. For instance, the Gujarat Government has undertaken many e-governance initiatives like GSWAN (Gujarat State Wide Area Network), SWAGAT Online (State Wide Attention on Grievances through Application of Technology), e-Dhara, Health Management Information System¸ VAT (Value Added Tax), e-procurement, e-gram etc. Recently, the Government of Gujarat announced a project named

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Apno Taluko Vibrant Taluko (ATVT) for taluka-level Jan Seva Kendras with an aim to provide all end-to-end government services under one roof. The project has been implemented in 225 talukas, covers 150 services and till date around 12,09,704 applications have been received. The Gujarat government has also enhanced the GSWAN connectivity by five times at taluka level to facilitate ATVT operations. Neeta Shah, Director (eGovernance), Gujarat Informatics informs, “Under ATVT, every taluka in Gujarat will be empowered and self sustaining to provide a local platform for driving double digit growth and social development. The decentralization of administration up to sub-district (taluka) level will increase the speed of the services and will also make it more effective, transparent and citizen centric.” Likewise, in the state of Andhra Pradesh, some of the major e-governance projects like e-seva and Rajiv Arogya Shree and Online Scholarship Management System for Minorities have delivered a huge impact on the citizens. “The e-governance projects in Andhra Pradesh have reached each and every beneficiary in a transparent and userfriendly way,” opines Dr Ilyas Rizvi, VC and MD at Andhra Pradesh State Minority Finance Corporation. As per the recent statistics (September 30, 2011), a total of 96,733 Common Services Centers (CSCs) have been rolled out in 33 states and union territories. The CSCs are proposed to be the front-end delivery points for government, private and social sector services to the rural citizens of India at their doorstep. Almost 100 percent CSCs have been rolled out in 12 states

“The decentralization of administration up to taluka level will increase the speed of the services and will make it more citizen centric”

Neeta Shah

Director eGovernance, Gujarat Informaticst (Chandigarh, Delhi, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, Puducherry, Sikkim and Tripura). More than 70 percent of the rollout has been completed in 13 states.

PPT model: The road ahead

One of the best ways to accelerate the speed and efficiency of providing services to the citizens is through Public Private Partnership (PPP) as the private sector can bring in a lot of expertise. But in the PPP model, it is important that the private objective should be aligned with the government objective. According to Binod Mishra, Sr. VP –Government Projects, Glodyne Technoserve, information and communication technology, schemes have been a success story globally for PPP. There is an opportunity for both private sector standalone and PPP initiatives to fulfil the growing inclusive needs in India. Glodyne has launched the Labour Management System, Mahashramm, to be implemented in the State of Maharashtra. On similar lines, Wipro has collaborated to implement several central and state government projects, including UID, ESIC, Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC), Crime and Criminal Tracking Network & Systems (CCTNS), State Service Delivery Gateway (SSDG), commercial taxation

“Wipro is innovating solutions based on cloud computing, social media and open source technologies”

and set up state data centers (SDCs). Vivek Sharma, General Manager and Business Head, Government and Defence Vertical, Wipro Infotech informs that Wipro is currently innovating solutions based on cloud computing, Green IT, Gov 2.0, social media and open source technologies for the government. Likewise, Accenture has a dedicated Health & Public Service (H&PS) group, which is helping governments and other public service organizations in India and worldwide to achieve high performance in the face of complex challenges. “Through innovative consulting and technology solutions and services, we enable public service organizations to strategize and deliver increased and improved services while containing costs — driving value for citizens and stakeholders,” states Krishna G V Giri, who leads Accenture’s Health & Public Service Operating Group in India, and its management consulting practice in the Asia Pacific. Thus, the government’s record in setting up e-governance targets and meeting them are definitely commendable, however, India still has a long way to go in taking e-governance to its rural population. The biggest hurdle in e-Governance’s rapid expansion is that there are regions in India where the Internet has not penetrated. So, the state and centeral governments are looking at mobile and cloud computing technologies for providing effective education, healthcare and other services to the citizens, especially in the rural areas.

Vivek Sharma

GM and Business Head, Government and Defence Vertical, Wipro Infotech t

u Vinita Gupta vinita.gupta@ubm.com

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Cover Story

M-governance

will usher in new era of

governance

Across India, government departments are aggressively using the mobile platform to quickly deliver effective services to the masses By Srikanth RP

informationweek november November 2011

ith more than 800 million mobile subscribers in India, the mobile platform is apt for India, where infrastructure problems are common, and where the PC penetration ratio is low. State governments have been quick to spot this opportunity, as mobile phones provide a low-cost alternative to the traditional mode of computers. This mode of governance, also called m-governance, refers to the usage of the mobile platform to deliver government services to the citizens. “By using mobile phones, we can deliver a huge number of public services in the electronic mode. A major advantage of mobile phones is that people can use their voices. So they don’t have to understand or know English. Also, every person or household has access to a mobile device, hence, citizens don’t have to go to some common service center or kiosk to seek public services,” states Shankar Aggarwal, Additional Secretary, E-Governance Group (overall head), Department of Information Technology (DIT). As mobile phones are already being used by a large part of the rural population, governments can reach out to a much larger set of the population. “M-governance has a huge potential in India due to three key reasons. The first reason is reach; almost every home today has a mobile phone. The second reason is the quick learning curve. Unlike PC, there is no need for anyone to teach anyone how to use a mobile phone. The third important reason is support for multiple languages, and the ability to interact in voice, which opens up the service for a wider range of people,” says Sanjay Vijayakumar, Co-founder & CEO, MobMe Wireless Solutions. Hence, m-governance, if implemented effectively, can help citizens quickly access governmentrelated information, with no or minimum human involvement. In India, states such as Kerala have taken the lead, with the state providing more than 25 services across six departments. The state of Kerala has also set up a unique short code, 537252, which is reserved exclusively for the government. For example, in Kerala, individuals can get detailed information on a vehicle or know the application status by sending a text message. This information is extremely useful for a person who wants to buy a second hand car. This service has proved to be extremely popular in Kerala. “Today, the service gets more than 40,000 hits every month from

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Cover Story mobile devices compared to 1,000 hits from PCs. The potential can clearly be seen in this example,” says Vijayakumar of MobMe. Bihar is another brilliant example of how a state can leverage cheap mobilebased technologies to monitor progress of development programs related to the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), pension scheme, scholarship and health. The system facilitates daily monitoring of ten development programs in Bihar’s 500 plus blocks. The report is generated on a daily basis, and is available for public scrutiny at a website. This gives individuals an opportunity to see and monitor the progress and development of various projects. In the case of the Rajkot Municipal Corporation, the m-governance project has drastically improved citizen services and also boosted collections for the corporation. Earlier citizens needed to stand in a long queue to know their dues to the corporation. Today, this information can be obtained on a mobile phone with just an SMS. Moreover, SMS alerts are sent to parents/relatives for birth or death registration. Other transaction alerts related to property tax/water charges and professional tax are also sent to citizens via SMS. If a cheque is returned or if a transaction is cancelled, an SMS alert is immediately sent to the concerned citizen. Higher officials receive SMS alerts daily with information about income/expenditure. This has introduced transparency and responsiveness in the corporation.

Innovative m-governance applications

Besides basic information services, the sky is the limit when it comes to delivering innovative services using the

“Major advantage of mobile phones is that people can use their voices. So they don’t have to know English”

Shankar Aggarwal

Additional Secretary, E-Governance Group (Overall Head), DIT t mobile platform. For example, in the state of Andhra Pradesh, the NIC team has developed an integrated disease surveillance program, which uses mobile phones to proactively track and prevent diseases. Another innovative application in the state of Kerala enables citizens to send photographs, text messages, and video and audio recordings as multimedia messages (MMSes) to an e-mail account operated by the police. This information assists in decision making and helps the police in curbing crime. The Karnataka Information Commission (KIC) has introduced a service where RTI applicants are able to know the status of their applications by sending an SMS. In Uttar Pradesh, an SMS-based technology solution is used to get daily feedback on mid-day meal schemes across the states’ 150,000 schools. In Kerala, a woman can raise a complaint about harassment at work to the Women’s Commission by sending a text message to a short code with a keyword designated to the service. The citizens in Kerala can also give marks to panchayats on the basis of their performance, by sending SMSes In Andhra Pradesh, the Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty has developed an innovative application, called e-Bank Mitra. This mobile phonebased application is used to capture data of bank transactions made by Self Help Groups (SHGs) regarding loan

“M-governance has huge potential in India due to three key reasons — reach, quick learning curve and support for multiple languages”

Sanjay Vijayakumar

Co-founder & CEO, MobMe Wireless Solutions t 20

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disbursement and loan repayments. Data is transferred from the field to the central server through an SMS by using a local language GUI. This application has been able to generate information on credit flow to SHGs on a daily basis. Because of its low cost and acceptance, the mobile phone as a platform is being adopted to push several interesting services. Take the case of the Jai Prakash Narayan Apex Trauma Center, AIIMS, in New Delhi. Every hospital has massive queues, especially in the outpatient departments. To streamline the process, the hospital took an initiative where patients are informed of their exact time of visit through an SMS. Due to this initiative, the wait time for an average patient has been cut down drastically. As information is collected on the number of patients seen by a specific doctor, this initiative also helps the hospital in analyzing and putting in place appropriate resources according to the specialty. Another exemplary project, called e-Mamta (a mother and child web-based tracking application in Gujarat), uses the mobile platform to send out SMS alerts to beneficiaries, health workers, and district and block level authorities to monitor essential healthcare services. With the help of the e-Mamta initiative, 12.54 lakh pregnant women, 4.09 lakh infants and 3.62 lakh children in the age group of one to six have been tracked for the essential Reproductive and Child Health (RCH) services. Today, the list of beneficiaries who are due for services in a village is available at the click of a button. The system has also helped in cutting down the time used in the compilation of reports from sub-center to block to district to state. Before e-Mamta,

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the total time required for a complete report to reach the state center from the sub-center used to take a minimum of 25-30 days. The report is now available instantly. The SMS facility is also used for intradepartmental coordination. For example, a record 16,000 SMSes were delivered to all nurses and doctors of Gujarat within minutes of infant deaths reported due to measles vaccine. In Madhya Pradesh, a mobile application is being used to collect information regarding the labor engaged at locations of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS). On the first day of every week, the secretary in every gram panchayat sends an SMS in a defined format to a designated number, which is then transferred to a database. Like

other mobile-based applications, this application has helped in collecting realtime data, and in better management and monitoring of the scheme at a granular level. Because of its versatility and the small form factor, the mobile platform can be used flexibly to meet a variety of needs. The Pune Traffic Police Department has partnered with Omni Bridge Systems to design a mobile application called ‘TrafficCop.’ The traffic police officials have been given a BlackBerry mobile handset, which in turn, is connected to a server that holds comprehensive information related to vehicle, driver and past violation incidences. Once a traffic cop logs on to a device, he can enter the vehicle number and automatically obtain a

Some interesting m-governance applications State

M-governance application

Andhra Pradesh Integrated disease surveillance solution that uses mobile phones to proactively track and prevent diseases Bihar

Mobile-based application tracks the progress of development programs related to the NREGS and pension, scholarship and health schemes. The system facilitates daily monitoring of ten development programs in Bihar’s 500 plus blocks

Maharashtra

In Pune, the traffic police uses a BlackBerry powered software application that helps the police retrieve information related to vehicle, driver and past violations. This application has already helped the traffic police to identify more than 900 regular offenders and in tracing more than 200 stolen vehicles

Gujarat

e-Mamta, a mother and child web-based tracking application in Gujarat, uses the mobile platform to send out SMS alerts to beneficiaries, health workers, and district and block level authorities to monitor essential healthcare services

Kerala

A woman in Kerala can raise a complaint about harassment at work to the Women’s Commission by just sending a text message to a short code with a keyword designated to the service

Uttar Pradesh

In Uttar Pradesh, an SMS-based technology solution is used to get daily feedback on mid-day meal schemes across the states’ 1,50,000 schools

Karnataka

The Karnataka Information Commission (KIC) has introduced a service where RTI applicants are able to know the status of their applications by sending an SMS

Tamil Nadu

The Chennai Corporation uses a BlackBerry-based application to collect property taxes. The entire process of updating a particular transaction has been reduced from a period of approximately two weeks to just three minutes now

record of the history of the offender. This pioneering project has already helped the traffic police to identify more than 900 regular offenders and in tracing more than 200 stolen vehicles. Another BlackBerry-based application used by the Chennai Corporation has expedited the process of property tax collection. Today, there is no need for bill collectors to carry loads of documents. All they need to carry is a small BlackBerry with a Bluetooth printer. As a result, the entire process of updating a particular transaction has been reduced from a period of approximately two weeks to just three minutes now. Additionally, due to the real-time update, the department has a clearer picture of the revenue for any given day. Understanding the immense potential of the mobile platform, the Department of Information & Technology (DIT), has notified the mobile short code 51969 for SMS and IVR-based service delivery for m-governance services. The DIT has also floated a draft consultation paper for formulating the mobile governance policy framework, so that various stakeholders from different parts of the society can give their feedback.

