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Edu Tech December 2009

Editorial

The power of collective It was in 2001 that Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger decided to harness the power of the collective and launched an online encyclopaedia called Wikipedia.

The collaborative model would let any netizen contribute and edit articles put up on the Web. The whole idea seemed preposterous at the start. Why would people attempt writing pieces on wide ranging topics, and even if they did, how would the write-ups match up to the standards of encyclopaedias like Britannica and Coliers? (Britannica has around 100 full-time editors on its rolls and over 4,000 expert contributors, with a history that dates back to the 18th century.)

Today, Wikipedia is one of the leading reference sites, with over three million pages and over 11 million registered users. So far, there have been over 372 million page edits done by users themselves. Available in 262 languages, 24 of these editions have more than 100,000 articles and 81 have over 1,000 articles.

If anyone ever doubted the power of collective, Wikipedia has put them to rest.

As for the quality of content, according to a survey done by Nature there were 162 mistakes in Wikipedia versus 123 in Britannica on 42 randomly selected general science articles. This, by all means, is comparable.

This issue of IT Next is based on the same Wiki model—ideated, shaped, driven and created by the community of IT managers.

Here are some stats: around 40 IT managers shaped the Tech Trend pieces, 10 managers wrote the Best Practices, and there was an edit panel of 10 senior IT experts who helped select and shape the content. The end result has been astounding.

I am genuinely surprised and humbled by the response that we received after we invited you to create this special issue. And I believe, you too will appreciate and savour this Wikified issue.

This experiment has worked, just like the Wikipedia experiment did at the beginning of the decade, where the reader of the content is also its creator.

Let me know what you will like to create next!

“This issue is based on the Wiki model— ideated, shaped, driven and created by the community of IT managers” S h u b h e n d u Pa r t h

Blogs To Watch!

Knowledge sharing communities http://www.toolbox.com Martin McKea’s blog http://www.mckeay.net Your views and opinion matter to us. Send your feedback on stories and the magazine at shubhendu.parth@9dot9. in or SMS us at 567678 (type ITNEXT<space>your feedback)

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15-Minute manager 53 Dare to lead? | In these

days of cut-throat competition, it is tough to become a leader. Here is a primer for the aspirants

From the myriad and complex technology landscape, here is a selection of ten technologies that are not only seeing traction in the enterprise space, but will also possibly dominate in the years to come. These technologies have been assiduously chosen by a select panel and subsequently evaluated by a panel of 40 IT managers, who have also crafted and shaped the content for the same.

54 Office Yoga | Meditate for success

59 Best Practices

55 Team Management | The

None knows the pain of a shoe better than who wears it. Similarly, the challenges, the consequences, the headaches, the pitfalls of different technologies can only be known by the IT manager who has been involved in either seting it up or managing it. Insights and experiences of 10 IT managers on different technologiesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;articles that not only provide tips on troubleshooting, but also on how to avoid implementation challenges.

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traditional ways of leadership will not work with techies who are talented, hands-on and respect doers, not preachers 56 Manage it | 5 simple steps to going open

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RegulArs Editorial _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 01 Inbox _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 04 Industry update_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 06 Open debate _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 75 My log _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 76 advertiser index IBM Reverse gate fold EMC IFC Wipro

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DATA CENTRE TRANSFORMATION

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itnext.in

Editorial Advisory Board

MANAGEMENT

IT experts who helped us shape the March 2010 issue of IT Next

Managing Director: Dr Pramath Raj Sinha Printer & Publisher: Vikas Gupta

EDITORIAL

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TECH TRENDS | COVER STORY

IT NEXT

COVER STORY | TECH TRENDS

FEBRUARY / RS. 150 VOLUME 01 / ISSUE 02

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SECURITY: Is your enterprise ready for mobile devices?

12

GREEN IT: Can you cut the power cost in the data centre?

30

STRATEGY: How do you define IT project requirements?

52 THE BIG Q

How to ensure adequate bandwidth? Page 55

YOU

VOTED! IT MANAGERS IDENTIFY

A 9.9 Media Publication

INDIA’S IT MANAGERS REVIEW, ANALYSE AND REFLECT ON THE LATEST TECHNOLOGY TRENDS—AND VOTE ON THE ONES THAT WILL MAKE THE CUT THIS YEAR.

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BY DEEPAK KUMAR I L LU ST R AT I O N : A N I L T

identify the latest technology trends and make predictions for the year. This is also the time when IT managers responsible for creating, maintaining and operating corporate infrastructure and services recommend and select the technologies and solutions for their organisations. A big challenge for IT managers making these decisions is to cut through the hype and hyperbole—and identify the ideas that will matter.

The IT Next team identified a range of technologies that have the potential to make a mark in 2010—and asked the community

IT NEXT | F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 0

value technology maturity over novelty.

3. Potential benefits and utility: Evaluating a trend or technology on this parameter helps organisations sift hype from reality.

Issues like return-on-investment and time-tomarket are important considerations here.

4. Cost of implementation: Superior or new technologies often come at a significant cost, or can become expensive to deploy. A discrete assessment (of the technology) on cost considerations ensures its relevance.

We now present the Top 10 Technologies that will matter this year.

F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 0 | IT NEXT

2/10/2010 7:06:27 PM

february 2010

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IT NEXT values your feedback

We want to know what you think about the magazine, and how we can make it a better read. Your comments will go a long way in making IT NEXT the preferred publication for the community. Send your comments, compliments, complaints or questions about the magazine to editor@itnext.in.

300 members www.scribd.com/ doc/27254589/ IT-Next-Vol-1Issue-2February-2010 518 views

I must say that you guys have done a fantastic job.

Sections like Insight, Indulge, and Cube Chat appealed me the most. I suggest you also do some stories on management issues that IT managers are facing. Best wishes!

read this issue online http://www.itnext. in/resources/ magazine

RANJAN JUNEJA Engineering Manager | Persistent Systems

Is India CaaS ready? I am impressed by both the content and the design of the magazine. The story on communication as a service (CaaS) is noteworthy. However, I doubt if Indian enterprises are ready to adopt it in a big way. If I have got it right, CaaS translates into renting or leasing out of software / communication / IT services. In a layman’s terminology, I will probably not be required to maintain a server, or a dedicated bandwidth. Can one (ITNext) talk about the security challenges that will arise in such a scenario, and are we ready to deal with those? To draw an example scenario, Chunghwa Telecom is all set to launch a cloud-based CaaS for enterprise users in April 2010 as a first step to tapping the Taiwan cloud computing market.

LAVANYA KUMAR Editorial Assistant | The Economist Group

MANISH JAIN Head Communication | Dell Perot

IT Next is the best KISS—knowledge and information sharing suite!

RATNAKAR NEMANI CIO & Head of IT Projects Wing | VST Industries Limited

it next | m a r c h 2 0 1 0

Congratulations! The magazine has a lot of interesting articles and good coverage.

SURENDRA REDDY Founder | Bluekaw, Cloud Open Innovation Labs

Congratulations on the launch of IT Next magazine. I liked going through it and would say that you have picked a very good target audience, which is the IT manager and CIO fraternity. The choice of articles is very apt—cloud, enterprise mobility, virtualisation, etc. I also liked the layout of the magazine, which is easy to read and catches attention.

However, on the mobility front, I think one of the top enterprise mobile applications today is the one for mobile sales force, which probably got missed out in the article “Top 5 Mobile Applications”.

Besides, since the magazine is meant for IT managers, and one of the rightly identified areas is how they can progress in career, it may be a good idea to provide some IT manager and CIOrelated job sections.

Also, information on movement of CIOs across the industry and IT spending across industry verticals, will add to the overall impact.

VADIRAJ ARALAPPANAVAR Head-Mobile Applications | MindTree

Well done ITNext. The magazine looks awesome in terms of the content and its relevance, but it was the visual appeal that struck me first... your design team has done a fantastic job.

4

It is comprehensive and has covered most of the IT challenges and pain points. Keep up the good work!

RAHUL MEHER Managing Director | LEON Computers

TEN HOT TECHNOLOGIES

VOLUME 01 | ISSUE 02

THAT MATTER

of IT managers evaluate and rank them on four dimensions:.

1. Leverage of existing IT assets: With increased organisational emphasis on cost control, the ability to reuse and leverage existing technology and infrastructure is a huge plus since it not only helps optimise capital expenditure but also reduces the difficulty of transitioning to a new paradigm.

2. Maturity of technology: Technology maturity often has a direct correlation to ease of installation, deployment and management.

IT managers responsible for ensuring application and infrastructure reliability tend to

TEN HOT TECHNOLOGIES

10

TECHNOLOGIES

The robust performance of the Indian economy over the past few months has reinforced the belief that downturn, at least in India, is well and truly behind us. IT budgets that were hurriedly slashed a few quarters ago are being slowly reinstated. Shelved project plans are being revived, and IT managers are once again being tasked to identify and evaluate technologies that can help their organisations capture and monetise new opportunities, and improve operational efficiencies.

The beginning of a new year is also the time when industry experts and vendors

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567678 *Special rates apply

I enjoyed reading the inaugural issue of IT Next. It has a good interview and some very informative articles.

ABHIJIT SINHA Advisor--Communications | TERI (Note: Letters have been edited minimally, for brevity and clarity.)

4

Edu Tech December 2009

update

Oracle extends EPM capabilities

The solution makes best use of the divergent capabilities of OFSA, Hyperion, Reveleus and PeopleSoft

TECH TIDINGS | Oracle has refurbished its suite of financial services

and analytical applications for the enterprise performance management (EPM) space. The new solution is based on the merged capabilities of Oracle Financial Services Applications (OFSA), Hyperion, Reveleus and PeopleSoft Enterprise Performance Management.

The EPM Suite is designed to help institutions in planning future performance and lowering anticipated risk. It also assists in planning net interest margin, anticipate liquidity contingencies and reconcile

teckh et mar

Global PC shipment is slated to touch US $223 billion by 2010, a 2.6% rise from the 2009 market value (figures are in US $ billion)

Majority of all new purchases were driven by introduction of Windows 7

250

$238

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$223

$217

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2010

0

2009

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2008

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trends deals products services people

asset/liability management forecasts with annual budgets and rolling forecasts. They provide the capability to go beyond measuring bottoms up historical performance to actively managing future risks and results.

Oracle Financial Services Balance Sheet Planning is a budgeting solution made specifically for bank planning, budgeting and forecasting.

This application leverages Oracle’s Hyperion Planning as a foundation to allow banks to plan future profitability and risk adjusted returns. The solution captures instrument characteristics and nuances of each customer relationship, to accurately model balance sheet behaviour and provide the most accurate net interest margin and earnings forecasts possible.

The solution makes best use of the divergent capabilities that it has acquired over the past few years—Hyperion, Reveleus and PeopleSoft. Meanwhile, the Oracle Financial Services Asset Liability Management Analytics is an updated version of the Oracle Asset Liability Management business intelligence application. It emphasises upon the critical need to measure and manage interest-rate and liquidity risk. Building on the existing functionally-rich interest rate risk content, new metrics, reports and dashboards provide additional management insight into “stressed” results, including liquidity gaps, funding concentrations, deposit distribution profiles, marketable assets and liquidity ratios.

Photo graph y: photo s.c om

Update I n d u s t r y

GREEN MOTHERBOARD

SECURE REMOTE FILES

TRIPLE YOUR MEMORY

ASUS has launched Protect 3.0 motherboard that lowers emission and transmission of harmful radiation by 50%, minimising the negative impact on users’ health. It also claims to deliver more stable system operations.

Symantec has launched the all new Norton 360 suite that combines security with remote access to safely backedup data. It also includes features that helps reduces boot-up time.

Transcend’s new RDP7 multi-card reader is a high-speed three-slot reader. It can accommodate up to three USB peripherals and can read most memory card formats that are available in the market.

Salesforce unveils visual process manager TECH TIDINGS | Salesforce.com has unveiled a new visual process manager—Force.com—a platform to help companies to rapidly automate any business process. According to the company, the platform enables customers to design complex business processes such as sales, service, finance, HR, legal and operations, with an intuitive visual-design tool. It allows processes to be run instantly on the cloud.

The solution combines the elegance of visual process design with the simplicity, low cost, and quick results of the Force.com cloud computing

Enables enterprises design complex business processes

platform enabling customers to continuously refine and enhance processes to improve operational efficiency or fulfill regulatory

Around The World

compliance.

Being part of the Force.com platform, enterprises can create dynamic and sophisticated business processes within their current sales cloud2 and Service Cloud2 deployments, or in their custom Force.com applications.

The platform also aims to provide tools such as process designer, process stimulator and process wizard builder, which may be added to a visual process design diagram through a simple drag-and-drop action.

Moreover, the engine boasts of the capability to run all sophisticated processes of a company, and automatically scale up to meet the needs of any business size. Force.com Visual Process Manager will be available to Enterprise and Unlimited Edition subscribers for $50 per user per month.

quick byte

Mobile, wireless industry

to touch $89 billion by 2015 The mobile and wireless industry in South Asia, Middle East and North Africa is estimated to cross the $89 billion mark by 2015. According to a Frost & Sullivan report, India showed the highest subscription growth rate in South Asia, followed

by Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Pakistan. The report suggests that the low penetration levels in South Asian countries indicate a large untapped market that may translate into a high subscriber growth rate between 2009 and 2015.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on the company’s alliance with Yahoo!

“I believe that together Microsoft and Yahoo! will promote choice, value and greater innovation for our customers, as well as, for our advertisers and publishers.”

m a r c h 2 0 1 0 | it next

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update

Demand for identity, access management to grow by 20% adds that the IAM products will continue to attract investment during vey projects that audit and analytics, global identity and access management coming years, because it remains a critical technological area for (IAM) revenue is expected to reach the enabling businesses to improve and US $9.9 billion mark by 2010, bankautomate processes relating to access ing on the rapidly-growing enterprise management. requirement for compliance market.

It further mentions factors such The figure would be an 8% rise from as merger and acquisition, economic the 2009 revenue of US $9.2 billion. It downturn and consequent tightening is expected to rise further to US $11.9 of IT budgets as key bottlenecks in billion by 2013. market evaluation.

According to the report, suite-based The report also predicts that public IAM is the most preferred technology cloud computing is expected by enterprises. Almost 40% to drive IAM standards. of respondents indicated Global IAM market to Gartner reasons that cloudthis preference, which is touch computing “construction” for slated to continue for the next “private” clouds will require couple of years, together with specific IAM-as-a-service an increasing reliance on functionality, to accommodate managed security services and bn scale-and-standardised IAM consulting services. by 2010 Source: Gartner delivery needs.

