InformationWeek November 1, 2012 issue by Viraj Mehta

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The belief in IT is growing… or this month’s cover story we focus on the six verticals that have traditionally been key adopters of technology. We discuss investment trends and technology adoption in the BFSI, manufacturing/retail, government, telecom, IT/ITES and healthcare verticals. Here’s what stands out in our research: the dip in market performance in past months has not been a deterrent to long-term IT investment, though sectors (like telecom) may be more frugal about this for the moment. In fact, there is plenty of optimism in the air, and I say this for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the Indian IT industry crossed the USD 100 billion mark in FY 2012 and is now contributing significantly to the country’s GDP. According to Gartner, IT spending in India will reach USD 71.5 billion by the year 2013. Secondly, consumption and demand for products and services is expected to pick up in the last two months of the year, which includes two major festive seasons. In India, consumers loosen their purse strings during festivals — so demand will surge in retail. Thirdly, the recent reforms announced by the UPA government will lead to increased FDI, giving sluggishly performing industries a much needed boost. And expected rate cuts by RBI are sure to improve the economic climate. Apart from this, the government is investing heavily in technology to digitize records and improve connectivity — to improve citizen services. In the background of this optimism, our writers and analysts here at InformationWeek observe much activity in Indian enterprises, with elaborate plans for adopting the latest technologies. Take BFSI for instance. Jasmine Kohli reports how banks and insurance companies are changing the way they interact with young customers, through platforms like social and mobile. An example is IndiaFirst Life Insurance Company, which has empowered its sales force with a tabletbased application to sell insurance policies at the doorstep of its customers. According to rating agency Fitch, the Indian Healthcare sector is expected to reach USD 100 billion by 2015, from the current USD 65 billion, growing at 20 percent a year. Ayushman Baruah reports how healthcare providers and pharma companies are increasingly investing in IT to improve the quality and delivery of patient care. Why even the government sector and PSUs, once laggards in technology investment, are investing heavily now. Amrita Premrajan finds out that government expenditure on IT has tripled in the past four years. Atul Khatavkar, VP, IT Governance Risk Compliance, AGC Networks says, “This is due to the government’s focus on creating applications and IT infrastructure that is transparent, secured, and scalable to help citizens to avail government services.” In this issue, you will also learn how the six verticals are using different technologies and applications to pitch products and services, tap new segments, reduce customer churn, and mine nuggets of information from Big Data, to make those timely and important business decisions. In closing, I wish all our readers a joyful Diwali and a Happy New Year!

The dip in market performance in past months has not been a deterrent to longterm IT investment

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u Brian Pereira is Editor of InformationWeek India. brian.pereira@ubm.com

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contents Vo l u m e 2 | I ss u e 0 1 |

November 2012

18 Cover Story Social and mobility wave set to redefine BFSI sector The immense popularity of social networks coupled with a huge adoption of smartphones have led firms in the BFSI sector to redefine their traditional processes

28 31

Healthcare industry prescribing a dose of technology Healthcare, pharma and life sciences companies are increasingly adopting technology to optimize cost and ensure better health services

BI and Mobility propel IT spend for manufacturing enterprises Driven by the need to take real-time decisions, firms in the manufacturing sector are investing heavily in BI and mobility-based solutions Cover Design : Deepjyoti Bhowmik

34 35 38

The evolving role of IT in a manufacturing setup Viswanathan Krishnamurthi, Vice President - IT, APAC, Eaton Corporation

How technology is transforming government services

Preparing for the next telecom revolution In an era of price wars, commoditization of core voice-based services, slowing subscriber growth rate and falling profit margins, telecom service providers are increasingly investing in certain technologies that will help them control churn by providing value added and intelligent services

Government bodies are increasingly embracing technology to ensure transparent, timely and hassle-free delivery of citizen services

feature IT-ITeS: The forerunner of technology Companies in this vertical are using technology in various ways — internally to increase efficiency — and externally to offer better uptime and SLAs to customers

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Chairman: Rapid urbanization problems 45 IBM are a leadership issue

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Says leaders will need to gain support for their ideas and concepts, and be persuasive. Alludes to success stories of cities that have got smarter to tackle urbanization

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THE BUSINESS VALUE OF TECHNOLOGY

interview 46 Smart use of technology can transform core systems of cities Dhamodaran Ramakrishnan, Director, Smarter Planet, IBM India/ South Asia

interview 48 ‘Employees should have an emotional connect with the company’ VR Ferose, Managing Director, SAP Labs India

50 interview Best practices in adopting emerging technologies Jayantha Prabhu, CTO, Essar Group

52 feature RSA pursues intelligent security models to fox password thieves Distributed Credential Protection technology can potentially reduce the likelihood of successful “smash-andgrab” attacks on password servers

interop mumbai 2012

53 54 55

The new world of Google Kaur and Facebook Singh

EDITORIAL.........................................................6

‘Video will dominate information flow’

INDEX................................................................ 10

How cloud is fuelling innovation

Chirpings from twitterati .................. 12

Dell shows how tech can drive business strategy

social sphere............................................. 13

CIOs should become application scouts of the enterprise

the Month in technology..................... 14

Why IT must be ‘sasta’ and ‘tikaoo’

news analysis............................................. 16

What CIOs expect from their direct reports

technology & risks.................................67

India’s best IT leaders

global cio................................................... 68

61 63

Acknowledging tomorrow’s IT leaders EDGE recognizes India’s finest business technology leadership

practical analysis...................................71 down to business......................................72

november 2012 i n f o r m at i o n w e e k 9

Imprint

VOLUME 2 No. 01 n November 2012

print online newsletters events research

Managing Director : Sanjeev Khaira Printer & Publisher : Kailash Pandurang Shirodkar Associate Publisher & Director : Anees Ahmed : Brian Pereira Editor-in-Chief Executive Editor : Srikanth RP Principal Correspondent : Jasmine Kohli Principal Correspondent : Ayushman Baruah (Bengaluru) Senior Correspondent : Amrita Premrajan (New Delhi) : Shweta Nanda Copy Editor Design Art Director : Deepjyoti Bhowmik Senior Visualiser : Yogesh Naik Senior Graphic Designer : Shailesh Vaidya Graphic Designer : Jinal Chheda Designer : Sameer Surve Marketing Deputy Manager : Sanket Karode Deputy ManagerManagement Service : Jagruti Kudalkar online Manager—Product Dev. & Mktg. : Viraj Mehta : Nilesh Mungekar Deputy Manager—Online : Nitin Lahare Web Designer Sr. User Interface Designer : Aditi Kanade Operations Head—Finance : Yogesh Mudras Director—Operations & : Satyendra Mehra Administration Sales Mumbai : Marvin Dalmeida Manager- Sales marvin.dalmeida@ubm.com (M) +91 8898022365 Bengaluru : Kangkan Mahanta Manager—Sales kangkan.mahanta@ubm.com (M) +91 89712 32344 Delhi : Rajeev Chauhan Manager—Sales rajeev.chauhan@ubm.com (M) +91 98118 20301

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Person & Organization Anil Jain, Wipro ..............................................................44 Anuj Vaid, Wipro Infotech...........................................21 Arthur W Coviello, EMC Corporation ....................52 Arun Gupta, Cipla .........................................................56 Arup Roy, Gartner..........................................................21 Ashish Gupta,Oracle India.........................................36 Atul Bhandari, SAP .......................................................31 Atul Khatavkar, AGC Networks.................................35 Avinash Pitale, Omnitech InfoSolutions...............33 Balasubramaniam Vedagiri, MphasiS....................40 Bishwanath Ghosh, Mahindra & Mahindra........57 Deepak Braganza, LifeSize India & South Asia.........................................29 Dhamodaran Ramakrishnan, IBM...........................46 Dr Christopher Holmes, IDC Manufacturing Insights......................................32

EMEA Huson International Media Gerry Rhoades Brown, gerry.rhoadesbrown@husonmedia.com Tel: +44 19325 64999, Fax: + 44 19325 64998

Dr Pavan Kumar, Nanavati Hospital.......................29

Japan Pacific Business (PBI) Shigenori Nagatomo, nagatomo-pbi@gol.com Tel: +81 3366 16138, Fax: +81 3366 16139

Jitesh Shetty, Microsoft...............................................38

South Korea Young Media Young Baek, ymedia@chol.com Tel: +82 2227 34819; Fax : +82 2227 34866

RNI NO. MAH ENG/2011/39874

Dr Sanjay Gogoi, Medanta.........................................29 Girish Rao, Marico .........................................................55 Jayantha Prabhu, Essar Group .................................50 Kamlesh Bhatia, Gartner India.................................44 Katyayan Gupta, Forrester Research .....................42 Keyur Desai, Aegis Limited........................................58 KT Rajan, Allergan India..............................................30 Mundakkal Satyajith, Hexaware Technologies..............................................39 Neeraj Arora, Cisco .......................................................42 Nikhil Gundale, Lowe Lintas India..........................58 Prasad Patil, Aegis Limited.........................................57 Praveen Bhadada, Zinnov..........................................37 Rajeev Batra, MTS India ..............................................43 Rajesh Uppal, Maruti Suzuki.....................................56 Rakesh Sinha, Microsoft .............................................20 Ramesh Nagarajan, Wipro Technologies.............40 Samuel J Palmisano, IBM............................................45 Sanjay Sharma, IDBI InTech.......................................19

ADVERTISERS’ INDEX Company name Page No. Microsoft APC IBM Eaton Symantec Virtual IBM - Gatefold Interop Ctrl S Juniper

Editorial index

Website Sales Contact

01 & 02 www.windowsserver2012.in microsoft.in/readynow 4 www.schneider-electric.com esupport@apc.com 5 www.ibm.com ibm.com/integratedsystems/in 7 www.eaton.com/powerquality/india EatonPowerQualityIndia@eaton.com 11 www.symantec.com www.symantec.com/in/nbu 15 www.interop.in salil.warior@ubm.com 22 - 27 www.ibm.com 62 - 63 www.interop.in salil.warior@ubm.com 73 www.ctrls.in/mumbai-data-center marketing@ctrls.in 74 www.juniper@dnbindia.in Priya Sharma

Shailesh Joshi, Godrej Industries............................33 Shankar Aggarwal, Department of IT ..................37 Sitaram Venkat, Dell India..........................................35 Sudhir Rao, HP................................................................38 UC Dubey, IFFCO-Tokio...............................................19 V Subramaniam, Otis...................................................56 Vinay Ravuri, AppliedMicro.......................................16 Vinayak Khadye, IndiaFirst Life Insurance ...........20 Vinod Krishnan, VMware ...........................................39 VR Ferose, SAP Labs India .........................................48

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informationweek november 2012

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How banks can benefit from real-time Big Data analytics Banks capture and generate more information than organizations in most other industries. Here’s why banks need to acquire the capability to process their Big Data in real time http://bit.ly/Rk1y4D

Shaun Lowe @Shaundlowe tweeted:

How banks can benefit from real-time Big Data analytics http://t.co/cEvBSeXe 6 days ago Reply Retweet Favorite

Bria Analytics @Briaanalytics tweeted:

Nice article on #analytics in banking http://t.co/yIPRsQLE

How organizations can unlock the value of data with in-memory analytics Managing Big Data becomes a bottleneck for many organizations, leading to delays in critical business decisions. In-memory technology provides a quantum leap in data analysis http://bit.ly/R5A6DX

John de Voogd @JohndeVoogd tweeted:

How organizations can unlock the value of data with inmemory analytics http://bit.ly/R5A6DX

João Branquinho @joaocbranquinho tweeted:

How organizations can unlock the value of data with inmemory analytics http://bit.ly/R5A6DX

Sagar Pande @ Pandesag83 tweeted:

How banks can benefit from real-time Big Data analytics http://t.co/Yyb8e1pf

Smart use of technology can transform core systems of cities Over the next 5 years, government spend on technology is expected to be around USD 500 billion – 63 percent of which will be outside Tier-1 cities. Big Blue is looking at this mega-shift as a mega-opportunity and is planning to tap this with its ‘Smarter Planet’ initiative http://bit.ly/RnayUP

Healthcare industry prescribing a dose of technology Healthcare, pharma and life sciences companies are increasingly adopting technology to optimize cost and ensure better health services http://bit.ly/U1gsdb

David@ slingshotvoip: #VoIP tweeted: Healthcare industry prescribing a dose of technology - InformationWeek India http://t.co/v4lYd1lV

Heather McLaughlin @ mostheather tweeted: Michael Hlava @michael_hlava tweeted: Smart use of technology can transform core systems of cities http://t.co/cTiOzKdP

Healthcare industry prescribing a dose of technology - InformationWeek India http://t.co/dxGrwbwx

Follow us on Twitter Atta Arghandiwal @lostdecency tweeted: Smart use of technology can transform core systems of cities - InformationWeek India http://t.co/iK2MsJlu

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News

T h e m o n t h i n t e c h n o lo g y Microsoft launches Windows 8 in India Microsoft recently announced the availability of Windows 8 for its customers in India and around the world. Windows 8 PCs and tablets will be available in India from 14 OEM partners: Acer, Asus, Dell, Fujitsu, HCL, Hewlett Packard, Lenovo, RP Infosystems, Sai Info System, Samsung, Sony, Toshiba, Wipro and Zenith Computers on both touch and non-touch devices. Over 250 Windows 8 enabled devices, including 23 completely new SKUs of Windows 8 PCs, will be available across 100 cities and more than 2,500 retail stores.

Windows 8 comes with a new smooth and intuitive start screen and tiles that are brimming with content, and update in real time. Further, Windows 8 comes with a re-imagined browser, Internet Explorer 10, which is touch-ready and delivers a full screen browsing experience. Windows 8 will be available in two versions at retail, Windows 8 and Windows 8 Pro. Launching at the same time is a new member of the Windows family designed for ARM-based tablets, Windows RT, which will be available pre-installed on the new devices. From June 2, 2012 until January 31, 2013, consumers currently running PCs with Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7, can download Windows 8 Pro for an estimated retail price of ` 1,999. And Windows 7 PCs purchased between June 2, 2012, and January 31, 2013 can download Windows 8 Pro for an estimated retail price of ` 699.

SAP launches cloud platform built on Hana SAP recently jumped into the cloud platform-as-a-service market by launching the first in a series of planned cloud-based application services and database services. The new services make SAP a more comprehensive cloud player and opens up new points of competition with the likes of Oracle and Salesforce. com. With its announcements, SAP is now challenging Salesforce.com’s Heroku unit with a new Java-based cloud development platform called SAP NetWeaver Cloud. The platform runs on Hana, and its in-memory performance ensures that it won’t require the “resource governors” that Salesforce.com routinely imposes on customers so it can keep up with cloud computing demands, said Vishal

informationweek november 2012

Sikka, Chief Technology Officer, SAP. SAP’s new platform is called the SAP Hana Cloud, and it includes both AppServices and DBServices. On the database side the vendor introduced SAP Hana One, a new deployment option on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Hana One is aimed at companies that want to experiment with Hana, stage proof-of-concept projects, or put small-scale in-memory applications in the cloud. Hana One can handle up to 32 gigabytes of enduser data and costs 99 cents per hour for SAP’s software and another USD 2.50 per hour for AWS EC2 compute capacity, for a total cost of USD 3.49 per hour. SAP had previously offered free Hana developer licenses of Hana on AWS, but data loads were limited to megabytes rather than gigabytes.

Cisco, Citrix extend partnership Cisco and Citrix announced a significant expansion of their desktop virtualization partnership into three strategic areas: cloud networking, cloud orchestration, and mobile workstyles. The two companies believe the IT industry is on the verge of the next major architectural transition: the mobilecloud era. To help enterprise and service provider customers capture the market transition and transform their business models, Cisco and Citrix will collaborate to unify best-of-breed technologies into innovative solutions for the mobilecloud era. The expanded partnership will include a significant investment in people and resources to drive technology innovation, solution integration and validation, customer support, and joint goto-market investment on a global basis. As part of the strategy, Cisco and Citrix intend to jointly integrate the Citrix NetScaler application delivery controller (ADC) to seamlessly coexist with other Cisco network and security services, such as Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) and Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA). The companies also intend to integrate Cisco Nexus 1000V with Citrix XenServer to enable enterprise and service provider customers to build clouds based in part on key open source technology. Cisco will continue to fully support existing customers of its Application Control Engine (ACE) product line and will recommend Citrix NetScaler as as an alternative to customers who want to deploy a next-generation ADC.

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News Analysis

Can AppliedMicro create a ripple with its server-on-a-chip architecture? With its server-on-a-chip architecture, AppliedMicro is looking to etch a new role in the emerging world of clouds By Srikanth RP As the first and only company to have developed and demonstrated a server chip based on the 64bit ARM architecture, AppliedMicro is aiming at the billion dollar server market that has been traditionally dominated by Intel and AMD. The firm has launched ‘X-Gene’ — a system-on-a-chip that integrates key server and network components onto the same chip. This is the first 64-bit ARM implementation designed specifically for the server market. The firm has already demonstrated Apache Web Server running on its 64bit ARM v8-compliant processor. The biggest advantage for AppliedMicro is the huge efficiency gain in power savings. Typically, analysts estimate that electrical power can contribute about 20 percent to the TCO of a server. Processors typically consume half of a server’s power. Further, associated cooling contributes another significant percentage of the power of a data center. Hence, power related to processors contributes in a big way to the overall power of a data center. As X-Gene integrates CPUs, networking, communication and storage components into one chip, it not only occupies less space, but also consumes less power. “A typical data center that costs say, USD 1 billion to build, will only cost USD 500 million approximately, if a firm uses X-Gene. We can reduce the TCO by a factor of 50 percent, “ states Vinay Ravuri, AppliedMicro’s Vice President and General Manager, Processor Business Unit. In a large data center, this can make a huge difference. Research

informationweek november 2012

from Linley group estimates that data centers around the world consume nearly 1.5 percent of total electricity produced, and almost USD 44.5 billion is spent on powering the servers in these data centers. Even a small gain in efficiency in data centers can transform the landscape completely. AppliedMicro is aiming at providing these chips to large telecom companies, or social media players who typically customize their infrastructure to suit changing workloads. As AppliedMicro has already demonstrated the successful deployment of a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) stack to run on a 64bit ARM core, it envisages that large data centers will look at deploying X-Gene for slashing their power related costs. “More and more data centers are leaning towards open source. We are working closely with players like Red Hat, and our goal is to have applications as well as associated libraries. We are seeing tremendous interest from Tier-I system integrators,” states Ravuri. The complete virtualization, unification and management of storage, networking and compute resources is a concept that has found many takers. Cisco calls it Unified Computing System (UCS), while HP calls it Converged Infrastructure. While Cisco and HP have been able to do this at the system level, AppliedMicro has been able to do this at the chip level. “No organization has been able to do this at the silicon level, which is the last frontier. We are embedding the vision of unification into silicon, which can change server dynamics completely,” claims Ravuri.