M-governance: A complEment to e-governance

The list of applications can go on and on — any application that requires functionalities related to data collection, access or query can be now enabled on a mobile phone. As can be seen by the numerous examples across the different sectors, even a small bit of automation can usher in huge efficiencies. The mobile phone is a perfect platform for delivering e-governance services in India, as it adequately addresses the traditional problems of infrastructure and low PC penetration ratios, with a low-cost solution, that is difficult to replicate by other mediums. As India looks at delivering effective e-governance services, mobile phone may be the single most important device that can change the face of government citizen interactions. u Srikanth RP srikanth.rp@ubm.com

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Case Study

How Andhra Pradesh is detecting diseases early using SMSes The state of Andhra Pradesh is showing how the power of a simple SMS can be used to quickly track and prevent disease outbreaks By Srikanth RP

ince childhood, we have grown up hearing that prevention is better than cure. And the state of Andhra Pradesh is precisely using this adage to create a project that relies on the power of a simple SMS to proactively track and prevent diseases. Christened ‘Integrated Disease Surveillance,’ the project is being implemented by the National Informatics Center (NIC). “Typically, the speed at which diseases can spread is much faster than the method or communication to prevent them. Hence, identifying diseases proactively is critical in preventing a disease from becoming an epidemic,” says K Rajasekhar, Senior Technical Director at NIC, Andhra Pradesh. Capturing and relaying information in rural areas is a huge challenge due to lack of proper infrastructure. As mobile phones have been rapidly adopted and used in many parts of rural India, NIC decided to leverage this infrastructure, rather than create an infrastructure of its own. Today, health workers in the field use mobile phones to relay information pertaining to any disease

TUBERCULOSIS

TYPHIOD

MALARIA

JAUNDICE

CHOLERA

Send SMS

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in their jurisdiction to a central server. The information on diseases and their impact is automatically marked on maps for health authorities to pinpoint the exact locations, where the disease outbreak is severe. This innovative project has helped in pooling data from multiple locations, and enables the state government to easily track disease outbreaks through maps. “Instead of going through reams of paper, today top officials in the government can quickly detect and act on early warning signals of impending outbreaks by just looking at maps,” states Rajasekhar. It will also help officials in estimating the intensity of the disease outbreak, and deploying necessary resources accordingly. The team at NIC, Andhra Pradesh, has built the system in such a way that once a disease crosses a certain threshold, an alert is immediately generated and sent to district officials through an SMS. This has enabled health officials to use mobile phones to immediately transmit data from the field; enabling data collectors to use this information effectively for taking quick decisions. Today, information can be instantly relayed compared to a delay of over a month earlier. Rajasekhar gives the example of an incidence of Anthrax, which was detected in a district, with no prior history. Early detection of the virus helped in preventing an outbreak. Buoyed by the success of the solution, NIC, Andhra Pradesh, is in talks with other states, which have shown keen interest in deploying this solution. “We have our data centers in multiple states. With just a little bit of tweaking and customization, this

Highlights l Uses

low-cost mobile phones to track diseases

l Disease

alerts are sent to respective district officials once a disease crosses a specific threshold

l Instant

transfer of information from multiple remote locations to the state headquarters. Earlier, this process used to take more than a month

l Allows

health officials to quickly pinpoint locations affected by diseases through interactive maps

solution can be quickly deployed,” states Rajasekhar. The same solution can also be used to track and monitor stock levels of life saving drugs. As health is a sector which affects the entire population — from a new born to an old person, any efficiency that can be brought about due to information technology, can act as a catalyst to usher in huge benefits. The SMS-based disease surveillance solution built by NIC is ideal for India as it overcomes the traditional problems of infrastructure with a low-cost option. In most rural areas, limited resources are available, and decision makers are based in urban areas. The usage of a low-cost mobile option is apt, as it allows information to be captured quickly in rural areas where infrastructure is characterized by high illiteracy levels and low PC and Internet penetration.

u Srikanth RP srikanth.rp@ubm.com

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Interview Dr Alok Bharadwaj, Senior Vice President, Canon India talks to Amrita Premrajan of InformationWeek about how his organization is planning to cash in on e-governance space in India and the challenges encountered while rolling out projects

‘20 percent of our business comes from government initiatives’ What is the significance of public-private partnership in taking e-governance solutions to the masses? The problems of e-governance can be tackled with a combination of public and private sector organizations. These public-private partnerships are essential for an efficient, sustainable model and delivery of e-government services and programs. It has become a priority to improve the overall functioning and efficiency of actualizing e-governance projects, for which IT vendors have extended their support. What is the potential size of opportunities in e-governance space in India? The Indian government is laying a lot of stress on providing a wide coverage for the e-governance initiatives across India. Projects like State Service Delivery Gateway, e-Courts, Modernization of Postal Services, e-Panchayat, Crime and Criminal Tracking and Networking Systems (CCTNS) and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan are big opportunities in the e-governance space, which all put together would be close to ` 10,000 crore of buying, out of which our industry should get a share of 20-25 percent. Your views on some of the biggest opportunities in the e-governance space in India in the next five years?

Public Distribution Systems (PDS), e-Panchayat, CCTNS, IVFRT (Immigration, Visa and Foreigners Registration and Tracking), e-Courts and security surveillance are some of the big projects. Canon is also offering a new service, called Managed Print Services, to the government customers, which essentially is a solution of outsourcing printing, copying and scanning services. What is Canon’s strategy to tap the government sector in

India? Canon is involved with the government in G2C (Government to Consumer) operations. A substantial 20 percent of the business of Canon India comes from its government initiatives. Canon expects to earn revenue of ` 300 crore from its government business by the end of 2011. We want to focus on these government projects through a specific and focused division, as approximately 50 percent opportunities for business come from this sector. Canon is planning to closely work with the state governments of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. A government subdivision of 12 people will focus on the government initiatives and nodal agencies. Five of these people will be stationed at the mentioned states and seven people will coordinate with the central government from Delhi. Canon believes that document

management services will be greatly beneficial for the government segment. Canon–Netspider partnership for the Government of Rajasthan’s Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan is an example of government adopting the DMS solutions for their state education initiatives. Canon India has also provided the Automated Document Feeder (ADF) scanners for the project. Canon has recently proposed a pilot study for the digitization of documents for the Ministry of Information Technology, The Planning Commission, National Disaster Management Authority and the Ministry of Defense. What are the challenges that you face while dealing with project implementation for the government sector? In the government sector, the focus is less on outcome and more on procurement. There is a need for greater transparency in the government buying process, a common dashboard for all running projects and one window for issue redressal etc. All running projects must be measured. Another challenge is ‘reach.’ How do we reach 650,000 villages through broadband connectivity? Should we address the service deliverables by appointing Canon Care Centers or through franchisee model? These are the issues we are deliberating internally. . u Amrita Premrajan

amrita.premrajan@ubm.com

november 2011 i n f o r m at i o n w e e k 23

of information, it can be achieved without creating two sets of the same information. For example, if you have one set of land records in the district, then there is no real need for keeping a set of the same record at the state headquarters. Rather, a single set of the entire data can be kept at the state headquarters and whosoever wants it, can access this data. Department of Information Technology (DIT) has recently released a draft framework and guidelines for the use of social media by government organizations. Can you please discuss this? Social media is a very powerful medium and it allows two-way communication. That means through this channel, you can communicate with the public and also get a feedback from the public on a real-time basis, thus entering into a meaningful dialogue. In a democracy it is very important to enter into these kinds of dialogues. However, at the same time, people can misuse the powerful medium and create a lot of disinformation.

bring transparency. Under RTI, there is an institutional mechanism within every department under the ministry. Similarly, for the government bodies to use social media and respond quickly, there was a need of a formal institutional mechanism, so that we are able to respond in a definite time frame, without any chaos. DIT has been strongly pushing the Electronic Service Delivery Bill. Can you discuss about the bill and the way it will transform the government to citizen relationship? It is going to transform the way we deliver services. We started the journey of e-governance in 2006 and thought that all the state governments will take necessary steps to deliver services in the electronic mode. However, the pace is a bit slow and is not as per the expectation of people. Then, we found that if we give it a force of law and if we make it mandatory for all government departments to deliver all public services in electronic mode, then every department would be forced to deliver these services electronically.

again and again, then it will take time. On the other hand, if the wheel has been invented somewhere, then why don’t we put that wheel on a common platform, and whosoever wants to use this wheel can do so. What we are thinking now is that once the entire infrastructure is created, we can put this infrastructure on the cloud so that it is available for everyone to use and deliver services in the electronic mode. Also, for a lot of applications, instead of creating software again and again, these can be customized and hosted on the cloud. For example, services like payment gateways, authentication services, etc. We are also working in this direction and we hope that by the middle of the next year, we will be able to create some kind of a private cloud for the government for limited operation. With various e-governance projects being implemented at the centre and state level, what are government’s initiatives in the direction of capacity building? Firstly, we are creating general awareness, so that we can generate

We created draft framework for the use of social media so that we can use the medium effectively for propagating our policies and getting public feedback You must have seen this in the case of the UK riots. How to avoid such situations? How to encourage the government officials to adopt this powerful medium? That’s when we thought it will be a good idea to create a framework, because in the absence of a framework, government officials were very reluctant and hesitant to use social media and they had no clarity on how they should be using the medium and to what extent. We created this framework so that we are able to use the medium effectively and in a meaningful manner to propagate our policies, to get public feedback and to