The research firm

TECH TRENDS | A recent Gartner sur-

9.9 $

Dell unveils zero-client hardware for enterprises TECH TIDINGS | Jumping on the

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MARK REGISTER VP—Information Management Asia Pacific, IBM

IT NEXT: What exactly is the IBM’s Information Agenda campaign?

MARK: We believe that an enterprise needs to adopt a holistic approach for managing its structured and unstructured data. IT departments and managers can best leverage existing information within their systems by looking beyond just data management or business analytics.

How big is the challenge of managing unstructured data?

It is a huge puzzle that we are trying to solve. According to an estimate, there is 998 exabyte of data across the world, and I am sure the number must have already grown, considering the staggering pace at which data is growing. Close to 80% of this data is unstructured in nature. You have the e-mails, blogs, tweets, videos, audio, etc... And the stack is piling up.

What should the IT manager do to cope with this challenge?

It offers rich multimedia support and faster response as compared to standard virtualisation and streaming codecs

evolutionary successor to thin clients with even fewer chips inside. The company expects it will be able to penetrate the market with its attractive cost option beginning US $500 (per device).

There are a few things that IT managers must do. First, put a data management policy in place. This would help decide how to classify and store data. Second, there is a need for improvement in the data quality, so that it can be meaningfully used. Finally, they can choose a solution that lets them deal with such issues. For instance, IBM recently released Cognos Content Analytics that brings the world of analytics to unstructured data.

By Jatinder Singh

Photo graph y: Jayan K Narayanan

virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) bandwagon, Dell has launched its first zero-client device for enterprises. According to the company, its existing FX100 will support the new VMware View 4.0 app and PCover-IP streaming technology through a firmware upgrade.

According to the company, the device that is expected to hit the Indian markets by end of May will minimise the chances of hardware failure, as compared to the more traditional thin- or fatclient desktop PCs that have been converted for VDI use.

Zero clients are the

Interview

update

Indian enterprises too risk-averse, says ISACA Lack of engagement and budget limiting enterprises’ ability to take IT-related business risks

TECH TRENDS | One in three IT profes-

sionals in India believe that companies should take bigger risks with IT business projects. According to a recent ISACA survey, 34.4% of India’s IT professionals believe that organisations are too risk-averse and may be missing out on opportunities to increase value.

The global association of IT governance, security and assurance professionals, with over 5,000 members in India alone, recently conducted a survey of 463 IT professionals. While more than 85% of these respondents indicated that their organisations were effectively integrating IT risks into overall risk

News @ blog

management, 30% stressed that business lines were not willing to fully engage in risk management.

The survey also revealed that lack of engagement was the top hurdle while addressing IT-related business risks, followed by budget limits (29.6%) and uncertainty of how to tailor best practices to the environment (18.1%).

Interestingly, compliance with government regulation did not emerge as the top driver for organisations’ risk management activities. Instead, 41.1% respondents said that aligning current functionalities with business needs was the primary reason for risk management programmes.

TECH ALLIANCE

EMC, Intel to secure cloud RSA, the security division of EMC, is teaming up with Intel and VMware to build a transparent infrastructure for business-critical cloud services. The partnership intends to chart a way for technologies to combine and boost security in the cloud networks.

The proof of concept will be used by service providers to help customers build private clouds within firewalls, or build cloud-like services. It will combine authentication technology inside Intel processors with VMware technology that will collect data from physical and virtual infrastructure and then feed it to RSA’s security platform, which, in turn, will identify potential threats.

The information will then be handed to governance, risk and compliance software that have been created by Archer Technologies—a company recently acquired by the EMC. These controls will help companies enforce differentiated policies in private clouds such as formulate physical hardware types that may help run virtual machines.

According to the companies, third-party vendors are expected to start offering services based on the proof of concept within six months.

Google Vs China: Was it just a word war?

YES, IF YAHOO’S CHIEF EXECUTIVE CAROL BARTZ is to be believed. She took a potshot at Google while talking to the media at the company’s birthday bash | Miguel Helft in his blog <http://bits.blogs.nytimes. com/2010/03/02/a-yahoo-birthday-party-with-carol-bartz>

Bartz suggested that Google flip-flopped on whether it would stay in China, or not. “It looked to me like it was more of a statement than an action,” she said commenting on Google’s January 12th threat to pull out of China. “If they wanted to pull out, they should have pulled out,” she said categorically. m a r c h 2 0 1 0 | it next

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insight | technology trends

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Security

Policy revisited A successful security implementation must rest on the foundation of a sound security policy, which in turn should not just address the potential threats, but also the compliance requirements

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Security | insight Security has remained among the most challenging and perennial con-

Editor’s Note

cerns of IT managers for the last few years, increasingly so because of the dynamically changing computing and communication paradigms, largely initiated by the Internet and accelerated by a host of newer platforms and devices.

As long as computing was largely desktop-dependent and notebook users were few, information security concerns were limited too, until first the Internet and later the USB drives arrived to give information portability disruptively new meanings. Ever since, security has been a nightmare for IT managers. The surge in notebook adoption and the associated growth of wireless networks has added to the woes of IT managers, while the advent of smart phones has further complicated matters.

And just when IT managers were beginning to arm their enterprises with new security arsenals, the mother of all breaches—the social networking sites and the ilk—surfaced, and then grew at a colossal pace, making all ‘security controls’ go flying in the wild.

That’s right! Security controls don’t seem to work anymore in traditional ways! The answer to the problem lies, to a large extent, in setting up a policy-based security infrastructure.

75 Over

In today’s 2.0 world, how does one protect an organisation’s information assets that are potentially exposed to a cross-continent Facebook user base of 400 million?

A sound stepping stone to the answer, no doubt, will begin with a security policy that is thorough and relevant in today’s context.

But, a ‘security policy’ itself is no new a concept and its importance has not been emphasised any less any time. Yet, a large number of organisations still don’t have the policy in place. In fact, many of them are yet to fully grasp the seriousness and relevance of having such a policy in the first place.

Also, many organisations that do have a

policy continue to be plagued with the problem of its ineffectiveness.

In this background, let’s look at some of the essential objectives that a security policy must be able to achieve.

Regulatory and legal compliance: The IT (Amendment) Act 2008, which got notified in November 2009, requires that organisations must put due mechanisms in place to ensure information security and privacy. A new entry in the Act in the form of Section 43A reads: “Where a body corporate, possessing, dealing or handling any sensitive personal data or information in a computer resource which it owns, controls or operates is negligent in

%

organisations globally experienced cyber attacks in 2009 Source: State of Enterprise Security 2010, Symantec

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insight | Security Per-record cost of data breach

redt aler

(Average cost per-record of a data breach, 2005-2009 in $)

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FY 2008

FY 2007

FY 2006

FY 2005

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204

138

$100 $50

202

197

182

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Source: Ponemon Institute/PGP

A security policy document should clearly state the response process to be followed in case of an incident

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million

users in 190 countries and 31,901 cities affected by the Mariposa botnet this year Source: Panda Security

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implementing and maintaining reasonable security practices and procedures and thereby causes wrongful loss or wrongful gain to any person, such body corporate shall be liable to pay damages by way of compensation to the person so affected.”

Effective communication of objectives: For the policy to be effective, it should be able to unambiguously define the security objectives of the organisation and ensure that they are easy to read and understood by all employees.

Moreover, a process has to be put in place to ensure that any changes in policy have not just been mailed to employees but also that the changes have been read and understood by employees with a fair amount of clarity.

Clear statement of responsibilities: The policy should be able to clearly state and define the various information security roles. Roles and responsibilities could range from preparing security policy and making necessar y changes, communicating and enforcing those changes, measuring the effectiveness of the communication and the impact of any changes, response mechanism to be employed in case of a security incident, and even the escalation procedure to be used by an employee in case a security incident is not attended to within a stipulated timeframe.

Adherence to security framework: It’s always a good idea to select a generally

accepted and acknowledged security framework as a benchmark that is best in sync with your organisation’s and industry’s characteristics.

ISO 27001 provides a standard security framework that has been implemented by a large body of organisations. The Data Security Council of India (DSCI), set up by Nasscom in August 2008, has formed a framework for data security and privacy, listing 16 best practices that are an extension of the ISO 27001 standard.

The DSCI framework aims to address needs of IT BPOs, service providers, banking and financial services, manufacturing, e-Governance, telecom, PSUs and e-commerce organisations, especially those dealing with overseas clients. DSCI is also said to be planning development of an implementation m e t h o do l o g y t h at addresses technical and operational information needs.

Risk assessment and response mechanism: It is an important role of the security policy document to state how risk assessments are to be performed. Realistic risk assessments are key to successful information security implementations, as the right assessment also sets the basis for establishing an effective control point in the security infrastructure.

The policy document should also be able to clearly state the exceptions to be observed and the response process to be

Security | insight followed in case of an incident.

Taking a functional view of security The manner in which security of information and IT resources is ensured in an organisation should ideally have a direct correlation with the functions that it (security) is expected to perform.

So it’s important to first look at the functional genres of security and what they imply for today’s enterprises. Broadly, these can be classified under umbrella segments: Identity and access management: IAM systems are important from the point of defining a wide range of information security and privacy controls across the organisation. Typically, an IAM system comprises four key components-authentication, authorisation, user management and central user repository, of which the last one is of paramount importance.

An IAM system enables, for the benefit of the IT manager, IT users’ complete organisational lifecycle mapping in a single view—right from the identity creation to authorisation awarding to the deletion of identity in the event of the user leaving the organisation. Controls such as user ID and password authentication are taken care of

by IAM. IAM also allows implementation of department and role-based access authorisation to enterprise-wide information and database resources and can be used for implementation of more complex controls as well.

An increasingly important role and benefit of IAM is that it takes care of a variety of compliance requirements on the way.

Secure content and threat management (STM): This department of security includes enterprise firewall/VPN products, wired and wireless network intrusion and prevention products, messaging security, and web security, among other such software and appliance products.

There is a growing relevance of STM systems, attributed in large part to the unprecedented rise in Internet traffic and the phenomenal success of Web 2.0 sites,

especially in areas of social networking and micro blogging.

A popular solution under the STM category is Unified Threat Management (UTM), offered as an appliance that serves multiple functions such as firewalling, intrusion prevention, antivirus and antispam protection at the gateway level.

Security and vulnerability management (SVM): In an enterprise context, SVM can be closely linked with the security policy for maximum effectiveness.

Specifically, security incidents as per the definition of the policy document can be recorded and classified under different vulnerability heads. Further, policy-based actions can be taken to mitigate future vulnerabilities.

Password

length distribution A study from data security firm Imperva that analysed 32 million passwords exposed in the shocking RockYou.com breach, showed that only 40% enterprises used mixed letters and numerals to form their passwords.

3.81% 1.62%

36.94%

41.69%

Over to Implementation While a robust policy document will provide the necessary guidelines for implementation as well, the actual implementation is a different ball game. And who will know this better than IT managers who, while not averse to an occasional indulgence in 30,000ft views of IT, always have an announced liking for operational details in the regular course!

A number of views to implementation exist and are practiced too, but the most methodical approach to addressing security concerns in today’s dynamic environment will be to view the entire gamut of security from the functional segmentations: Implementation of IAM, STM and SVM can be carried out using either an appliance, standalone software, or a mix of both. In business environments with complex security requirements, IT managers may be better off roping in an IT integrator.

Another implementation view could be of taking into consideration aspects such as perimeter security, endpoint security and information security. It is important to note here that given the rising regulatory and compliance-related mandates, a forward looking security policy will need to accord highest importance to information security, followed by endpoint security and perimeter security.

Editorial coordination: Deepak Kumar

15.94% Mixed letters and numeric Only numeric Only lower case Only upper case Contains special characters

Resources Information Technology (Amendment) Act, 2008 http://www.mit.gov.in/download/ it_amendment_act2008.pdf Developing information security policy http://www.sans.org/securityresources/policies/

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BI & BA

Enterprise sharpeners BI and BA tools enrich decision-making faculties in enterprises, helping them analyse past business performance and assign future targets by way of predictive analysis

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BI & BA | insight Only a few years ago, organisations existed, functioned and competed in an

Editor’s Note

age of information. Today, many of them struggle in an age of information overload!

Information no longer provides a competitive edge. Too much of it in fact leads to indecisiveness, and therefore a lack of competitiveness.

Dynamic and smart organisations no longer chant the information mantra; they practice the “intelligence” raga instead—business intelligence (BI) to be precise!

Various views of BI exist, but from a functional viewpoint it broadly covers querying, reporting, online analytical processing (OLAP) and business analytics (BA). However, in recent times, the BA genre has matured to a greater relevance than other BI functions.

While BI tools are typically more focused on measuring business performance using assigned metrics, BA takes a predictive approach to business performance, using insights gained from a relatively vast set of data. Both, of course, serve as decision making tools.

The good news for enterprises is that IT managers are particularly aware of the need for BI/BA deployments, as evidenced by the ranking assigned by them in the February survey of IT Next. BI/BA was adjudged No. 2 in the survey, second only to Security.

The global economic slowdown caught many enterprises unprepared, resulting in dwindling market share and exorbitant losses. Though there were umpteen other factors responsible for this sudden shock, many organisations suffered because of incorrect decisions made on the basis of incomplete or inaccurate information.

Sure, lessons have been learnt. Enterprises that were not equipped enough to deal with the disruptive changes spawned by the global financial crisis have since warmed up to BI and BA tools.

Market intelligence teams in enterprises are now placing greater emphasis on such tools to

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help their organisations captivate on spreadsheets for generating new opportunities in the recovered reports and MIS, only 27% use economy. And here the role of an IT BI tools manager is evolving from a provider to Source: IT Next, Decembe r 2009 facilitator or enabler.

In a world that is flooded with data, BI and BA tools help compete better. Enterprises therefore are deploying these tools for improved CRM, better supply chain management, and enhanced marketing and financial performance management.

From data generation being the focus area in earlier days, the shift is now to a realisation of its efficient and smart usage.

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insight | BI & BA

Why BI/BA implementations fail?

Erroneous data quality

Lack of specialize skills to align business and IT objectives

Poor governance models

Reality check

Get a clear understanding from the vendor on the kind of performance improvement the company will get after deployment

Through 2011, organisations using applications to support a performance-driven culture will outperform their peers by

30

%

So urce: Gartner

BI and BA tools help businesses to segment their customers, as per the buying behaviour and individual preferences. This enables them to differentiate among various customer levels and needs and align their products and services accordingly.