“No organization has been able to do this at the silicon level. We are embedding the vision of unification into silicon, which can change server dynamics completely,” Vinay Ravuri

VP and GM, Processor Business Unit, AppliedMicro

In the emerging world of clouds, as the world focuses more on power savings and efficiencies, AppliedMicro has a massive opportunity to etch its own image in a market dominated by Intel and AMD. u Srikanth RP srikanth.rp@ubm.com

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IT in Verticals

A comprehensive insight into the key IT trends across the BFSI, healthcare, manufacturing, government, IT-ITeS, and telecom sectors. We look at the prime drivers for increased IT spend in each sector and how companies in these sectors are leveraging emerging technologies for transforming their traditional processes

Social and mobility wave set to redefine BFSI sector The immense popularity of social networks coupled with a huge adoption of smartphones have led firms in the BFSI sector to redefine their traditional processes

Healthcare industry prescribing a dose of technology Healthcare, pharma and life sciences companies are increasingly adopting technology to optimize cost and ensure better health services

How technology is transforming government services Government bodies are increasingly embracing technology to ensure transparent, timely and hassle-free delivery of citizen services

IT-ITeS: The forerunner of technology Companies in this vertical are using technology in various ways â&#x20AC;&#x201D; internally to increase efficiency â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and externally to offer better uptime and SLAs to customers

november 2011 i n f o r m at i o n w e e k 17

Cover Story

or firms in the BFSI sector, emerging technologies have completely changed the way traditional banking is done, or customers are serviced. Paper-based forms are slowly giving away to online forms, with customers preferring to bank online than visit a physical branch. The emergence of mediums, such as social media and mobility has not only brought the bank closer to the customer, but has also helped in cutting down operational costs for servicing customers.

informationweek november 2012

The need for embracing new platforms is also due to the immense pressure that firms in the BFSI sector are facing from young customers. For all financial institutions, acquiring new clientele is difficult and further effort is required to retain them. Today, we have young banking customers who are willing to switch banks, if they are not offered the latest in mobile services. In response, banks and insurance companies have reassessed their approach and have changed the way they interact with their customers â&#x20AC;&#x201D; thereby leading enterprises to adopt a

social and mobile approach. Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s take a look at these two top trends: mobile and social, which are influencing the enterprise IT strategy of companies in these sectors.

Mobility â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the top priority

The rising number of smartphone users in the country is forcing banks to reconsider mobile as a serious platform for connecting with the end customer. For example, a recent report by Google this year pointed out that India had emerged as the second biggest consumer of mobile Internet

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after the U.S., according to data from 15,000 mobile websites monitored by Google. Several companies in this sector have already started deploying apps on smartphones to improve their customer service. A case in point is IndiaFirst Life Insurance Company, which has empowered its sales force with a tablet-based application to sell insurance policies at the doorstep of the customers. This initiative, called MagicBoard, not only automates and simplifies the sales processes at the customer end, but in a single platform, it connects the customer with the distributor, employees and the insurance organization. The platform ensures a 360 degree integration, where every stakeholder has a single page view in his handheld tablet PC for real-time information, intelligence, and intervention. Vinayak Khadye, Head, Project Management and IT Excellence, IndiaFirst Life Insurance says, “Mobility in insurance is all about extending the reach and providing one of its kind of experience to customers. With the tablet-based solution, we believe that the ROI will be significant as we will save on paper-related costs coupled with an overall boost in the productivity of our sales personnel.” The firm claims that by using the application on the tablet, a sales person can now complete a sale on the spot within 15 minutes. The mobile or the smartphone has emerged as the new medium for better connectivity with end customers. Agrees Praveen Bhadada, Director – Market Expansion, Zinnov Management Consulting, said, “The inevitable evolution of mobility is convergence of different services on

Mobile computing will help in extending the reach of the business to rural areas and in reducing the cost of customer acquisition and delivering services UC Dubey

Executive Director, IT, IFFCO-TOKIO

the consumer’s mobile device.” The huge availability, cost efficiency and accessibility of mobile devices have also contributed to firms looking at this medium to quickly deliver services. For instance, IFFCO-TOKIO sends an ‘SMS’ alert’ to consumers on the payments due, or policy maturity and so on. This helps leverage the convergence to provide integrated services to the consumer, says UC Dubey, Executive Director, IT, IFFCOTOKIO. “Mobile computing will help in extending the reach of the business to rural areas as mobile technology is available easily. It will help us improve the customer experience, enhance productivity and help in growing our revenues by applying strategies to cross-sell and up-sell. It will also help us in reducing the cost of customer acquisition and delivering services,” adds Dubey. The popularity of the mobile platform is corroborated by statistics from India’s apex bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The RBI, in a report released in August this year states that over 13 million people used mobile banking services and 49 banks were involved in 25.6 million mobile banking transactions valued at ` 18.20 billion for FY12. The transaction in volume terms recorded an increase of

Leveraging the terabytes of information stored in the databases and getting actionable insights from it is one of the key focus areas for the BFSI sector Anuj Vaid

General Manager & BFSI Vertical Head, Wipro Infotech

198 percent while transactions in value terms were up by 174 percent. State Bank of India (SBI) launched a Mobile Banking Service over Application which is also available via Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) on all the phones. The users are required to download the application on to the mobile handset. The app allows users to transfer funds (within and outside the Bank), allows interbank mobile fund transfers via IMPS. Users can generate mini statements, request for cheque books, bill payments, mobile top ups and M-Commerce. “Mobile money is a game changer. The only electronic device, which is being used by the literate and illiterate, urban or rural masses is mobile — as it is simple to use. The mobile subscribers have outnumbered the number of bank customers in the country. Mobile devices too have become much more smarter and cheaper,” says Sanjay Sharma, MD, IDBI InTech. National Payment Corporation of India (NCPI), is another example that launched the Interbank Mobile Payment Service (IMPS) initiative through which interbank mobile fund transfers are processed. IMPS is an instant, 24X7, interbank electronic fund transfer service through mobile phones. IMPS facilitates customers to use mobile instruments as a channel for accessing their bank accounts and put high interbank fund transfers in a secured manner with an immediate confirmation feature. Mobile devices have the ability to deliver personalized services, which is an attractive option for firms as it helps in delivering customized services. “Customer centricity, will

november 2012 i n f o r m at i o n w e e k 19

Cover Story

61%

of customers in India use social networking sites as sources of information on banking products

31%

of customers use social networking sites for sharing the budget and spending patterns

50%

use social networking sites for sharing their bank related offers

53%

use social networking sites for commenting on the level of services they’ve received

Source: Ernst and Young, Global Consumer Banking Survey 2012

lead to an increased expenditure by enterprises in mobility. Mobility would help the enterprises to walk up to the customer and service them. Customers look for customized servicing,” adds Rakesh Sinha, Director-Banking and Capital Markets, Microsoft.

Taking social route for customer engagement

As most young customers are technologically savvy and are used to social networking websites, the best medium to connect with them is through social networking sites. This is validated by a study by Ernst and Young. According to the Ernst and Young, Global Consumer Banking Survey 2012, 61 percent of customers in India use social networking sites as sources of information on banking products, 31 percent of customers

use social networking sites for sharing the budget and spending patterns, 50 percent use social networking sites for sharing their bank related offers, 53 percent use social networking sites for commenting on the level of services they’ve received. Given this trend, BFSI companies are in a race to woo young, tech-savvy customers by connecting with them through social networking sites. ICICI Bank, a pioneer in this space, has launched a Facebook application that enables its customers to directly perform banking transactions. It allows customers to make transactions, check account details, generate mini statements, upgrade debit card and do cheque book enquiries. Other banks, such as HDFC Bank and Axis Bank too have created pages on Facebook to understand their customers better and promote

ROI will be significant with the tabletbased app we are using, due to savings on paper-related costs and boost in the productivity of sales personnel Vinayak Khadye, Head, Project Management and IT Excellence, IndiaFirst Life Insurance

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their banking products. “Going social is inevitable and has started to happen in a big way. Infrastructure is improving; social media will play a key role for all the organizations to reach the masses. It is not virtually possible for banks to be physically present. The key to reach the customers and provide customized service is only through the social media channel. Social media is the next wave for the CIOs and a medium to acquire more customers,” says Sharma of IDBI InTech.

BI forms the backbone of BFSI

While banks are embracing new technologies, they are also simultaneously investing in traditional technologies such as BI/Analytics. Enterprises in the BFSI sector are faced with voluminous data of customers. “One of the key focus areas now is on leveraging the terabytes of information stored in the institution’s databases and getting actionable insights from it. A number of banks and insurance companies have already started the journey towards having a business intelligence data warehouse, along with advanced analytics to guide business decisions and dashboards for senior

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management,” opines Anuj Vaid, General Manager & BFSI Vertical Head, Wipro Infotech. A case in point is Kotak Mahindra Bank, which has implemented a BI Solution with Data Warehouse to streamline its business processes and transform its corporate data into high-value information. In line with its objective, the Bank first built a data warehouse for its credit card operations and then implemented 1KEY BI Suite, a BI tool, from MAIA Intelligence for analytics and reporting requirements. The implementation enabled the Bank to save an estimated 3-4 times the cost of implementing any alternate solution. Post implementation of the BI solution, the Bank can assess business by means of understanding the trends in the customer acquisition, credit policy, portfolio management, and collections and recovery areas. Based on transaction analysis, the Bank is able to give service and quality related calls and collect feedback. The data reporting and visualization tools have enabled automated scheduled generation and delivery of reports to the end users and customers. The Bank can now access high-value information at the point of need, which in turn provides it in-depth insights and supports better decision making. YES BANK is another example for implementing BI solutions effectively. YES BANK embarked on a project on Funds Transfer Pricing and Customer

In the BFSI sector, the focus is on the innovation of products. Build a lean and agile IT function, thus enabling a resilient operating environment Arup Roy

Analyst, Gartner

Income analytics. This enabled the financial analytics team to transfer price each product across the Bank on a daily basis, analyze the daily income, generate various critical MIS, and come out with analytics on-demand from various business units. Earlier, these analytics were not possible due to various reasons like unavailability of latest data, limitation of spreadsheets used (MS Excel) for data processing, inability to churn out or work on large sets of data, higher processing time for any analytics, etc. Also, this process was risk prone as the process was manual, leading to errors and hence incorrect analysis. This led to rework on MIS when the errors were pointed once they were published. Now, with this project, only one person can do all the work in an automated environment with just a click of button. This solution has zero implementation cost on existing hardware spare capacity and has saved daily work load of 2-3 people. With financial products becoming quickly commoditized, financial institutions are looking at improving the customer experience across all touchpoints to differentiate themselves. “CRM, alternative channels, predictive customer analytics are some of the IT enablers for achieving this goal,” states Vaid of Wipro Infotech. In the current competitive business and economic environment opportunities for growth still exist. The volatile conditions are forcing Indian enterprises to maximize the use of technology by innovating products and business models. “In the BFSI sector, the focus is on the innovation of products. Build a lean and agile IT function, thus enabling a resilient

operating environment,” says Arup Roy, Analyst, Gartner.

Focusing on transforming processes

Most firms in the BFSI sector have already invested in establishing core systems. Now, the focus is more on regulatory compliance and in better handling risk. Firms are also investing in automating their processes to reduce inefficiencies and cut down overall costs. “Banks have been looking at integrated treasury, payment hubs, CTS outsourcing, ATM outsourcing etc., to achieve these goals, while insurance companies have been exploring application rationalization, process re-engineering and core system replacements for policy administration,” says Vaid. But the biggest opportunity for firms in this sector is the ‘unbanked’ population in India — or in other words, individuals who do not have a bank account. In India, according to the RBI, close to 41 percent of the population is unbanked. Out of this unbanked population, the rural population of India remains significantly under-penetrated. Technology can help in bridging this gap and in providing services to this unbanked population. Whichever way you look at it, the BFSI sector is in the process of transforming itself, aided by complementary technologies that will not only help in extending these services to a larger set of population, but will also more importantly help in providing better customized and personalized services. u Jasmine Kohli jasmine.kohli@ubm.com

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Cover Story

ome years ago, a patient at the operation theatre would be enraged, irritated or at the least nervous if the doctor was seen fiddling with his mobile device. Things have changed much since then and patients have begun to accept technology/mobile devices as an aid rather than a distracting element. Today, both hospitals and doctors make profound use of technology at every move. The Indian healthcare sector is expected to reach USD 100 billion by 2015 from the current USD 65 billion, growing at around 20 percent a year, according to rating agency Fitch. Given the huge metamorphosis, competition and fast growth, the industry is going through, healthcare providers and pharma companies are increasingly investing in IT to improve the quality and delivery of patient care.

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“Video conferencing is becoming an important tool in the healthcare ICT portfolio to deliver care more effectively and efficiently. It has become an important tool within a wider portfolio of telehealth services, and is being used in a range of different healthcare settings, for a multitude of different purposes,” says Deepak Braganza, Country Manager, LifeSize India & South Asia. The telemedicine centre of Nanavati Hospital, the largest telemedicine service provider in Western India, is an example of how a hospital has used video conferencing and communication technology based on ISDN/ broadband/ satellite-based connectivity. Using this technology, the hospital provides teleconsultation and tele-education in India through its network of 34 peripheral rural centers in India and in 45 African countries through its international network.

“Since inception in 2006, the center has provided over 4,000 teleconsultations and over 100 CME (Continuing Medical Education) programmes to doctors and paramedics in rural India and Africa. With over 4,000 teleconsultations and 500 treatments, the hospital has till date saved approximately over ` 1 crore in travel and consultation fees, stay and treatment of patients,” says Dr Pavan Kumar, Head- Department of Telemedicine, Nanavati Hospital. Consider the case of Bengalurubased specialty pharmaceutical company Allergan India, a joint venture between Allergan Inc and Piramal Healthcare that commenced commercial operations in 1996. Given that India is a vast country with varying geography, the company was facing a big challenge in meeting the needs of its customers and employees. It was looking at innovative ways of mak-

ing customers and employees meet virtually with a first-hand feel of virtual presence during the meetings. To achieve this, the company embarked on an IT project called virtual connect where 7 primary locations namely Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Kolkata, Lucknow and Delhi were connected through hardware equipment, and other locations through third-party connectivity. The new system handled calls from other VC equipment, VoIP calls, calls from softwarebased solutions, and multi-party calls. With the new VC system in place, Allergan India has benefitted in many areas, such as HR recruitment, product launches, campaigns and employee sales review meetings. For example, earlier the HR had to invite candidates from multiple locations to Bengaluru for interviews and the travel charges would be reimbursed to the candidate. Now, the candidate can walk into the Allergan zonal office, connect VC to Allergan Bengaluru, and the interview can happen in 30 minutes at no cost. This has saved the company approximately ` 20 lakh per annum, says KT Rajan, CIO, Allergan India. Another example is that of Max Healthcare, which has been at the forefront of delivering healthcare services in Delhi-NCR. The Group moved to an Electronic Health Records (EHR) system from its existing Hospital Information System (HIS). It implemented an open source EHR system, WorldVistA, with the goals of minimizing the need for paper records, allowing order entry by the doctors in the system itself, and enabling easy access to patient records. The system was hosted on a private

Video conferencing is becoming an important tool in the healthcare ICT portfolio to deliver care more effectively and efficiently Deepak Braganza

Country Manager, LifeSize India & South Asia

cloud and was interfaced with laboratory, radiology and pharmacy to allow real-time access to any patient record. The system included Computerized Patient Record System (CPRS) for documenting, ordering, reporting and viewing of clinical information. Apart from this, Bar Code Medication Administration (BCMA) was implemented along with unit dose dispensing policy to track and reduce waste, returns and medication errors. An m-health system for accessing laboratory reports and radiology images was also implemented for improving turnaround times. Today, Max Healthcare facilities catering to 1,000 beds have gone live using the system and all the patients admitted have their records on the system. Till date, the system has approximately processed data of 1,04,130 patient-days across the facilities that are live with 3,123,900 pharmacy orders, 2,603,250 laboratory orders, 520,650 radiology orders and 312,390 bedside procedures.

TABLETS & SOCIAL MEDIA

Physicians have also realized the importance of technology as it helps them make decisions that are better informed and offer patients with more personalized care. Not surprisingly, today

doctors use iPads and smartphones that enable them to work more efficiently. There are numerous iPad applications available in the market that are used for different purposes. “Smartphone apps have been helping doctors a lot to fine tune their practice. Epocrates app is an invaluable tool to help review drug dosages, interactions, and adverse effects. These apps regularly update and provide with warnings if any new adverse effect is reported or if any drug has been withdrawn. There are other apps that provide doctors with medical calculators to calculate important patient parameters like body-mass index, creatinine clearance, anion gap, etc., which enable critical patient bed-side decisions,” says Dr Sanjay Gogoi, Senior Consultant, Kidney and Urology Institute, Medanta, a super-speciality hospital in Gurgaon. “Micromedex from Thomson Reuters also provide similar information and is free. The Apple app store is full of specialty specific apps, which are invaluable and cardiologists and intensivists regularly use them.” Pharma companies too are conducting trials with tablets. For instance, Cipla is now testing the yet unreleased Windows Surface tablet (Windows 8 RT)

Using video conferencing and communication technology based on ISDN/ broadband/satellite-based connectivity, the telemedicine center of Nanavati Hospital has saved approximately ` 1 crore in travel and consultation fees, stay and treatment of patients till date

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Cover Story and plans to deploy it for its field force of medical representatives in India. Social media platforms have also helped doctors to form clinical groups for instantly sharing important inputs regarding patient care. Today, inside the operation theatre, most procedures are being documented with videos and clinical photographs, and these go a long way in improving treatment outcome. “Advances in video technology have brought 3D imaging for laparoscopic procedures wherein during surgery, the surgeon and his team sport high tech glasses to view 3D images in large format LCD panels. Dedicated video recorders are increasingly used to record high quality videos for data-keeping and presentations,” says Medanta’s Dr Gogoi.