Also, this would be a time-bound activity — in the next five years all the public services should be delivered electronically. Because of the time frame and the force of law, everybody would have to work together and take necessary steps in this direction. Is the government planning to utilize cloud computing for e-governance projects? All the departments would not be able to take this agenda forward, as they would have to create their own infrastructure and their own modules. If everybody has to invent the wheel

demand from the public. We are sensitizing policy makers. Secondly, we are imparting technical knowledge to people like tehsildars and executive engineers, who are at the cutting edge. We are recruiting professionals from the market at the state level. They will not be involved in the implementation of a particular project, but will be overseeing the implementation of the project. So they will be the eyes and ears of the state government at the program level, and not at the project level. u Amrita Premrajan

amrita.premrajan@ubm.com

november 2011 i n f o r m at i o n w e e k 25

Interview

‘We hope to create a private cloud by the next year’ NeGP was rolled out in 2006 and has now entered its fifth year. According to you, what have been some of the most transformational e-governance projects implemented in the last five years? There have been some extremely transformational projects in the area of delivering public services by the electronic mode. One of the big areas has been with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, where every company needs to be registered electronically and all the returns need to be filed electronically. It is a huge transformation and a very big service to the citizens of this country. Another big area is that of income tax. As we know, a large number of people are filing their returns electronically today. E-passport Seva is another transformational e-governance project. Though e-passport seva has been rolled out slowly, it is now on a national roll out, and is no longer a pilot. It has been achieved in Bengaluru and is being implemented in Chandigarh. This means that people will not have to go to passport offices, as they can go to facilitation centers to file their requests. In addition to this, there are a large number of other projects, which are being implemented by the state government. In many parts of the country and in most of the states, the land records have been digitized. Earlier whenever one wanted a copy of a land record, one had to go to the patwari, who used to demand a lot of money and citizens had to face a lot of harassment. Today, wherever the land records have been digitized in India, the copy of land records is available within few hours. Another transformational project has been in the area of obtaining a driving license. I still remember when I came to Delhi for the first time, getting a driving license used to be a herculean

informationweek november 2011

task. Today, a driving license can be obtained very quickly and one can get it delivered at his residence. No doubt, corruption has reduced substantially and there is greater transparency and efficiency. So, there has been a huge transformation in these areas. Rather, I would say most of the Mission Mode Projects have done wonderfully well. Please tell us about the e-infrastructure that has been created to successfully deliver various e-governance projects? To deliver services electronically in a transparent manner, we had to create an e-infrastructure. That platform is up and operational today. We have got the front ends that are the Common Service Centers (CSC). Currently 97,000 CSCs have been set up, though out of them 15,000- 20,000 may be a little dormant. But almost 80,000 CSCs are fully operational and working very well. We have created SWANs (State Wide Area Networks) — almost 27-28 SWANs are up and operational and two SWANs will get operational this month. These networks are providing connectivity to government officials. Also, the State Data Centers (SDCs) are getting up and operational. Once the entire infrastructure becomes operational along with the middleware, successful delivery of public services electronically will become much easier. When we say, delivering of services electronically, it does not mean some kind of digitization. It does not mean that whatever is being done in the manual form would be digitized and delivered. That is not the idea. The idea is to go for reformation and transformation. For that what is required is, business process reengineering and sharing of data — wherein all the information sits at one place and everybody shares it. Also, if there is need for any kind of integration

The government embarked on the mission of ensuring transparent and timely delivery of citizen services through the use of information and communications technology in 2006 with the NeGP plan. In an exclusive interview, Shankar Aggarwal, Additional Secretary E-governance Group (Overall Head), Department of Information Technology talks about the achievements so far and the future goals www.informationweek.in

Case Study

Innovative application shows the way to prevent female foeticide An initiative taken by the district administration in Kolhapur to protect the girl child has succeeded in arresting the rising incidents of female foeticide By Srikanth RP

ndia is facing a severe problem of declining percentage of the girl child in the 0-6 age group. In many rural and even urban parts of India, extensive misuse of the technology such as sonography machines to easily identify the sex of the foetus has become a common technique and also an unethical practice for the doctors and radiologists to earn easy money. While sex determination and sex selection is a criminal offence in India, it has not stopped doctors and even parents from indulging in this horrific practice. The reason — if no one complains, no one can detect, as the crime is done with mutual consent from both the parties — the doctor and the patient. As per the PCPNDT Act, every pregnant Ultrasound Sonography (USG) test needs to be recorded and reported to appropriate government authorities in the ‘F’ form as prescribed in the law. But the responsibility of such record generation lies with doctors and radiologists. In the case of sex selection, such records were either not generated or falsely reported. Hence, when a district collector, by the name of Laxmikant Deshmukh (IAS), was transferred to Kolhapur, he was shocked to see some of the worst sex ratio statistics for the district. Thus, the collector invited an IT firm called Magnum Opus to study the problem and resolve the issue. The Magnum Opus team identified two major issues for the lower sex ratio — under reporting and false reporting. The mandatory part of ‘F’ form filling and submission after every sonography test was not followed by the centers. To counter this critical problem, Magnum Opus created an online web

informationweek november 2011

portal (www.savethebabygirl.com), allows users to register all details like sonography clinic address, PNDT code, machine and information related to doctors. The web-based software solution connects all centers and collects the important data on a daily basis as per the PCPNDT act rules and formats. The software assures that no incomplete data is submitted by doctors/users. The government authorities can access this portal through secured login and can automatically generate various reports from time to time. However to make the solution more foolproof, Magnum Opus wanted to make sure that every sonography test could be recorded. Accordingly, it started

images,” states Girish Lad, MD, Magnum Opus.

Successful tracking

The pilot was launched on August 15, 2009. Today, Kolhapur district has 252 registered genetic centers —120 in the urban parts and 132 in rural parts. The success of the device in preventing female foeticides can be seen from the fact that as per 2011 census, Kolhapur’s sex ratio has increased to 845 from 839 of 2001 census. “Statistics show that there was under reporting of 4,449 ‘F’ forms, 210 deliveries and 16 Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) cases every month. After connecting the device to each ultrasound machine, the reporting has increased to 34 percent across the district. In first nine months, in case of MTP, of 12 weeks plus pregnancies were recorded as four females and 22 males, while after the implementation of the device, in next six months, the female foetus MTP cases recorded were 10,” claims Lad.

Expanding to other states

connecting a device called the Silent Observer (SIOB) to the ultrasound machine externally through cables. The device captures the video images of each sonography test conducted and stores it in a local hard drive. “This device has acted as a deterrent as it captures all the video images on the sonography machine. False reporting can be immediately detected by comparing the information filled in the ‘F’ forms and captured video

Recently, the Maharashtra government announced that this project will be implemented across the six districts of the state. In Gujarat, the firm has successfully implemented this project in Surat. Concerned authorities from the states of Punjab, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Goa, Rajasthan and Haryana have already visited Kolhapur to study the systems and principally decided to implement the project in their respective states. Currently around 2,000 centers are registered under the system. u Srikanth RP srikanth.rp@ubm.com

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Case Study

Real-time complaint monitoring application can improve governance An innovative project by an IT firm, Tangere, is showing how real-time monitoring of citizen complaints can bring in far more accountability and transparency in service delivery systems By Srikanth RP

en years have passed since the heads of various countries, including India adopted the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which emerged out of a commitment made at the UN Millennium Summit in 2000. The MDGs are eight international development goals that all the signatories have agreed to achieve by the year 2015. At a broad level, these include eradicating extreme poverty, reducing child mortality rates, fighting disease epidemics and developing a global partnership for development. As seen in most ambitious initiatives, a review of the past decade of MDGs indicated that there was a need to improve essential services at the local level, while policies and strategies in support were well in place in many countries. There was an urgent need for more accountability and transparency throughout the service delivery systems. Accordingly, a pilot project on Real-Time Citizen Monitoring services was initiated in two districts; Sehore in Madhya Pradesh and Koraput in Orissa. IT firm, Tangere, built a strong open source platform for real-time monitoring of citizen complaints in close collaboration with Samarthan, United Nations Millenium Campaign and the District Administration of Sehore and Koraput. Tangere developed a solution called ‘Samadhan,’ which provides a comprehensive system to gather information and respond to grievances. “Complainants can register their problems easily through SMSes or by calling up the call center. The status of complaints can be tracked online, which keeps the citizens updated on

“Complaints can be registered through SMSes, and their status can be tracked online, which keeps the citizens updated on the progress”

Apurva Sharan

Co-founder and Director, Technology, Tangere

the progress. The district administration gets a bird’s eye view and can drill down to details of all filed complaints. The complaint map can be seen visually on a Google map,” explains Apurva Sharan, Co-founder and Director, Technology, Tangere.

Real-time updates

When a citizen files a complaint, he immediately gets an acknowledgment number. The citizen monitoring hub, comprising of citizen representatives, then gets in touch with the complainant and seeks more details. At this stage, respective line departments of the government get automatic notifications through an SMS. The complainant is always kept in the loop through SMS notification. “Samadhan provides an opportunity for engaging media, civil society groups, elected representatives and other interested stakeholders in policy advocacy using the results coming out of the system,” explains Sharan. It ensures access to governance response systems, which is typically weak for most communities. “At times, there are drop boxes kept in panchayats, but there is typically no loop closure of how these are redressed.

Follow up and closure is more driven by the complainant’s urge and officer’s zeal rather than a systematic process of handling this,” points out Sharan. The citizen monitoring hub grievance redressal system is a significant attempt in solving these perennial problems. Firstly, it engages citizens, local organizations and local government bodies into an involved process of issue monitoring and resolution, while ensuring complete transparency of the entire process. Secondly, the system automatically generates a large amount of data to carry out future planning exercise. The system also helps in bringing administrative continuity in event of transfers and other changes. This analysis is available at finger tips for taking proactive action and helps build a citizen-centric system. The hope is that this would generate sufficient objective detail to impact even the political process towards delivering meaningful governance. While the platform is in the early stage, it shows the potential of the benefits of ushering in transparency in government-citizen communications. u Srikanth RP srikanth.rp@ubm.com

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Case Study

Kerala enhances coastal security with ReALCraft ReALCraft, a workflow-based online application system for the registration of the fishing vessels, enables the Government of Kerala to identify illegal, unregistered and unreported vessels in the territorial waters By Amrita Premrajan

or years, the Government of Kerala was trying to tackle the issue of repeated cases of unregistered fishing vessels, missing fishing boats and duplicate engines. In 2008, the Government of Kerala decided to address these challenges and implemented a workflow-based online application system called ReALCraft (Registration and Licensing of Fishing Craft) for the registration of the fishing vessels along the coast of Kerala. This project developed by NIC Kerala for the Fisheries Department provided a uniform database of fishing vessels operating across the Kerala coast, wherein every vessel was issued a unique identity. “It is a novel and unique application system developed on the basis of Merchant Shipping Act (MS Act) and State Marine Fisheries Regulation Acts (MFRAs), which is considered as one of the key components for the strengthening of coastal security and fishermen security. Details of 2 lakh fishing vessels are already available online. It prevents multiple registration of the same vessel and the operation of unregistered vessels,” informs M Kasthuri, Development Team Leader, ReALCraft Project, NIC Kerala. The implementation of this system helps coastal security agencies to identify vessels involved in fishing operations in Indian waters and enable them to track information related to the movement of these vessels. Also, the process of issuing Fishing License and Registration Certificate of Fishing Crafts to fishermen has become much more faster, transparent and hassle free. Fishermen can also get the status of

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“The implementation of this system will bring all the 3,00,000-odd fishing vessels across the country into one national database”

Sajjad Akhtar

National Coordinator, ReALCraft t their application by simply sending their registration number through an SMS. The barcode mechanism of the registration certificate helps security agencies to trace the history of fishing vessels. The Marine Enforcement Team gets complete vessel details by sending vessel identification number, registration number, license, and permit, SART or EPIRB (sea safety equipment) via SMS.