However, any realignment should also be quick enough to reap actual benefits. For instance, given the kind of opportunities that exist in the Indian telecom market, a telecom company cannot afford a timeframe of six months to analyse the customer behaviour for a set of new value added services they intend to offer. It stands to lose out a fortune if the analysisto-delivery cycle is more than a month.

So it’s not enough to deploy the intelligence and analytics tools. It is equally important to first establish benchmarks and set goals that the organisation needs to achieve by deploying such tools.

Since BI and BA solutions are meant for providing competitive intelligence and improved performance management, it’s also important to find out the solutions that are best suited for the industry in which your organisations operates. Get a clear understanding from the vendor on the kind of performance improvement the company will get after deployment.

True, you will not be able to figure out the RoI by carrying out these checks, but some of the yawning gaps between the need and the offering will certainly get addressed.

Implementation challenges A major reason for the failure of a BI implementation is that data is often not stored in the desired way. Worse, there are also data

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Lack of communication between analysts and management

Stressing more on long term productivity benefits

integrity issues, which lead to incorrect projections, making a forecast go haywire.

So it’s important to ensure integrity and structural aspects of data and its storage.

A key challenge seen by IT managers is in terms of recognition for BI as a crossorganisational initiative in the enterprise and support from senior management.

Another set of challenges is mainly due to the presence of heterogeneous systems in the enterprise. BI projects are meant to integrate, analyse and deliver information derived from all areas of business. However, data warehousing and CRM systems should be there in place to enable BI and BA implementations.

Many organisations are still way behind in terms of establishing the core transaction systems which is a deterrent to successful deployment of BI applications. In the lack of a sound data warehousing solution, BI tools will only serve the purpose of “garbage in, garbage out.” Also, as organisations move to clouds for data storage, heterogeneous environments come into play and lead to portability and integration issues.

It is important to remember that organisations are fast moving beyond the traditional reporting and analysis tools. They are increasingly banking on capabilities that could assist them with targeted data mining, dashboarding, collaboration, statistical analysis and dimensional analysis.

Moreover, there has been a growing uptake of customised analytical and intelligence tools. Some enterprises have felt that standardised models are too complex and inadequate in meeting their needs effectively.

In order to reap desirable benefits from a BI and BA implementation, it is important

BI & BA | insight

Check your deliverables Business requirements: Document the data that captures and formalises business-centric requirements for the organisation’s BI solution. This will help in guiding all subsequent phases and deliverables.

Subject area diagram: A high-level diagram of business-critical functional areas to make logical relationships between them. It establishes a topical framework for the information architecture of the BI solution.

Key performance indicators: This is an important document that specifies metrics to address corporate or functional performance based on analysis of business-critical subject areas and identified areas of opportunity.

Reporting requirements: This will help articulate end user reporting requirements for targeted intelligence, the associated delivery channels, frequency of updates and access methods.

while evaluating a solution it is important to have a complete understanding of the vendor’s service level capabilities

Current BI architecture status: Document that identifies reviews and assesses the state of organisation’s existing BI components and supporting infrastructure. It also provides a summary of the BI components that may be leveraged in subsequent phases.

Conceptual BI design: This document contains high-level design specifics and associated processes for extension of the existing BI components and future components represented in the organisation’s BI Framework. It also summarises the integration of source systems and data and the client model into the BI solution.

Source: CGI

Pilot recommendation: Document recommending a limited-scope implementation of BI solution targeted to a single functional area or data set with the goal of achieving a high-return, low-risk result.

Implementation plan: Document that proposes the next steps for implementation of the pilot BI solution. Included in this document are the project plan, resource requirements and cost estimates.

to ensure that the information flow happens to the right stakeholder in a seamless manner. It is also important to monitor and review the process on a periodic basis, to effect any required changes, without which it will turn into a fruitless exercise.

What’s in store?

BI tools are now widely used in industries like insurance, telecommunication, IT, healthcare and finance for competitive advantages. A number of vendors today offer BI and BA tools and services, some of which are SAP, Oracle, Sybase, SAS, MAIA, Wipro, and IBM. One of the solutions designed for financial and business analysts is SAP’s Business Objects Voyager. The solution is aimed at online analytical processing (OLAP) of data through multi-dimensional data sets. Its Business Objects Set Analysis solution helps identify and track good customers, bad suppliers, and at-risk customers, and how they impact the business.

While MAIA specialises in providing intelligence reporting solutions for

hospitality, media and financial verticals, Oracle offers products for interactive dashboards business intelligence and analytic capabilities. In fact, the Oracle solution is aimed at providing capabilities for ad hoc analysis, proactive detection and alerts, advanced reporting and publishing, mobile analytics, and desktop gadgets.

Sybase’s IQ analytics server is another interesting solution present in the market. It is a column-based database management system for analytics-optimised query performance.

When evaluating a solution, it is important to have a complete understanding of the vendor’s service level capabilities. The solution’s flexibility and ease of use are some other key parameters for selection.

BI applications, no doubt have immense pay-off potential if implemented effectively.

They can help organisations increase their business agility, decrease operation costs, and increase market share by improving customer acquisition and retention.

Editorial coordination: Jatinder Singh

Resources Get your analytics right http://www.sybase.com/files/ White_Papers/Analytics-from-theStart-WP.pdf A vision for BI www.mwsug.org/proceedings/2009/ appdev/MWSUG-2009-A08.pdf

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Data Centre Transformation

Enter Gen 3.x

The transformation is about getting rid of silos, leveraging IT assets optimally and having a data centre that is green and lean, to respond to business needs on the fly

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Data Centre Transformation | insight In IT Next’s February survey, IT managers ranked data centre transforma-

Editor’s Note

tion as the third most important trend for 2010. But more significantly, they ranked it No. 1 on the utility parameter.

So when it comes to the utility value, IT managers prioritise data centre transformation even over security, which incidentally ranked No. 1 on an

overall basis.

That is not without reason. Data centre transformation has become a necessary primary step to support the dynamic IT needs of today’s increasingly 2.0 organisations. In fact, many IT managers would have long kick-started this transformation and pushed it through, but for the sudden onslaught of slowdown that pushed it off their priority lists, for economic considerations known to all.

Also, the silo characteristics of IT organisations—courtesy an unavoidable fallback of the IT evolution process—make it difficult for IT managers to align IT seamlessly to business needs.

Indeed, many data centres still exemplify an air-conditioned quagmire, or in better instances, a warehouse of IT boxes. This range from servers, switches, and of course, intertwined bundles of patch cords.

Often, proprietary clusters of solutions are housed, aimed at serving specific requirements of specific

Removing a single x86 server from a data centre will save more than

departments. By virtue of their being, these clusters in the data centre still champion the cause of Enterprise 1.0 characteristics, increasingly less relevant in the 2.0 era.

An immediate question that comes to mind is while talking about data centre transformation is why 3.x, particularly when enterprises are yet to fully transform into 2.0 entities. While there can be multiple answers to the question, the simplest one will be that a 3.0 data centre will provide a necessary foundation on which a 2.0 enterprise can be built.

Data centre vendors started propagating the transformation to a 3.0 set-up about three years ago, and now that sure signs of an economic rebound have been evidenced, IT managers can very well paddle up the transformation process.

Meanwhile, the key elements of transformation have undergone continuous refinement and

evolution and hence the term 3.x.

So let’s first look at some of the key elements of data centre (DC) transformation.

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Unified architecture: No silo please This is the first and foremost part of an effective transformation story, as a DC transformation is essentially about moving on to a next-generation networking and computing environment that enables and fosters convergence of different network views and hues.

For such converged view to become a reality,

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insight | Data Centre Transformation

Virtualisation of a data centre brings in a level of abstraction and pooling of IT resources, which comes handy in aligning IT and business

5-20

%

fewer servers being deployed due to rationalisation and consolidation programmes

it is important that there is a unified fabric in place that brings in an effective consolidation among diverse network environments such as the Ethernet, InfiniBand, Fibre Channel and iSCSI. While with 10G, Ethernet holds the promise of addressing the speed requirements of Fibre Channel (FC), it has still fallen short of addressing no-packet-loss and other important characteristics of FC that are essential to requirements of missioncritical applications.

With IEEE Data Centre Bridging standards in place, Ethernet is more robust than before, but the standards on their own don’t ensure a loss-less service, which is key proposition of various unified fabric solutions from the vendors.

These solutions have added specific network components to make the lossless feature a part of the data centre architecture.

This unification not only simplifies the network view but also provides substantial savings in terms of operating and management costs for diverse sets of networks.

An important aspect to be noted here is that of convergence, of voice and data.

The unified data centre architecture and networking should take into consideration that voice is increasingly moving from TDM based environments to IP, which is already the widely used protocol for data communication. Going forward, the

Tier 1

Basic data centre This performs the essential roles of a data centre but has no redundancy

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Data centre virtualisation: It’s about money There are clear and measureable benefits of carrying out virtualisation in a data centre or across data centres in the enterprise. Given that high redundancy levels of servers and storage resources are common in data centres, a virtualisation strategy can result in immediate benefits in terms of server and storage rationalisations.

Application virtualisation also leads to substantial savings in data centre costs.

Fr o m the IT managers’ point of view, virtualisation of a data centre brings in a level of abstraction and pooling of IT resources, which comes handy in aligning IT with business objectives. This is because virtualisation presents a view of IT resources that is more logic-oriented rather than operationsoriented and hence is more amenable to such alignments.

However, the most significant benefit of DC virtualisation is that it sets the basis for data centre evolution in a well architected manner rather than an ad-hoc manner.

At the same time, there is often a risk of falling for an ad-hoc approach to data centre virtualisation itself, which can defeat the very objective of virtualisation and lead to significant hidden costs—and complexities.

Instead, it is okay to have a phased approach

Data Centre Tiers

Source: Gartner

22

unified data centre fabric will also be able to provision for consolidation of voice and data networks in the enterprise.

Tier 2

Tier 3

Tier 3

Redundant components Has redundancy, but over a single distribution path

Concurrently maintainable The architecture supports multiple distribution paths, but has only one active channel at a given time

Fault tolerant This provides multiple active distribution paths, along with redundant components

Data Centre Transformation | insight

How to transform?

IT managers can draw measurable benefits by installing energy monitoring and management software in the data centre

Optimising data center for better business outcomes, key domains, people, process, and technology can rapidly become a complex exercise. Hence, a critical success factor in transforming the data center is to have an integrated and structured approach. The process can be catogorised into five logical and manageable phases, each of which add value and can be taken up as independent projects.

Strategy: This phase encompasses planning for current and future data centers and mapping out how the data center will grow with your business.

Design: This stage refers to building the best possible facilities and IT infrastructure for your technology and business needs.

Operation: This stage involves the ongoing maintenance and enhancement of one or more solutions.

Continuous improvement: This phase is characterised by consistently improving service levels and responding to new business requirements.

to data centre virtualisation, provided that all the phases are well considered parts of a thoughtfully defined transformation strategy, with a clear roadmap.

Managing heat: Air everywhere Spiralling power and energy costs alone are strong reasons for making ‘green’ a core part of data centre transformation strategy. While virtualisation also has some by-products that add to the greenness of a data centre, standalone green strategies can result in more significant and measureable benefits for an organisation.

For example, IT managers can identify inefficient and energy hogging servers and chart a phase wise plan to replace those by smarter form-factor servers that are more energy efficient.

Too often, data centres operate with more-than-surplus cooling equipment, which ironically is an accepted way of fighting off ‘hot spots’ that get built up in certain zones, largely due to air-flow deficiencies in the data centres. Experts have pointed out that most of the data centres suffer from the problem of overfeeding, and that the solution lies in identifying the hot spots and facilitative airflow in deficient zones. IT managers can draw measurable benefits also by installing energy monitoring and management software in the data centre.

Sour ce: HP

Transition: This stage involves shutting down redundant data centers and deploying new, more efficient ones.

The use of green cabling solutions, those that lead to cables with thinner diameters or those that employ intelligent patch panels, can greatly improve air flow within the racks as also across the data centre, thereby further reducing the cooling requirements.

In case of new build-outs, ‘green’ has to be grounds-up. The overall design and layout of the data centre has to be such that it facilitates air flow and its management and reduces dependency on artificial cooling.

While these three elements—unified architecture, virtualisation and green— form the core of a data centre transformation strategy, the existing and prevailing best practices would continue to play their roles.

In fact, an effective data centre transformation strategy can work in tandem with several of the existing best practices.

Another important thing that can drive data centre transformation to the extent of making it mandatory, without saying so, is compliance.

More particularly, in industries like BFSI and Telecom, it is already a requirement to preserve customer data for a stipulated number of years. A policy and standards-based approach to data centre transformation will help organisations address such compliance and regulatory requirements.

Editorial coordination: Deepak Kumar

Resources Data centre efficiency calculator, with dashboard http://www.emerson.com/edc/Calculator/default.aspx Unified fabric: Benefits and architecture of virtual I/O http://www.cisco.com/en/US/ prod/collateral/ps6418/ps6423/ ps6429/prod_white_paper0900aecd80337bb8.html

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Virtualisation

Full Circle?

It uses the same concept that was applied to the Big Irons of the much older computing era, but the avatar is new and so are the application areas, the users, and the implementers

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Virtualisation | insight Virtualisation has an element of romanticism to it, being a technique first

Editor’s Note

used in 1960s—the early days of computing. Those days, it was used to maximise the return on a mainframe computing investment, by way of partitioning the heavily priced “Big” resource into several virtual machines that could be used to run diverse application instances in parallel.

Then, with the advent of the PCs and the distributed computing era, mainframes gradually lost their dominance and general relevance, and so did virtualisation.

Decades later, with the growth of the Internet and the subsequent dot-com boom, x86 server environments mushroomed, to the extent that the data centres they populated got riddled with RoI concerns akin to those associated with mainframes of the sixties.

And therefore, virtualisation got its relevance back, was reincarnated and dressed to serve a purpose in today’s complex IT environments, often loaded with redundancies, particularly at the server, storage and network levels. Today, a case for virtualisation for the desktop and the applications has also been established and we hope to see more of these implementations as offerings get more robust, and successful deployments are illustrated.

In the meantime, a phased approach to virtualisation—implementing it first in areas that are not mission-critical, but could lead to measurable cost benefits, would be a recommended one.

1.7

million

From a technology perspective, virtualisation has crossed the big chasm of hype that segregates an idea and its practical uptake. Unlike many other technologies that can drum up lot of potential in theory but fizzle out when it comes to a ground-level implementation, virtualisation has found a good number of takers in actuality.