TACKLING DATA DELUGE

Market research firm Ovum expects the global IT-related spending in the life sciences sector to grow modestly during the next five years to reach USD 37 billion in 2016. In the short-term, Ovum expects this IT spending to increase faster than the rate of total revenue growth for the sector, due to a series of large-scale IT initiatives and changes in the industry’s structure. Interestingly, the research firm predicts that by 2015, most of these initiatives would have been completed and there could be negligible IT spending growth in the fifth year of the forecast. By this time, the industry will be reaping the benefits of cloud-based delivery methods, systems simplification and centralization. According to Ovum, the emerging markets, particularly the Asia-Pacific region will drive IT spending through

With the new VC system, an interview can happen in 30 minutes at no cost. This has enabled us to save ` 20 lakh per annum KT Rajan

CIO, Allergan India

2016. An increasing amount of R&D and manufacturing is being sourced primarily from India and China. Asia-Pacific countries are rapidly becoming centers for life sciences innovation as well as contract manufacturing. In addition, more clinical trials are being conducted in the region to take advantage of lower costs and large “drug-naive” patient populations. Life sciences companies are currently facing a daunting “data deluge” produced by experimental runs in this industry, which they need to optimize, manage, transfer, store and protect. Such challenges have led to companies such as BT to set up BT for Life Sciences R&D, the first cloud service designed to enable collaboration within the life sciences industry. The new service is designed to allow customers to comply with the industry’s stringent security, regulatory and compliance requirements. The platform will allow participating groups to securely upload documents, share results and communicate via IM, voice, video or chat to analyze results. To ensure faster data transfer, BT is working with Aspera, a provider of next-generation data transport technologies, to integrate its innovative

file transfer technology into the cloud service. “Aspera’s patented fasp protocol eliminates the fundamental bottlenecks of conventional file transfer technologies and provides high-speed, reliable end-to-end transport over public and private networks fully utilizing available bandwidth, independent of network delays and is able to deal with extreme packet loss,” BT said in a statement.

CONCLUSION

Though the healthcare sector has traditionally seen lower levels of IT investment and adoption, the trend is fast changing. Today, healthcare providers are increasingly turning to IT as they are operating in a competitive environment, each one trying to offer the best possible quality of patient care. This has in fact driven the emergence and growth of sophisticated telemedicine centers, mobile health services, EHRs and medical apps. The life sciences sector, Ovum suggests, will be investing a great deal in technology over the next few years until they begin reaping the benefits of cloud, systems simplification and centralization. u Ayushman Baruah

ayushman.baruah@ubm.com

By using m-health system for accessing laboratory reports and radiology images, doctors at Max Healthcare have been able to improve turnaround times

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Cover Story

he manufacturing sector is said to be the backbone of Indiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s economy, and is a major contributor to Indiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s GDP. While skilled labor is inexpensive in India and compares well to China, the global manufacturing hub of the world, India has still a long way to go before it can compete aggressively with its Asian counterparts. In addition to policy-related factors, and deploying high quality machines, Indian manufacturers also need to increase productivity across the supply chain. Investments in IT are required to facilitate data assimilation from the plant floor and dealer networks. Manufacturing companies recognize the importance of IT, and are investing heavily on automating processes. This is corroborated by research firm IDC, which states that the manufacturing sector in India is expected to grow

at 14.5 percent to touch USD 8.78 billion by 2016, driven by segments including automotive, chemicals and consumer products. The IT spend for 2012 for this sector is projected to double from 2011 spends, and represents a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.5 percent between 2012 and 2016. The primary drivers for increased IT spend in the manufacturing sector is pent-up consumer demand, changing buying patterns, shorter time to

market, increasing user maturity, and advent of new technology. Within the manufacturing verticals, the automotive companies are on their way to expand value propositions to have an edge over the others in terms of service offerings, pre-/post-sale phases for products. In this era of connected consumers, companies in the manufacturing sector are investing heavily in IT to deliver better products. Enterprises like Mahindra and Mahindra believe in providing

Organizations of all sizes and in all verticals are investing in ERP in order to turn around their mission-critical business processes Atul Bhandari, VP, Value Engineering, Industries, & Customer Advocacy, SAP Indian Sub-continent

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Cover Story personalized customer experience, engagement with consumers and dealers, leveraging the connected vehicle, embracing technology-enabled collaboration and in narrowing the polarization between them. Enterprise applications such as ERP and SCM are common, and are considered mandatory for most manufacturing organizations. However, most small and mid-size manufacturing companies are considering investments in ERP to match the competitiveness of their large counterparts. Frost & Sullivan estimates the ERP market in India will grow at a CAGR of 19.2 percent to reach approximately USD 184.7 million by 2013. Market growth will be fuelled by new developments in the ERP space such as enterprise mobility, in-memory technology and cloud. These trends can also be observed in the way ERP vendors are gearing up to serve the growing demand of the market — be it in increasing investments in the country or their plans to increase headcounts or launch newer/customized versions in the market to suit the needs of a specific vertical/category. “Organizations of all sizes and in all verticals are investing in ERP in order to turn around their mission-critical business processes, and prepare themselves for the next level of growth. Last year, SAP expanded its market share in the Core Enterprise Application market from 11.2 percent to 12.3 percent,” says Atul Bhandari, Vice President, Value Engineering, Industries, and Customer Advocacy, SAP Indian Sub-continent. Given the large amount of data that every large manufacturer processes, the ability to effectively handle this data and transform this into actionable in-

Manufacturers will re-jig processes to leverage in-memory computing due to its ability to analyze huge amounts of data in a short span of time Bishwanath Ghosh, VP-IT & KM, Automotive & Farm Equipment Sectors (AFS), Mahindra & Mahindra

sights will prove to be a major differentiator for manufacturers. For example, a technology such as in-memory can be a major game changer for manufacturing companies. “Manufacturers will re-jig the business process to leverage in-memory computing as it has great ability to analyze huge amounts of data in a short span of time. In-memory technologies can also be used to greater effect to reduce inventory of input material to enable higher level of process flexibility,” states Bishwanath Ghosh, VP - IT & KM, Automotive & Farm Equipment Sectors (AFS), Mahindra & Mahindra. Besides analytics, organizations are now looking at the next level, and are investing in applications that support the core enterprise applications. “Enterprises are looking beyond ERP to leverage technology to deliver value to the enterprise. Traction is more towards specific applications to support manufacturing operations, supply chain management, and product lifecycle management,” opines Dr Christopher Holmes, Head, International, IDC Manufacturing Insights.

SUPPLY CHAIN

The supply chain plays a crucial role in the success of a manufacturing company, and any bottleneck in the supply

chain can seriously dent the profitability of any company. Hence, every company in the manufacturing sector focuses a huge amount of time, resources and investments in fine-tuning the supply chain. A case in point is Mahindra & Mahindra, which was faced with supply chain and logistics issues, where delay in procurement and receipt of any part caused production losses and dead inventory to the tune of several hundred crores. In a move to enhance its supply chain effectiveness, the M&M Auto Sector embarked on a project to reduce supply chain trauma by de-coupling supplies from production with the help of Dynamic Buffer Management (DBM) technique of TOC (theory of constraint). The company’s in-house team developed and implemented a solution by conducting sessions with business users. The group synchronized three different systems ECC, SAP-SCM and BI in the solution to have effective functionalities. The solution includes separate MIS monitoring for finished goods (vehicles) and raw materials. The solution has the capability of total parameterization at a user level, which allows real-time changes to be made in business scenarios. The solution enables clear identification with respect to buffer penetration (Red, Yellow,

The manufacturing sector in India is expected to grow

14.5 % to touch USD 8.78 billion by 2016, driven by segments including automotive, at

chemicals and consumer products Source: IDC

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Green) with respect to plant and model. It also has the ability to generate illustrative dashboards at the front-end using complex validation at the back-end. Earlier, inventory monitoring activity was done by manual SAP download into Excel and further analysis, and this consumed a lot of time. End Users are now able to execute this report and get readymade formatted data directly. Today, the company has a single dashboard to depict system inventory status, which leads to transparency in coverage and inventory reports. Close monitoring of selected parts and their inventory using DBM report has resulted into an overall improvement in the visibility of parts stocks and the related costs.

UPGRADES

With base investments made in enterprise applications, most large manufacturing organizations are now looking to upgrade their existing IT infrastructure. For example, Godrej Industries, embarked on an initiative of implementing Business Analytics Solution on its existing SAP ERP solution. Godrej Industries has also integrated the ERP with Business Analytics. This has helped the enterprise to conduct analysis on the reports and also do some ‘what if scenarios’ and make effective decisions in turbulent times. The firm has now gone one step ahead, and has brought its CRM and BI capability on mobile platforms, such as the iPad. This has helped the top management in taking real-time decisions on the go. “Getting the CRM onto the iPad is important due to the business needs, as the senior management is mostly on the move,” says Shailesh Joshi,

As the senior management is mostly on the move, we have given CRM access on the iPad to meet our business needs Shailesh Joshi,

Head-IT, Godrej Industries

Head-IT, Godrej Industries. This trend of mobility is expected to accelerate as manufacturer’s bank on mobile platforms to boost productivity. The uncertainties in the business environments put more emphasis on leveraging information systems for realtime visibility. Enhancing the productivity of employees and enabling them to respond in real-time to business challenges and needs is driving enterprises to mobile enable their business applications. Improvement in operational efficiency and capital productivity are still key drivers influencing the IT spend. However, the focus now is drifting towards gaining more control of core business processes and outsourcing IT in specific functions such as using third-party IT service firms for providing managed services for IT infrastructure and applications, application development and testing services. Also, manufacturing companies having heterogeneous IT landscapes are embracing IT integration, since they already deploy a variety of proprietary applications, operating systems, databases, and hardware. This also accounts for integration between suppliers and OEMs. “We are currently working with

a large manufacturing unit with an export facility for revamping their entire IT facility. We have suggested various applications along with ERP as a base application. With the entire project getting implemented in six months, the customer is expected to save at least 5 percent of their expenses by automating various processes and reducing the back office,” says Avinash Pitale, Joint Managing Director, Omnitech InfoSolutions. As more Indian enterprises go global and move to multi-location and geographically dispersed operations, the need to leverage technology to manage these diverse operations, have business visibility and comply with different statutory requirements will grow simultaneously. Supply chains will need to be collaborative, agile and aware to meet the demands of a new world where manufacturers must learn to introduce their products faster, and with greater efficiency. Today, Indian manufacturing is at an interesting stage of evolution, and even a small investment in IT can accelerate productivity to a different level, and boost the overall competitiveness of the sector. u Jasmine Kohli jasmine.kohli@ubm.com

The IT spend for 2012 for this sector is projected to double from 2011, representing a CAGR of 14.5 % between 2012 and 2016 Source: IDC

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CIO Voice

The evolving role of IT in a manufacturing setup

he globalization of manufacturing ecosystem in the past few decades has driven a significant change in how companies compete in the market place. IT has played a key role in enabling this ecosystem. This is likely to continue, but with a quantum shift in terms of what IT contributes to the business. There are a few major factors driving this change: requirements of current growth markets are very different from the mature markets; localization is a huge imperative across most enterprises; and exponential growth of digital infrastructure. The areas that will see the maximum shift are customer facing and aftermarket solutions, product development tools, plant and shop floor applications, top floor applications that support the CXO functions, and infrastructure elements. Customer facing and aftermarket solutions will fundamentally drive topline growth. Penetration of smart devices and mobile apps among sales marketing professionals and distribution channels will see a tangible increase. Some of our apps available to our customers via Apple iStore are great examples of this emerging trend. One of our products, Eaton PowerSource, puts specifications of over 2,00,000 hydraulics products at our customers fingertips, enabling search, spec and sell/buy products from an iPad. Our another product PowerEdge is designed to provide mobile access to our electrical power management solutions. The solutions enable a faster way to share information than ever before. We are also likely to see major scaleups in the usage of embedded technology solutions that improve product functionality and in many cases product life. Eatonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s PowerTrack is an iPad app in development that will demonstrate usage of such devices in demanding field conditions, to schedule and monitor vehicle product performance over time. In product development and as-

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sociated tools space, we see strong indications of a movement towards integrated solutions for global collaboration and efficient processes from design to manufacturing. Almost certainly, there will be an increasing demand for developing global solutions and a push towards single source for engineering information and reference. Merger of engineering bill of material and manufacturing bill of material would significantly improve manufacturing execution. Search paradigms to locate best solutions, designs, experts and parts will become almost usual. Social concepts like crowdsourcing will drive innovation and promote concepts to idea to marketable product. Plant and shop floor applications would see a greater degree of standardization and integration with engineering. Real-time monitoring and dashboard information will be available ubiquitously on the web and smart devices to help plant managers make efficient decisions. Cloud-based solutions would enable peripheral applications related to supplier and contract management. Concepts like Kaizen, Value Stream Mapping and Gemba Walk that are common place in shop floor will make inroads into the IT floor. Top floor applications will see far greater levels of standardization and will increasingly leverage public and private cloud. We will witness a push towards common interfaces to leverage information from diverse sources like ERP and other operational systems. F&A applications like Purchase-to-Pay, Order-to-cash and others will see strong end-to-end integrated functionality. In addition, implementation of customer data hub and master data management solutions will gain traction. Infrastructure will transform to support increasing needs of global collaboration. A greater degree of decoupling amongst research, engineering and manufacturing functions is predicted. Emerging markets will push the enve-

lope on developing innovative solutions to suit regional business models. Also, a mobile infrastructure would evolve to cater to the demands associated with security and compliance. Mobility solutions will go beyond the traditional BYOD and collaboration scenarios to cater to enterprise app stores and the efficient deployment, management and administration of apps. In addition to technology development, we foresee changes in how IT organizations and personnel are structured and aligned. Key IT personnel would be engaged much more closely with customers in regions and participate in strategic discussions related to the growth of business. Deep within the IT organizations, exposure to business process knowledge amongst technical personnel would become essential for developing and delivering successful products and services that help gain competitive advantage. While IT in manufacturing in certain areas will still take a fast-follower approach, there are increasing number of areas where we will see fast-failure techniques towards embracing newer technologies.

u Viswanathan Krishnamurthi is Vice President - IT, APAC, Eaton Corporation

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Cover Story Government bodies are increasingly embracing technology to ensure transparent, timely and hassle-free delivery of citizen services By Amrita Premrajan

How technology

is transforming government services

ot long ago, government services were synonymous with piles of files, long queues, tardy processes, and endless wait to avail services. However, the use of emerging technologies to deliver public services has changed the notion associated with services provided by the government agencies. Today, many government offices have not only made their internal processes digital and efficient, but have also started converting tedious manual citizenfacing public processes into simple electronic formats, wherein the citizens are not even required to physically step into the office to avail a particular service. The government is increasingly investing in technology solutions to improve public service delivery and ensure transparent, timely and hasslefree delivery of citizen services. And the investments are driven mainly by the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), which aims to draw public services

closer to the citizens and the Right to Information Act (RTI) 2005, which mandates digitization of files and records, and use of workflow solutions for processes and file movements by public authorities. “We hear from various research analysts that total IT spend, including hardware, software and services, for government in 2012 could be around USD 5,000 million, spread across enterprise applications, industryspecific solutions, software packaged applications, ERP, CRM and associated hardware,” says Sitaram Venkat, Director Enterprise Solutions Business, Dell India. Agrees Atul Khatavkar, VP, IT Governance Risk Compliance, AGC Networks, “The expenditure on IT has become triple-fold in the past four years and we forecast an exponential rise further. This rapid growth in the domestic market is most likely to be driven by government’s focus on creating applications and IT infrastructure that is transparent,

secure, and scalable and can help citizens to avail government services.” Some transformational IT projects taken by the government that have drastically improved the quality of citizen services include online filing of income tax, passport e-seva, land records digitization, etc. With e-seva Passport service, citizens are no longer required to wait in long queues; the process can be done online, which has reduced the time for procuring a passport, from months to days. Another innovative project taken by the government is the online voting system. The benchmarking project was taken up by the State Election Commission, Gujarat to provide userfriendly and convenient option of voting, in order to encourage greater voter participation. The online voting system allows people to cast their votes and do an online registration from the comfort of their home or office. The system was tested in the General Elections of six Municipal

The government is investing heavily in building a network, which will e-enable the remotest of areas in the country Atul Khatavkar

VP, IT Governance Risk Compliance, AGC Networks

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Cover Story Corporations (namely Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat, Bhavnagar, Rajkot, and Jamnagar), and subsequently in Gandhinagar Municipal Corporation. The initial results have been extremely encouraging. The government registered increased voter turnout. Compared to the average voter turnout at EVM booths, of around 44.12 percent, the average voter turnout in the online voting system was more than 75.14 percent. Also, from an administration point of view, there is a centralized control over the entire election process, which makes it more effective for election staff to manage various processes of online voting.

Bringing technology to rural areas

Currently, the government is primarily spending on those technology solutions that will benefit citizens living in far-flung and rural areas. “The government is investing heavily in building a network, which will e-enable the remotest of locations. This is not just a connectivity exercise, but also educating and preparing the country for a better connected tomorrow. The second largest investment is expected in the area of applications, which will help citizens connect with the world as well as with the government. We can expect a whole paradigm shift in the way information reaches to rural India and the education and employment opportunities are generated,” informs Khatavkar. An example of innovative use of technology by the government in the rural area is a project undertaken by the Government of Gujarat. It

Pressed to provide services quickly and cost effectively, public sector leaders are feeling the need to modernize the IT infrastructure Ashish Gupta, Director – Government, Education & Healthcare, Oracle India launched an online program called e-Krishi Kiran Programme (Soil Health Card Program) – which is designed to run on the Internet and intranet (Gujarat State Wide Area Network). It involves providing Soil Health Card (SHC) to each farmer to guide them on the soil conditions of their farms, with recommendations for cropping practices to be followed. It contains soil fertility index of each village on the basis of available soil analysis reports of individual farmers. With this solution, farmers can easily search for fertilizers recommended for a particular crop, based on the nutrition status of a certain farm’s soil. Another example is that of a project undertaken by the Government of Orissa and implemented by The United Nations World Food Programme (UNWFP). The project involves managing and monitoring the distribution of food grains in predominantly tribal, Rayagada district of Orissa. The district did not want to implement the state government’s Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS) as this process was prone to challenges linked to rightful identification of the candidate due to bogus enrolments. To overcome

challenges related to multiple bogus enrolments it implemented a 4G Identity Platform — an interoperable identification engine that uses multimodal biometric technology, facial photograph, fingerprints and captures the iris of the citizens. Post deployment of the solution, the Government of Orissa has registered significant savings on account of elimination of bogus and duplicate cards.