ReALCraft: On a national roll-out

Seeing its successful implementation in Kerala, the Ministry of Agriculture decided to implement ReALCraft for vessel registration of fishing vessels working along the entire Indian coast. ReALCraft is now a national project sanctioned by the Department of Animal Husbandry, Dairying and Fisheries, Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India for implementation in all coastal states and union territories (UT). The roll-out process, at the national level started in December, 2009 for the nine coastal states and four coastal UTs. “The Government of India decided to rollout the Kerala model in all coastal states & UTs to enforce coastal security and have a uniform mechanism to identify each and every

fishing vessel operating in coastal areas. “The implementation of this system will bring all the 3,00,000-odd fishing vessels into one national database. Security agencies like Navy and Coast Guards will be in a position to use the same database for uniquely identifying and monitoring the fishing vessels in the sea,” states Sajjad Akhtar, National Coordinator, ReALCraft. NIC has developed an offline module for them for this purpose. The registration certificates will be issued to fishermen through the ReALCraft System after the backlog data entry is over.

The way forward

NIC is also planning to issue a boarding pass to all fishermen, every time they venture into the sea. This will allow security agencies an analytical insight on the numbers of trips made, including the data on fishermen who go out frequently. Also, all the 166 ReALCraft Centres, with all the necessary ICT Infrastructure in place, are proposed to be designated as ‘Fishery Monitoring, Control and Surveillance (FMCS) Centres by the Ministry of Agriculture to facilitate the coastal fishermen. u Amrita Premrajan

amrita.premrajan@ubm.com

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Case Study

Empowering the state through e-education The e-governance initiative has enabled the state of Madhya Pradesh to implement the RTE Act and provide quality education By Ayushman Baruah

he School Education Department of Madhya Pradesh had a challenging task before them. They wanted to achieve universal elementary education and promote quality education up to class 12. The massive number of stakeholders involved made the task both important and demanding. They had to administer more than 1 lakh schools, 3.5 lakh teachers and staff, maintain and monitor a database of more than 1.6 crore students. School education is the largest sector in the state in terms of number of beneficiaries, geographical reach, number of institutions and engagement of human resources. It is also the most complex sector with multiple departments and local bodies exercising control over the workforce engaged in it. Over the past many years, the workload of the departments, institutions and offices dealing with school education has increased manifold without corresponding increase in the quantity and capability of the supervisory staff. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009 requires the state to provide free elementary education and ensure compulsory admission, attendance and completion of elementary education by all children between the age group of 6-14. The inception of RTE Act in 2009 has levied additional

Who has benefitted? l

1.6 crore students

3.5 lakh teachers/staff

1 lakh children with special needs

1.6 lakh Out of School Children

expectations on the state-school education departments to be able to provide transparent and accountable governance apart from ensuring quality education to the masses. These challenges led to the development of a bilingual, database driven, dynamic portal in collaboration with the National Informatics Center (NIC), Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh for all the schools. The portal www.educationportal. mp.gov.in facilitates a single source of live and authentic information related to school education for all the stakeholders of the state education system namely students, teachers, citizens and educational managers.

Benefits to stakeholders

The portal facilitates effective learning and enhancement of achievement levels of students by online monitoring of their performance in the monthly tests. Online application ensures timely availability of all assistance like free textbooks, uniforms, cycles, and scholarships to the children as per their eligibility. Parents can also submit online demand for more teachers to ensure an appropriate pupil-teacher ratio. Based on the demands received, the administration can engage the services of the guest teacher as per the norms. As per the Persons with Disabilities Act, 1995, the application facilitates the department to register the CWSN (Children With Special Needs) and enables online tracking of the assistance being provided to the child to ensure personalized followup. The portal also provides services to 1.6 lakh Out of School Children (OOSC) by facilitating the automation of various processes involved in their identification, registration and enrolment. Apart from this, it

facilitates the citizens to register any OOSC in their locality and work area online. Additionally, the portal provides the list of classes and schools with poor academic performance of students and the responsible subject teachers. Based on this report, the District Education Officers (DEO) can take necessary corrective action to augment the school with more teachers or upgrade the skills of the poor performing teacher or replace the teacher. The portal includes a wellintegrated suite of e-governance applications and facilitates a common platform that fulfils the needs for all school education related services. “To be effective, a portal must be alive with the latest content,” says Manoj Jhalani, Principal Secretary, Government of Madhya Pradesh. “This solution gives us the tools to easily make such updates. With up-to-date information, the school-government interaction and information sharing achieves the much needed transparency.” Madhya Pradesh has made dramatic improvements in the achievement levels of primary school children, leading to improved results for the state. “Effective implementation of the RTE Act 2009 along with better administration has been the major gains of this project,” says Jhalani. “Providing quality education to nearly 1.6 crore children including under privileged children along with ensuring better resource management have been the high points in the project’s implementation.”

u Ayushman Baruah

ayushman.baruah@ubm.com

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Opinion

Government assets require holistic security strategies

-governance has become a buzzword and leverages the vast IT capital the country has created to benefit a larger population. Information stored within the government institutions (defence records, tax records, or health records) is growing manifold. This leads to increased focus on creating an IT infrastructure that can handle the rapid technological changes, as well as secure and manage growing volumes of information. The Indian Government is undertaking various mega-projects to digitize information, with the intention to deliver services to citizens in a more streamlined and effective manner. A recent example is the UID project, considered to be one of the largest information management initiatives in the world, which brings various elements of information about citizens in a central database. This is leading to an explosion of digital information that is increasingly also dispersed across various devices such as smartphones, tablets and more significantly, the cloud. However, growth in data volumes is also being accompanied by the rising sophistication and targeted nature of cyber threats. Symantec observed over 286 million new threats in 2010 globally, according to the latest Internet Security Threat Report XVI. The report also revealed that India ranked sixth for overall malicious activities in 2010, up from 11th in 2008. Today, state and local governments face a challenge of securing their sensitive information in addition to modernizing infrastructure. Some of the key requirements that government institutions need to consider include: l Protecting confidential data residing in various endpoints, network and storage systems to reduce risks. l Automating key compliance and security processes to reduce risk

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and operational costs. Recovering citizen information in response to accidental loss of data, intentional data misuse or a disaster. Recognizing the seriousness and importance of information security, the Indian Government recently issued a directive to all Sarkari Bhavans to deploy intrusion prevention systems, with the objective of preventing attackers from entering the network. However, government organizations first need to anticipate and identify threats. One cannot hope to have security without intelligence. Networks do not know borders and given the advent of remote users, this is becoming more evident each day. As a result information collection on attacks, techniques, methods and vulnerabilities needs to be constant and vigilant. Along with the continuously evolving threat landscape, the insider threat to data has also become a significant danger, especially in the context of the numerous devices and platforms on which data is accessed anywhere and anytime. From the well meaning insider who clicks on a malicious link to the employee who may copy confidential information on to a thumb drive for personal benefits, the insider threat can be addressed through the technology that identifies the most valuable information and protects it no matter where it resides â&#x20AC;&#x201D; at rest or in motion. Data loss prevention technology also automates the implementation of policies and reduce risky actions to create a culture of security in the organization. Governments also need to make sure that critical services/systems remain available for as long as possible and that these services/systems can be quickly recovered in the clearly defined timeframe after an attack. According to Symantecâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Critical Infrastructure Protection Survey 2010, 43 percent of l

Indian critical infrastructure providers said attempts to shutdown or degrade their computer network were effective. Critical Infrastructure Protection is not limited to protecting government and defense infrastructure, but extends to both publicly and privately run infrastructure such as telephone networks, power generation and distribution, oil refineries and gas pipelines. These are the industries that always need to be available and any downtime can have significant societal impact and even threaten national security. As the pace of information growth accelerates and the digital infrastructure expands, the governments have more to manage than ever before. They now require a focus on security continuity that allows them to continuously respond to internal and external changes. Governments need to develop and implement an information-centric security strategy that is risk-based and policy driven, and operationalized across a well managed infrastructure. Such a strategy will help them secure and manage the connected world and deliver confidence to citizens that their information and identities are safe.

u Ajay Goel is Managing Director, India and SAARC, Symantec

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@ @

From L to R - Lenny Heymann, Executive VP & Group General Manager, UBM TechWeb; Sanjeev Khaira, MD, UBM India; Rob Preston, Editor-in-Chief InformationWeek; Pankaj Jain, Group Commercial Director, UBM India; Sandeep Nair, President and MD, Emerson Network Power India; and Mahesh Menon, Head - IT Infrastructure Services, iON, TCS lighting the ceremonial lamp

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Cloud computing – A change in business model INTEROP Mumbai 2011 opened with a keynote by Mike McCarthy, VP – Cloud Computing, IBM, which expressed his views on how cloud computing can play a vital role in changing the IT landscape InformationWeek News Network

loud computing is not a technology; it is a change in business model. It is an important concept for smarter planet. Mike McCarthy, VP of Cloud Computing, IBM expressed his views on how cloud computing can play a vital role in changing the IT landscape in his keynote session at INTEROP Mumbai 2011. However, he also said that cloud is not the only solution to all the challenges IT organizations face today and it is very important to understand where to apply cloud computing. “The percentage of CIOs who see cloud computing as IT and business model is growing. Cloud helps a business and IT to create and deliver value in fundamentally new ways. Businesses are choosing a variety of cloud models (private, public and hybrid) to meet their unique needs and priorities,” said McCarthy. In his session titled ‘Re-thinking IT. Re-inventing Business,’ McCarthy stressed on how enterprises need to re-invent themselves to ensure sustained growth. He said, from the companies that were in the top ten categories about 10 years back, only two are still in the top category.

Mike McCarthy, VP - Cloud Computing, IBM

McCarthy suggested, IT leaders must address the vicious cycle of sprawling IT, inflexible IT and incomplete data to overcome the IT conundrum.

In his keynote session at day one of INTEROP Mumbai 2011, Mike Nielsen, Director - Vertical and Solution Marketing, HP Networking expressed his views on the convergence of traditional IT, virtualization and cloud computing with mobility and emerging social trends.

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@ Lessons from India’s toughest projects CIOs discuss lessons learnt from some of India’s toughest and largest projects at INTEROP Mumbai 2011 By Ayushman Baruah

hen we come out of anything tough, we inevitably learn something out of it. CIOs of enterprises across business verticals discussed some of their learning experiences at the INTEROP 2011. State Bank of India (SBI), the country’s largest bank, embarked on the world’s largest core banking project that included the conversion of approximately 140 million accounts held at 14,600 domestic branches of SBI and its affiliate banks. “The project that started in 2003 had achieved its target of enabling core-banking solutions across 5,000 branches. Within one year by 2008, SBI enabled core banking across another 5,000 branches,” said SK Magoo, General Manager - Core Banking, SBI. The lesson learnt here is that the second phase of implementation takes a much shorter time than the first. Consequently, the bank in its second phase migrated more than 100 branches per day. Panelist K V Krishnamurthy, Head IT, Corporate Centre, Mahindra & Mahindra, shared unique insights and experiences about project Harmony – the Mahindra group’s ambitious effort to create a

single platform for common processes across the group on SAP. The platform has close to 14,000 users from across 100 different cities together on a single consolidated instance with 40 plus harmonized processes. Nirmalendu Jajodia, CTO, NCDEX, highlighted the importance of risk-scenario planning and communicating the risk, in any project. He said that phase-wise implementation and scenario planning are keys to any successful project. One of the other issues discussed by the panel was the advantages of a single vendor-scenario over a multivendor scenario and vice-versa. The panel reached a unanimous consensus that the deployment of a single or multi-vendors will vary on a case-tocase basis. For instance, Magoo of SBI said that a multi-vendor scenario is unavoidable for SBI Bank as it needs to have different vendors for the hardware of the ATM machine and its software. However, he emphasized that a single vendor is preferred for a single service within a particular project. This panel discussion was moderated by Dr Nilay Yajnik, Professor and Chairman – Information Systems Area, NMIMS Mumbai.