While from a global standpoint, it’s the technology’s second coming, IT managers in India do not enjoy benefits of a legacy exposure of the sixties, though such an exposure would anyways have little meaning, given that the

computing environments today bear little semblance to those of the preyesteryears.

servers will be shipped for meeting virtualisation needs in 2010. This will be 14.6% of all physical servers expected to be shipped in the year Source: Gartner

Saddled on the server, desktop next Virtualisation has already gained much credence on the server side, with many of the big data centres already hosting virtual machines and the needs for high availability, disaster recovery and consolidation driving home the case for virtualisation. Concerns for rising costs of power

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insight | Virtualisation

The new kid on the block is desktop or client virtualisation, which is most suited for larger organisations

50

%

of all x86 architecture server workloads will run on virtual machines in 2012, up from 16% in 2009 Sourc e: Gartner, 2009

and energyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the resources that a typical data centre guzzles by the gallonsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;further strengthen the case for virtualisation.

The list of benefits starts building up in no time...

But, beyond these discretely measureable benefits, another significant, and somewhat strategic, reason why enterprises are increasingly warming up to virtualisation is because it sets a basis for organisational agility and dynamism.

For example, virtualisation makes provisioning of additional computing resources, such as storage or new applications a fairly seamless and quick process, usually achieved through a dashboard. Little wonder that IT managers who have tasted the benefits are quick to recommend server virtualisation as an optimisation strategy.

Today, server virtualisation is a mature technology. Organisations that have reached a certain level of server redundancy but have not yet kick-started the process may well be advised to go for it. The same holds true for storage and network virtualisations, though with somewhat lesser degree of priority.

Meanwhile, the new kid on the block is desktop or client virtualisation.

This is especially suited, and is also cost effective, for very large to large organisations. Here, typically, blade PCs are hosted in the data centre, and users can access their desktops logically from any thin client terminal.

The blade PCs are virtualised such that in case of a failure, another blade is assigned to the desktop. This also takes care of a number of information securityrelated issues, as data no longer resides on the physical desktops at usersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; ends.

Not yet mission-critical There are still areas of concern when it comes to hosting mission-critical applications in a virtualised environment. Traditionally, such applications have resided on dedicated servers, so in case of any disruption, the issue can be isolated and the impact can be restricted. By comparison,

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Benefits of virtualisation

Lower physical Consolidation of servers

Increase in server uptime

disk space

Dynamic provisioning of hardware

Ability to run multiple OS

a virtualised environment that, say, prioritises cost benefits over high-availability, also holds the potential to give an IT manager a sleepless night.

So while virtualisation has gained a foothold in the enterprise space, it is yet to become all pervasive. That pervasiveness can only come through technological maturity. As that happens, IT managers can get comfortable with the idea of endto-end virtualisation and the benefits that it will offer. Until then, part virtualisation will continue to make more business and IT sense, while also providing a solution that can be trusted as fairly robust.

Vendor & licensing issues Pricing and after-sales service are the two biggest grouses that IT managers have with the vendors. It is not uncommon to hear IT managers from smaller firms and companies complain of neglect bordering on unprofessionalism, as the vendor is completely focussed at servicing big accounts.

Given that virtualisation is a new concept, IT managers expect a higher level of involvement of the vendor during the implementation phase, and even during the initial days of the post-implementation phase. That has been lacking.

Another area of concern is the ambiguity in licensing terms. The problem arises when the IT manager has to manage multiple licenses even when he or she has virtualised the infrastructure. Till recently,

Virtualisation | insight

Key issues with virtualisation Like any other technology, virtualisation too comes with its own set of challenges, and IT managers are bound to face problems at different stages of implementation.

Planning and analysis: IT managers and companies face tough task analysing the existing IT infrastructure—hardware and software components—while planning the migration to a virtual infrastructure. The next big task is to conduct a thorough examination of licenses of OS developers, as well as independent software vendors (ISV).

Running the virtual infrastructure: Companies usually experience problem integrating the virtual infrastructure with the existing heterogeneous elements of the physical IT infrastructure. There is also a need to deploy specialised servers to manage virtual systems, monitor load, and allocate servers for backup. Besides, at this you might also experience problems with using virtual platforms in SAN. Not all platforms support a wide range of equipment and the popular iSCSI protocol. Also, you will find it difficult to introduce virtualisation solution into the data storage networks without a specialist.

gIVEN THAT virtualisation is a new concept, IT managers expect higher vendor involvement during the INITIAL phases

Maintenance of virtual infrastructure: Once the system is up and running, a big task for any IT manager is that of scaling up the operation. The other major tasks at this stage include maintenance, defining centralised control, security, and access right management. These ongoing and repetitive processes can be quite monotonous.

licensing has been an issue that has resulted in virtualisation being a bumpy ride and not a smooth sail, though vendors are now taking corrective measures.

The green angle Virtualisation is also touted to be a greenpromoting solution, so much so that many enterprises gain a strong sense of being green simply by virtualising their servers.

VMware stated that for every server virtualised customers can save about 7000 KW hours or four tons of CO2 emissions every year. It said approximately six million desktop computers and servers had been virtualised using VMware software, which saved around 36.9 billion kilowatt hours of electricity each year—more than the electricity used for heating and cooling the entire country of Denmark.

Undeniably, virtualisation does lead to server consolidation and therefore reduces

consumption of power, but the technology also raises a fresh set of challenges, especially in terms of greater cooling needs.

Since virtualisation enhances CPU utilisation to nearly 80%, the heat generated by a virtualised server is also comparatively higher than the server that runs only one application. This puts an additional load on cooling-led power requirements.

However, the industry is taking measures to address such concerns.

Overall, benefits of virtualisation are not just for the IT manager but promise to make the CFO glad as well. And as energy prices continue to rise while IT budgets will probably never be the same again, more and more enterprises will look to virtualise their servers and data centres.

It’s surely a virtual street ahead!

Editorial coordination: Shashwat DC

Resources Virtualisation energy cost calculator: http://www.apcmedia.com/ salestools/WTOL-7B6SFC_R0_ EN.swf How IT management can ‘Green’ the data center: http://download3. vmware.com/elq/pdf/2530_How_IT_ Management_Can_Green_the_Data_ Center.pdf

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Enterprise Mobility

Unwire for Growth Enterprise mobility significantly boosts an organisation’s efficiency and productivity while offering immense flexibility to the employees on any device any time

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Enterprise Mobility | insight There has been considerable debate as to what are the key components of

Editorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Note

enterprise mobility. The broad agreement has it that it comprises the handheld device, the enterprise WLAN and the mobility applications.

Some stakeholders add peripheral input devices such as barcode scanners and other input devices to the enterprise mobility portfolio, given enterprise

mobilityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s vast adoption in businesses like retail, transportation and logistics and hospitality. And of course, security remains a close-knit segment.

Enterprise mobility handhelds vary from vertical to vertical, not only in terms of form factors but also in terms of the compute capability of the device and its ruggedness.

So while a Blackberry remains the better known face of enterprise mobility, and is also well suited for the white collared employee, it is not a preferred choice in industries and businesses that relate to hazardous environments such as oil and gas exploration or mining. Even manufacturing environments will be better served by tougher devices.

Indeed, there are a variety of rugged and semi-rugged handhelds and notebooks that work well in such environments. The enterprise mobility space has matured significantly in terms of offerings and there is much for IT mangers to pick and choose, based on their organisationsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; needs.

Over the last few years, mobile devices have rapidly and deeply penetrated enterprises at a root level, thanks to their immense value as corporate productivity tools. The competitive business landscape has further prompted enterprises to take strategic initiatives in making their workforce mobile.

Devices like PDAs, smart phones and notebooks are rapidly being adopted by enterprises to support workers and help them stay productive while being mobile. And with the help of various on-the-go applications built into the devices, organisations are able to increase their efficiencies effectively.

There is no dearth today of functional devices

Enterprise mobility market in India is projected to reach

1,881

Rs

in various form factors that can handle both voice and data applications.

Apart from notebooks that are getting more and more affordable, a host of handheld devices are there to serve as key enablers of mobility.

A study by Frost & Sullivan says the enterprise mobility market in India clocked revenue of over Rs 346 crore in FY2008-09, and was estimated to reach Rs 1,881 crore in FY 2015-16.

crore

by FY 2015-16 Source: Frost& Sullivan

Challenges for IT managers Indeed, enterprise mobility has freed employees from the inflexibility of a wired desk.

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29

insight | Enterprise Mobility

Planning enterprise mobility Key questions that needs to be addressed when going for an enterprise mobility deployment.

What are the best practises for implementing a costeffective mobility strategy?

Is the infrastructure ready for deployment of enterprise mobility?

Has due diligence been conducted in a rigorous manner?

Mobile data traffic on wireless networks is expected to witness

131

%

CAGR between 2008 and 2013 Source: Morgan Stanley, February 2010

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it next | m a r c h 2 0 1 0

What are the organisational and processes changes that will maximise benefits?

Have the cost issues related to infrastructure, enterprise servers and license fee been analysed?

However, this new-found freedom has introduced a number of new challenges for the IT manager.

These challenges are getting multiplied with the growing adoption of wireless in the organisation. While wireless was considered to be an overlay network in the past, enterprises are now using it more and more as a mainstream medium, given that it is quicker to deploy and promises lower overall total cost of ownership (TCO) than a wired network.

However, enterprise mobility is much more than the mere adoption of wireless networks, PDAs, notebooks and other such devices. It is about a number of applications being enabled over the mobile devices. This brings in the associated challenges of porting the enterprise-wide applications to mobile devices and also

Have all risk management aspects such as programs, controls, policies and procedures have been thoroughly checked?

Has proper training and education with respect to the associated risks of using devices been provided to employees and partners?

integrating new mobile applications with the enterprise network.

Mobile enablement of business applications such as sales force automation (SFA), customer relationship management (CRM), and supply chain management (SCM) offer immense benefits for enterprises. For attaining these efficiencies, effective collaboration between the handset manuf acturers and application providers is also very crucial.

An aspect of enterprise mobility is also to connect and integrate employeesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; mobile device to the corporate PBX. This brings in the benefit of a single number and voicemail box for the mobile employee, apart from access to richer PBX-based features as well as features available on the mobile device. Again, this gives rise to integration requirements and related

Enterprise Mobility | insight issues, which need to be addressed at the IT mangerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s end.

Enterprises should regard mobile data akin to an IT project, rather than a communications deployment. This implies that companies deploying mobile data today need to work with a variety of companies. It is unlikely that dialogue with a mobile operator alone (as is the case for the purchase of mobile voice) will suffice.

The likely option for a one-stop approach would be to work via a systems integrator.

IT managers should also look for vendors with wide-range device support.

There are thousands of new devices coming into the market every year and it is foolish to design an app for a particular handset or even an OS. Instead, IT managers should quiz vendors on their device and OS support and how their transcoding engines are going to be future-proof.

Security issues As enterprise mobility makes extensive use of wireless networks, the boundaries are often very porous in nature. This potentially introduces new vulnerabilities in the enterprise network, which in turn means that security threats rise manifold.

Therefore addressing security issues becomes an integral part of an enterprise mobility deployment. Safeguards should also be put in place to monitor and protect mobile assets throughout their lifecycles.

These measures must take a strategic view of IT and security. Ideally, relevant and adequate changes should be made at the security policy level to effectively address security issues related to enterprise mobility.

Besides having policies for strong encryption and inbuilt password protection, the devices should be managed from a central console, so that maintenance and support activities can be carried out without physically bringing the devices back to the premise.

It is also important to ensure that the choice of mobile devices is such that the enterprise mobility landscape doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t become too heterogeneous. In the total absence of standards, it becomes really challenging for an IT manager to provide the required level of support. It will be ideal to go for a single type of device, at least for common business objectives. If that

is not achievable, specific compatibility parameters and operating systems must be specified and adhered to.

Also, employees should be trained well on safe usage of the devices. They should be told which precautions are to be taken in case the device gets lost or stolen. Basic security measures such as changing passwords regularly, exercising caution about posting or submitting confidential data, and not doing an auto-save for passwords will go a long way in ensuring that the mobile devices are not easy entry points for security attacks on the enterprise network.

A provision in the security policy should ensure that sensitive documents that can embarrass or negatively affect the image and reputation of the organisation is not stored on mobile devices.

Digital rights management (DRM) should be applied to prevent data to be synchronised or transmitted by undue means, so as to block any malicious or careless breach.

In spite of all the precautions, it must be noted that whatever encryption method is used, the device is at risk anytime it leaves a secured perimeter. Therefore, any mobile platform must be viewed as always unsecured and treated as a vector for major loss. Such a view will help put up an effective quarantining process in case of a breach or a threat.

While wireless was considered to be an overlay network in the past, enterprises are now using it more and more as a mainstream medium

Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s in store?

While RIM continues to dominate the market in e-mail access solutions, companies like Unisys and Tech Mahindra have offerings in the space of ERP, wireless data, CRM, field force automation (FFA), sales force automation (SFA), and supply chain management (SCM).

Motorola is also offering wireless network solutions (WNS), aimed at providing customers with multi-vendor flexibility and seamless connectivity.

The company is also expected to release a mix of eight new products and solutions over the next few weeks to cover the full spectrum of indoor WLAN, outdoor wireless mesh, point-to-multipoint, point-to-point networks and voice-overWLAN solutions.

Editorial coordination: Jatinder Singh

Resources Building unified enterprise mobility strategy http://www.silicon.com/white-papers/ it-infrastructure/2007/05/01/building-a-unified-enterprise-mobilitystrategy-60370690 When enterprise mobility matters http://www.articles-database.com/ viewarticles.php?articleid=17212

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Unified Communications

multimodal quadplay UC overcomes limitations of standalone communication media and enables users to navigate from one mode to another, from within the same window S KR

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Unified Communications | insight Enterprises are faced with the urgent task of aligning their business proc-

Editor’s Note

esses to the needs of a market place that is suddenly very dynamic. It is witnessing ever new technologies, supported by innovative marketing strategies. And often, there are disruptions in the forms of aggressive pricings, new competitors, and fast changing customer needs.

On the enterprise front, organisations need to be dynamic and responsive enough to be able to cope up with the pace of this new global market place. And to achieve this, it needs to be agile at forming new market strategies and reducing time to market. In turn, teams internally will need to speed up the development process while working in cross-geography environments.

It is equally important that the partners and suppliers are also in sync with the enterprise transformational needs and initiatives.

Throughout, the focus will be on two aspects—people and processes—and also on establishing an effective and harmonious interplay between the two key aspects. And this interplay will be achieved only with a communication framework that is pervasive, device- and platform-independent, fosters teamwork and above all, catalyses business and process transformation.