Increased focus on newer technologies

After noticing the huge benefits of technology initiatives implemented, the government is now shedding the traditional outlook it had towards IT and is already proactively looking at newer technologies in the market, like cloud computing and analytics solutions. Substantiating this, Praveen Bhadada, Director - Market Expansion, Zinnov, explains how the Unique Identification Number (UID) is based on two core technologies — one being cloud infrastructure, which involves the storage of data of millions of citizens, and the other being analytics, which would become extremely relevant when different organizations like banks

Post implementation of the online voting system, the government registered increased voter turnout. Compared to the average voter turnout at EVM booths, of around 44.12 percent, the average voter turnout in the online voting system was more than 75.14 percent

OTE 36

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and insurance companies would be required to tap into this information to find out the relevance of a particular citizen to their business. Highlighting government’s interest in cloud computing, Shankar Aggarwal, Additional Secretary – e-governance Group (Overall Head), Department of IT says, “Once the entire IT infrastructure is created, we are planning to 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.” Another important trend is that adopting one technology is making it necessary for the government to adopt another technology. “Since RTI has come in to play, there is a lot focus on digitizing offline/ printed content, which means a lot of emphasis is given to document management systems, and also to the use of Big Data analytics technologies for analysis of this digital data. As government departments store a plethora of data, they are opening up to the relevance of cloud-based infrastructure. Also, as the government wants to deliver all these services to most rural parts of the country, it is turning to mobile phones to deliver relevant services, like m-krishi to the farmers through a phone,” explains Bhadada.

Technology adoption landscape in PSU vertical

Traditionally, the approach of both PSU and government verticals towards technology in comparison with the entire segment of private

players in the market has not been innovative. However, the competition from the global market and private sector companies is forcing the PSUs to adopt technologies and be more competitive. Apart from this, as PSUs are increasingly being pushed to provide services quickly and cost effectively, they are realizing the need to modernize their IT infrastructure.

considering the huge amount of confidential data the two verticals hold. The two verticals will increase the investment on technology solutions to ensure data security. “The spend is more likely to increase in the area of Information Security since government departments hold a huge amount of confidential information, which is of national importance. Another reason

The spend in the area of information security will increase in the PSUs and the government sector, considering the huge amount of confidential data the two verticals hold “Public sector organizations are increasingly driven to improve operational efficiency, share information, and integrate processes across operational and jurisdictional boundaries while maintaining control over costs. Pressed to provide services quickly and cost effectively, public sector leaders are feeling the need to modernize the IT infrastructure and increase efficiency and transparency,” says Ashish Gupta, Director – Government, Education & Healthcare, Oracle India. While PSUs have lagged quite a bit in the adoption of IT, but since they do not have much of legacy to carry, they can directly move to newer forms of IT, like cloud computing, enterprise mobility or Big Data. This would in turn enable them to address some of the global requirements and be at par with their counterparts across the globe. Another key area of focus for PSU and the government sector equally is going to be information security,

As government departments store a plethora of data, they are opening up to the relevance of cloud-based infrastructure Praveen Bhadada

Director - Market Expansion, Zinnov

for increase in spend would be because the sector has experienced a lot of instances of leakage of confidential data,” says Khatavkar of AGC Networks.

Conclusion

Upon evaluating the adoption of technology in the government vertical, we are pleasantly surprised at the rate at which government is turning to IT to actually benefit the citizens of the country. We can already see the benefits trickling down to the different layers of the society — the citizens are now finding comfort in the fact that red-tapism is slowly vanishing and there is far more transparency in public service delivery. On the other hand, although PSUs are lagging behind in the adoption of technology, competition from the private players is actually pushing them to limits and motivating them to look at technology implantations to help them stand at par with their competitors. Looking at the pace of technology adoption in the government and PSU space, we can safely say that within few years, both these verticals would be at the forefront of technology adoption to address their business needs effectively.

u Amrita Premrajan

amrita.premrajan@ubm.com

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Cover Story

IT-ITeS

The forerunner of technology Companies in this vertical are using technology in various ways — internally to increase efficiency — and externally to offer better uptime and SLAs to customers By Ayushman Baruah

he IT-ITeS (Information technology and ITenabled services) industry has always been at the forefront of adopting technology. This is perhaps because they realize its benefits and ROI better than any other sector. IT spending in India is projected to touch USD 71.5 billion in 2013, a 7.7 percent increase from the USD 66.4 billion forecast for 2012, according to the research firm Gartner. The market size of the IT-ITeS industry, as per NASSCOM, is expected to rise to USD 225 billion by 2020 considering India’s competitive position, growing demand for exports, government policy support, and increasing global footprint. The software and services revenues (excluding hardware), comprising nearly 87 percent of the total industry revenues, is expected to post USD

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87.6 billion in FY 2012, an estimated growth of about 14.9 percent over FY 2011. Within software and services exports, IT services accounts for 58 percent, BPO is nearly 23 percent and R&D and software products account for 19 percent. In terms of spending, IT-ITeS companies are willing to spend on OPEX and want to reduce heavily on CAPEX, according to Microsoft. “Therefore, lots of Microsoft solutions are available on the cloud and users can pay as per their use. The flexibility in payments and removing stable cost becomes imperative. Given the growth in IT-ITeS sector, there is a significant increase in discretionary IT spends. If a company understands the benefits of technology, the non-discretionary spends become

discretionary,” says Jitesh Shetty, Director – Industry Solutions, Microsoft. According to Sudhir Rao, CTO, Enterprise Services India, HP, there has been a shift in how technology is being used. “Today, operational complexity has increased among the IT-ITeS companies. So, the key drivers for them for using the technology are to achieve greater operational flexibility and reduce cost.” As organizations of all sizes have turned to outsourcing and offshoring to drive down costs, improve employee productivity and meet SLAs, the IT and BPO export revenues are expected to grow at 11-14 percent in FY 13. But it is challenging for IT outsourcers in a physical world to keep up with the demand while

Given the growth in IT-ITeS sector, there is a significant increase in discretionary IT spends Jitesh Shetty

Director – Industry Solutions, Microsoft

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keeping costs low for a number of reasons. “First, most traditional PC environments are designed to be locally managed – not only is this costly and resource intensive, but it also makes the management overhead harder to ‘move’. Secondly, any data stored locally on desktops and laptops pose a security risk for which the provider is held accountable. Finally, while most outsourcers want to centralize resources to gain economies of scale, remote access across the WAN is costly, and if sized incorrectly, can impede worker productivity and compromise SLAs,” says Vinod Krishnan, Director- Advanced Technologies, VMware India & SAARC. According to VMware, desktop virtualization has helped outsourcers streamline and centralize IT management. It has helped them move data from local endpoints into the data center and provide highly available desktop services to agents and workers in remote locations. “The need to consolidate data centers, and save money on hardware, power & cooling will continue to drive the adoption of server virtualization in the IT-ITeS segment as well. In fact, the IT-ITeS segment has been ahead of the curve in adopting virtualization given their premise of cost efficiencies,” says Krishnan. VMware sees virtualization as a key trend and claims to have a number of customers in India who have moved their critical applications onto a virtualized infrastructure environment. “We are helping our

The need to consolidate data centers, and save money on hardware, power & cooling will continue to drive the adoption of server virtualization Vinod Krishnan

Director- Advanced Technologies, VMware India & SAARC

customers in their journey from virtualization to the cloud. We believe that virtualization is the key underpinning technology to enable the cloud for IT-ITeS companies. Having seen success with server virtualization, many IT-ITeS companies are now extending this approach and benefits even at a desktop level. The promise of better manageability of the desktop environment, additional security, CAPEX and OPEX savings, as well as improved employee productivity is helping drive the adoption of desktop virtualization today,” says Krishnan. Some of VMware’s IT-ITeS customers in India include Infosys, Wipro, TCS, Cognizant, HCL, Genpact, WNS, Evalueserve, KPIT Cummins, Mastek, Hexaware, Patni and Vertex Software. Most of these companies have adopted virtualization technologies to bring in greater efficiencies.

CUSTOMERS BENEFITTING FROM IT

Consider the case of mid-sized IT company like Hexaware Technologies that has adopted a new IT delivery model and developed a private cloud

based on VMware technologies. The company embarked on this new technology to meet the rising costs and complexities of administering its IT infrastructure. With the new delivery model, more than 60 applications in the cloud, including Microsoft Office SharePoint server are delivered as a service to 6,000 staff. “VMware’s strong legacy in cloud technologies such as virtualization and its expertise in handling the challenges and security needs of modern enterprise IT has helped us prepare a strong roadmap for our cloud infrastructure,” says Mundakkal Satyajith, Head Virtualization and Storage – IMS, Hexaware Technologies. Deploying the private cloud has already enabled Hexaware Technologies to implement a chargeback system to track utilization and establish a foundation to allocate costs back to individual business units. It has also enabled the company to implement self-service access and pay-for-use pricing. These tools reduced infrastructure costs by an estimated 30 percent over 12–16 months, cut the infrastructure provisioning time from two weeks

By deploying the private cloud, Hexaware Technologies has reduced infrastructure costs by an estimated 30 percent over 12–16 months, reduced infrastructure provisioning time from two weeks to hours, increased server/storage resource utilization by about 40 percent over 24 months, and reduced backup and restore window by 70 percent november 2012 i n f o r m at i o n w e e k 39

Cover Story to hours, increased server/storage resource utilization by about 40 percent over 24 months, and reduced backup and restore window by 70 percent. There are other examples of how technology is being used by companies in this vertical. Bangalorebased IT services firm Wipro has turned to software major Microsoft to enhance its enterprise IM (instant messaging) infrastructure using Microsoft Lync solution. With Lync, Wipro wanted to leverage the new collaboration capabilities including on-premise audio/video, web conferencing facilities, mobile IM access for BYOD users, and real-time collaboration through integrated SharePoint skill search. Prior to deployment of Lync, all users used IM but only few of them were enabled for audio and video services. However, with Lync deployed, text-only IM was extended to audio/video collaboration as well as desktop and application sharing with the conferencing facility. The solution enabled keyword-based search to locate right skilled resources and advanced presence information to initiate on-demand communication. It allowed easy communication and collaboration while outside the corporate network. “Lync infra has helped us save USD 80,000 on hardware alone and there has been an increase of 35 percent in users’ login and also in the number of conferences,” says Ramesh Nagarajan, CIO, Wipro Technologies. India’s second largest IT services company Infosys has developed a

In addition to social, mobility, analytics and cloud (SMAC), we would continue to invest in ERP, CRM, SCM, EAI and testing Balasubramaniam Vedagiri

VP & Head – Enterprise Technology Solutions, MphasiS

suite of applications called Integrated Employee Life Cycle Management (ELCM) suite of applications that helped the company reduce or eliminate cost, inefficiency and risk of managing paper-based employee documents. Prior to this, Infosys used to face huge challenges in efficiently managing the increasing number of documents and processes associated with its 150,000 employees throughout their life cycle. The new application has also helped Infosys in enabling consistency and accuracy in high-volume HR processes such as onboarding, performance reviews, etc. Today, the platform is a single place to look for complete information about an employee. As a result, Infosys completely automated its employee document management with 400 plus different varieties of documents maintained for each employee, scaling up to13 million documents. Infosys has been able to reduce turnaround time for document verification from 10 days to one day. Another example is that of software services/BPO company MphasiS, which is investing on social,

mobility, analytics and cloud (SMAC) as part of their emerging focus on technology hyper-specialization for FY 13. “In addition to that, we would continue to invest in ERP, CRM, SCM, EAI and testing,” says Balasubramaniam Vedagiri, VP & Head – Enterprise Technology Solutions, MphasiS. The key drivers of technology, according to Vedagiri are customer preferences, changing technology landscape, market & customer competitive analysis and potential growth in the chosen areas. In conclusion, technologies around SMAC, virtualization, collaboration, data center management and other infrastructure and operations management solutions, are some of the key technology trends in the IT-ITeS sector. The bottomline — IT services, BPO and KPO companies in India will continue to invest in technology internally to increase efficiency and externally to offer continuous uptime and service level agreements (SLAs) to their customers.

u Ayushman Baruah

ayushman.baruah@ubm.com

Post deployment of Lync infrastructure, Wipro Technologies has saved USD 80,000 on hardware and there has been an increase of 35 percent in users’ login 40

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Cover Story

Preparing for the next

telecom revolution In an era of price wars, commoditization of core voice-based services, slowing subscriber growth rate and falling profit margins, telecom service providers are increasingly investing in certain technologies that will help them control churn by providing value added and intelligent services By Amrita Premrajan

ccording to a recent Gartner report, IT spending in India will reach USD 71.5 billion by the year 2013. Out of this, the telecom vertical alone would be spending some USD 47.8 billion on IT. And service providers are now investing in various technologies to pursue opportunities in a highly competitive market. Katyayan Gupta, Analyst and Connectivity Lead, Telecom and Networking Services, APAC & Emerging Markets, Forrester Research reminisces how the focus of service providers evolved over the last couple of years. “Previously service providers were primarily inclined to get people on board and inflate their subscriber base numbers. But today, in our country with a population of 1.2 billion, we have already reached a penetration of 160-170 percent in urban areas,” he says. Customers also have the choice of switching operators with the MNP (mobile number portability) facility. So service providers are now focusing on concrete steps to retain their existing customer base and prevent customer churn. “The operators today are focusing a lot more on the customers who

are on-board, reaching out to them proactively, and providing Value Added Services (VAS). This is the story of Indian Operators 2.0, which is all about VAS and enabling intelligent services to customers,” he says. Some of the key technologies that the telecom vertical has been investing in include business intelligence and analytics, Big Data, predictive analytics, Operations Support System (OSS), Business Support System (BSS), customer experience management, social media, multi-channel integration of CRM, and technologies to tap into the enterprise market. Let’s dig deeper into these focus areas, and what might be the business benefit.

BIG DATA AND ANALYTICS

Big Data has been a buzzword this year, and like various industry verticals, the telecom industry has been trying to understand the real business benefits that it would bring in, as the stakes are high when it comes to investing in this technology. Praveen Bhadada, Director, Zinnov Management Consulting, says telcos are increasingly interested in looking at Big Data technologies to tap into, and derive meaning out of the information, which they are already storing. “For example, petabytes of data

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Cover Story is stored, just from Call Data Records (CDR) that are being generated every day. Telcos want to figure out a way to look at these CDRs, map what the customer preferences could be, and predict where a customer is likely to spend more — and what might be the offerings which would eventually become relevant for customers,” he says. Resonating the same thought, Neeraj Arora, Director and Lead, Internet Business Solutions Group, Service Provider, Cisco India & SAARC says, “Big Data analytics is becoming a key differentiator for Indian service providers. The confluence of the network-side analytics and customerside analytics is where we believe that the next inflection will come in for Indian service providers — which would be true Big Data. Here you would get volume, variety and velocity of data. This means network side analytics, which tells us the location of the customer, and which tower or Wi-Fi access point he/she is closest to, can be mashed with the customer-side analytics data, which essentially includes information around usage/consumption patterns of the consumers. This will together open up a lot of, hitherto unknown opportunities for the service providers to tap into, and derive value. This could be called the Wave 2.0 of Big Data.” Forrester’s Gupta says, “Predictive Analytics will become very important in the future. This solution would enable predicting the behaviour patterns of specific users, enabling the operators to provide personalized solutions for individual customers depending on their specific usage patterns. But there is still a maturity,

Within 12-18 months, predictive analytics will become core to the service provider’s strategy Katyayan Gupta, Analyst & Connectivity Lead, Telecom and Networking Services, APAC & Emerging Markets, Forrester Research which the Indian operators need to achieve before this happens. We are looking at anywhere between 12-18 months when predictive analytics will become core to the service provider’s strategy.”

EVOLVING OSS AND BSS

Just like ERP forms the backbone of a manufacturing company, Operation Support System (OSS) and Business Support System (BSS) are the core technologies when it comes to telecom service providers. The number of subscribers, the traffic, and the consumption of telecom services have increased manifold in the last 4-5 years. And it has been observed that OSS and BSS solutions have been slowly evolving to respond to these needs. Zinnov’s Bhadada says, “OSS and BSS is going into its Phase II where these technologies are becoming more sophisticated, interacting with various other solutions, thus providing more value. Solutions like revenue management software, fraud management software, and customer support software are evolving and becoming more relevant in the context of OSS and BSS solutions. And these are some of the key areas of investments, which telecom service providers are looking at this point in time.”

The confluence of the network-side analytics and customer-side analytics will open up a lot of opportunities for the service providers to tap into Neeraj Arora, Director and Lead, Internet Business Solutions Group, Service Provider, Cisco India & SAARC

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Gupta of Forrester adds, “Investments in OSS and BSS by telecom companies would increase. For example there are many operators who are providing 2G, 3G and 4G services. In addition, they have landline and broadband services. What this means is that the telecom company would face a lot of complications in doing its billing and management, and investments in these areas will be of prime importance to them.”

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MANAGEMENT

A recent research report on Customer Experience Management published by the Wipro Council for Industry Research, says that Customer Experience Management (CEM) applies tools and techniques that enable the telecom service providers to gain insights into the service experience from a customer’s point of view and identify the pain points to improve the overall experience. Anil Jain, Sr Vice President & Business Head, Global Communications, Wipro says, “CEM is critical for telcos to remain viable in an era of price wars, and commoditization of core voicebased services, slowing subscriber growth rate and falling profit margins. Customer experience is particularly critical because there is little opportunity for operators to establish competitive differentiation with basic voice and data services. Hence, providing a best-in-class customer experience across the network, the IT stack and customer support has become a key focus area.” Moreover, the introduction of MNP is putting even more pressure on the telecom players to preserve their

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‘Our IT spend is driven by the need to gain differentiation’ Key technology areas of IT Spending Applications like market campaign driven by online data analytics are one of the main area of IT spends at MTS. IT spends are also happening in the BSS and OSS space, with the new function and features aiding innovative product development in data and voice businesses. Other areas of investments include customer interface applications for ease of customer interaction for information and other services related to billing and activation/deactivation of services; VAS applications and applications and developments for regulatory compliance like data de-duping, SMS quota, etc.

satisfaction and to enhance QoS for overall customer experience. Added to this, the ability to gain market intelligence and customer like/dislikes from structured and unstructured sources, such as social networking media and advertising, and the need to be compliant to regulatory guidelines have been some of the other major drivers.