From L to R - Girish Hadkar, K V Krishnamurthy, Dr Nilay Yajnik, Nirmalendu Jajodia and SK Magoo

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Dabbawalas: The masters of supply chain management Dr Pawan Agrawal, President, Kamlabai Educational and Charitable Trust, fascinated the audience in his session By Amrita Premrajan

uoted by none other than C K Prahlad as “A model of managerial and organizational simplicity,” the Dabbawalas, a 120-year old business, has been executing 400,000 transactions everyday (including return). At INTEROP, Dr Pawan Agrawal, President - Kamlabai Educational and Charitable Trust, explained how this ‘seemingly simple’ process of collecting tiffins (dabbas) from households across Mumbai, their delivery to the right person, and then consequent collection and delivery of the empty tiffin boxes back to the respective houses, is actually intricate, time-sensitive and most importantly, sans the IT component. Dr Agrawal described the ‘Color Coding System’ that has evolved over a period of years among the dabbawalas. He explained it is as a series of alphabets and numbers scribbled over each dabba, which is a symbolic representation of where and who would be delivering it. He answered questions like how do the dabbawalas manage to deliver with an error rate of just 1 in 16 million transactions and with Six Sigma Performance (99.999966), charging just 350/400 rupees per month, per person.

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Will CISOs ever be on board? In a panel discussion titled, ‘Talking to your board about security,’ at INTEROP 2011, prominent CISOs of the industry shared best practices on how CISOs can communicate complex security plans to largely non-technical board members InformationWeek News Network

he whole landscape of security is evolving because of new threats. In most of the organizations today, the CISOs role has evolved from IT security administrator to a business enabler. CISOs today are definitely going way beyond technology. However, the question arises how the CISOs can convince the top management about deploying a particular security solution and will CISOs ever be on board? In a panel discussion titled, ‘Talking to your board about security,’ at INTEROP 2011, prominent CISOs of the industry shared best practices on how CISOs can communicate complex security plans to largely non-technical board members. The panel was moderated by Murli Menon, CISO, Atos Origin India and the panelists included eminent CISOs like Vishal Salvi, CISO, HDFC Bank; Sunil Dhaka, CISO, ICICI Bank; Sameer Ratolikar, CISO, Bank of India; and Satish Warrier, CISO, Godrej Industries. All the panelists were of the opinion that it is important to provide visibility to the management about security in the language the business understands. Dhaka said,

From L to R- Murli Menon, Vishal Salvi, Sunil Dhaka, Satish Warrier and Sameer Ratolikar

“Scorecard based approach to show the management about your security posture is very important.” Warrier asserted that the board should be made aware about the security threats and challenges and case studies of similar industry. Also, all the panelists believed that the CISOs role has evolved and soon they will be on board.

Enterprise journey to the cloud The keynote by John McCool, Senior VP and GM-Core Technology Group, Cisco at the second day of INTEROP 2011 touched upon an enterprise’s journey to the cloud By Ayushman Baruah

here is some hype about the cloud but there’s no doubt that it’s happening. As per statistics, there are 13 billion devices connected to the network and this number is poised to grow to 50 billion by 2020. Video will quadruple all IP traffic by 2014 and enterprise cloud technology will be used by 70 percent of enterprises by 2012. This burgeoning demand makes cloud an indispensable tool for enterprises. “Cloud helps in reducing IT costs, simplifying IT operations,

John McCool, Senior VP and GM-Core Technology Group, Cisco

improving pace and consistency of business applications and better aligning IT resources to business

needs,” John McCool, Senior VP and GM -Core Technology Group, Cisco said. There are however challenges that need to be addressed before cloud can realize its full potential. “Data privacy and security, measuring of ROI, and availability of vendors with a consolidated value proposition are some of them,” McCool said. He also outlined a four-pronged strategy for adopting cloud computing, including consolidation of assets, virtualization of environment, standardization of operations and automation of service delivery.

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@ On the second day of INTEROP Mumbai 2011, Ram Appalaraju VP - Technology and Product Marketing, Enterasys Networks delivered a keynote on ‘Network transformation for mobile application delivery: Market Trends and Technology Innovations.’’ The keynote focused on the challenges faced by IT managers to prepare the enterprise IT network for mobile applications.

Social Media: Not a matter of choice anymore Adoption of social media by enterprises is not a matter of choice anymore. It is a must, said Umesh Jain, CIO, YES BANK at INTEROP Mumbai 2011 By Amrita Premrajan

Umesh Jain, CIO, YES BANK

ocial Media has changed the way people have been discussing a brand. From wordof-mouth people have now moved to airing both their dissatisfaction and satisfaction towards a brand, through word-of-mouse. Umesh Jain, CIO, YES BANK emphasized this point at INTEROP Mumbai 2011 in his session, ‘Using social media for banking.’ “Online reputation management is a key for every organization. Whether you like it or not, people are talking about your enterprise,” he said. He discussed about various ways to leverage an

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enterprise’s engagement with customers on social networking platforms. Some of the questions he answered included how social media could be used effectively to engage prospective customers, consequent lead generation and timely problem-resolution of current customers. He also talked about how enterprises can benefit by connecting CRM with the profile of customers on social networks and utilize the flow of the unstructured data for generating cross-selling opportunities. Jain discussed how monitoring and analyzing customer feedback on social networks is an invaluable exercise for enterprises. This enables leveraging inputs from far wider audience in much lesser time, for co-innovation of new products with the customers, he said. Talking about whether social networking should be allowed inside enterprises, Jain said, “Openness in work culture is what Gen-Y is looking for. It is not a commandcontrol culture anymore. If you implement an internal social network, it would create a tremendous impact by breaking hierarchy and making it possible for employees to voice their opinion to the top management without a filter.” Talking about what is inhibiting enterprises from adopting social networks, Jain said, “Change management, getting people to adopt social media and making them feel secure about sharing their thoughts at these platforms is one of the challenges. Also, it requires drive from top management and sometimes drives for incentivizing the employees for doing the same.”

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Social media for corporate espionage Walking in the clouds: CIO perspective R Srinivasan, IT Head, Wipro talked about the top five challenges in adopting cloud InformationWeek News Network

hile everybody is talking about the cloud and how it can yield benefits for their business, CIOs are facing several challenges in deciding the type of applications that can be moved to the cloud in a secure environment. At INTEROP Mumbai 2011, R Srinivasan, IT Head, Wipro talked about the top five challenges the CIOs face in adopting the cloud and the ways they can tackle the challenges. As an experienced CIO, who has deployed a private cloud at his own firm, Srinivasan has recognized ROI and TCO, right architecture, security, resilience and integration — as the top five challenges. Srinivasan said it is extremely important for CIOs to track the ROI and TCO of each and every technology investment they make. It is equally crucial for the CIOs to map their business requirements to the service and deployment mode, he said. Also, the CIOs should take a call whether to deploy a private or public cloud and should make maximum use of the existing infrastructure. Srinivasan further said that CIOs should ensure seamless security layer and role-based access mechanism. He identified integration as the trickiest challenge the CIOs face.

Abilash Sonwane, Senior-VP, Elitecore Technologies, talked about how social media networks are the next frontier of corporate espionage

round 13 percent of corporate losses occur due to corporate espionage, as per a recent KPMG report. The number is less as most of the companies usually don’t admit it. In a session at INTEROP Mumbai 2011, Abilash Sonwane, Senior-VP, Elitecore Technologies, talked about how social media networks are the next frontier of corporate espionage. Today, corporates are looking at social media like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook to broaden their online outreach. Considering the popularity of social media among corporates, Elitecore Technologies did a research on 20 companies to find out how social media can be used for corporate

espionage. Elitecore selected companies that were active on social media from a mix of industries. The company found out that though on one hand social media can enable an enterprise to enhance its relationship with customers, on the other hand it can adversely affect a company’s reputation. Elitecore in its research came across a Singaporebased multimedia company, which had to shut down its business when its employees discussed the company’s internal issues on social forums. Sonwane said that to avoid such instances, it is vital for each and every organization to have a security solution that can enable accessing or blocking of social media based on time and user.

Big Data Analysis set to be a key differentiator for businesses Big data is penetrating every industry and is set to create values in various important ways By Amrita Premrajan

t INTEROP Mumbai 2011, Arun Ramachandran, Country Manager, Data Computing Division, EMC India & SAARC, discussed how big data is transforming businesses and enabling them to better compete and create value. However, at the same time, big data is posing several challenges as it requires customers to employ new architecture to capture, store, integrate, manage and analyze data for realizing

business values. Ramachandran talked about two categories that deal with big data and its analysis — data collectors and data aggregators. He said that in order to derive value out of big data, an organization needs to adopt a multi-disciplinary approach to big data analysis. Cluster analysis, crowd-sourcing, data mining, business intelligence, cloud computing and data warehousing are technologies which would enable derivation of value from big data, he said.

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@ IT consumerization and work-life integration Anand Sankaran, Senior VP and Business Head, Wipro Infotech delivered a keynote on consumerization of IT By Amrita Premrajan

How SMBs can grow in the virtual era?

onsumer technology and enterprise technology have traditionally followed different paths of evolution. While consumer technology was built on open standards and was developed for a larger audience, enterprise technology has traditionally been proprietary, accessible within the firewalls of the organization for usage by a defined set of employees. But in the last few years there has been a trend of migration of consumer technology into enterprise computing environment, as consumer technology started becoming more capable and cost effective like its enterprise equivalents. Anand Sankaran, Senior Vice President and Business Head, Wipro Infotech shared his views on the prevailing trends at the INTEROP Mumbai, 2011. Sankaran said that the key trends leading to consumerization of IT are social media pervasiveness, smart and mobile devices, changing work force devices and emerging business models. “It is predicted that 120 million more smartphones and tablets will be sold than PCs in 2012 and 1.3 million apps will be downloaded to smartphones and tablets, compared to 75,000 on PCs. We will clearly see a shift from apps traditionally being developed for usage in clients like Windows and Linux towards developing apps on smartphones,” said Sankaran. He further added, “In the next 5-10 years you will see the proliferation of integration of consumer technology with enterprise technologies. I am confident that just a year later, there will be more noise on consumerization of IT than now,” said Sankaran. Talking about the Bring Your

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Satyen Vyas from Dell India discussed how SMBs can grow by choosing the right technologies By Amrita Premrajan Anand Sankaran, Senior VP and Business Head, Wipro Infotech

Own Devices (BYOD) policies being implemented by Wipro, Sankaran said that they started off with rolling out Bring Your Own Apple products policies. Wipro then started rolling BYOD policies for other devices ranging from Android to Windows. At Wipro there are certain sections of employees who have been given the flexibility of bringing their own devices rather than what had been traditionally defined by the CIOs, he said. One of the reasons he cited on why a company should develop a BYOD policy was to attract and retain fresh talent. He said that prospective employees have today started asking the companies whether they have a policy that enables employees to bring their own devices to the office. If a company has BYOD in place, it gives the company brownie points and attracts the tech-savvy talent of today. Sankaran cited scalability, security, sustainability, developing a plan that is manageable within the organization, and inclusiveness that should involve supporting multiple technologies and devices, as the important points CIOs should take into while planning the integration of consumer technologies and enterprise technologies.

ost technology vendors look at SMBs as second rung customers but they are actually growth engines of the world. With the trend of proliferation of data and mobile devices and escalating need for flexibility and quick responsiveness in businesses, SMBs are facing more challenges with respect to developing a competitive edge for themselves. Satyen Vyas, Director – Medium Business CSMB, in his keynote at INTEROP Mumbai 2011 discussed how SMBs can leverage the current technologies to their benefit and develop a strong differentiation. Vyas discussed how, unlike established large enterprises, SMBs do not have a legacy infrastructure. Hence, they have the advantage of adopting new technologies and cost-effective solutions without worrying about legacy infrastructure. Satyen discussed how SMBs should be investing for a foreseeable future, so that tomorrow when they grow as a business, they can easily scale without any struggle. He further emphasized on developing a balanced view of on-premise applications and usage of cloud for non-core applications.