Enter the world of multimodal communication. Enter UC.

Business communication has become rapidly multimodal, driven by enterprises’ need for reaching out to customers, partners and employees in a swift and targeted manner.

This, however, has brought in new complexities and integration issues in the system, and enterprises have been exploring ways to simplify their communication channels.

At the same time, organisations are also looking at adding capabilities to their existing communication systems so as to enrich them.

And while they do all this, they also want to reduce their communication cost that has been going up rapidly.

All these requirements are pushing the

5,000

Cr

The Rs

need and the case for adoption of unified communications (UC) in the enterprise. While many organisations have already embarked on the journey, and are at various stages of UC maturity curve, several others are actively considering its deployment.

In simple terms, UC involves blending of various real-time communication channels on a single platform, thereby assisting businesses to resolve query in the easiest possible manner in the course of a given session. Some of the commonly accepted components of a UC solution include e-mail, unified instant messaging, IP telephony, audio/video/web conferencing and

Indian UC market is dominated by enterprise IP telephony

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33

insight | Unified Communications Key benefits of UC Cost savings through consolidation

Since the architecture of UC is still evolving, the implementation should be flexible enough to accommodate the evolutionary changes

Collaboration

Developing better customer service

mobile applications.

Businesses are also evaluating the capabilities of UC for better integration of the communication functions with the core business applications. In fact, the post-recession economy has seen many a companies, strictly adopting policies of reducing their travel budget through video and web conferencing.

According to Frost & Sullivan, the total market size of UC that was pegged at $670 million in 2008 is expected to cross $1 billion mark in 2010. While enterprise IP telephony holds the major chunk of the total, components like telepresence, conferencing, mobility and collaboration make up for around 10%.

Modular approach

The Indian UC market is projected to reach

$1bn

by 2010, up from $670 million in 2008 Source: Frost & Sullivan

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it next | m a r c h 2 0 1 0

The real challenge comes in consolidating voice, video and data onto a single network. In this context, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s important to first analyse if the existing corporate network is ready to deal with the proposed deployment.

The deployment needs to be a highly tailor-made process and demands an effective strategy that should be based on the current and future business requirements.

IT managers must record usersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; behaviour and business processes before finalising a UC solution. It is important to understand that since no single solution has the capability to fit all user requirements, it is advisable to choose from the components that a particular solution or vendor offers.

However, if you are building a multivendor UC solution, monitoring of tools becomes all the more critical. Also, monitoring solutions are not a core

Transforming business processes

Streamlining business processes

expertise of vendors in general and they often lack good-quality graphical user interfaces (GUIs), detailed performance data and even general usability.

During deployment phase, it is advisable to avoid the integration of UC applications with the corporate wide area networks (WAN). On the surface, this may appear to be the right way, however, in reality it will result into an extremely complicated networking scenario. It also increases the cost significantly.

A better approach is to identify pain points by addressing areas that can help derive maximum benefits. Implement UC in such areas initially.

However, it is important to note that the architecture of UC is still evolving, and therefore, the implementation should be flexible enough to accommodate the evolutionary trends.

Network performance, security, reliability and ease of usage have to be thoroughly tested before rolling out the solution. A modular approach can help IT managers identify issues at an early stage and solve them.

Also, avoid getting into a vendor lock-in situation by implementing proprietary solutions. When moving to a new application, it is always a good idea to conduct pre-deployment testing.

The bottlenecks While UC proposes a number of offerings to enterprises, issues such as too many devices, too many platforms, non-availability of bandwidth, and unavailability of standards often come in the way of a fullblown UC deployment.

Enterprises also face the challenge of defining the collaboration needs across the organisation. Every worker,

Unified Communications | insight

Checklist l Make a blueprint of the critical communication needs of the organisation l Determine the rate of change and the capabilities required l List out the long-term benefits that you want to achieve from the solution l Identify the best suited UC components that gives you quickest ROI l Ascertain how the options will integrate with the current infrastructure l Evaluate if the existing resources can be managed to meet SLA requirements l Evaluate and compare vendors’ expertise and new technology offerings l Conduct pre-UC deployment testing l Communicate with employees and organise a training session to make them familiar with the new technology

department and a group have their own set of mechanisms through which they collaborate and they are far from homogeneous. For instance, what might be a meaningful collaborative model may not be an ideal model for the editorial department of any media organisation.

Similarly, while few groups prefer face to face interactions, others prefer tools like Skype or Yammer to interact. Therefore, it is nearly impossible to meet the user requirements through a common UC solution.

For an IT manager, it is vital to take a pre deployment survey to understand the collaboration requirement of each department or a group of users. The answers of 4W’s and 1H—who, when, what, why and how—needs to be noted before deploying any new tools or solutions.

The overall strategy should revolve around the applications enabled by UC technology, collaboration and knowledge sharing. It is critical to evaluate the collaboration needs of each business department before making any roadmap.

Another bottleneck is the low penetration of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) that is a cornerstone of UC. There still are regulatory limitations

to be addressed. VoIP termination related issues, especially with regard to PSTN, are a deterring factor.

Vendor landscape Many vendors are now aiming at delivering fully hosted UC solutions with the capabilities of providing the same user experience as the on-premise converged office solution.

Cisco has added Manager 8.0 Session to its basket recently. This version of Cisco UC manager provides aggregation services for legacy PBXs, devices, and applications.

It provides connectivity to fixed and mobile carriers via SIP trunks and allows customers to rapidly deploy UC and new collaboration applications cost-effectively.

The company has also forayed into enterprise social software to furnish enterprise-ready tools to connect people and provide integrated experiences with policy, security, scale and real-time communications. These can be integrated with the UC solutions as well.

Avaya’s One-X Unified Access Suite of applications is also an interesting solution to watch out for. It provides access to business communication tools in both realtime and non-real time environments.

For Datacraft, integration of unified communications with third party applications is the latest technology addition.

In the contact centre space, Sify has introduced UC as a service. The solution is integrated with the customer business process or systems like the CRM, marketing campaign, database integration, and computer telephony integration. It uses a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model for delivery, which does away with the need for an upfront capital expenditure (capex).

For enterprises looking to evolve their voice communications, Business Octane offers audio teleconferencing solutions like Altra Clarity and Xtra Clarity. These promise high-end audio conferencing capabilities for enterprises.

UC can help enterprises proactively connect with customers for information and insights. Components like IM and presence can be used to seamlessly connect customers to domain experts for real-time resolutions.

Editorial coordination: Jatinder Singh

Avoid integrating Unified Communication applications with corporate wide area network during the deployment stage

Resources Building competitive advantage http://uc.att.com/regain_momentum/ slides/fs_whitepaper.pdf Building UC strategy http://www.adobe.com/products/ acrobatconnectpro/webconferencing/ pdfs/connectpro_unifiedcommwhitepaper_1_09.pdf

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Green IT

Problem slayer!

Green IT can be used to save substantial power cost, meet corporate environmental responsibilities, and to stay prepared for aligning with the compliance requirements when they kick in

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Green IT | insight One of the tasks of Hercules, in ancient Greek mythology, was to kill the

Editor’s Note

9-headed serpent-like beast Lernaean Hydra. The Greek hero apparently was stumped by the fact that every time he chopped one of its head two more grew back in place. Finally, he devised a workaround to slay the Hydra.

Today’s IT manager has to deal with a many-headed serpent of a different genre—inefficient use of IT resources that has come to plague organisations in a monstrous way. Concerns range from low server utilisation to HVAC issues in the data centre, and even the cumulative power consumed by desktops, that often remain switched on for days in a row.

In fact, if one were to list down the most used buzzwords in tech circles today, green IT will surely find a prominent place. Moreover, after the onset of the economic crisis, green’s role and relevance has expanded beyond environmental and ecological concerns of organisations.

The slowdown has made more and more organisations wake up to the financial benefits of deploying green IT. Green’s return on investment is not only substantial, it is measureable too, something that CFOs like very well.

The pre-slowdown resistance to green IT is melting away fast.

Green is soon going to be the norm rather than an exception.

An organisations’ journey to green will ideally begin with evaluating how brown it is. While the data centres and assembly-line systems are the known devils when it comes to gobbling power, the seemingly innocuous desktops are no saints either.

It is important to put a mechanism in place to measure power consumption by functional departments or by IT sub-systems, or even better by both. Power-spend patterns for these can then be ascertained for monthly cycles, and subsequently for quarterly cycles.

In other words, the idea is to prepare energy profiles of various IT components and

systems in the organisation.

This way of profiling will also help in creating a green policy, which can then be shared with the employees as their involvement is sought to make a green strategy successful in the organisation.

40 Over

%

employees keep their PCs on standby mode when leaving for home

Green is mainstream While vendors had already started promoting green IT before the economic crisis took the world by surprise, the cost of deploying it was then considerably high. The crisis therefore derailed much of the green initiatives across enterprises.

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insight | Green IT

Quick Take The total carbon footprint of the ICT sector—including personal computers (PCs), peripherals, telecoms networks and devices, and data centres—was 830 Mt CO2e, about 2% of the estimated total emissions from human activity released in 2007 Encourage users to switch off their PCs when leaving from work. This will create user level awareness across the organisation

50 Nearly

%

of power used by most computers is wasted as heat jettisoned by fans

A good market development is that the cost of deploying green IT has come down significantly from the earlier levels, as IT vendors now ship green IT more in the mainstream than in a niche.

IT managers can use the opportunity to achieve green-readiness, perhaps before compliance requirements make it mandatory to have a certain level of green IT in the enterprise.

Yes, sooner than later, environmental standards will be defined which will lead to making deployment of green IT mandatory in the enterprise, at least partially. In such a scenario, a ‘green’ enterprise will surely have some instant competitive advantage.

There are already live examples where companies in India, merely by realigning their systems have started drawing measurable benefits under their Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) initiatives. Some of the well-known companies who have implemented projects as per CDM guidelines include Gujarat Ambuja Cement, Jindal Vijayanagar Steel, and Indian Rayon & Industries.

Taking the initial steps Good deeds begin in small packets, they say. Likewise, when it comes to the implementation of a green policy, PCs are ideal

38

it next | m a r c h 2 0 1 0

candidates for initiation. A simple step of activating the power management on a PC will make a big difference. Further, users should be encouraged to switch off their PCs when leaving from work. This will help create awareness at the user level across the organisation.

The next stop can be the data centre, where interestingly, the bulk of the expenses are not on processing of the information but on cooling of the equipment deployed. Cooling is about 60% of the power costs in a data centre because of generally high inefficiency levels. A way to go green here is to carry out virtualisation and consolidation, which will not only save power costs directly but also through reduced u s age.

Imp r ov i n g ventilation and air flow across the data centre will also help bring down the cooling requirements and costs considerably.

Building a case for green One of the challenges faced by IT managers is to convince top management about the benefits of going green. Just talking about return on investment doesn’t cut much ice here. It important to list down the foreseeable cost savings, the measures that will be used to calculate the benefits, and the timeframe in which the cost of green IT will be recovered. If benefits

Green IT | insight

Managing enterprise e-waste India faces a mounting problem of e-waste with only 5% of it being managed by authorised recycling agencies. The rest is treated by the informal sector. According to MAIT, over 94% of organisations in the country do not have a policy on how to dispose obsolete IT products and e-waste. Here is what you can do to deal with the problem Extend hardware life: Another way managing e-waste is to extend the life of IT hardware. This reduces the demand for new hardware and amortizes the environmental impact of manufacturing over a longer period.

Donate IT: Charity and re-marketing could prove an effective strategy for reducing the volume of e-waste getting into the informal recycling sector. However, make sure that the products and equipments that you plan to donate are in good working condition. Do not donate junk.

The biggest nightmare for any IT manager is to figure out what to do with the equipments that were not designed with Green IT in mind

Work with authorised recyclers: Lot of vendors these days offer buy back recycling facility. So, be sure to check the same before you sign on any new hardware procurement deal. For the existing IT assets, deal only with authorised recycling agencies.

are listed by way of comparison with the ‘brown’ IT, it will facilitate quicker decision making and approval of green IT budgets.

Excepting greenfield scenarios, a phased approach to green IT deployment is recommended. It’s neither advisable nor required to deploy green IT by ripping off existing systems that have not completed their usual lifecycles, as that will lead to a sudden peak in e-waste generation and will defeat the very purpose of going green.

It is also recommended that IT managers identify pockets where green IT will lead to quick and measurable returns, and use those as success studies to pitch for widerscale deployments. These smaller projects will also serve as pilots that provide the insight and experience for larger green projects.

Beware of browns Another major challenge faced by IT managers lies in a confusing plenitude of vendors and products, as there are a number of companies eager to sell their wares under the garb of green. Right from servers to networking cable, everything is painted green these days. In such a scenario, it is mighty difficult for an IT manager to make a choice, let alone make a right choice.

A way out of this jumble is to pay attention to the details and to stay informed about the developments in the area of green IT. This will help IT managers identify the

right set of green IT requirements suited to their organisations so that they can float an effective request for proposal that specifies the green specifications clearly and firmly. This will rule out the possibility of vendors trying to push products that have a green marketing exterior basis just a few parameters but fall short on a green standard’s set of parameters.

The biggest nightmare for any IT manager, however, is to figure out what to do with the equipments that were not designed with Green IT in mind. While the pace of information dissemination for a greener planet has gained ground of late, the IT equipments were not designed to meet the green planet initiative standards.

So, what does an IT manager do with these equipments? A bigger task at hand is to convince the management to junk these equipments and ask for fresh IT investments.

It is also important for the IT manager to sensitise the management on the economic benefits of phasing out these equipments that are most often power guzzlers. IT managers also need to identify vendors who are designing green products, and need to work towards framing policies for managing enterprise eWaste. Keeping abreast with best Green IT practice is another challenge they face.

Editorial coordination: Shashwat DC

Resources White paper on reducing energy usage http://download.intel.com/it/pdf/ Reducing_Energy_Use_In_Offices.pdf How IT management can ‘Green’ the data center http://download3.vmware.com/elq/ pdf/2530_How_IT_Management_ Can_Green_the_Data_Center.pdf

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Private Cloud

Gated computing If you can’t dump the existing IT infrastructure and jump onto the public cloud bandwagon, private cloud is just the right answer for you

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Private Cloud | insight It took a long time for the term â&#x20AC;&#x153;cloud computingâ&#x20AC;? to be reasonably de-

Editorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Note

mystified, though pockets of ambiguities still remain. And then we started hearing of various classifications of the cloud--public clouds, private clouds and hybrid clouds. (Public cloud is nothing but the infrastructure powering the Internet itself.)