Outlook 2013 Given the uncertain situation around the telecom domain, we see a muted outlook for IT spends, where only lightson critical spends can be expected. Business analytics and customerRajeev Batra centric services/ applications, which CIO, MTS India can assist revenue growth, will remain Business Drivers core areas of growth and adoption in the coming years. The key drivers for adoption of these technologies have Any new application/technology or change in existing been to gain market differentiation in time of cut-throat application arising out of regulatory or law enforcement competition, to offer innovative product and services to requirements would also be adopted. customers to aid revenue enhancement and customer

current customer base, and to prevent any kind of customer churn. Such a competitive market is driving the adoption of CEM amongst the telecom players, making it an extremely important area of investment for them. Wipro’s research report points out that for telecom service providers to do practical CEM deployments, it is essential to understand how a customer perceives service experience, how a Communication Service Providers (CSP) system responds to a customer request,

that telecom companies would sooner or later invest in and adopt various tools and technologies that lead to a robust CEM solution, which would ensure high quality of service to its users, thus preventing any customer churn.

WI-FI OFFLOADING

Though various telecom service providers are providing 2G, 3G and 4G services, there is currently a clear mismatch between the user experience one gets through fixed

Telecom companies would sooner or later invest in and adopt various tools and technologies that lead to a robust customer experience management solution and the outcome or quality of the resulting transactions, which constitutes multiple sub-transactions that are hidden within CSP networks and IT systems. This clearly indicates

lines and that on mobile. Even within one city, sometimes 3G speed is not consistent while accessed from different locations. All this has accounted for 3G not taking off the

way it was expected to. Realizing this, service providers are planning to invest in ways and means to improve coverage and capacity. Here, coverage of a network defines the areas in which you have signals reaching; capacity means how many users can log on, at one point in time, without the network getting clogged. Wi-Fi offloading is one way to tackle this problem. While Wi-Fi is pervasive in Western countries, with plenty of public hot spots, it is limited to office infrastructure in India. Green field airports, swanky malls, and coffee shops in India provide Wi-Fi hotspots with free access. But Wi-Fi is still scarce in public areas like bus terminals and railway stations. And this is an opportunity for telecom operators to tap. Forrester’s Gupta explains, “To tackle this issue (network clogging) a lot of operators are currently focusing on Wi-Fi offloading, where the operators go about installing Wi-Fi across the city and country. This technology will ensure that there is no choking of 3G and 4G networks,

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Cover Story and it will ensure uptime by enabling consumers to access Internet through Wi-Fi. By doing so, they are just shifting the access mechanism.” Arora of Cisco adds, “This is being done not just from the traffic-offload point of view, but many progressive service providers are also looking at how to make money out of this opportunity.”

TAPPING THE NEW ENTERPRISE MARKET

Traditionally, a telco’s customers have been consumers, both in the rural and urban areas of India. But of late telecom players have started realizing that enterprise is emerging as a new segment for them. Telecos like Bharti Airtel for instance, have been the first to invest in this segment. Kamlesh Bhatia, Research Director, Gartner India, says, “The consumer market today has started to flatten out. Growth is not really happening at the same pace, it was happening two years ago. Operators are realizing that enterprise is the new growth engine, and they are preparing themselves for this. What they are realizing is that the enterprises with whom they want to connect with do not need just a connectivity provider, but a value provider for the business. On top of connectivity rides a lot of processes and apps that enterprises want today. And this is where operators are beginning to invest.” In the past, telcos have made massive investments in data centers and networks. Some of that infrastructure can be diverted to providing enterprise services. This would not only offset the decline in consumer business, but also help recover the investments made by the

Telecom operators will have to weave social media into their customer management processes Kamlesh Bhatia

Research Director - Gartner India

telecom service provider. A prominent example here is Tulip Telecom, which has diversified into the data center business, and invested close to ` 900 crore to set up its data centers across the country. Cisco’s Arora says, “Most of the service provider’s revenue is coming from consumer business and enterprise is currently just a small part of the revenue. But service providers are realizing that they have the potential to provide various kinds of services to enterprises like SaaS and IaaS.” He further says a key focus areas is Enterprise Cloud Service, not only from a wire-line perspective, but also from the perspective of enterprise mobility. “Large telecom players already have fibre available with them, and they are really looking at ways to cost effectively serve the business customers, particularly the small and medium businesses. For SMEs, they are looking at new ways at offering mobile cloud services to improve their productivity.” But to gear up for enterprise services, telcos will need to develop capabilities that are beyond voice and data services. And that calls for additional investment in infrastructure.

Customer experience management is critical for telcos to remain viable in an era of price wars, slowing subscriber growth rate and falling profit margins Anil Jain, Sr. Vice President & Business Head, Global Communications, Wipro

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INVESTING IN ‘SOCIAL’

Social networks have changed the way customers interact with the service provider, and submit grievances. So it has become increasingly important for operators to proactively tap the social aspect of customer interaction. That calls for investment in social media and integrating it with the CRM channel of the company. Bhatia of Gartner India says, “Telecom operators will have to weave social media into their customer management processes. Here they identify a customer on the social side of things and then connect them to their behaviour on the network, and then with the telecom operator’s own customer management applications, thus closing the loop. And this loop would enable the operators to tap into the customer sentiments and ensure a differentiated experience. Customers are also connecting with operators in multiple ways, through call centers, social media, Point of Sale, etc. To ensure that all these communication channels are collected in a timely manner, and no issues remain unresolved, the telecom operator would need to invest in CRM with a focus on multi-channel integration — and this is a major area where we would see telecom companies investing in.” In conclusion, currently IT spending of telcos is primarily driven by the need to reduce churn and retain their existing customer base. And to achieve this, telcos will increasingly invest in technologies like Big Data analytics, social media, and customer experience management.

u Amrita Premrajan

amrita.premrajan@ubm.com

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Feature

IBM Chairman: Rapid urbanization problems are a leadership issue Says leaders will need to gain support for their ideas and concepts, and be persuasive. Alludes to success stories of cities that have got smarter to tackle urbanization By Brian Pereira

ities are a critical component of driving the economy. But rapid urbanization around the world is already putting immense pressure on the limited resources available in the world’s cities. And countries like India and China are at the forefront of urbanization — India already has 12 of the world’s 100 largest cities. It took nearly 40 years for the urban population in India to reach 230 million. Studies reveal it will take only half that time to reach the next 250 million. In the next 20 years around 30 Indians will migrate from a rural area to a city every minute. At that growth rate, the population of Mumbai will be bigger than that of Canada by 2030. And the Delhi/NCR region will have a GDP bigger than Portugal. With more people choosing to live in cities, India will need 500 new cities in the next 20 years. At the IBM Smarter Cities forum in New Delhi on September 13, a gathering of city planners, government policy makers, politicians, city architects, technologists, and researchers, the consensus was that, even the best technology in the world cannot address the challenges induced by rapid urbanization. Delivering the keynote, IBM’s Chairman, Samuel J Palmisano said it was really “a leadership issue” and that “collaboration was essential”. He suggested our leaders “should be systems thinkers, take a long-term view,” and have persuasive skills. And they “shouldn’t confuse leadership with charisma or the sound-bite on TV.”

“If leaders are going to manage in the long term, they will need to build organizational support for their concepts and ideas. And you can only do that in a collaborative environment, with good team work and spirit”

“If (leaders) are going to manage in the long term, they will need to build organizational support for their concepts and ideas. And you can only do that in a collaborative environment, with good team work and spirit. And you can’t dictate it and will it — you have to persuade people (to accept your ideas),” said Palmisano. He said the problems (due to urbanization) are too severe for our leaders to manage. Yet there were changes happening in cities elsewhere in the world. Palmisano alluded to fresh water systems in Saudi Arabia, waste management systems (recology) in the San Francisco, a public safety crime center in Davao (Philippines), and an end-to-end command center in Rio de Janeiro to monitor all aspects of the city. IBM is also engaged with 3,000 smarter city projects around the world. “Leaders who are managing these cities are non-ideological. They get things done. They have to solve the problems and make things better. And that’s what you see leaders in urban centers doing. These leaders think in terms of systems. Power generation, water management, transportation, health care and public safety are systems. A city is a system of systems that are interconnected. A great example is Rio de Janeiro. And they take a long-term orientation because you can do this in one election cycle. These are sophisticated projects.”

Samuel J Palmisano Chairman, IBM

u Brian Pereira brian.pereira@ubm.com

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Interview

Smart use of technology can transform core systems of cities Over the next 5 years, government spend on technology is expected to be around USD 500 billion — 63 percent of which will be outside Tier-1 cities. Big Blue is looking at this mega-shift as a mega-opportunity and is planning to tap this with its ‘Smarter Planet’ initiative

esearch forecasts point out that every minute, 30 people move from a rural area of India to a city — and that will continue through the year 2025. By 2050, 70 percent of the people will live in cities. There will be at least 27 megacities of 10 million people, compared to 19 today. No doubt, we see a shift in the spending patterns of the central and state governments coupled with the adoption of new technologies. Over the next 5 years government spend on technology is expected to be around USD 500 billion — 63 percent of which will be outside Tier-1 cities. IBM is looking at this mega-shift as a mega-opportunity and is planning to tap this with its ‘Smarter Planet’ initiative. Dhamodaran Ramakrishnan, Director, Smarter Planet, IBM India/ South Asia shares with Srikanth RP of InformationWeek his perspective of why IBM is so bullish on this opportunity: What is the business case for building a smart city? What kind of challenges do cities face today? India’s growing economy is placing

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huge demands on critical infrastructure — power, roads, railways, ports, transportation systems, healthcare, water supply and public safety. Some estimates indicate that while the government has raised its investments in infrastructure, the investment gap remains daunting with an estimated USD 1 trillion required to meet the country’s resource needs over the next five years. This significant investment in urban infrastructure also represents new challenges and opportunities to consider how these systems interact with each other and design them in a more efficient manner. The benefits of a city growth are far-reaching, and multiple players have a stake. At the same time, the existing systems within that city come under new pressures. In order to manage these challenges, civic leaders across the world are looking at innovative solutions that can transform city systems and better prepare them for rapid growth.

the opportunity? A smarter city is the one that uses technology to transform its core systems and optimize the return from largely finite resources. By using resources in a smarter way, it will also boost innovation, a key factor underpinning competitiveness and economic growth. Investment in smarter systems is also a source of sustainable employment. Smart use of technology can go a long way in transforming a city’s core systems. It can help create an efficient transport management system; improve healthcare, public safety, education, and water supply; and develop a robust communications network to connect businesses, people and systems. With over 2,500 smarter city projects, IBM is helping cities around the world transform into sustainable cites. For instance, the City of Rio de Janeiro automated alerts of changes in flood and landslide forecast to reduce reaction times in emergencies.

Please elaborate on the Smarter City initiative from IBM? What is

How can cities serve as platforms of innovation? Can

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you give us some examples where cities have already demonstrated this? Cities are complex interconnected networks of system of systems, and an integrated and holistic approach can enable city leaders to look at the big picture and improve efficiencies across all citizen services — power, energy, water, healthcare, transportation, public safety, education, green housing, emergency system and so on. By doing this they can harness a city’s finite resources in a smarter way, and boost innovation, a key factor underpinning competitiveness and economic growth. Better services attract and retain creative talent, which acts as a powerful, long-term competitive advantage for cities. Consider this: Smart metering in Malta helps citizens pay only for the energy they use. Predictive analytics helped slash Richmond’s crime rate significantly in one year. In Taiwan, almost all of the trains run on time. Data analytics helped cut crime in New York City. In downtown Stockholm, smart traffic systems helped reduce gridlock. Underneath this runs a complex pattern of insights leveraging discreet flow of information, anticipating problems, and coordinating resources like a cognitive system of a living organism. How can cities optimize their systems to serve as engines of economic growth? As cities grow in both numbers and population, they are taking their place on the world’s center stage, with more economic, political and technological power than ever before. Economically, they are becoming the hubs of a globally integrated, services-based society. Every city is unique, but their leaders face many similar challenges — most of which call for exceptional creativity and innovation to resolve. Cities are perfect for promoting change, and renewable energies. They can serve as innovation platforms, creating clusters of business around green energy. Driving sustainable growth and prosperity through the strategic use of technology recognizes the challenges that city leaders face.

Proven solutions and new technologies for data management and resource coordination can help transform city systems to make the best use of funds and talent. What are the various IBM solutions for better outcomes in Smarter Cities? We believe in adopting a holistic, collaborative, and engagement-driven approach in evolving smarter cities and enabling citizen-centric services through the use of sophisticated technologies. This include Smarter Buildings (schools, hospitals, homes, offices, energy, water, waste, and emission management); Smarter Public Safety (emergency response and communications, digital video surveillance, and crime analytics); Smarter Water Management (water infrastructure management, and resource planning optimization); Smarter Government Services (social services, citizen and business interaction and case management, visit optimization); Smarter Transportation (road user charging, congestion pricing, integrated fare management, and traffic prediction), Smarter Energy Management (smart grid, electric vehicles, renewable energy, and Intelligent Utility Network Communications & Security); and Smarter Cities (improved services, operations, safety, sustainability, incident management, domain correlation, and emergency response). Please explain how a smart city can overcome traditional problems for a city like water scarcity, transportation, public safety, and blackouts due to power scarcity? Government, city planners, and municipal bodies are under intense pressure to provide robust services, drive economic growth, anticipate problems, and coordinate their responses to crises, while optimizing existing resources, and doing more with less. Technology can help us integrate information from disparate, instrumented systems and create an intelligent, interconnected environment that fosters collaboration, enhances

efficiencies and sponsors effective decision making across departments, including buildings, energy, operations, public safety, transportation and water — while facilitating virtually seamless cross-departmental integration. Architecture and urban planning are not going to solve all of a city’s problems, unless they use the information smartly, and break down all the silos that have naturally developed over a period of time. Changing that mindset is the biggest road block in making progress. People have to think differently, and we have to act together to make it happen. In your view, what are the characteristics of an ideal smart city? To transform our cities, city leaders must infuse intelligence into their systems and integrate the city ecosystem — they should collaborate with multiple agencies, departments, as well as citizens and businesses to achieve this innovation. By enabling dynamic interconnections among these groups and constituents, leaders can improve outcomes across the system of systems. For example, they can improve emergency responses by easing traffic congestion; increase school attendance rates by improving student health; and bolster public health by better protecting the city’s water supply. No matter what starting point leaders select, they can implement integrated IT solutions that address specific priorities and align with citywide goals. What kind of growth opportunities do you foresee in India? With major growth opportunities ahead, cities in India and other emerging markets are heavily investing in massive urban infrastructure. India too is at the cusp of undergoing rapid urban transformation. By 2030, the urban areas will be home to 40 percent of the country’s people — doubling the urban population within a span of 30 years. At this rate, India will need some 500 new cities in the next two decades. The smarter they become, the better. u Srikanth RP srikanth.rp@ubm.com

november 2012 i n f o r m at i o n w e e k 47

Interview

‘Employees should have an emotional connect with the company’

AP has a few more reasons to celebrate its 40th anniversary. In the quarter ended July 2012, it became the most valuable company by market capitalization in Germany. And in Q2, it crossed the USD 1 billion mark in software revenues. Previously, that milestone would be achieved only in the fourth quarter. These are the best financial results ever for the German enterprise software maker. But a less known fact is that its research lab in India has contributed significantly towards this success. VR Ferose, MD, SAP Labs India tells InformationWeek India why and how India became a strategic market for SAP. He speaks about best practices that foster product innovation and personal growth. Last year, SAP Labs India was placed fourth in an IT Best Employers Survey. How many research labs does SAP have worldwide? What are the highlights of SAP Labs India? How much does it invest in R&D? We invest 14 percent of our budget in R&D, which is higher than what most IT product companies invest. SAP has two legal entities in India: SAP India, the field organization and SAP Labs India, the R&D arm. Worldwide, SAP has 15 R&D labs in all, the India labs being one of the oldest (set up in 1998 after the lab in Palo Alto). The other major R&D labs are in Israel, China and the U.S. We have moved from two lines of businesses to 55 lines in the last 13 years. There are 4,800 people working at SAP Labs India, across two locations in Bengaluru and Gurgaon. And there are 1,600 additional contract employees. India labs is a fairly young organization with the average age of employees being 30 years. The attrition rate is between 8-10 percent, the lowest in its history. What kind of people do you look for? What skill sets and

informationweek november 2012

VR Ferose, Managing Director, SAP Labs India tells InformationWeek India why and how India became a strategic market for SAP. He speaks about best practices that foster product innovation and personal growth

qualities do you seek? Too much of experience can go against you sometimes — it becomes a bottleneck to unlearning. So we look for young people who are more agile. A young organization moves much faster. I believe that we age as an organization. Technology changes very fast and we need to be ahead of technology. And the youth brings in a lot of value here. What are some of the biggest differentiators for SAP Labs India? We aspire to be the number one IT company in the next two years and this will not happen by paying the best salaries. The biggest differentiator is that employees must have an emotional connect with the company. We found that 50 percent of our workforce is actively involved in social activities. And we made this part of the induction program. It is mandatory for new employees to spend one day at an NGO — we want to build a sense of inclusion from day one. Last year, we won the NASSCOM Diversity Award because of inclusion. We built a product for charity transformation called Charitra in 90 days. We want this to be the Facebook of charity and it already has 13,000 users across India. Charitra was built on HANA and it was launched a year ago, globally. Our company policies and processes are designed to give employees a sense of emotional connect. Some of the policies at SAP Labs India are probably the best in the industry. We have policies for part-time employment, work from home, sabbatical, etc. We have won many awards for our electric car policy. We were the first company to have a policy for employees who use electric cars. Many SAP employees own cars and that adds to the carbon footprint. That’s why we gave subsidies to employees who owned electric cars. Many of our policies are driven by employees. This has upped our