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@ Acknowledging CIOs in the making

ho in the CIO’s team today are most suited to be tomorrow’s IT leaders? Who are the future leaders who have kept up with the evolving role of CIO — blending business with technology? These questions were answered at the second InformationWeek Future Strategist Awards (FSA), held on September 28 at INTEROP Mumbai, 2011, when the eight IT leaders came to collect their award, which recognized them for being next in line for the CIO role. The eight winners were picked by a jury comprising InformationWeek senior editors. The jury shortlisted the

entries that clearly reflected the nominee’s contribution to the business. The Future Strategists were selected on the basis of their experience and track record, their innovative approaches for solving business challenges, and their business acumen and technology knowledge (among other parameters). The jury also looked for qualities like strategy, time management, delegation, sharp decision making, quick thinking, ability of handling multiple projects, and skills for dealing with people-centric issues such as change management.

The winners of Future Strategist Award 2011 along with United Business Media team

Brian Pereira, Editor, InformationWeek presenting the FSA to Seema Gaur, Dy GM (Systems), IFFCO

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Vikas Malhotra, Dy. General Manager – Information Systems, Hero MotoCorp accepting the FSA

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Joy Bagish, Sr. Systems Manager, Apeejay Surrendra Group receiving the FSA

Kailash Shirodkar presenting the FSA to Arvind Subramani, Head IT Projects and Governance, SIVA Group

Uma Ramani, Vice President – Information Technology, IDFC accepts the FSA from Kailash Shirodkar, Director & Publisher, UBM India

Srikanth RP, Senior Associate Editor, InformationWeek presenting the FSA to Tejas Mehta, VP-IT, IIFL (India Infoline)

Manoj Singh, Deputy General Manager, HyperCITY Retail India accepting the FSA

Prasad Patil, Head – Innovation and New Technologies, Essar Group receives the FSA from Srikanth RP

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@ Meet Global CIOs 2011 Global CIO is an award that acknowledges an exceptional group of business technology leaders. These are the leaders who not only guide their companiesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; IT efforts around the world, but also play a key part in driving growth and innovation efforts across the businesses. This year, InformationWeek conferred the prestigious Global CIO 2011 award on seven CIOs at an award ceremony in INTEROP Mumbai on September 29, 2011

The winners of Global CIO Award 2011 with UBM Team

Mike Prieto, VP, HP Storage Division, Asia Pacific & Japan, HP presenting the award to K T Rajan, Director â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Operations , IS & Projects, Allergan India

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N Nataraj, Global CIO, Hexaware Technologies receives the Global CIO Award 2011

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V S Parthasarathy, Group CIO, Executive VP â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Finance & M&A, Mahindra & Mahindra accepting the Global CIO Award 2011

Michael Duck, Executive Vice President, UBM Asia presenting the Global CIO Award 2011 to T G Dhandapani, Group CIO, TVS Motor Company

Rob Preston, VP & Editor-in-Chief, InformationWeek presenting the Global CIO Award 2011 to Girish Rao, Head -IT, Marico

Umesh Jain, CIO, YES BANK receives the Global CIO Award 2011 from Michael Duck

Vijay Sethi, Vice President Information Systems and CIO, Hero MotoCorp accepts the the Global CIO Award 2011

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@ @

EDGE honors Indiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s finest business technology leadership The EDGE awards ceremonies were held on 29th and 30th September at INTEROP Mumbai, 2011. EDGE or Enterprises Driving Growth and Excellence through IT is InformationWeekâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s annual initiative to identify, recognize and honor end-user companies in India that have demonstrated the best use of technology to solve a business problem and improve business competitiveness.

The winners of Diamond and Silver EDGE awards with the UBM team

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Mike Prieto, VP, HP Storage Division, APAC & Japan presenting the Diamond EDGE Award to Anju Sharma and IT team of NRHM

SK Magoo, GM- Core Banking (second from left) and the IT team of SBI received the Diamond EDGE award from Sanjeev Khaira, MD, UBM India

Satya Gupta, Addnl GM-IT, NDPL receiving the Diamond EDGE Award from Mike Prieto

Umesh Jain, CIO (second from left) and the IT team of YES BANK was presented the Diamond EDGE award by Sanjeev Khaira

V S Parthasarathy, Group CIO, Executive VP â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Finance & M&A (fourth from left) and the IT team of Mahindra & Mahindra accepting the award

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Sankaranarayanan Raghavan, Director â&#x20AC;&#x201C; IT and team of AEGON Religare collected the Silver EDGE

Mike Prieto presenting the Silver EDGE award to the IT team of HDFC

Yogesh Zope, VP-IT, Bharat Forge & CEO, Kalyani Technologies received the Silver EDGE award from Kailash Shirodkar, Director & Publisher, UBM India

U C Dubey, Executive Director (IT), Iffco Tokio General Insurance Co. receiving the Silver EDGE award from Mike Prieto

Radhakrishnan Menon, CIO, Biocon accepted the Silver EDGE award from Kailash Shirodkar

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Mike Prieto presenting the Silver EDGE award to Muralikrishna K, Senior Vice President and Head - Computers & Communication Division, Infosys

Pankaj Jain, Group Commercial Director, UBM India presenting the award to Shashi Kumar Ravulapaty, CTO, Reliance Commercial Finance

Girish Rao, Head â&#x20AC;&#x201C; IT, Marico (fourth from left) and the IT team accepted the Silver EDGE award from Mike Prieto

Ajit Manocha, CIO, Syngene receiving the Silver EDGE award from Pankaj Jain

T R Venkateswaran, Chief Manager â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Data Warehouse, Punjab National Bank receiving the Silver EDGE award from Mike Prieto

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Nikhil Kapadia, Head of Business Analysis and Projects, TCS accepting the Silver EDGE award from Pankaj Jain

Prof. Pradeep Pendse, Dean, WIM, Mumbai presented the Silver EDGE to Subrata Banerjee, Head - IT, Aluminium Sector, Vedanta Aluminium

Brian Pereira, Editor, InformationWeek presenting the Silver EDGE award to R Srinivasan, Head 窶的T, Wipro Technologies

The IT Team of WNS accepted the Silver EDGE award from Prof. Pradeep Pendse

Vaidya Nathan, Founder and CEO, Classle Knowledge accepts the Silver EDGE from Brian Pereira

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@ @ Jayantha Prabhu, CTO and IT Team of Essar Group collecting the EDGE award

Pankaj Jain, Group Commercial Director, UBM India presenting the EDGE award to L B Subrahmanyam, Head â&#x20AC;&#x201C; IT of Oil Fields Warehouse and

S Ramasamy, Executive Director (IS) and the IT team of Indian Oil Corporation proudly accept the EDGE award

Gita Ramachandran. Vice President ERP & IT at Bharat Oman Refineries accepting the EDGE award from Pankaj Jain

Jawed Ahmed, Head-IT, Power Business of Sterlite Technologies accepts the EDGE award

Tarun Pandey of Aditya Birla Financial Services received the EDGE award from Pankaj Jain

Rajesh Garg of Nucleus Software Exports and his team mate collecting the EDGE award

Team members of Gati proudly show the EDGE award

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Ketan Parekh, CIO and the IT team of Sharekhan proudly receives the EDGE award

Vipin Rustagi, Manager-Systems from Asian Paints receives the EDGE award

Alpna Doshi, CIO, Reliance Communications and the IT team accepted the EDGE award

George Mathew and the IT team of IOCL proudly show their EDGE award

Sharat M Airani, Chief- IT (Systems & Security), Forbes Marshall Group of Companies receives the EDGE award

The IT team of Atul Limited proudly shows the EDGE award

Manoj Kumar Mittal, Head - IT, Aegis Logistics accepting the EDGE award

H R Khona and the IT Team of L&T accepting the EDGE award

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The team members of Elder Pharmaceuticals received the EDGE award

Vivek Bandhu of Max New York Life Insurance collecting the EDGE award

Shailesh Joshi, AVP窶的T and Aniruddha Apte of Godrej Industries collecting the EDGE award

Neeraj Chandra, Senior VP, Commonwealth Bank of Australia proudly accepts the EDGE award

IT Team of Mahindra & Mahindra proudly accepts the EDGE award for the Nanhi Kali initiative

Rohan Batra - VP -Group Strategy and Operations, Cravatex receives the EDGE award

Vijay Gokarn, Senior IT Manager and the team of HDFC Standard Life insurance receiving the EDGE award

Balaji Ganesan of Eaton Corporation accepting the EDGE award with his team mate

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Vikas Malhotra, Dy. General Manager â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Information Systems, Hero MotoCorp accepting the EDGE award

Aruna Rao,CTO and the IT team of Kotak Mahindra Bank collecting the EDGE award

The IT team of Mahindra Vehicle Manufacturers is delighted to receive the EDGE award

Dr. Anthony Vipin Das of L V Prasad Eye Institute accepting the EDGE award

The IT team of HPCL accepting the EDGE award

Bharati Lele, Head Innovation Labs accepting the second EDGE award bagged by L&T

Manoj Singh, Deputy General Manager of HyperCITY Retail accepting the EDGE award with a team mate

The IT team of Mahindra and Mahindra collecting the EDGE award

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A team member of MTS India accepting the EDGE award

Muralikrishna K, Senior VP and Head - Computers & Communication Division, and the IT team of Infosys receiving the EDGE award

Team members of New India Assurance proudly receive the EDGE award

The team members of Max Bupa Health Insurance accepting the award

Asmita Junnarkar and IT team of Voltas accepting the EDGE award

Ashok Jade, Head IT - Videocon Consumer Electronics Division accepting the EDGE award from Kailash Shirodkar, Director & Publisher, UBM India

Archana Sinha and Hitesh Patel from HyperCITY Retail receiving the EDGE award

Shailesh Joshi, AVP窶的T of Godrej Properties collecting the EDGE award

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Mukund Prasad, CIO, Welspun and the IT team accepted the EDGE award

The team members from Infosys collecting the EDGE award

Vijay Kumar Singh, GM - IT of Abhijeet Properties receiving the EDGE award

The IT team of Kalpataru accepting the EDGE award

Jayantha Prabhu, CTO, Essar Group (second from right ) and the IT team accepting the EDGE award