There is significant haze surrounding the private cloud, the misuse of which has caused much confusion among the IT manager fraternity. Well, to use an analogy, a private cloud is to a public cloud what an intranet is to the Internet.

Again, remember the days when every organisation rushed to deploy an intranet of its own? Likewise, today organisations are deploying private clouds on the lines of the public cloud. There are benefits, and yes, there are limitations too!

There is no frenzy of the intranet phase to be seen, as the IT usage is much mature now. Typically, only organisation that are fairly large and have a sizable IT infrastructure to be leveraged will be among the early adopters. The other reason to do so is that a private cloud generally sits atop a virtualised infrastructure. Hence, organisations that are high on the virtualisation implementation curve are the ones that are more suited for private cloud deployment.

In many ways the very term Private Cloud is a misnomer of sorts, as when you talk of cloud computing it often refers to computing resources over the Internet. But private cloud essentially means a caged cloud infrastructure within the enterprise itself. Usually, private clouds are virtualised architectures existing within private data centres, though varying greatly in configuration and usage of technologies. As of now, there is no fixed definition or standard for private clouds.

Newer advances in virtualisation and distributed computing have allowed data centre administrators to effectively become service providers that meet the needs of their customers

5

Only

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within the enterprise. companies currently rely So is private cloud all hype, no solely on cloud computing substance? Indeed not.

Many enterprises, particularly the technologies for their IT needs bigger ones that were keen to go on the cloud and make use of the scalable Source: Kelton Research, 2009 infrastructure and adaptability but were unable to do so because of their existing investments, are finding private cloud a good starting point. Usually for banks and telcos that are vary of hosting their data on public space, the private cloud is a good starting point.

Since, private cloud is configured to function behind a firewall, the procedures to deal with disparate data becomes much easier. Also, the

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41

insight | Private Cloud

Building a private cloud environment is not merely a technological event; it changes management processes, organisational culture, and relationships with business partners

Cloud services market to touch

150bn

$

in 2013, up from $46.4 billion in 2008 Source: Gartner, Feb 2010

42

it next | m a r c h 2 0 1 0

fact that the IT manager no longer has to depend on Internet connection to be able to process the data only makes the task all the more easier and streamlined.

When compared to public clouds, private cloud is definitely more secure and robust since the data in this case resides in the data centre within the organisation itself. Thus, there is an additional layer of security that can be ensured for the same.

The other big thing that seems to be working in the favour of cloud computing is the ability to run multiple OS almost without a hassle.

However, the best thing about cloud computing is the ability to be better prepared for the troughs and crest in the demand for computing.

Yet, the challenges of going on the cloud remain, irrespective of whether it is public or private.

Is it cost advantageous?

The biggest attraction of going on the cloud has always been the low costs associated with the paradigm. With the provisioning of computing power and resources remotely, companies are able to scale down their capital expenditures significantly. Indeed, cloud computing has came as a panacea to the smaller organisations that are keen to expand but are not able to because of financial considerations.

But the private cloud is a lot different than the public cloud, especially when it comes to capital expenditure (capex). It is certainly not cheap, mainly because it is owned and operated by the enterprise itself. Also, other benefits of scalability and access to various resources that an organisation can accrue from going on the cloud are not there of the same magnitude and flexibility. While, a private cloud implementation lowers the cost somewhat while operating the same infrastructure, it is no where compared to the public cloud cost advantages.

Most significantly, by going onto the public cloud, companies benefit significantly in terms of the realestate gains made by doing away with

on-premise infrastructure. That is also not the case with private clouds, as much of the infrastructure still exists within the enterprise itself. However, a big benefit here can be in terms of operating hassles being taken over by a third-party provider.

How about scalability?

Another attraction of the public cloud is the high degree of scalability it offers. For instance, enterprises are able to expand and contract the computing resource allocation dynamically through a dashboard based on their changing or seasonal requirements.

So a sudden spike in demand can easily be met with a few clicks and the computing bandwidth is increased.

While private cloud operators do promise that its scalability will be equally dynamic, that is usually not the case.

Since these private clouds exist behind enterprise firewalls, any increase or decrease in resources is not so seamless.

Also, the private cloud is further limited by the scalability provided by the vendor, so an expansion will be only as hassle-free as the provisioning the vendor has done towards that end.

Can implementation be challenging?

Conceptually, a private cloud will look great on paper, but it is much more complex a task to make it a reality in the organisation. IT managers really need to work hard to make it work, and the problem increases manifold if they have huge legacy infrastructure in place. The biggest obstacle arises due to lack of system management tools that can synchronise the data centre functions with that of the cloud. Usually, virtualisation software provides an easy dashboard for quicker management, but that is not enough for an effective integration.

For the private cloud to be really effective, the IT manager needs to create a checklist of all the functions and then automate. And finally, one must remember that while private clouds are more secure

Private Cloud | insight

Creating a private cloud While conceptually private cloud might look great on paper, there is lot of complexity in making that a reality. IT managers really need to work hard to make it work, and the problem increases manifold if they have huge legacy infrastructure in place. The biggest obstacle arises due to lack of system management tools that can synchronise the data centre functions to that of the cloud. Usually, virtualisation software provides an easy dashboard for quicker management, but that is no piece of software that could effectively integrate the hybrid infrastructure.

Also for the private cloud to be really effective, the IT manager needs to create a checklist of all the functions and then need to automate. And finally, one must remember that while private clouds are more secure than the public ones, the issues and challenges of privacy and compliance remain the same.

Hence, proper attention needs to be paid to issues likes compliance and regulatory issues, software licensing, availability, scalability, service-level agreements (SLAs) and employee satisfaction. The best way to tackle the issue is a piece-meal approach, wherein the infrastructure is upgraded in a phase-wise manner. This will help the IT manager gain confidence over the new technology and also limit any disruption and disturbance that might crop up during the transformation.

than the public ones, the issues and challenges of privacy and compliance donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t just melt away. In particular, proper attention needs to be paid to compliance and regulatory issues, software licensing, availability, scalability, service-level agreements and user experience.

The best way to tackle the issue is a piecemeal approach, wherein the infrastructure is upgraded in a phased manner. This will help the IT manager to gain confidence over the new technology and also limit any disruptions that commonly crop up during the transformation.

Will switching the provider cause nightmare?

Another big headache for the IT manager is in terms of defining service levels with the vendor or making any changes in case of dissatisfaction. Even in a public cloud environment, changing a vendor can be a nerve wrecking experience. This is because porting data from one cloud to another can be very cumbersome, especially since most of these clouds are not interoperable. The scenario is more or less the same when it comes to private clouds as well.

In the case of a private cloud, the client is tied up with one vendor, who has committed resources and infrastructure based on the agreement. This tie-up can

be difficult to break, so the SLAs should be designed in a way that is mutually beneficial--and binding too--for both the parties. The fact that most of the private cloud service providers are also hardware and application vendors, the agreements typically tend to tie you down to a single platform. So it is important to exercise due caution before putting the final ink on the agreement document.

Building a private cloud computing environment is not merely a technological event; it also changes management processes, organisational culture, and relationships with business partners and customers. Therefore, the private cloud approach needs to be very holistic to make it easier for the enterprise to make good â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;cloudsourcingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; decisions.

In the days to come, private cloud services will be a stepping stone to public cloud services and. It will also be reasonable for some organisations to use both private and public cloud resources in a hybrid manner. As analysts have also point out, for many large enterprises, private cloud services will be required for many years, perhaps decades, while public cloud offerings get mature--and secure enough.

Though private clouds are more secure, there is a need for proper attention for managing compliance, software licensing and SLA issues

Resources Cloud ready network architecture http://www.bladenetwork.net/ userfiles/file/0210a290b9d59d40WP_Cloud-Ready_Network_Architecture.pdf Busting nine cloud computing myths http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloudcomputing/busting-nine-mythscloud-computing-260?page=0,1

Editorial coordination: Shashwat DC

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XaaS

Early Days?

Pockets of maturity and reliability do exist, but commonplace support in terms of SLAs is still a missing feature, and it is difficult to measure and implement too

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XaaS | insight First a chicken-and-egg question: did the concept that initially start off

Editor’s Note

with software-as-a-service catch the fancy of an e-commerce behemoth like Amazon, which saw an opportunity in offering its spare server capacity as a Web service, on a pay-per-use basis?

Or, was it the other way round—the onset of Web services led to experiments

in SaaS? (After all, it’s the Internet that made such concepts thinkable in the first place.) Whichever is true, the concept has really taken off such that the markets are abuzz with phrases like softwareas-a-service, hardware-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service, infrastructure-as-a-service, and so on.

Indeed, the era of everything-as-a-service—XaaS—has begun!

From IT managers’ perspective, issues like connectivity and reliability often tend to push XaaS aside in favour of traditional on-device licenses. Moreover, since XaaS is often delivered over the cloud, it would be difficult to form service level agreements that don’t have elements of haze built-in, which is something IT managers would certainly not appreciate, and rightly so.

For now, it will be safe to stay with those XaaS offerings that have matured and have received favourable feedback from user organisations, especially when it comes to deploying enterprise-wide applications that need a high uptime.

58

%

An immediate question that comes to mind is while talking about data centre transformation is why 3.x, particularly when enterprises are yet to fully transform into 2.0 entities. While there can be multiple answers to the question, the simplest one will be that a 3.0 data centre will provide a necessary foundation on which a 2.0 enterprise can be built.

As is common to all new technologies, various XaaS offerings have shown varying degrees of maturity and robustness, though the early teething problems seem to be over and behind.

The web mail services, which individual users and smaller organisations are already familiar and comfortable with, helped test and

mature SaaS as a concept in a clearly demonstrative manner. In fact, web mail service providers already have substantial revenue streams coming by way of powering e-mail services of some very large enterprises.

A discussion on XaaS would be best initiated and the developments best exemplified with the mention of two pioneers: Salesforce.com and Amazon.

Salesforce.com is undoubtedly regarded as a SaaS leader, with its pronounced focus on CRM. The company is now also firmly positioned in other XaaS categories such as platform-as-aservice.

organisations will maintain current levels of SaaS in next two years, while 32% will expand, and 5% each will discontinue and decrease levels Source: Gartner

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insight | XaaS Amazon S3: Simple Storage Service Scalability

The service has been built to fulfil the following design requirements

It can scale in terms of storage, request rates, and support for an unlimited number of web-scale applications. It uses scale as an advantage: Adding nodes to the system increases its availability, speed, throughput, capacity, and robustness.

Reliability

It can store data durably, with 99.99% availability, with no single points of failure. All failures are to be tolerated or repaired by the system without any downtime.

Speed

applications, with server-side latency being insignificant relative to Internet latency. Any performance bottlenecks are fixed by simply adding nodes to the system.

Cost-effective

Amazon S3 is built from inexpensive commodity hardware components.

As a result, frequent node failure is the norm and is not likely to affect the overall system. It is aimed at being hardware-agnostic, so that savings can be captured as Amazon continues to drive down infrastructure costs.

Simplicity

Building highly scalable, reliable, fast, and inexpensive storage is difficult. The S3 service aims to do it in a way that makes it easy to use for any application anywhere.

The CaaS market is estimated to touch

2.3bn

$

by 2011, up from $251.9 mn in 2007 Source: Gartner

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Amazonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is among the best known, which according to Amazon, is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.

EC2 can be used in conjunction with Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), which is web-based storage service, as also with Amazon SimpleDB and Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) to provide a complete solution for computing, query processing and storage across a wide range of applications.

Benefits and considerations The most important benefit of XaaS lies in the associated pay-as-you-use model, which allows user organisations to avail the IT product or facility without committing an upfront expense for procuring the

product or the license, it has seen a rapid embracement by enterprise over the past couple of years, given the constraints posed by the sudden economic crisis.

However, it is important not to consider pay-per-use and XaaS as inseparable concepts.

In fact, pay-per-use was employed by XaaS providers more as a matter of strategy than a compulsion. Economic slowdown has prompted even traditional vendors to come up with different forms of pay-per-use options... for that matter, XaaS itself can be a viewed as a delivery strategy, which has worked so well that itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s now set to become the new paradigm.

The pay-per-use model, however, is not something even XaaS vendors may necessarily hold on to under all circumstances. A contract pricing for

Adapted, Source: www.ama zon.com

Economic slowdown has prompted even traditional vendors to come up with different forms of payper-use options

The service is built to be fast enough to support high-performance

XaaS | insight

Embracing SaaS

XaaS can be a good bet when new software or solutions for non-core functions are being tested, as it lowers costs and risks in the event of a failure

For any given application or function, you can determine your SaaS readiness by plotting your organization’s needs and expectations on each continuum, using the below Figure as a guide. ing ens Lic

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If you mark all three segments in the rightmost column, you’re ready to explore making the move to SaaS. Marking all three segments in the leftmost column means you should probably stick with a traditional on-premise solution for this application. Any other combination suggests that a hybrid approach might be appropriate; explore the marketplace to see if you can identify any solutions that are right for you.

Finding the right place on each continuum involves taking a number of considerations into account: Political considerations: Sometimes, the decision can be short-circuited by resistance from within an organization. Test-drive deployments might sometimes help convince riskaverse managers to approve pilot projects.

Technical considerations: If an important application requires specialized technical knowledge to operate and support, or requires customization that a SaaS vendor cannot offer, it might not be possible to pursue a SaaS solution for the application.

Financial considerations: Factors that can affect the TCO of a SaaS application include the number of licensed users; the amount of custom configuration you will have to perform to integrate the SaaS application with your infrastructure; and whether your existing data centres already provide economy of scale, thereby reducing the potential cost savings of SaaS. Legal considerations: Some industries are subject to regulatory law in different parts of the world, which imposes various reporting and recordkeeping requirements that your potential SaaS solution candidates cannot satisfy.

XaaS is very much possible and may be applied for the benefit of both the buyer and the vendor in instances of large user organisations.

XaaS can be a good bet when matured and proven offerings are being considered.

It is also worth considering when new software or solutions for non-core functions are being tested, as it lowers costs and risks in the event of a failure. For other staple application areas, it’s always a good

Abridged, so ur ce: http://msdn.microsoft.com /en-u s/ library/aa905332. aspx

Each continuum can be subdivided into three segments, representing traditional, SaaS, and hybrid approaches.

idea to look for success studies and robust proofs of concepts when evaluating a XaaS offering.

It is also important to explore the possibility of entering into service level agreements with XaaS vendors and service providers, wherever possible, as it will make the vendor more answerable in cases of outage or other such failures.