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employee engagement from 73 percent (in 2010) to 85 percent today. And this is the highest employee engagement across all the SAP Labs worldwide. The global average is 67 percent. This is an important KPI for an R&D center, which means higher productivity and low attrition. In the last two years the percentage of women hired at SAP has gone up. Why is gender diversity becoming a focus these days? From 265 people we took from Indian campuses, 42 percent are women. Overall, 32 percent of employees at SAP Labs India are women. A SAP global objective is to have 25 percent of women in leadership by 2017. While women are the highest focus, we are also looking at diversity. We believe that a more diverse or inclusive work environment makes for a more innovative company. But diversity is just not about women — we are also focusing on the differentlyabled. We were the first company to hire four autistics to do software testing. Autistics can do two things well: repetitive tasks and they also have a fantastic memory. Testing and gamification software requires these skills. But the initial investment is high and this is an expensive exercise. It took us six months to onboard these people, but after that we started realizing the value. The head of testing tells me that one of these autistic employees is as good as three engineers. This is not a social initiative, as there is a business benefit to it. Why is India a strategic location for SAP? What is your biggest advantage? How do you ensure that you still have the cost advantage? What trends do you observe? The first trend that we see is the convergence of cost, talent and market. Because of this India is becoming a strategic market for SAP. When we started our biggest differentiator was cost. Yes we had talent too, but the market was not happening in India then. However, today India is a significant market. Our biggest advantage is cost. R&D cost is still 60 percent the cost of China

and 20 percent the cost of the U.S. Even though we are raising salaries, we are still more cheaper than other locations. We have grown from 200 to 4,800 (since 1998), so there is the advantage of scale coming in. We have a big advantage of cost because we built our own campus. We are absorbing the savings on real estate now. Each time we grow and we take a rented space, the costs are 3X. So the advantage of scale is a big factor in the overall cost. We have maintained the same per-developer cost today as we had between 1998-2001. When we began in 1988, we had 200 people and were paying very high salaries, but we were using rented space. That (having our own space) is a huge advantage because 70 percent is still personal cost for an R&D center. Also, we are a good paying company — not a high paying company, which we were in our earlier days. We pay ` 5.5 lakh for a campus recruitment. In comparison, other companies such as Google and Oracle pay much more. Secondly, we have content ownership out of labs from India. The next practices are happening out of India. That means the decision makers of the products are based in India. The four large areas where the complete ownership moved from other areas to India are HCM, SRM, Business by Design, and all the new applications. While SCM and SRM are the traditional apps (developed out of other SAP labs), Business by Design was moved here to India. Before it moved to the India labs, Business by Design was a 2,000 person organization. Today, there are just 300 people working on and supporting this product. So we have a smaller group, but they have been given complete ownership. And this is a proof point that something that was not very successful in the past was given to a lab in India, and with less people we are trying to turn this around. You told us that to innovate one needs to be at the intersection of technology and other fields. What are some of the initiatives you are taking to expose your employees to the other domains? Innovation happens at the intersections

of diverse fields. And a great culture would provide a platform for these intersections or for accidents to happen. An innovator should have the ability to connect seemingly unconnected things and make something out of it. To ensure this culture, we are looking at varied domains like sports, theater, social, etc. We send people to different places to get different experiences. For instance, we send our core innovation person to spend two days in Harish Hande’s village. Hande (a social entrepreneur popularly known as Mr. Sunshine), has electrified his entire village. We also sent 50 of our people to spend time with Aravind Eye Care. They realized that the analytics used there was a lot faster than what we had. So our learning today comes from sending people to customers to understand what they need. We also have a series of leadership talks, with a thought leader conducting a session every week — we invite leaders, social entrepreneurs, authors, and technologists. We did a program for our employees called Dialog in the Dark (where they attend theater classes and do a play) to improve their interpersonal skills. We are also working with Anil Kumble to see how cricket and strategy can be applied in analysis. Of late your engineers have been speaking a lot about this term called Design Thinking. What does it imply? Design Thinking is about having an entrepreneurial mindset. Our founder says that SAP did design thinking back in 1972 so the concept always existed. There are three things that happen: desirability, feasibility and viability. A product will succeed if it is at the intersection of the three. It should look good to see, should be technically possible, and it must make business sense. Most of us would not have all three in mind. A technologist is only thinking about technical feasibility, not whether it would make business sense. This writer was hosted by SAP Labs India in Thailand. u Brian Pereira brian.pereira@ubm.com

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Interview

Best practices in adopting emerging technologies

he Essar Group is a multinational conglomerate and a leading player in the sectors of steel, oil and gas, power, communications and business process outsourcing (BPO), shipping, ports and logistics, projects, and minerals. With operations in more than 25 countries across five continents, the Group employs 75,000 people, with revenues of USD 20 billion. The Group recognizes that a key ingredient for attaining success in a competitive industry is superior customer service. It is therefore constantly looking for ways to use technology to enhance value for its enterprise customers. Essar’s CTO, Jayantha Prabhu, shares with InformationWeek how the Group leverages information technology for competitive advantage:

What are some of the major IT initiatives taken in the past six–eight months that have been focused on emerging or new technologies? Please also explain the business rationale behind each initiative? We have taken several technology initiatives. This includes desktop virtualization, adoption of cloud technologies, SAP HANA, Juniper Junos,and Sybase Afaria. Let me describe each of these initiatives. Essar Group has taken a mammoth leap towards desktop virtualization by adopting Citrix VDI technology. Currently, the Group has clocked 3,000 desktops/laptops virtualized with an end target of 14,000 within a span of a year. The key driver behind virtualization is to gain maximum efficiency, and fulfill business requirements in a short time. The Group has also taken a step

into the public cloud arena with Microsoft Azure and SAP SucessFactors. The Group has high plans to take the Azure journey through Phase-2, wherein it will take 6-8 more applications to the public cloud as against two applications earlier. We are a pioneer in adopting public cloud services. Essar Group also took a major decision to implement SAP HANA — the latest in-memory computing technology being offered by SAP. The Group intends to derive faster SAP responses through this technology, thereby driving business with better speed, and cut down earlier operative timeframes, resulting in enhanced business productivity. Essar Group has also associated itself with Juniper, whereby it assures secured mobility over Junos client offered by Juniper. Secure mobility is

Jayantha Prabhu, Essar’s CTO, has been in the forefront of adopting several emerging technologies. In an interview with Srikanth RP of InformationWeek, he describes the key technology initiatives taken by his group, and how he chooses emerging technologies whose business value is not proven, and there are no reference cases 50

informationweek november 2012

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the key driver behind this initiative. With the implementation of Sybase Afaria, we focused our intention towards embracing BYOD â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a service that will allow its end users to carry out business operations over their personal devices. Afaria solution within its initial phase will encompass most of the mobility devices such as tablets, smartphones and laptops for around 2,000 selected end users. The Group has promising plans to expand this spectrum to a major segment of its end-user base in coming years.

meeting steered by me and selected representatives conducts meetings every fortnight with business CIOs and portrays new technology mapping with business requirements. Detailed POC/Demo results are also shared during this meeting. Later, detailed business case, alignment with Essar Group Enterprise Architecture that directs the strategy, and technology roadmap with ROI and TCO is proposed to senior management for its final approval. Post which rollout takes place for such technologies.

Can you describe some business benefits delivered from these initiatives? We have registered several quantitative and qualitative gains. For example, with virtualization, currently around 300 plus standalone servers are being migrated into a virtualized environment, and over 2,000 desktops/laptops are being virtualized through VDI. Through various server virtualization technologies, there has been energy saving of around 70 percent. We have reduced around 150 standalone servers, and 25 racks within our data centers. This in turn has released critical floor space for further scalability and expansion. By migrating two of our applications over public cloud as against dedicated infrastructure based out of our native data center, we have saved around 60 percent of our operating cost.

In terms of providing IT solutions to solve business problems, who takes the lead? Does the push come from business or IT? We have defined business engagement SPOC from each Essar Group business vertical such as Steel, Oil, Power and Projects. During defined meetings, business problems are shared by business CIOs, which in turn are deliberated within the CTO leadership team for solution mapping. While criticality is the factor raised by business, we decide the technology and propose this to the business.

What is the process for adopting a new technology? The Essar Group CTO office led by me has structured itself by dedicating a team that takes care of new technology and innovations. This cell is responsible to explore several new technologies that can be mapped later with business requirements after their thorough evaluation process. This cell also works with several other SME teams within the CTO office collaboratively, as a team works hand in hand with top notch leading technology providers, such as SAP, Microsoft, HP, Cisco, IBM, Dell, Oracle, Symantec, Juniper, etc. A technology committee

If you had to highlight some best practices that you can suggest to fellow CIOs in adopting emerging technologies, what would they be? We have complete transparency with business leads during the initial stages of emerging technologies with technology providers. It is evident that business CIOs/representatives should be involved when the technology is hunted and proposed to business at the primitive stage so that the solution mapping gains complete clarity and achieves completeness to a larger extent. As a team, we arrange several such structured meetings/conferences/ forums within the organization. While the final decision lies with us, adequate buying is also required from the business. That can be achieved only through due and appropriate connectivity with business CIOs and leaders from time to time.

Through various server virtualization technologies, there has been energy saving of around 70 percent. We have reduced around 150 standalone servers, and 25 racks within our data centers

u Srikanth RP srikanth.rp@ubm.com

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Feature

RSA pursues intelligent security models to fox password thieves Distributed Credential Protection technology can potentially reduce the likelihood of successful “smash-and-grab” attacks on password servers By Brian Pereira

redentials such as Secret Question, date of birth, or address as a way of authenticating users are no longer fool proof, for hackers can cull these details from LinkedIn or Facebook pages. The recent LinkedIn password exposé highlights the inadequacies of credential protection techniques such as hashing and salting. InformationWeek reported on the LinkedIn hack here: http://bit.ly/TJEaKH. But the cat and mouse game between hackers and security solutions providers continues, with RSA (an EMC company) claiming to be one step ahead with its new Distributed Credential Protection (DCP) technology. In fact RSA is on the verge of releasing an intelligent security model based on Big Data analytics (more on that later). Arthur W. Coviello, Executive Vice President, EMC Corporation and Executive Chairman, RSA Security told InformationWeek that DCP technology would be most effective on Windows Active Directory. “When hackers breach a company’s (perimeter) security, they first try to determine who are the System Admins and look for their passwords, so they try to breach Active Directory. But if you are able to disguise that information with tokenization technology, or split the authentication information, you just increase the level of difficulty.” RSA has been working on DCP technology for quite some time. The technology is designed to eliminate a primary point of compromise by proactively or reactively scrambling, randomizing, and splitting sensitive data across multiple locations. So effectively, your password or the answer to your ‘secret question’ would be split and stored on multiple servers in

informationweek november 2012

“We are building a governance and visibility stack that will help you manage an intelligence-based system at the highest level. Ultimately, it won’t just rely on log information but on full packet capture”

Arthur W. Coviello

Executive Vice President, EMC Corporation and Executive Chairman, RSA Security different locations. That means hackers would need to figure out the locations of all those credential servers and password databases, and then find a way to reassemble that fragmented authentication information. Even if an attacker does manage to do that, the information gained would be useless. According to RSA, secrets can also be re-randomized at the push of a button so that any potential intrusion into one of the credential servers would similarly yield useless information. As a result, attackers face the daunting task of having to compromise two separate servers or data centers nearly simultaneously, without detection, in order to gain valuable authentication information. While companies like RSA are investing heavily in technology like tokenization to stay ahead of hackers, organizations have been slow to adopt and implement these cutting-edge technologies. The models adopted by business have not kept up with the speed and expertise with which hackers breach organizations. So it seems intelligence and automation in security

solutions would be the only way to stay one step ahead of hackers. Coviello said the next level of protection would be an intelligent-based security model. “RSA has to be providing the solutions that get you to a new intelligence-based model for security. To do this, we have acquired companies like NetWitness and Archer Technologies over the years. We are building a governance and visibility stack that will help you manage an intelligence-based system at the highest level. Ultimately, it won’t just rely on log information but on full packet capture — it will take contextual data from your controls. We will have a high-powered Big Data application that will analyze and correlate what’s going on in your infrastructure in real-time, to produce actionable information. So, you can reduce the window of vulnerability from any attack,” said Coviello. InformationWeek has learned that RSA’s intelligence-based solution is now in the testing phase and is expected in the current quarter or early next year. u Brian Pereira brian.pereira@ubm.com

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The new world of Google Kaur and Facebook Singh

n a highly intuitive session at INTEROP Mumbai, V S Parthasarathy, Group CIO, EVP - Group M&A, Finance & Accounts, Member of Group Executive Board, M&M Group highlighted that the CIOs have to change from 3Cs (ConnectCollaborate-Converge) to 3Es (EnableEnhance-Engender). “Unless CIOs are ready to change with changing times, a CIO’s office would not be required in the future as the world is changing dramatically. If CIOs don’t ride the wave of change, they will find themselves beneath it,” asserted Parthasarathy. He further said that currently CIOs are at the cusp of history and they can become prime movers in the time to come — and for that they should aspire to be on the board and become business integration experts. They also need to be a catalyst in change adoption and drive transformation. Else the only portfolio that would remain with the CIO would be that of a Data Center Manager. He said the CIOs need to embrace new technologies like social media. He said such will be the proliferation of

social media that the relatives of the family will be known by the pseudo names of social media websites. Adding a tint of humor to the event, Parthasarthy introduced Santa’s family to Banta : “Yeh meri biwi Google Kaur, ek sawal pucho das jawab deti hai.., Yeh mera beta Facebook Singh, ghar ki har baat muhalle tak pahunchata hai...Yeh meri beti Twitter Kaur, pura muhalla raat din follow karta hai ise! Aur yeh YouTube . . . . , Isko to tu mere se jada dekhta hai.” Parthasarathy stressed that going social is not a choice any more, it is a necessity. He said, “Social is inevitable and necessary for CIO’s transformation.” Another biggest change expected from the CIO of today is to change the image of ICT from “cost allocator” to “value creator” for the business, he said. Today, when costs are driving businesses crazy, investing for the future is highly difficult. “One must remember that the price of doing the same old thing is far higher than the price of change. It is up to the CIOs to decide whether they are ready to change or perish,” Parthasarathy concluded. —Jasmine Kohli

V S Parthasarathy, Group CIO, EVP - Group M&A, Finance & Accounts, Member of Group Executive Board, M&M Group

Anil Menon, President, Globalization and Smart+Connected Communities, Cisco

‘Video will dominate information flow’

he world is changing at an unprecedented speed. Major demographic shifts are taking place, which are reshaping the global economy to address unmet needs and emerging business challenges. In his session at INTEROP Mumbai 2012, ‘The City is the New Country’, Anil Menon, President, Globalization and Smart+Connected Communities, Cisco discussed how emerging technology can become a key enabler that will enable industry and citizens to take advantage of these major changes. Menon said that whether building a city from the ground up, revitalizing existing cities, or helping an organization become more efficient in the way they manage their integrated operations, new technology allows the industry to address some of their greatest concerns — be it public safety, security and sustainability. He further said that in the future, video will dominate the information flow. “By 2013, 91 percent of all consumer internet traffic will be video.” He also explained how video can prove beneficial in providing education to students in rural areas. “How can we do things differently for rural areas where there is just one teacher for 40–50 students and that too with 40 percent absenteeism on the part of the teacher? The answer lies in virtual education,” Menon said.

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How cloud is fuelling innovation

ick-starting the second day of INTEROP, Tushar Singhat, CEO, D-Link India, delivered an interesting keynote that discussed how the emergence of cloud computing is fuelling innovation amongst the vendor community and is bringing revolutionary products and offerings in the market. He said that cloud computing has captured the imagination of vendors and the CIO community alike, sparking off a lot of exciting discussions on the pros and cons of utilizing the technology. Singhat highlighted that the concept of cloud computing existed from the time e-mail emerged. The technology vendors sensed the inherent opportunity that cloud computing offers and started doing extensive R&D to leverage the technology in various ways. They started innovating,

developing and delivering different enterprise apps in a convenient and easy to use manner. He also pointed out another key trend shaping in the market today — the marriage between the hardware and software industry, which have traditionally developed independent of each other. He further talked about what CIOs should keep in mind while availing cloud-based solutions. Singhat highlighted that with plethora of cloudbased offerings (like security as a service or enterprise applications as a service) flooding the market, the CIOs have to first identify the specific need of the enterprise and then accordingly avail the required cloud-based offering. He highlighted that though CIOs can see the clear benefits of the technology, one of the major concerns that they still have is — how secure is the enterprise data going to be in a

Tushar Singhat, CEO, D-Link India,

cloud environment? And one of the key things that would help addressing this issue and in turn drive the adoption of the cloud solutions amongst enterprises is the trust factor, which solution providers build in the market. He asserted that unless CIOs are ensured about the security of enterprise data, they would remain skeptical towards this opportunity. —Amrita Premrajan

Dell shows how tech can drive business strategy

ridhar S, Director, Enterprise Solutions, Dell delivering a keynote at INTEROP Mumbai 2012 said that enterprises should tune their infrastructure to meet their specific requirements. He urged the organizations to plan backup infrastructure and bring some regulation in client devices. He said by standardizing apps and reducing servers, organizations can balance IT spending to 50:50. “Dell has reduced 7,000 servers internally in the last two years,” Sridhar said. He said Dell is aiming to help CIOs shift their IT operations to a more strategic level and deliver compelling business value. “We believe in bringing innovation and building an open architecture with no legacy,” Sridhar said. Dell has made a series of

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acquisitions in the past to work towards its goal of building agile enterprises, he said. In early 2008, Dell acquired EqualLogic, a supplier of data storage for large companies, for about USD 1.4 billion. With EqualLogic, Dell aimed at unleashing the power of iSCSI, the technology which makes storage Internet-based and locally available. Last year, Dell acquired Compellent Technologies, a provider of highly-virtualized storage solutions with automated data management features, including tiering and thin provisioning for enterprise and cloud-computing environments. The Compellent and EqualLogic acquisitions were strategic in helping Dell build out its own storage line of products. Sridhar also mentioned the acquisition of storage vendor Exanet, which brought Dell into the enviable

Sridhar S, Director, Enterprise Solutions, Dell

market of scale-out network attached storage systems. Its acquisition of Ocarina Networks gave Dell a de-duplication and compression technology. —Ayushman Baruah