The IT team of Tulsidas Khimji proudly show the EDGE award

Samir Mandal from Haldia Petrochemicals receiving the EDGE award

Kailash Shirodkar, Director & Publisher, UBM India presenting the EDGE award to B Sreenivasa Rao, Vice President, 4G Identity Solutions

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Amit Jaste, AVP â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Legal, Secretarial & Corporate Affairs of Glodyne Technoserve accepting the EDGE award

Karthi V from Allergan collecting the EDGE award

The team members of HDFC Securities accepting the EDGE award

The team of Anand Agricultural University accepting the EDGE award

A team member of Gujarat Government receiving the EDGE award

The team members of Govt of Chhattisgarh proudly receive the EDGE award

Venkata Krishnan, Head - IT, Mahindra Vehicle Manufacturers and the IT team accepting the EDGE award

Muralidharan Rajamani, COO and the IT Team of Dhanlaxmi Bank accepting the award

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The IT Team of Shree Cement proudly receive the EDGE award

Team members of Marico accepting the EDGE award

Rajesh M Gangakhedkar of Indian Hotels Company and his team mate are delighted to receive the EDGE award

Dr Rajendran N from NPCI receiving the EDGE award with his team

S Sekar from Karur Vysya Bank proudly accepts the EDGE award

The IT team of Reliance Infrastructure collecting the EDGE award

Paromita Joseph, K K Sreeram and Neelesh Gore from Kotak Mahindra Old Mutual Life Insurance receiving the EDGE award

The IT team of Reliance General Insurance accepting the EDGE award

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The team members of IFFCO, Aonla Unit collecting the EDGE award

Brian Pereira, Editor, InformationWeek presenting the EDGE award to Chandresh Dedhia from Fermenta Biotech

The team members of IndiaFirst Life Insurance Company proudly accept the EDGE award

The team members of Firstsource accepting the EDGE award

Shailesh Joshi, AVP窶的T, Godrej Industries receiving the EDGE award with his team mates

Prashanta Ghoshal, Director, ITES, Geometric proudly receive the EDGE award with his team mates

The IT team of ICICI securities accepting the EDGE award

Muralikrishna K, Senior VP and Head - Computers & Communication Division, and the IT team of Infosys receiving the EDGE award

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The IT team of AMG India International accepting the EDGE award

The IT team of K Raheja Corp accepting the EDGE award

Umesh Mehta, CIO, Jubilant Life Sciences receives the EDGE award

Alpna Doshi, CIO, Reliance Communications and the IT team proudly show the EDGE award

Team members of Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services accepting the award

Muralidharan Ramachandran from Syntel accepting the EDGE award

C O Parmar from IFFCO Kandla accepting the EDGE award

Raghavendra Joshi, Head-IT, VFS Global Services and the IT team receiving the EDGE award

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The IT team of EXL Service receiving the EDGE award

Deepak Shivathaya, EVP & Head – IT proudly receives the EDGE award with his team mate

Bharati Lele, Head –Innovation Labs, L&T Infotech accepting the EDGE award

Dhiraj Trivedi, Corporate Director, Revenue Management and E-Distribution receiving the EDGE award

The IT team of Infosys accepting the EDGE award

Jawed Ahmed, Head of IT, Power Business of Sterlite Technologies proudly accepts the EDGE award

The IT team of redBus receiving the EDGE award

Ruchita Chawla, Head Operations, UCP Direct receiving the EDGE award

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Subodh Dubey from Usha International receiving the EDGE award

Sayeed Anjum, CTO, Greytip Software accepting the EDGE award

Basant Kumar Chaturvedi, Head IT, Pefetti Van Melle India accepting the EDGE award

Srinibash Sahoo, Senior VP & Head - Technology, BSP BlackRock (DSPBR) Mutual Fund receiving the EDGE award with his team mate

The IT team of Mahindra Shubhlabh Services is proud to receive the EDGE award

Meheriar Patel, CIO, Globus Stores receiving the EDGE award

Suresh A Shanmugam from Mahindra and Mahindra Financial Services accepting the EDGE award with his team

KN Swaminathan from TVS Motor Company accepting the EDGE award

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Team members of Marico receiving the EDGE award

Sesanka Pemmaraju, IS Director & CISO, Sierra Atlantic receiving the EDGE award

The IT team of Mahindra and Mahindra collecting the EDGE award

Thomas K Alex, Associate Vice President-IT from Times Business Solution accepting the EDGE award

The IT team of Wockhardt proudly accepts the EDGE award

Jayant Magar, General Manager - IT from Mahindra Navistar Automotives and the IT team collecting the EDGE award

Ramkumar Mohan, Head â&#x20AC;&#x201C; IT & CISO from Orbis Financial Corporation accepting the EDGE award

Mahesh Gohel, EDP Manager, Rajkot Municipal Corporation receiving the EDGE award

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Team members from Vijaya Bank collecting the EDGE award

The IT team of Reliance Infrastructure collecting the EDGE award

The IT Team of Sumul Dairy was honored with the EDGE award for implementing an innovative automatic milk collection system

Geeta Patil from Nanavati Hospital accepting the EDGE award with a colleague

Nilkanth Poman and the IT team of Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation accepting the EDGE award

The IT team of ICICI securities accepting the EDGE award

Team members of Ravi Jaipuria Group receiving the EDGE award

Rajiv Sharaf, Addl VP - IT, Reliance Infra receiving the EDGE award

informationweek november 2011

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@ INTEROP is a wonderful base for all IT verticals to present themselves to enterprises, entrepreneurs and end users. I got a very good opportunity to interact with many eminent CIOs and CXOs and I am highly thankful to Information Week for this

Sesanka Pemmaraju

IS Director & CISO, Sierra Atlantic

Overall the experience at INTEROP was tremendous. The focus was clearly on providing a platform for experts and suppliers of the latest IT technologies to interact with the attendees and exchange information on the latest directions of technology. INTEROP is one of the most productive and well-rounded IT events that I have attended in India

INTEROP is an eye opener to new technologies. It provides a very good networking platform for the IT fraternity and vendors

Seema Gaur

Dy GM(Systems), IFFCO

Prashanta Ghoshal

Director, ITES, Geometric Limited

UBM India and all the jury members have done a great job in evaluating the projects for EDGE, going through the minutest detail to churn out true deserving winners. We appreciate the global standards and benchmarks maintained

V S Parthasarathy

Group CIO, EVP – Finance and M&A, Member of Group Executive Board, Mahindra & Mahindra

I am very thrilled and excited to receive the FSA award. FSA is an excellent initiative undertaken by InformationWeek and UBM to recognize our capabilitiesr is

Manoj Singh FSA is one of the best technology awards. It enhances our confidence level and motivates us. We spend long hours working and it is good to have some recognition in the form of an award

Deputy General Manager, HyperCity Retail India

Arvind Subramani

Head IT Projects and Governance, SIVA Group

The live webcast idea at INTEROP was very good. The concept of FSA award is brilliant as it recognizes the efforts of IT team members as normally only CIOs get recognized

Uma Ramani

Vice President – Information Technology, IDFC

INTEROP is a very good event not just for CIOs, but also for the mid-level technology professionalsor

Prasad Patil

Head – Innovation and New Technologies, Essar Group

november 2011 i n f o r m at i o n w e e k 65

Event

Big event, big data, big machines OpenWorld is the largest information technology event of its kind in San Francisco dedicated to helping businesses optimize existing systems and understand upcoming technology breakthroughs By Ayushman Baruah

racle OpenWorld isn’t just a conference in San Francisco. It’s a celebration. A culture. With more than 45,000 registered attendees from 117 countries, OpenWorld generates more than USD 100 million for the Bay Area economy. Oracle OpenWorld 2011, held October 2 to October 6, at the Moscone Center, offered about 2,000 educational sessions, 400 product demos, and exhibitions from 475 partners showcasing applications, middleware, database, server and storage systems. Oracle launched some of its latest and most compelling products at the OpenWorld. During one of his keynotes, Larry Ellison, CEO, Oracle announced the Oracle public cloud, a set of integrated services that provide customers with subscriptionbased, self-service access to Oracle’s enterprise applications, middleware and database. The Oracle public cloud includes Oracle Fusion Customer Relationship Management (CRM) cloud service, Oracle Fusion Human Capital Management (HCM) cloud service, Oracle Social Network, Oracle Java cloud service and Oracle Database cloud service. “The Oracle public cloud is a little different,” said Ellison. “It is both a platform-as-a-service and applications-

as-a-service. The key difference is that Oracle public cloud is based on industry standards and supports full interoperability with other clouds and your data center on premise.” In continuation with Oracle’s strategy of hardware and software integration, Oracle unveiled the Exalytics Business Intelligence machine, which it claims to be industry’s first in-memory hardware and software system engineered to run analytics faster than ever, provide realtime speed-of-thought visual analysis, and enable new types of analytic applications. Oracle Exalytics is engineered as a single vendor system featuring Oracle BI and in-memory database software to minimize integration cost, time and effort as well as on-going maintenance. Oracle Exalytics is an open solution for use in heterogeneous IT environments, and can access and analyze data from any Oracle or non-Oracle relational, OLAP (On-Line Analytical Processing) or unstructured data sources. One of the other major products announced at the OpenWorld was the Big Data Appliance aimed at helping customers integrate and maximize the value of Big Data. Weblogs, social media feeds, smart meters, sensors and other devices generate massive volumes of data (commonly defined as Big Data)

that isn’t readily accessible in enterprise data warehouses and business intelligence applications today. Engineered to work together, the Oracle Big Data Appliance can be easily integrated with Oracle Database 11g, Oracle Exadata Database machine, and Oracle Exalytics Business Intelligence machine, and is designed to deliver extreme analytics on all data types, with enterprise-class performance, availability, supportability and security. “With the explosion of data in the past decade, including more machine-generated data and social data, companies are faced with the challenge of acquiring, organizing and analyzing this data to make better business decisions. New technologies, such as Hadoop offer some relief but don’t provide a holistic solution for customers’ Big Data needs,” said Andrew Mendelsohn, Senior Vice President, Oracle Server Technologies. “With this announcement, Oracle becomes the first vendor to offer customers a complete and integrated set of products to address critical Big Data requirements, unlock efficiencies, simplify management and create data insights that maximize business value.” The writer was hosted by Oracle in San Francisco for OpenWorld

Larry Ellison, CEO, Oracle

informationweek august 2011

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Technology & Risks

Is your mobile data secure?