Editorial coordination: Deepak Kumar

Resources Linking SaaS software pricing to value http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2009/01/linking-saas-softwarepricing-to-value.php SaaS architecture maturity model http://www.infoq.com/news/2008/02/ saas-architecture-maturity-model

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Social Media

beyond emails!

Social media is naturally suited to the communication needs of a flat 2.0 world, and harnessing it will provide the much needed competitive edge to the enterprises I KY

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social media | insight One would still remember that not many years ago, paper documents formed

Editor’s Note

the staple life of businesses, as well as IT departments in enterprises. While the hard copy has not yet been done away with, and although the paperless office remains an elusive entity, one can’t stop wondering why IT and business functions shouldn’t move uninterrupted without the hard copy.

That’s because today’s IT managers—and even their peers in other functional departments— by virtue of their respective professional exposures in the years gone by, now belong to the e-mail generation.

Indeed, e-mail is the primary mode for written communication today, having long ago displaced hard-copy letters from the position.

But if, as the cliché goes, change is the only constant, then the primary mode of written communication will also change once again, in favour of yet another mode that is probably superior, more flexible and can be accompanied by more features.

True, just as organisations would have found it hard to function without the hard copy barely a decadeand-a-half ago, they won’t be able to imagine a world without the e-mail today. Similarly, whether you like it or not, social networking tools have already started to lead the way for yet another generational shift in the way enterprises communicate.

53,000

people use IBM’s internal social media tool SocialBlue Sour ce: socialmediaexaminer.co m

The good old e-mail was organisations’ first tryst with digitised communication and is currently a flagship representation of Communication 1.0 in enterprises, which themselves are transitioning to the next level, in terms of their structure, dynamics and the go-to-market approach.

Communication 2.0—comprising social networking tools, Wikis, blogs and micro blogs, collaboration tools, and unified communication—is slated to become an integral part of the new enterprise.

The shift to the 2.0 enterprise is not in isolation; it’s driven by the needs of a new generation consumers and users, increasingly empowered by a rapidly flattening world… after all, the celebrated author Thomas Friedman did say in 2005 that “the world is flat”.

That organisations are made of people is truer in this flattening world. Equally true is the fact that organisations need to be dynamic in order to succeed and survive in this world.

Dynamic organisations will also need—and

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insight | social media

What Gartner says...

The five key predictions for social networking software By 2014, social networking services will replace e-mail as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications for 20% of business users.

Greater availability of social networking services both inside and outside the firewall, coupled with changing demographics and work styles will lead 20% of users to make social network the hub of their business communications. During the next several years, most companies will be build internal social networks and/or allow business use of personal social network accounts. Social networking will prove to be more effective than e-mail for certain business activities such as status updates and expertise location.

By 2012, over 2 50% of enterprises will use activity streams that include micro-blogging, but stand-alone enterprise micro-blogging will have less than 5% penetration.

The huge popularity of the consumer micro-blogging service Twitter, has led many organisations to look for an “enterprise Twitter”, that can provide micro-blogging functionality with more control and security features to support internal use between employees. Enterprise users want to use micro-blogging for many of the same reasons that consumers do: to share quick insights, to keep up with what colleagues are

1

Social network analysis is a useful way of examining the interaction pattern of people and groups, as well as that of business partners and customers

Cisco Systems’ Twitter page has more than

23,000 followers, while the company’s CTO Padmasree Warrior has more than

1.4

50

Million followers

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doing, to get quick answers to questions and so on.

Through 2012, over 70% of IT3 dominated social media initiatives will fail.

When it comes to collaboration, IT organisations are accustomed to providing a technology platform (such as, e-mail, IM, web conferencing) rather than delivering a social solution that targets specific business value. Through 2013, IT organisations will struggle with shifting from providing a platform to delivering a solution. This will result in over a 70% failure rate in IT-driven social media initiatives.

Fifty percent of business-led social media initiatives will succeed, versus 20% of ITdriven initiatives.

Within five years, 70% of collaboration and communica4 tions applications designed on PCs will be modelled after user experience lessons from smart phone collaboration applications.

As we move toward three billion phones in the world, serving the main purpose of providing communications

and collaboration anytime anywhere, Gartner expects more end users to spend significant time experiencing the collaborative tools on these devices. For some parts of the world, these will be the first or the only applications they use. The experience with these tools will enable the user to handle far more conversation within a given time than their PCs simply because they are easier to use. Just as the iPhone impacted user interface design on the desktop, the lessons in the mobile phone collaboration space will dramatically affect PC applications, many of which are derivatives of decadesold platforms based on the PBX or other older collaboration paradigm.

Through 2015, only 25% of enterprises will routinely utilise social network analysis to improve 5 performance and productivity.

Social network analysis is a useful way of examining the interaction pattern of people and groups in an organisation, as well as that of business partners and customers. However, when surveys are used for data collection, users may be reluctant to provide accurate responses. When automated tools perform the analysis, users may resent knowing that software is analysing their behaviour. For these reasons, social network analysis will remain an untapped source of insight in most organisations.

social media | insight

The future is social With companies around the world starting to experiment with social media tools, Forrester Research predicts that the biggest gainers will be the tools like Facebook, Myspace and LinkedIn. Close on heels will be Mashups, which is basically a web page or application that combines data from external sources. Enterprises will be using all these tools in a variety of ways to reach out to their audience or to get their feedback.

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

Social Networking

149

258

437

701

1,063

1,514

1,997

RSS

78

120

182

262

357

463

563

Blogs

64

118

201

290

341

355

340

Wikis

63

108

177

259

342 w

410

451

Mashups

39

61

98

165

285

458

682

Podcasting

33

50

76

111

158

214

273

Widgets

29

47

75

118

175

250

340

TOTAL

455

762

1,246

1,906

2,721

3,664

4,646

Sour ce: Forr ester Research

Enterprise 2.0 Spending (in US $ million)

It’s not the technologybut the cultural and mindset barrier that hinder effective implementation of social media in an organisation

Note: Numbers have been rounded of

be formed of—dynamic people who can work cohesively as part of makeshift teams that are often distributed and increasingly global in nature.

Yes, the ability to reach out to, for example, a domain expert, in case of a customer query is important, but even more important is the non-hierarchal communication structure in the organisation that can foster such ad-hoc interactions on the fly as the new normal.

And, guess what? Communication tools like the traditional e-mail fall obviously short of meeting such real-time, flattened communication needs of today’s dynamic organisations. The quicker organisations are able to recognise its arrival, the better it is for their makeover into the new mould, and for their competitiveness in a world constituted by new dynamics.

IT research firm Gartner, in its February 2010 report has predicted that tools like social networking and micro-blogging will replace e-mail as the primary vehicle for communications in future. It also says that nearly half of the companies across the world will start using micro-blogging tools.

Implement by evangelising The challenges related to implementation of social media software in enterprises that are still very much hierarchal in characteristics can be multiple, but most of them are rooted in a problem that’s not a technological one.

It’s a cultural or mindset barrier that needs to be overcome.

As such, a very different approach to a social media software implementation and its success is required. IT managers may benefit the most by playing the role of an evangelist or a change agent.

It will also be pertinent to identify champions of social media from various other departments and functions and involve them in processes of identifying the right kind of social media for the organisation and their implementation… nothing would be better than taking this ‘social’ course to a social media implementation.

Such inclusive approach would form a path of least resistance in adoption and usage of a suitable social media in the enterprise.

Editorial coordination: Deepak Kumar

Resources Gartner’s social media predictions for 2010 and beyond http://www.gartner.com/it/page. jsp?id=1293114 Social media statistics http://econsultancy.com/blog/440220+-more-mind-blowing-socialmedia-statistics http://www.socialmediatoday.com/ SMC/81522 http://bravemedia.com/socialmedia-statistics-2009

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15minute manager

training Education workplace compensation workforce trends skills development personal development

Asanas For Stress Relief Page 5 4

Leadership Primer for the aspirants this page Management How to nurture tech teams page 55 Manage IT 5 simple steps to going open page 56

By An and K u ma r Padm anaban

M

any of us believe that if we work hard, meet targets and keep on delivering results consistently, we will be on our way to becoming a true leader.

It would be great, if this was true.

Unfortunately, it is not! So, what do we need to do besides working hard and accomplishing our goals?

Here is a list of actionable points that I have seen many successful people implement in their career.

Demonstrate honesty, courage Walking the talk is the key trait to becoming a leader. You need to have the ability to articulate what you think and then to execute it as well. Be truthful and honest to yourself and your employer.

Photo graph y: photo s.c om

Display positive temperament Always play positive and hard irrespective of the state of the market. I have seen many people demonstrate capabilities when things go well and struggle when they donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t.

Then again, I have also seen people failing to handle the risks of exponential

Leadership

Dare to lead?

In these days of cut-throat competition, it is tough to become a leader. Here is a primer for the aspirants

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53

15-MINUTE MANAGER growth. Learn to balance the tide.

Be all that you can be, influence others Simply put, drive your career and growth by being earnest about your strengths and areas of improvement and constantly exploring the unknown in terms of new projects or career opportunities. It is always good to seek feedback from peers and managers, and strive for self-development, influencing others in the process.

Make sure you know what is happening in the industry… what are the trends and how various external events influence your workplace when there is a crisis or when there is a situation where no leadership is being shown. This will make you stand out.

Live in the present Make sure you know what is happening in the industry you are working in, what are the trends and how external events influence your workplace. Leaders appreciate people who are well-informed and in sync with the developments around.

Meditate for success Why meditate?

Helps reduce stress Brings peace of mind Im proves energy level Rel axation purpose Helps in pro blem solving I mproves health

Asana for meditation l Lotus pose (padam asana) l Accomplished pose (siddha asana) l Auspicious pose (swastikasana) l Easy pose (sukhasana) l Thunderbolt pose (vajrasana)

Plan for the future One consequence of failing to live in the present is that you risk a setback that you could have anticipated. The fact is, if it is not in your nature to anticipate, then you normally would not. But you should at least try and learn. Those

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By Dr Naveen Arya | aryansclinic@gmail.com

Achieve peace of mind and better health with regular meditation

It is important to tame one’s mind to overcome the stress and strains of the day-to-day work, as also from flickers of life that may create a worklife imbalance. And the solution lies in meditation. Simply put, meditation is the continuous and effortless flow of attentive awareness towards achieving concentration. Here are some tips on how to go about it.

Where to meditate?

Always choose a place that you can use regularly. The place should be simple, clean, calm and quite. It should be comfortable and free from any kind of pollution. Ensure that there is enough fresh air and the temperature is optimum.

When to meditate?

It is necessary to have a fixed time for meditation, and going by the Indian conditions, the period between 4 am and 6 am is most suited for it. This two hour, pre-dawn period has the quintessential stillness and calmness that is important for achieving mental bliss.

However, if you cannot wake up early, you can still choose a time between 6 am and 12 noon, or 6 pm and 12 midnight. Do remember that the mind during meditation should be like a lamp in a windless place, where even a flame does not flicker.

How long to meditate?

Stick to your routine and be regular. Beginners can do well with five to ten minutes of meditation each day. You can gradually increase your time by up to 20 minutes.

The author is a Ayurveda and Yoga expert and Director of ayuvredayogashram.com

Photo graph y: photo s.c om

Get involved in all aspects of the work you do viz, when someone needs help,

Office Yoga

Photo graph y: Jayan K Narayanan

Involve yourself, communicate

15-MINUTE MANAGER constantly looking around for trends are normally best suited for leadership.

Collaborate and cooperate It is surprising how many individuals still resist collaboration or sharing credit, even though we know how much more we can achieve when we bring everyone together to solve a problem, or celebrate a victory. As teams become more dispersed, collaboration is mandatory for leadership.

Show initiative There is no way of knowing how chal-

lenging a new project or assignment will be. So, individuals are often reluctant to be associated with an untested idea.

Showing positive temperament and taking risk at that time demonstrates you are not bound by what exists but are open to innovation and trying new things.

What I have shared with you are key characteristics of a good leader. In fact, as you evaluate your own leadership skills, try to find out what is it that you need to focus your energies on. You may also want to find out how influential you are among your peers and team-members.

While I am sure each organisation

Team Management

Be a pro, not a boss

The traditional ways of leadership will not work with techies who are talented, hands-on and respect doers, not preachers

By T h ej e nd ra B S

and team has a vision, as a leader, it is important to assess whether you are doing enough to lead others to achieve that vision.

Also, introspect whether you need to work on being a person of character and setting a good example for others?

What is your level of enthusiasm and have you learned from past failures?

Are you making a commitment to lifelong learning?

Welcome to leadership!

The author is CEO of SurgeForth Technologies and specialises in HR analytics

A

computer dictionary defines geeks in many ways such as an individual who enjoys computers and technology; someone who is always immersed with computers; or a computer expert or enthusiast. For the IT manager, it is important to be able to effectively lead a team of such geeks in an organisation.

However, leading the geeks requires leadership skills that are different from the leadership approaches taught by traditional and academic management consultants and books.

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15-MINUTE MANAGER Manage it

5 simple steps TO GOING OPEN

Is the fear of complexity holding you back from going Open (source)? Here is a five-step guide to get you inducted in the ‘open world’ without any hassles.

Try OpenOffice Suite: The first step is to download the OpenOffice Suite from openoffice.org. It has a word processor, spreadsheet, a presenter (akin to PowerPoint), an illustrator, and a database manager.

Alternatively, if you only need a word processor and spreadsheet application, AbiWord is a fast and lightweight word processor and Gnumeric is its counterpart spreadsheet program.

1

Go for Thunderbird: The next in line, is your enterprise mail client. The most popular option is Mozilla Thunderbird that lets you do almost everything that Outlook did, for free. However, you can also opt for Zimbra, the mail client that supports almost all e-mail providers and even works on Windows.

2

Surf on a Fox: Start surfing with Firefox, which is a free cross-platform web browser that offers greater privacy and prevents pop-ups, spyware and viruses. It is also customisable to insane degrees. And if speed is your poison, go for Google Chrome, one of the fastest browsers around.

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Play Open: The best way to learn is to play. While Sauerbraten is an incredibly fast-paced, first person shooter game, Freeciv is an empirebuilding strategy task inspired by the history of human civilisation. A good option would be check http://happypenguin.org, the website that tracks games for Linux, most of which are open source, and a good many of which work on Windows as well. BZFlag, a multi-player tank game, is the other most downloaded game with an active community.