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CIOs should become application scouts of the enterprise

lagging off the last day of INTEROP, Sharad Sharma, Chair, NASSCOM Product Forum, & Co-founder and CEO, NASSCOM, talked about the relevance of emerging technology startups for the enterprises and how they are set to bring in the next wave of transformation within the enterprise IT. He highlighted some of the most popular Indian technology startups, like Zoho and FusionCharts, that are already reining the markets in their respective niches. Sharma gave a gripping account of how these startups succeeded in building such a strong market share across the globe, competing with established names in the market. Further, he shared that such Indian startups especially the ones in the applications space have taken advantage of the dramatic and radical reduction in app development process and have churned out large number of apps for enterprises — with most of the apps developed being situational. “Today, within the enterprise, CIOs are controlling the core enterprise apps but the situational apps is where the growth is happening and this space is increasingly going out of a CIO’s control,” Sharma said. He added

that such a proliferation will soon be witnessed in the core enterprise apps space, thus putting more pressure on CIOs to be on their toes in evaluating which apps would give them greater business benefits within the limited budgets. Sharma emphasized that this change happening in the enterprise apps space is calling for an important change in the role of CIOs. “The changing enterprise app scenario is necessitating the CIOs to take on the role of application scouts who constantly monitor new apps, which even if not mainstream, has the potential to bring a strong business benefit at a very low investment,” said Sharma. He shared that CIOs generally look at startups with some amount of skepticism. He persuaded them to judge startups by their product offerings. “CIOs now need to retrain their muscles to look at smaller innovative players who can bring enormous benefits to the business. It’s time to let go of the thought that the best apps originate from the West, and open up our minds to these startups.” said Sharma. —Amrita Premrajan

Sharad Sharma, Chair, NASSCOM Product Forum, & Co-founder and CEO, NASSCOM

Girish Rao, Head - IT, Marico

Why IT must be ‘sasta’ and ‘tikaoo’

‘C

IOs should keep business needs in mind and not the tool. Keep the solution simple and scalable,” said Girish Rao, Head - IT, Marico while delivering a session at INTEROP. Rao said that Marico adopts ‘Sasta Sundar Tikaoo’ approach toward investing in IT, where ‘Sasta’ means inexpensive — ‘low price and good quality’ and not ‘low price and low quality’, while ‘Sundar’ implies meeting business needs with simple and usable tools, and ‘Tikaoo’ means sustainable, which gives ROI as well as meet needs over a period of time. He said that to adopt the ‘Sasta Sundar Tikaoo’ approach, Marico first re-architected the IT landscape and adopted open source and virtualization technologies. He said that earlier Marico’s data center had five racks containing 30 servers, which were proprietary Itanium-based servers. Post re-architecting the IT landscape, Marico now uses virtualization and Open Source technologies extensively. “The server AMC cost has reduced by 30 percent, while DC charges have reduced by 50 percent. We also registered power costs savings of up to 70 percent. Apart from this, we achieved the flexibility to address peak loads, and adopted commodity servers blades and Open Source Linux OS for apps servers,” Rao said. —Jasmine Kohli

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PANEL DISCUSSION

What CIOs expect from their direct reports If you want to win respect from your IT Head, work on key attributes such as attitude, communication skills, business credibility, ability to make independent decisions, self-learning ability, and communication skills

(L to R) Rob Preston, VP & Editor-in-chief, InformationWeek, USA; Prasad Patil, Associate Vice President - IT Infrastructure & Projects Group, Aegis Limited; Keyur Desai, Associate Vice President - IT Infrastructure & Projects Group, Aegis Limited, Nikhil Gundale, Vice President â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Systems and Technology, Lowe Lintas India; Bishwanath Ghosh, Vice President - IT & KM, Automotive & Farm Equipment Sectors (AFS), Mahindra & Mahindra; Subramaniam V, CIO, Otis; Rajesh Uppal, Executive Director (IT) and CIO, Maruti Suzuki; and Arun Gupta, CIO, Cipla

live mentoring session was conducted at INTEROP Mumbai, on 11th October. The panel comprised four well-known Indian CIOs from elite companies such as Cipla, Maruti Suzuki India, Otis and Mahindra

& Mahindra Group. The CIOs mentored three Future Strategists (direct reports to the CIO/CTO). In the first half of the session, CIOs shared what they look for when picking people for their teams. And then the InformationWeek Future Strategists picked a mentor and asked

career and role-related questions. The panel was moderated by Brian Pereira, Editor-in-Chief, InformationWeek India. Rob Preston, VP and Editor-in-Chief, InformationWeek USA was also a panelist. The panel began with each CIO

I look for attitude when picking people â&#x20AC;&#x201D; are they going to put their neck on the block, irrespective of whether I agree or disagree?

The IT team must develop a mindset of working together with the business users. They have to shed the idea that they are solution providers

I look for people who have passion, energy, and enthusiasm. The person should have fire in the belly and fire in the eyes. And he should be a team player and work with users across functions

Arun Gupta CIO, Cipla

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Rajesh Uppal, Executive Director (IT) and CIO, Maruti Suzuki

V. Subramaniam, Director - IT & CIO, Otis Pacific Asia Area

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sharing what attributes he looks for when picking candidates for his team.

ATTITUDE

Arun Gupta, CIO, Cipla said he looks for attitude when picking people. Communication skills and the ability to work independently are also important. Gupta, who recently moved from Shoppers Stop to Cipla, is in the process of assembling his team. “Are they going to put their neck on the block, irrespective of whether I agree or disagree? When you are taking initiatives on your own, you have to be able to drive yourself from within. It is the intrinsic motivation that comes into play,” said Gupta. Gupta said he does “psychometric tests” to “validate his assumptions” when making a first assessment. Rajesh Uppal, Executive Director (IT) and CIO, Maruti Suzuki agreed that attitude was important. He said he can gauge a person’s attitude when he or she walks into the room (in the first few minutes). “It is important for tomorrow’s IT leaders to empathize with, and understand their users and then come back and offer some value,” said Uppal.

TAKING INITIATIVES

V Subramaniam, Director - Information Technology & CIO, Otis Pacific Asia Area said apart from attitude he looks for leadership abilities. “I observe how the person takes

We make our assessment of the candidate in the first eight seconds of the interview. And in the remaining 40 minutes we validate that

Bishwanath Ghosh, VP- IT & KM, AFS, Mahindra & Mahindra

initiatives. I look for people who have passion, energy, and enthusiasm. It is about the discipline of the execution. They have to make things happen, without excuses. Also, the person should have fire in the belly and fire in the eyes. And he should be a team player and work with users across functions,” said Subramaniam. Bishwanath Ghosh, Vice President - IT & KM, Automotive & Farm Equipment Sectors (AFS) Mahindra & Mahindra said the Mahindra Group has a philosophical mission dubbed ‘Rise’ that encourages all employees to evolve themselves. “It is really important for people to mould themselves for the role he or she plays in the organization. Self-learning ability is important. And this is what the Rise philosophy is about,” said Ghosh. “We make our assessment of the candidate in the first eight seconds of the interview. And in the remaining 40 minutes we validate that,” said Ghosh.

U.S. CIOS

Rob Preston, VP and Editor-in-Chief of InformationWeek, USA offered his views on how U.S. CIOs mentor their direct reports. “First and foremost, US CIOs expect business credibility. They look for people who build relationships with their CXO peers and have regular conversations — not just talk the language of finance. They also expect broad technical experience in

US CIOs expect business credibility and look for people who build relationships with their CXO peers. They also expect broad technical experience in the areas of IT operations and infrastructure Rob Preston, VP and Editor-in-Chief of InformationWeek, USA

areas of IT operations, infrastructure management etc. Then they ask about the record of success. They ask if you’ve led big IT projects. Have you delivered on time? Are customers happy? Do you have customer testimonials? Listening and communication skills are also important,” said Preston. Preston also said that the CIO role in the U.S. is becoming more customerfacing. They move about in the market talking to customers.

BACKGROUND & ASSESSMENT

The other half of the panel had Future Strategists asking their CIO mentor certain questions related to their career. Prasad Patil, Associate Vice President - IT Infrastructure & Projects Group, Aegis (Essar Group) chose Rajesh Uppal of Maruti Suzuki as his mentor. He asked if CIOs prefer people with a business background or they choose those with a strong IT background. (Patil received the InformationWeek Future Strategist award in 2011.) Responding to this question, Uppal said, “IT people come with a lot of technical knowledge and when they approach users in the organization, they try to upload all that to them. So it’s better to have business people coming to IT. It’s ideal to have that combination of user experience and IT background. I am an IT person, but I also run some businesses at Maruti Suzuki.

At Essar, we have created a culture of exposing the end user to the vendor, so that they understand which is the right solution to the business problem Prasad Patil, Associate VP - IT

Infrastructure & Projects Group, Aegis

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PANEL DISCUSSION

The important thing is that one should have the ability to learn the language of business and learn to understand business concepts.” Keyur Desai, Associate Vice President - IT Infrastructure & Projects Group, Aegis (Essar Group) picked Arun Gupta as his mentor. He asked Gupta how he assessed his mentees in the different organizations that he served throughout his career (in retail, logistics, and pharma companies). Gupta said everyone has a perception about others in an organization and it was easy to be judgmental. “I never look at perception and always go by an opinion. As we work together on a daily basis, we are continuously being assessed, and that gives me a view of what one can and cannot do,” said Gupta. Speaking about his experience in different organizations, Gupta said in his 15-year CIO career the 15 people he mentored went on to become CIOs. And they could do so only because they had a sense of responsibility, the potential, and a strong desire to be a CIO. He said a person cannot behave the same way in different situations. But it was also important to have the right ecosystem within the organization, and the opportunities for growth.

CO-CREATING SOLUTIONS

Nikhil Gundale, Vice President, Systems and Technology, Lowe Lintas India, who received the InformationWeek Future Strategist award in its debut year (2010), posed a question to the whole panel. He said IT (and IT support) is now commoditized and users look for solutions on the Internet (rather than approach IT). He said people should instead elaborate on the problem statement/definition, leaving solution architecting to the IT teams. Gundale asked, “How do we handle this user behavior and still be a leader in the technology domain?” This question evoked knowing smiles from the panelists, and each offered their opinion.

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Subramaniam of Otis acknowledged this challenge and disagreed that IT is a commodity. “Every user has varying degrees of experience and there are different awareness levels. It is not just about searching Google for answers, because the user has needs and methods for connecting with peers internally and in the industry. At Otis every person in my team connects to the business and understands the business mandate. We provide the entire service knowledge. And the IT person works with cross functional teams in the design and the development (of the solution) from day one. So the IT team understands what functionality is required, the business pain-points, and how IT should solve the business problem. So it is one common team to create one common goal,” said Subramaniam. Gupta had a different response and said one should never resist the user; if a user has an opinion understand the logic behind it. “The moment you get into the process scenario the solution is co-created in a way that there is ownership. So never fight it — always accept it and say let’s sit together and co-create the solution. Keep on asking the user questions and listen a lot,” advised Gupta. “While the user is talking the IT person is already crafting the solution in his mind, and that’s why the solution isn’t suitable.” Prasad Patil of Aegis/Essar said they

IT and IT support is now commoditized and users look for solutions on the Internet rather than approach IT. How do we handle this user behavior and still be a leader in the technology domain? Nikhil Gundale, VP, Systems and Technology, Lowe Lintas India

have created a culture of exposing the end-user to the vendor, so that they understand which is the right solution to the business problem. Essar conducts technology days where vendors put up their stalls. These tech days are well-attended by the business users, who are introduced to the latest technologies. This creates the awareness and hence makes it easier to get a buy-in for a solution from the business users. Uppal said a mindset change is critical for the IT team. “Ten years ago, technology used in the office was better than what was used at home. But today it is reverse — you have more advanced technology (gadgets) at home. So users will naturally ask questions about technology (expectations are high). Thus, mindsets must change with respect to their learning ability, and with respect to finding solutions. The IT team must develop a mindset of working together (with the business users). They have to shed the idea that they are solution providers.” Ghosh of Mahindra & Mahindra was of the opinion that the discussions between IT and business should happen earlier in the development processes, so that there is upfront agreement on things like interface and functionality. “After all, it is the business users who need to use the application (more than the IT people). So they should provide the inputs and IT must build on those inputs.” Ghosh also reiterated what Uppal said earlier about greater awareness of technology among users. “Here we should ask the question: Is IT to be viewed as a separate entity or as a business partner?” stated Ghosh. The Future Strategists were more confident at the end of the discussion. Going by the feedback from the audience, it could be concluded that the panel discussion was highly charged, interactive and a success.

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@ Indiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s best IT leaders

2012

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 2012 award on seven CIOs at an award ceremony in INTEROP Mumbai on October 10, 2012 .

The winners of Global CIO Award 2012 with UBM Team

Amrita Gangotra, Director-IT (India & South Asia), Bharti Airtel accepting the Global CIO award from ED Grossman - President, TechWeb Media, UBM Tech

Daya Prakash, Head-IT, LG Electronics India receiving the Global CIO award

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N Jayantha Prabhu, Chief Technology Officer, Essar Group accepting the Global CIO award

Shailesh Joshi, Vice President, Corporate-IT, Godrej Industries receiving the Global CIO award

Rajesh Uppal, Executive Director (IT) and CIO, Maruti Suzuki India receiving the Global CIO award

S Ramasamy, Executive Director (Information Systems), Indian Oil Corporation Ltd. accepting the Global CIO award

S Francis Rajan, Vice President, ICT, Bangalore International Airport Ltd. receiving the Global CIO award

informationweek november 2012

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@ Acknowledging tomorrow’s IT leaders

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 third InformationWeek Future Strategist Awards (FSA) ceremony, held on October 10 at INTEROP Mumbai, 2012, when five IT leaders came to collect their award, which recognized them for being next in line for the CIO role. The five 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.

Munish Mittal, Sr. Executive VP– IT, HDFC Bank receiving the FSA from Rob Preston, VP & Editor-in-Chief, InformationWeek USA

Gaurang V Doshi, Associate VP - AEGIS – IT Infrastructure, Project Group, Essar Group accepting the Future Strategist Award

C O Parmar, Dy General Manager (Systems), Kandla Unit, IFFCO, accepting the FSA

Dinesh Chandra Gupta, DGM - IT, Godrej Consumer Products, receiving the FSA

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Raghubir Singh, GM - IT, Usha International Limited accepting the FSA

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@ EDGE recognizes India’s finest business technology leadership The EDGE awards ceremonies were held on 10th, 11th and 12th October at INTEROP Mumbai 2012. EDGE or Enterprises Driving Growth and Excellence through IT is InformationWeek’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.

Michael Duck, Executive Vice President, UBM Asia (extreme left) presenting the Diamond EDGE Award to Jayantha Prabhu, CTO, (extreme right) and the IT team of Essar Group

Manoj Shrivastava, Director - IT & Head, Integrated Technology and IT Governance, MTS India accepting the Diamond EDGE award

Prakash Shah, State Election Commissioner and the team of State Election Commission, Gujarat receiving the Diamond EDGE award

Amit Sethi, Senior President & CIO, YES BANK (second from left) and the IT team receiving the Diamond EDGE award

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PL Chockalingam, AVP – Risk Management & IT, Sesa Goa accepting the Diamond EDGE award

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Brian Pereira, Editor-in-Chief, InformationWeek (fourth from left) presenting the Silver EDGE award to Rajat Sharma, President-IT (extreme right) and the IT team of Atul Limited

Rakesh Kakadia, Deputy GM – IT, Essar Steel accepting the Silver EDGE award

Sanjay Lokur, Assistant VP – IT, GIS, BSES Reliance ADA Group receiving the Silver EDGE award

Tapan Paul, VP and Head – IT, IFFCO TOKIO General Insurance accepting the EDGE award

B Rajalaxmi, DGM – IT, Cholamandalam MS General Insurance Company accepting the Silver EDGE award

S Ramasamy, Executive Director, Information Systems, Indian Oil (Second from right) and the IT team accepting the Silver EDGE award from Anees Ahmed, Associate Publisher and Director, UBM (third from right)

Anand Raghavan, Associate VP, Business Services Head – IS, Infosys receiving the Silver EDGE award

V Srinivas, CIO, Nagarjuna Fertilizers & Chemicals accepting the Silver EDGE award from Srikanth RP, Executive Editor, InformationWeek

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Bharati Lele, Head - Innovation Labs (fourth from left) and the IT team of Larsen & Toubro Infotech receiving the Silver EDGE award

Pushan Mahapatra, Dy. General Manager, SBI receiving the EDGE award

Girish Hadkar, Head-IT (second from left), and the IT team at Mahindra Real Estate accepting the Silver EDGE award

Pertisth Mankotia, Head-IT, Sheela Foam (second from left ) and the IT team accepting the Silver EDGE award

Girish Rao, Head-IT, Marico (extreme right) and the IT team receiving the Silver EDGE award

TG Dhandapani, CIO, TVS Motors (extreme right) accepting the Silver EDGE award

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

informationweek november 2012

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Technology & Risks

The power and risk of ‘intelligence’

Avinash Kadam

Is there a threat lurking behind the rapid advances of intelligent infrastructure?

http://www.on the web Can hackers target a pacemaker? Read article at:

he march of technology across the centuries is truly amazing. The Industrial Revolution made common man’s life easy. The Information Revolution that followed the Industrial Revolution has brought its own blessings to mankind in the form of electricity, public switched telephone network, mainframe computers, etc. While we were getting used to the fruits of the Information Revolution, another kind of revolution had silently started. Slowly and steadily, each of the infrastructure facilities started acquiring “intelligence”. Things did not happen overnight. But when they happened, we were astonished by what the intelligence did to the infrastructure. The first major change we saw was the emergence of Internet. It started with a very limited purpose of enabling the sharing of existing networks through the use of packet switching. The initial growth of Internet was limited to connecting a handful of colleges for sharing resources of big super computers. Probably it would have remained just another type of networking technology but for the development of the global DNS system. DNS made it possible to connect millions of computers across the world in a public network instead of just a few hundred computers in a private network. Global DNS has the intelligence to route trillions of packets to millions of destinations. DNS system provided that extra intelligence to make the Internet a public utility. Next proof of the impact of ‘intelligence’ is our telephone infrastructure with the invention of Signaling System 7 (SS7). It is a digital network designed to run on top of the PSTN. We now get facilities like caller ID, voicemail, call blocking, pre-paid calling cards, and multi-party conference calls. SS7 seamlessly connects the mobile phone from one tower to another as the caller is travelling in a car. An air traveler is able to use his mobile phone as soon as it is switched on anywhere in the

world. This is possible because of the ‘intelligence’ built into the SS7. Our handsets have changed from the dialing and talking devices to smartphones with almost computer like capabilities. Our automobiles are using dozens of micro-computers in the embedded chips to control the engine function, transmission control, instrument panel and even remote diagnostics and maintenance. The power sector is creating intelligent infrastructure by using SCADA systems for load balancing, effective distribution of power generation and safety. The manufacturing companies are working at making the supply chain ‘intelligent’ by using RFID-tracking of objects by transmitting electronic product code providing realtime tracking of items in a global supply chain. Implanted medical devices are allowing doctors to remotely monitor the health of patients using their iPads. The possibilities seem endless. Is there a threat lurking behind all these rapid advances of intelligent infrastructure? We advise the use of antivirus software, firewalls, strong passwords, and regular patching for computer users, but how many smartphone users even know or care for these security measures? Do people protect their VoIP devices against a virus attack? What if organized criminals or terrorists start tampering with the intelligence of the intelligent infrastructure? We have already seen the beginning of attacks on SCADA systems through Stuxnet. The intelligent infrastructures are extremely powerful but equally vulnerable. We need to protect them by careful ‘defense in depth’. The risks are real but they can be countered by the intelligent use of ‘intelligent’ infrastructures. u Avinash Kadam is currently

Advisor – India Task Force for ISACA. Opinions expressed in the column are his personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views of www.isaca.org. He can be contacted via e-mail avinash@awkadam.com

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Global CIO

8 IT mistakes: Must-have lessons from top CIOs

Chris Murphy

Spare the euphemisms. Great teams embrace mistakes and get better

he best companies stare their IT mistakes straight in the eye. They don’t tiptoe around them. They don’t rename them “teaching moments” or “issues.” They don’t play blame games. They lay their mistakes bare so that their teams can improve. They talk about their IT mistakes in the way CenterPoint Properties CIO Scott Zimmerman describes his team’s first mobile application development. “We had to refactor because our egos caused us to forget the golden rule of software development: Always involve the users,” Zimmerman says. Mistakes are at the center of any business technology innovation — swing for big wins, sometimes fail, learn and improve. We embraced this idea as part of this year’s InformationWeek 500 by asking every IT team to share its biggest mistake this year. Not everyone was comfortable discussing them publicly — the wound is too fresh for some, and many are still working on the fix. What follows are real-world examples from IT teams willing to share.