Avinash Kadam

To ensure safety of vital data stored on our mobile phones, it is absolutely essential for us to acquaint ourselves with the security features of our device

http://www.on the web How to reduce your Android security risks Read article at: http://bit.ly/qgbgyO

ecently my colleague lost his brand new mobile phone. However, he was able to recover the phone within 24 hours without any help from the service provider or the police. The information on the phone remained intact and unaccessed. This became possible as my colleague (an active information security professional) had enabled each and every security feature of the phone. It was indeed an impressive demonstration of the capability of a mobile device to protect itself and help its owner to retrieve it. How much information does our mobile devices carry? My notebook PC has a modest 200 GB disk. My iPad has 64 GB capacity and my Android-based mobile phone has another 32 GB. So the two mobile devices that I carry have almost half of the capacity of my notebook PC â&#x20AC;&#x201D; which also is a mobile device as it is on the move along with me. How much data will be common between my notebook PC and my other mobile devices? Lots! Thanks to easy synchronization of data between the notebook PC and these mobile devices, we tend to synchronize our e-mails, calendars, contacts and various documents, which are on our current reading list. So, loss of any of these mobile devices can be truly devastating. It is absolutely worthwhile for us to spend a few minutes to acquaint ourselves with the security features of our mobile devices. It is not only the loss of costly devices that we may suffer, but more pertinently loss of vital information, which in the wrong hands can prove extremely dangerous. Some basic precautions are: Use strong passwords: This is a permanent, ubiquitous, standard and mandatory requirement. You can use even stronger adjectives to emphasize this. It is more so in mobile devices, because the encryption of data uses the password as the key. The stronger the password, more secure will be the data. Along with selecting a strong password, one should set stringent limits to maximum failed password

attempts, and define very low inactivity time before the device locks up. These settings will help the mobile device to defend itself, atleast against someone with moderate capability to break the password. Passwords entered on the mobile device screens also leave a trail of our fingerprints or stylus marks. These marks become almost permanent with constant usage. So, it is all the more important to change the password frequently, at least to ensure that you do not leave tell-tale marks. Local and remote wipe: One of the best measures is to set the local wipe feature to wipe all the data from the device. You can set the limit for failed password attempts, as per your requirement. You can also set the remote wipe feature, if the device is configured for remote administration. Mobile Tracker: Many free software applications are available for the mobile devices including notebook PCs. For the notebook PC, you can mark the device as missing on the web interface for the software to start tracking it. When tracked, you get a report containing the thiefâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s picture taken from the PCâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s webcam, a location map and a screenshot. For mobile phones, you can send an SMS to your lost device to disable it. As soon as someone changes the SIM card, you are sent an alert giving you the new number. You can then send an SMS to the new number and disable the device.You get a report containing a map of the exact location of the device.This will be done by your mobile device using WLAN networks or the mobile networks accessible to it. You can also use GPS satellite for finding the location. My colleague was able to pinpoint the location to the exact building. He, then, gave a call to the person who had his mobile phone to come down and handover the phone. You can just imagine the astonished expression on his face when he meekly returned the phone. u Avinash Kadam is at MIEL e-Security Pvt. Ltd. He can be contacted via e-mail awkadam@mielesecurity.com

november 2011 i n f o r m at i o n w e e k 67

Global CIO

Google+ lesson: Business users come second

Chris Murphy

Google’s consumer-first approach can produce creative products. Just go in knowing where you stand

LOGS Chris Murphy blogs at InformationWeek. Check out his blogs at: http://www.informationweek. com/authors/1115

informationweek november 2011

anny Sullivan pulled his hair out in frustration for 325 words in a recent blog post. Read for yourself, but he’s honked off that Google barred brand pages from its new Google+ social network. Google+ is Google’s attempt to create a social network to beat Facebook. Brand pages on Facebook and Twitter let you follow a company instead of a person. With digital marketing soaring in importance, companies flocked to the chance to plug into Google+. Google didn’t anticipate the demand for businesses to create their own brand profile pages, and it says the platform isn’t ready for them yet. It is disabling pages that businesses created using the standard Google+ format. Until it can build something for brands, Google recommends letting one employee who has a personal profile be your face of the brand for now. Tech bloggers went bananas. Sullivan’s blog post has more than 130 comments. Among the comments to Sullivan’s blog is this from Vic Gundotra, who leads Google’s social projects: “We should have anticipated brands and people who want a following would be very frustrated when we didn’t have proper profile support. This is my fault. I prioritized other things first. So when Danny says Google screwed up, he is right. We prioritized making a great experience for people first. None of our internal models showed this level of growth. We were caught flat-footed. This growth is very enticing for people/ brands who crave an audience. We are doing all we can to accelerate the work to properly handle this case. Please give us just a little more time.” Google brand profiles appear to have been placed well down the original list of Google+ priorities. I say that because Google now says that, by refocusing some priorities, it will be able

to get a solid business profile option in place within a few months. So, without that new sense of urgency, how soon would business brand profiles have appeared? For IT leaders, there is a good reminder here: Google thinks of the consumer first — and probably second and third. The enterprise/business market is a tag-along business, and you will not get the goodies first. This is a logical strategic decision — advertising is 97 percent of Google’s business, “other” (which includes enterprise customer licensing) is 3 percent, or a slightly north of USD 1 billion-per-year business. But you also get the sense at times like these that the consumer focus is simply part of Google’s DNA. Google does deliver some very good products for business use. I’ve talked to a number of satisfied CIO customers of Google Apps. But those CIOs also know that they won’t drive the Google Apps development agenda. Google isn’t indifferent to the needs of business. After Google+ product Manager Christian Oestlien posted the decision to take down brand profiles, one reader challenged whether Google “really [did] not anticipate thousands and thousands and thousands of businesses would need to be represented here?” Oestlien replied: Really. We didn’t know what to expect. I think you will find that we want to have the same nuance with business profiles that we did with consumer profiles when we created features like Circles. Small changes can have a very big impact. Thanks for your patience. Google’s consumer-first approach can indeed produce creative products for business use. Just go in knowing where you stand in Google’s line.

u Chris Murphy is Editor of

InformationWeek. Write to Chris at cjmurphy@techweb.com

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Practical Analysis

Virtualization: How much is enough?

Art Wittmann

Most organizations have virtualized one-half to two-thirds of their systems. For many, that’s about right

LOGS Art Wittmann blogs at InformationWeek. Check out his blogs at: http://www.informationweek. com/authors/6044

nyone who has been around the IT block a few times knows that even as new technologies come to dominate, old technologies never die and some won’t even fade away. Skeptics, consider this: In its most recent quarterly statement, IBM said that System z mainframe revenues increased 61 percent over the same period last year. It’s the latest data point illustrating the enterprise struggle to find the right balance between workload agnostic systems (virtualized generic servers, a.k.a. private cloud) and workload specific systems — like mainframes, database machines, and all those appliances we’ve been snapping up for years. Even for what we think of as appliance applications, the decision hasn’t always been clear cut. Back in the 90’s, if you wanted the gold standard for routers, you shelled out USD 30k for a Cisco AGS+, but if you needed a fast router with basic functionality, a Netware 3.1 server did a pretty good job. You paid Novell about USD 2,000 and the hardware ran around USD 5,000, quite a deal for cash-conscious organizations. Likewise, you had the option in many cases to purchase firewall software and run it on your own hardware, or to buy an appliance. You could roll your own for about USD10,000 or spend USD 25,000 on the appliance version. The result is that we often run appliances in places where there’s no performance-related reason to do so, though you can argue that because they run on a stripped down OS, they’re easier to manage and potentially more secure. I say potentially, because if there is a security vulnerability, it’s less likely that you can do anything about it and in many cases, less likely that the vendor will know about it. Even at the lowest levels, we can debate where and how to run a service.

DNS, DHCP, LDAP could all run together on a virtualized server or they could run in an appliance. File and print services can run on a big fancy NetApp-like box, or they can run on a virtualized server hooked up to local storage or to SAN. Of course, it’s still pretty reasonable to run some services unvirtualized. If you have a database that runs well and uses all the resources of a memory loaded server with 32 cores and some fast networking connections, you might think twice before sliding virtualization into that mix. It’s not like you’re going to start running more VMs on that system. But there’s also the clear advantage of being able to run that database on any 32 core box, not just that particular 32 core box where it runs now. For larger, mission-critical systems, the tradeoff in going virtual is less about performance and more about the testing and validation it takes to make that virtualized transition. It’s not trivial, and for just about 100 percent of IT organizations to whom I’ve talked, it takes resources that they really just don’t have. That leaves most organizations with one-half to twothirds of their systems virtualized. So, for the other one-third to one-half of systems, there’s a completely valid argument for choosing workloadspecific hardware. That could be an argument for a database toaster like Oracle’s Exadata, or for a good mainframe. These devices are secure, they’re very good at what they do, and can be run by surprisingly few staff people — if you can find qualified staff (staffing being probably the biggest deterrent to System z adoption). Should 100 percent virtualization be your goal? For a lot of organizations, the answer is probably not. u Art Wittmann is Director of

InformationWeek Analytics, a portfolio of decision-support tools and analyst reports. You can write to him at awittmann@techweb.com.

november 2011 i n f o r m at i o n w e e k 69

Down to Business

IT greatness Vs. IT risk

Rob Preston

While a new Harvard Business Review research article warns of the financial perils of big IT projects, business technology leaders must keep their eyes squarely on the upside

LOGS Rob Preston blogs at InformationWeek. Check out his blogs at: http://www.informationweek. com/authors/showAuthor. jhtml?authorID=1026

informationweek november 2011

s we prepare to celebrate the nation’s top business technology innovators and risk takers in our annual InformationWeek 500 ranking, an interesting new Harvard Business Review article is taking a different tack, warning executives about the financial perils of very ambitious IT projects. The HBR article focuses on those unwieldy, budget-busting IT projects that can cost CIOs and CEOs their jobs — and do worse. “It will be no surprise if a large, established company fails in the coming years because of an out-of-control IT project,” authors Bent Flyvbjerg and Alexander Budzier write. “In fact, the data suggests that one or more will.” The authors reach that grim conclusion, they say, after conducting “the largest global study ever of IT change initiatives,” poring over the budgets, actual costs, and results of 1,471 IT projects with an average tab of USD167 million. The average cost overrun of those projects: 27 percent. But more alarming, they say, is their finding that one in six of those projects incurred an average cost overrun of a whopping 200 percent. That is, the biggest IT projects tend to run over budget, and a significant percentage of them run way over budget. Furthermore, almost 70 percent of those biggest budget-busters also overrun their schedules, at a time when business technology executives see speed to market as their No. 1 priority, according to our InformationWeek 500 research. The HBR researchers argue that the biggest IT debacles typically occur at companies under financial duress. Their case in point is Kmart, which filed for bankruptcy protection in 2002 after two of its IT projects, costing a combined USD 2 billion, “went off the rails.” But Kmart was losing to Wal-Mart and Target well before those IT projects went awry, and it only makes sense that the poorest-run companies also lack strong technology leadership.

And could it be that the most troubled companies are the ones most likely to blame their problems on misguided IT? Another premise of the study seems tenuous — that IT projects “are now so big, and they touch so many aspects of an organization, that they pose a singular new risk.” Yet many of the examples the HBR researchers cite are years, even decades old. (Do we need to be reminded, again, that Hershey’s flawed supply chain management system messed up one of its Halloween seasons in the mid-1990s?) In fact, big-bang IT initiatives were far more common in the 90s and early 2000s than they are today. While mega-ERP and other IT project disasters can and do still occur, IT governance and risk mitigation practices have come a long way since the dot-com bust and the most recent recession. Meantime, technology models like agile development and software as a service emphasize smaller-scale rollouts, while big services contracts are more likely than ever to be tied to performance and outcomes. An HBR finding that jibes with our InformationWeek 500 research is the need for companies to tightly integrate product development and IT. While our IW 500 relates success stories such as PACCAR and Vail Resorts, HBR calls out a product development disaster, Airbus’s tech-intensive A380 airliner, which met with massive cost and schedule overruns because engineers and managers weren’t on the same page with IT experts. But at a time when IT organizations must complete the transition from support shops to drivers of growth and opportunity, companies must push the tech envelope rather than scale back their ambitions. Yes, do the due diligence to avoid the massive screw-up, but don’t let the prospect of failure paralyze your resolve to innovate with technology at the core. u Rob Preston is VP and Editor in Chief of InformationWeek. You can write to Rob at rpreston@techweb.com.