Mistake: Treating mobile development like desktop development

LOGS Chris Murphy blogs at InformationWeek. Check out his blogs at:

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CenterPoint is a developer and manager of industrial property, and it has some veteran application developers who know the business well. But when it came to building a mobile app, that knowledge of the business recently got the better of the IT team. CIO Zimmerman describes it this way: “So when we created our first mobile app, we wanted to surprise/ impress our business colleagues. We let enthusiasm cloud our judgment, trying to think through requirements for them. Initial adoption was disappointing. It ‘looked cool’ but didn’t meet their ‘mobile’ needs. We failed to recognize that people often perform business functions differently in the field than at their desk.”

That realization forced the team to redo the app, and it’s what reminded the IT team of that golden rule of software development, and the importance of working closely with the application end users. The app is back on track. Mobile app dev is serving up a lot of tough lessons. Few enterprise IT teams have deep experience with the technology and languages. And there’s almost always an impossible time pressure, as marketing wants that mobile app this quarter rather than next year. Vail Resorts CIO Robert Urwiler says he made the mistake of outsourcing too much of the resort company’s customer-facing mobile Web app, EpicMix, in its first year. In year two, he built an internal team for much of that work. Creating customer-facing software also demands that developers have a tight relationship with business units, especially marketing. “It’s not like ‘You do the idea generating, and we’ll build the software,’” Urwiler says. “We need to be joined at the hip throughout these initiatives.”

Mistake: Assuming everyone wants a social network

Several InformationWeek 500 companies noted initial lackluster adoption of employee-focused social networking and related collaboration tools. Some, like online game company Zynga, turned that reluctance around, while others say the software still isn’t delivering. Zynga put it this way: “We anticipated that internal collaboration tools would gain adoption faster than they did. We’ve made significant improvements on that front but learned a lot in the process. The biggest reminder for us was that content is key to driving internal adoption of enterprise social network tools.” What’s refreshing about Zynga’s experience is that it comes from a

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company on the cutting edge of the social web, whose games are intimately linked with Facebook and social sharing. The Zynga team lives and breathes the social concept, but it still needed vital content in an in-house social platform to make the tools relevant. That’s an important reminder if IT is tempted to blame end users for not hopping on new social collaboration tools: Employees are old, they don’t get it, they’re not tech savvy. Those are all cop-outs for not providing employees with a compelling reason why a social tool is a better, more efficient way to collaborate.

Mistake: Using outsourcing the wrong way

Several companies cited outsourcing problems as their big mistake. Sometimes it was execution, such as the outsourcer not having the promised skills or capability. Vail’s Urwiler, as mentioned above, felt he handed over too much project management. One admitted to moving too much to outsourcers too fast. With all of the outsourcing mistakes cited, we’re seeing IT leaders get more demanding of what they expect from their vendors. Edward Wagoner, CIO of the Americas for Jones Lang LaSalle, is fine-tuning his company’s outsourced IT help desk strategy to better fit the commercial real estate company’s culture. In commercial real estate, even as digital marketing becomes more important, it’s still the top talent who drive growth, and these rock-star salespeople thrive on relationships. Explains Wagoner: “We bought into the theoretical concept that certain IT functions such as help desk support could be ‘black boxed’ (e.g., that the end user wouldn’t care who the help desk person was or where they were located as long as the problem was resolved). We failed to realize that our top talent values that personal relationship in all areas of their work life. They want to know that Donna is their IT support person. They want Donna to understand their business and the way they work. They want Donna to be a part of their extended team. They value having a relationship

with Donna vs. calling an 800 number.” Wagoner has started assigning individuals to support key people and offices. Those outsourced support people have the go-ahead to ignore certain productivity metrics if it means solving a problem — ”think airline platinum” status, Wagoner says. Salespeople have even called him to thank him for the support. And the relationship building continues. Outsourcing may or may not be right for a given company. But regardless, IT needs to consider its company’s unique culture and business model, and bend the outsourcing model to its needs.

Mistake: Underestimating the upside

Innovation often happens only after putting IT tools in employees’ hands and watching what they do with them. Nice in theory, but it takes flexible IT operations to react to the new demand that such a process can create. Hertz came to this realization when it created its ExpressRent kiosks, which let people make a rental car reservation using a live video call to a customer service rep, along with a touchscreen to enter data, a scanner to validate a driver’s license, and a printer to provide a rental agreement. But Hertz’s IT team had to scramble when demand picked up in an unexpected market. Says Hertz: “We originally marketed the ExpressRent kiosks primarily to body shops and dealerships for insurance replacement rentals, assuming usage would be greatest for one-off rentals outside of business hours. We hadn’t anticipated the airport market, already fully staffed and with a vast majority of ‘existing’ reservations, would be the success point for implementation. Modified deployment planning and additional kiosk refinements needed to be made in addition to securing airport authorities’ approval for placement.” Quintiles, which runs clinical trials for biotech companies, launched a cloud-based service for drug development in 2011. Its business plan predicted that only small biotech companies would use the service. But some of the industry’s largest biotech

companies showed interest, asking for a scale of deployment for which Quintiles didn’t have the people or technology, forcing it to scramble to ramp up. Success is a nice problem to have, but it can still test IT’s ability to deliver results.

Mistake: Struggling to get off legacy systems

A surprisingly large number of CIOs described how hard it has been to get off a legacy system. Some problems involved moving to cloud software, including integrating systems from different vendors to replace a single legacy system. Some described employees who relied on specific features or databases tied to the old system, requiring process and cultural changes to switch software and get off those functions. One IT team, asking that its company not be identified, described its change management challenge: “We began a legacy system replacement early last year. Going into one of our larger locations, we thought we were cruising. But we had failed to truly understand the complexity of management reporting they had developed internally over the years. So when we swapped the system, all their custom reporting broke. It was big-time scramble mode to review, design, and build the reporting they were expecting. In all, a six-month project delay due to insufficient discovery. Big lesson learned for our project management team. And we left with a better design headed to the next location.” IT will rarely be hailed as the hero at first for moving the company off a legacy software system. Such moves force employees to change, so they resist. As this example shows, processes and functions can break during the process. But for every problem we heard about moving off legacy systems, we heard another say their biggest mistake was not moving off legacy systems fast enough as they brought on new systems, sapping the new project’s return on investment.

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Global CIO Mistake: Taking on too much

In a healthy business, there’s always some tension caused by business units asking for more than IT can deliver. IT is a constrained resource. But many IT leaders cite mistakes in managing the demand pipeline, either by not communicating and setting priorities well with the business units, or just taking on too much and crushing their teams. One CIO, who asked that his company not be identified, says a lot of projects were pushed to the back burner during a three-year ERP project, which the company finished in 2010. So 2011 “was a year where pent-up demand for systems reached a peak,” he says. The company launched a website, a customer loyalty program, and more in the first quarter of 2011. The logjam became clear in the following months, and IT met with each main business unit in the third quarter to better set priorities and expectations. Mismanaging IT demand badly can lead to poor-quality software and systems. But even when IT does deliver strong results, leaders must recognize the very real human toll. Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center recognized that risk as it raced to innovate: “In 2011, our organization took on a number of high-profile and strategic projects that required significant time and dedication from our staff,” the hospital says. “Although we successfully completed all of these projects, we risked staff burnout in asking our staff to go above and beyond on multiple occasions throughout the year.”

Mistake: Getting into a virtualization rut

Server virtualization has been the golden goose of technology ROI. By getting higher utilization from servers, IT shops have been able to consistently lower data center costs and in some cases avoid the multimillion-dollar capital expense of building a new data center. But even this money machine has its limits. HCA Information Technology & Services found that limit. The group

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provides IT services to the 150 HCA hospitals, hundreds of physician offices, and non-HCA healthcare groups as a revenue center for the company. Here is its experience: “We began server virtualization in 2009, and as our successes increased we began to see virtualization as a hammer searching for a nail. In 2011, we discovered several scenarios where we had chosen virtualization hastily, or we combined environments that did not match logically. All of this required us to take a step backward and to develop a more defined methodology and framework to decide which applications were right candidates for virtualization. We believe our move into internal cloud services will require us to learn from our virtualization days and ensure we have a highly defined selection process.” Plenty of companies have broken applications as they virtualized servers. As companies get more aggressive by building private cloud environments that virtualize computing, storage, and even networks, the transition will get more difficult. FedEx, for example, has created an entire private cloud data center and will only move applications into it once the company has rewritten these apps so that they’re optimized for that highly virtualized environment. IT organizations tend to think of a private cloud as the safe choice — all of the flexibility and security of a public cloud such as Amazon’s EC2, but without the security worries. But plenty of gotchas await.

Mistake: Underestimating mobile demand

IT didn’t see the iPhone revolution coming. It wasn’t until top execs and salespeople started bringing them in and demanding to get corporate email on them that IT took on the security problems iPhones created. So lesson learned, right? IT would be all over the iPad? Not really. IT did start experimenting with tablets right away, but many teams thought it would be at best a niche device, maybe something that would start slowly with executives. IT organizations weren’t ready for how soon and how many employees would

crave iPads — and who could make a credible case for why tablets make sense for work. A number of healthcare companies, in particular, were caught flat-footed by how many doctors insisted on using personal tablets. They’ve told us of extraordinary steps that “maverick docs” took to use iPads, like using apps of questionable security or installing desktop access software on a tablet to view records from the doctor’s PC. Salespeople instantly saw the iPad’s appeal as a better device to use while chatting one-on-one with a prospect. One financial company described its iPad experience this way: “Mobile computing has been a key component of our IT strategy for several years. We’ve delivered on initial focus areas, building mobile applications for customers and enabling employee personal mobile device access to company email. Our mistake was in not anticipating the dramatic surge in popularity of the iPad commensurate with the release of the iPad 2. Sales force demand to leverage company-liable tablets rose suddenly, requiring us to be uncustomarily reactive. IT quickly bridged the gap, setting policy and implementing mobile device management, which enabled the company to mitigate financial impacts. However, we’re still working to regain the full confidence of our sales executives.” Sales executives are going to need IT’s help to get the most out of tablets. Companies that roll out tablets quickly learn that they need content and applications fine-tuned to their specific needs, such as for accessing inventory available for sale and providing tabletfriendly presentations. But this company’s reaction is a pretty good guide to bouncing back from any of these mistakes. Fix the technology, build a platform for future innovation — and spend time strengthening IT’s relationships so that mistakes are much less likely to happen in the future. u Chris Murphy is Editor of

InformationWeek. Write to Chris at cjmurphy@techweb.com

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Practical Analysis

Employers are hot on application developers

Art Wittmann

It’s the IT job category where companies are looking to hire the most people, and it puts the biggest premium on fresh skills

LOGS Art Wittmann blogs at InformationWeek. Check out his blogs at:

n the movie The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman’s character, Benjamin, is famously given one word of advice on his future: plastics. If the 1967 classic were remade today (please don’t), the word would be: software. Of course, most graduates (or dropouts) won’t be the next Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, or Bill Gates, but in a shaky economy like this one, if there’s a safe, bankable major it’s in computer science. This conclusion is supported by our recent InformationWeek IT staffing report, which found that companies are anxious to hire security and application development talent, as well as application delivery and database management pros. Our survey also found that the largest needs are in app development. Among the survey respondents who said developers are a top need, the majority said their companies will increase such staffing by up to 10 percent over the next 2 years. Some 7 percent said they’d increase app development staffing by 21 percent to 30 percent, and 11 percent said they’d increase it by more than 30 percent. Those are huge percentages, among the highest of the IT job categories in our survey. Companies are generally looking to add staff or contractors to meet their app development needs. Only 21 percent are looking at retraining as the main way, a third see a mix of retraining and finding new talent, while 27 percent are looking only outside the company to fill their needs. It’s hard to say why retraining isn’t more popular. It could be that existing staffers already are fully engaged, and that there aren’t too many Cobol programmers or NetWare admins to re-mint as Python experts. It could also be that companies are simply looking for whiz kids who can pound out code in modern languages. In the longer run, companies that ranked app development as a top need aren’t necessarily looking to outsource

that work. Survey respondents said that in two years, on average, 73 percent of their companies’ internal programming teams would consist of existing employees (47 percent) or soon-to-behired employees (26 percent), the rest comprised primarily of either short-term contractors (14 percent) or long-term contractors (11 percent). We defined long-term contractors as those with stints longer than 18 months. For those people with the right skills, the high demand results in a pretty good salary. In this year’s InformationWeek Salary Survey, the median income for staff developers was USD 95,000, up from USD 92,000 last year and USD 90,000 in 2010. One downside: App development is a volatile field. Among the companies represented by our IT Staffing Survey respondents, 25 percent are hiring more in app dev than in any other IT area, but 22 percent said it was the IT area where they’re cutting the most. While every IT area requires a constant refreshing of skills, developers must be extra careful to keep their expertise current. Companies will pay for retraining (61 percent), and some will offer raises (35 percent), but all in all this is an area where successful workers are self-motivated to stay on top of their craft. The financial performance of companies that depend heavily on software and applications also tends to be more volatile. That’s because their products can be rendered obsolete by new competition (imagine being on the Lotus or NetWare development teams), and the companies themselves are often small and dependent on the success of a single product. Good programmers can almost always find a new job, and in many cases they regularly have to. 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 2012 i n f o r m at i o n w e e k 71

Down to Business

Are the CIO and IT organization replaceable?

Rob Preston

Technology spending and influence are moving outside of the IT department, but let’s not lay a wreath for the IT pro just yet

LOGS Rob Preston blogs at InformationWeek. Check out his blogs at:

informationweek november 2012

he new conventional wisdom is that the CIO and IT organization are becoming relics, as business technology decision-making and purchasing move into marketing, sales, HR, and other departments. Who needs a big IT organization, the reasoning goes, when tech-savvy line-of-business workers and their managers can buy the server capacity, storage, applications, and devices they need with a few clicks and a credit card? In a column, InformationWeek contributor Patrick Houston relates the example of LivingSocial, a Grouponlike startup whose HR chief, Jennifer Trzepacz, ramped up cloud-based recruiting, payroll, and employee performance-management systems in next to no time — all without an IT department. Adding fuel to the debate are two recent reports that conclude that marketing departments, whose spending on IT already is growing 2-3 times faster than other IT spending, are taking matters into their own hands. Gartner predicts that by 2017, marketing departments will spend more on IT than the IT organizations at those companies. And IBM, in a survey of 1,700 CMOs, found that 23 percent of them now rely extensively on external partnerships for IT initiatives — but 61 percent think they’ll rely extensively on them over the next 3-5 years. But before we start laying a wreath for the IT organization and dedicated IT professional, let’s step back. A few caveats: -- Not every company is a startup. LivingSocial may function fine (for now) without an IT department, but companies with myriad legacy systems to manage, competitors to one-up, and regulations to comply with need in-house IT chops — in integration, security, application development, analytics, networking, and much more. “Just put it all in the cloud” works for only the smallest companies. And it’s not necessarily an old world vs. new world

divide. Consider the extensive in-house IT infrastructure work done by Google, one of the biggest cloud proponents. -- The challenge before IT organizations is to earn a position at the center of innovation, not just plod along in a support and maintenance role. But CIOs must establish formal partnerships with other department chiefs, not just get on a conference call with them from time to time. For example, Allstate runs crowdsourced “innovation blitzes” out of its IT organization, whose executive VP, Suren Gupta, also sits on an innovation council that includes top execs from the insurer’s product, claims, financial, operations, investments, and sales departments. USAA, under its Agile Labs, puts developers together with subject matter experts and customer service reps to create fast prototypes of new products and product enhancements. “These leaders are working to formalize tech innovation as part of everyday business, because the reality is that business units aren’t always going to ask for IT’s help anymore,” writes my colleague Eric Lundquist. -- CIOs need to take on roles outside of the IT organization. Among our IW 500 companies, 34 percent of CIOs are responsible for innovation, 33 percent for business process management and improvement, 13 percent for operations, 13 percent for procurement, 12 percent for business services, 5 percent for logistics and supply chain, and 30 percent for some other function. Only 15 percent of those IW 500 CIOs have no official responsibility outside of IT. In the end, though, technical expertise is still critical. Richard Thomas, CIO of biopharmaceutical services company Quintiles said: “Working in IT but not understanding technology. If you work in IT, I expect you to know what you’re talking about.” u Rob Preston is VP and Editor-in-Chief of InformationWeek. You can write to Rob at rpreston@techweb.com.