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Go Ubuntu: Once you are comfortable with open source applications, it is good time to walk down the aisle. Ubuntu is one of the most popular open source desktop OS, which gives a lot of leeway. It lets you double boot, so you can skip to a proprietary environment in zippy if you flounder.

And you can take the transition at your own pace. So, go online, download the file, and be happily open!

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So what is so unique and different about leading geeks? This article describes five important tips that IT managers must keep in mind, when taking up a leadership role.

Accept them as peers: It is important to acknowledge and accept that many of the techies you are supposed to lead are often smarter and more talented than you. Also, many of the techies you lead, whether you like it or not, are technology leaders in their own right.

Hence, first switch off all intimidating components of a boss-subordinate behaviour. They are a clear turn off. For example, do not use usually irritating statements like, “don’t come to me with problems, come to me with solutions,” or “I know the solution, but I want to hear it from you,” or “show me the business value.”

Speak their language: You can earn the respect of your team members only if you are able to converse with them in the language they use. You may be a good and kind person, but if you lack the required knowledge and advisory skills to coach, mentor and supervise, you can agitate and de-motivate your team members. Lack of knowledge can often lead to conflicts as you may make unrealistic demands from your subordinates, overload them, or commit to impractical requests from customers.

Soon, it will become an ego conflict between the “knowledgeable and the clueless.”

Constant learning is the key: It is understandable that a manager cannot be expected to have an accurate knowledge from day one. However, one must get into deep water to understand the nitty-gritty of the work of a new department, irrespective of one’s earlier experience. And no matter the departments you have managed earlier, there will always be something new to learn every day to keep abreast of the latest trends and happenings in the given industry. You should be able to roll up your sleeves and pitch in if necessary.

Avoid switching topics: Many managers have the habit of switching to some other topic just for the sake

15-MINUTE MANAGER of disagreeing or proving a point. For example, if techies talk technical stuff, many managers switch the topic to financial concerns like RoI and business justification. Or, if techies talk costs, then they drop a googly like, “cost is not

learn to steer the topic smoothly towards the desired direction.

Ensure clear communication: This is an extremely important skill that all techies must learn. The palest ink is better than the most retentive memory.

A chat with the team at a data centre will give you the ground picture, instead of vague ideas gained from status reports a concern when it comes to customer satisfaction,” to throw them off guard.

In other words, some managers disagree for the sake of disagreeing, and introduce a different viewpoint. Instead,

Learn to put everything in writing in a clear simple language. Instead of giving speeches, talking or advising for an hour just summarise what you want and how you want in a concise e-mail.

Reduce formal talkative meetings to an absolute minimum. Instead, have quick informal meetings with your team members at their usual haunts like data centres, cabling rooms or server rooms. That way you will get to know their ground realities, practical difficulties, limitations and workloads, rather than have vague ideas of what they do by reading status reports.

Of course, there are heaps of other best practices that an IT manager must learn. However, the above five are a good beginning in case you are not practicing them already. Finally, we can summarise this article with a quote from Thomas Watson who said, “A manager is an assistant to his men.”

The author is IT Manager at ANZ OTSS

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best practices C loud Co mputing IT Audit Data Warehou s ing ERP DLP Energy E fficiency CR M Outsourcing Disaster Manage ment Ven dor Manage ment E nergy Efficiency

NEXT Special C ontribute r s

Berjes Eric Shroff, Manager—IT, Tata Services

Cut it fro m here

Sanjeev Sinha, Director—IT, Epoch Expo

Rajesh Aggarwal, IT Manager, DP Jindal Group

P rakash P radhan, Hea d— IT, Jagsonpal P harmaceuticals

R N Moorthy, Sr GM- IT, Jet Airways

Ashok RV, GM- IS, Sun dara m Cl ay ton

S Il ango, Sr Manager—IT, Adit ya Birl a Group

Manis h Jain, IT Manager, JuxtCon sult

Gaurav Kohli, IT Cons ultant, X ebia Architects Ind ia

Vi shwajeet Singh, Head — IT, FCm Travel Solution s Ind ia

Your responses count. Log on to www.itnext.in to submit your replies.

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Cloud Computing

Know your needs, avoid cloudache Sanjeev sinha Director—IT Epoch Expo

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Clearly map your enterprise business objective with the SLAs you want, and the service provider’s capabilities to avoid any migration pain Clouds are now a mainstream in the enterprise space, with ever-new applications and platforms being hosted remotely. Yet, the fact remains that the cloud is about leaving the safety and security of a physical server that sits within an organisation in favour of thirdparty machines sitting in unknown locations.

The thought can be unnerving for many.

With the market getting crowded with a variety of cloud service providers (CSPs), choosing the right one is like playing a game of Russian roulette.

As a first step towards gaining clarity, IT managers need to be clear on two basic two aspects—what is the business objective, and what they want from the CSP. Once this is done, migrating to the cloud becomes less of a headache.

Nature of business: Evaluate the nature of your business—is it computing intensive, or transaction intensive? You also need to check if your enterprise is storage intensive or network intensive. The approach to go on the cloud could vary based on these factors.

Growth: Next, do some hardcore accounting. Work out a CAGR assessment of compute, transactional, storage and network resources for the next one to three years and three to five years and plot a graph as to what will be the likely need over the time frames under consideration.

Security requirement: Make a note of how stringent is the security and privacy compliance need of your organisation.

For instance, a bank or a pharmaceutical company will have to be very cagey about putting data in the cloud, while an incensestick manufacturer will not be so worried.

Application migration cost: Make a list of the legacy applications, both in-house and standard ones. This will help you evaluate the time needed for migration, and the cost.

Business transformation agenda: You need to ask yourself as to what is the mediumto long-term business transformation agenda.

What are the new competencies? What sort of “IT as a strategy capability” is needed?

Also, what are the tangible and intangible

BEST PRACTICES benefits of the cloud? For example, how much management bandwidth will it free? How much real estate will be unlocked?

Once you are through with the exercise, take the next step by evaluating the CSP. Do remember to map your requirements and expectations with the CSP’s capabilities and the kind of service level agreements (SLAs) that you want.

What DO you want from the CSP? Strategic capability: These include the quality of manpower employed by the cloud service provider, its partnerships with other industry players in the cloud ecosystem, patents held or filed, and membership of technology forums and standards bodies.

Portfolio and customer empowerment: It’s important to see that the CSP has a good breadth and depth in terms of it offerings, and supports various service needs through a flexible pricing approach.

Customer empowerment is a very important aspect of a cloud model. The service

provider should provide adequate “self-care” support and also provide for service lifecycle management. Features such as real-time reporting and application visibility will further strengthen the case.

Apart from this, there should be a transparent way of measuring service performance, ideally supported by enforceable service level agreements. Another key consideration in selecting a CSP is the country in which it is located and jurisdiction by which it is covered. Once these concerns have been assessed and reasonably addressed, migrating to the cloud can be much easier and less of a headache.

Business viability: While the above two key factors should influence an IT manager’s decision, it is equally important to find out the kind of brand visibility the CSP enjoys, the track record of its top management team, and it strategic investors or VCs. Last but not the least, it will help to check out independent assessments of the CSPs available from reputed market research firms like IDC, Gartner, Yankee and Forrester.

it audit

Track IT, cut cost Internal audit can help enterprises view their IT assets at par with monetary resources to minimise misuse Berjes Eric Shroff Manager—IT Tata Services

It never ceases to amaze me that in spite of the widely reported cases of hacking, data theft and misuse of company’s IT resources, many enterprises have not taken the initia-

tive of conducting internal IT audits, let alone think of conducting an external one. This scenario has especially been observed in smaller business organisations.

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BEST PRACTICES First, let us see why smaller organisations should be concerned about doing an internal IT audit.

IT users in organisations, intentionally or unintentionally, misuse the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s IT resources in terms of bandwidth, Internet usage and what they store on their hard drives. Now, just as an organisation will not like their monetary resources to be misused, they cannot accept the misuse of their IT resources.

The question now arises as to who should conduct the internal IT audit? If cost and

If cost is holding you back from hiring a specialist to audit enterprise IT assets, someone of the rank of IT manager or above can fit the bill manpower are not a constraint, then ideally, there should be a dedicated internal IT audit team or specialist. But what does the IT department do when either the cost or lack of initiative from the management poses a problem?

In such a case, even though it goes against the basic tenet that a person should not audit ones own work, I feel that someone of the rank of an IT manger, or above, should take the initiative. It is better to conduct an internal IT audit than carry out no audit at all.

Get the managementâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s buy-in The first step will obviously be to educate and convince the senior management for their support. The IT manager will need to explain the requirements of conducting internal IT audits and its advantages. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s impor-

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tant to point out how IT resources are being wasted or misused and what threats and risks the organisation faces, preferably backed by statistical data.

Ideally, all this should be in form of a written communication, followed by a presentation to the management.

Once the management gives the go-ahead for conducting an IT audit, the next step is to convince them to appoint a small IT steering committee, comprising of senior people, to oversee the functioning of the IT audit, and to frame the IT policies and guidelines to be followed. The internal IT auditor will report to this committee.

Adopt a framework The next step is to adopt a framework such as the ISO 27001 standard. This will ensure that the major areas are addressed by the internal auditor. Although the current ISO 27001 standard does not address issues such as Wi-Fi technology and Green IT, it nevertheless does not deter a company from including additional points in the audit guidelines.

The internal IT auditor will need to be educated on auditing skills. Ideally, the person should undergo a professional training such as CISA or the ISO 27001 Lead Auditor program. At the same time, it goes without saying that upgrading of technical skills will remain a continuous process.

Another important thing that the internal IT auditor should be monitoring closely is the laws relating to IT. This is generally overlooked, and can lead to serious problems.

Develop soft skills It is important to remember that as an auditor, IT managers should not just have an excellent understanding of technology, they also need to be a good communicator. In case the IT auditor is unable to communicate clearly and effectively with the management and employees, the audit process is bound to fail.

BEST PRACTICES Other soft skills such as leadership and interpersonal skills are also important.

Finally, when it comes to acquiring software tools for auditing, if the organisation is not willing to invest in licensced software, there are a plethora of free auditing tools available online. The IT manager (now in the shoes of an internal IT auditor) will need to evaluate such tools and deploy the ones that best suit his organisation’s requirements.

The role of an internal IT auditor can be interesting, yet challenging for the IT manager.

The biggest challenge perhaps will lie in disclosing the true findings of an audit to the management in such a manner that ultimately it benefits the organisation. If communicated correctly and in a positive manner, these findings will garner further management support for strengthening the auditing process and curbing the misuse of IT resources in the organisation.

ERP

Coordinate, let others plan It is a must that all beneficiaries see it as a tool for better planning of their 3M resources of man, machine and material Rajesh Aggarwal IT Manager DP Jindal Group

More often than not, Enterprise Resource Planning or ERP is seen as a magic stick that can boost an organisation’s profitability. In reality, however, the success of an ERP solution depends on a number of factors that go beyond just the technology.

In fact, it would be good to remember that ERP is nothing but a tool that can help

For ERP’s magic to work, IT team should be the bridge among the top brass, the functional heads and the consulting team

organisations plan their 3M resources— man, machine and material—in an effective manner. Given this, the organisation’s top management should clearly understand what the solution means for the organisation.

To further ensure that the ERP is successfully rolled out, the enterprise needs to properly define the various functional procedures. There is also a need to set up a core team comprising the right set of decision makers and users. Besides, the IT manager should also seek answers to few questions before embarking on an ERP journey. l What is the amount that the organisation is willing to invest? l How will the company measure the return on investment (RoI)? l Is the organisation agile enough to

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Managing non tech challenges Acceptability of new system: Like any other major IT intervention, ERP brings in a cultural change in the way an organisation and its employees work. However, the decision to create core teams at the functional level ensures that there is a constant dialogue between the steering committee members and the validation team. This helps ironing out the acceptability issues better.

Non availability of a few core team members: There is a possibility of a few core members leaving midway, while the ERP is still being rolled out. However, if the core functional teams have proper documentation in place, the project team will still be able to maintain the required continuity.

Gaps between actual functional working and ERP methods: There can be instances of big gaps between actual working in functional departments and the methods available in the ERP system. This is where the in-house IT team’s understanding of the organisation’s system helps. The team can serve as a bridge, and help find a way around.

adapt the massive post-implementation culture? l How equipped are the functional users to understand and utilise ERP? l What is the organisation’s plan to train and educate employees how to use ERP? Let me illustrate these through my experience of rolling out ERP at the DP

Create core teams at the functional level to ensure a constant dialogue between the various teams Jindal Group. In fact, before going for ERP, we were working on a legacy system that was a combination of in-house developed software and standard software, integrated through intermediary codes.

When our management felt the need for a standard ERP, one of the first steps we took was to set up an ERP steering committee

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comprising heads of various functional departments. The team started by evaluating all existing solutions in the market.

Once the group shortlisted two ERP solutions for a final evaluation, it decided to map the strengths of the two solutions with the company’s line of business. The group also sought references of similar implementations from both the companies.

While the core group was working towards finalising the vendor, it also looked at other aspects—from evaluating infrastructure and planning its upgrade, to documentation of various functional processes. And by the time the consulting team moved in, we were ready with our documentation, core team members for each functional department and even the ERP room!

Besides, we were also through with the majority of all required infrastructure work— network connectivity, server, systems upgrade and network design for our plant. This saved a lot of time and helped the consulting team speed up the roll out process.

Needless to say, today our ERP has come to a stage where all functional departments are tuned in and are able to work efficiently on it.

BEST PRACTICES

DLP

Tag all data, guard accordingly prakash pradhan Head—IT Jagsonpal Pharmaceuticals

Evaluate the potential threats, categorise them and create a priority list before you chalk out a comprehensive enterprise info security plan Some will still remember the curious case of Biswamohan Pani, a design engineer and former employee accused by Intel of data theft amounting to as much as US $1 billion. More than anything else, the case brought forth the fact that even the world’s largest organisations were prone to a “mission-critical” data loss.

It’s like being killed in a battlefield by friendly fire. In fact, Deloitte in the 2009 edition of the Global Security Survey highlights that while social networks and blogs can be powerful enablers, they also increase organisations’ internal security challenges. It also reiterated that in today’s connected world, “insiders” were turning into greater security threats than ever before.

And while the organisations are trying to make their employees more aware about the basic steps to security, it’s the IT departments and the IT managers who end up being the custodians of organisations’ most important resource—information. Read on for some

Preventing information theft is a key concern of organisations, as cost of breached information can be worth a fortune

precautions and best practices that can go a long way in ensuring prevention of data theft.

Categorise digital assets The most important part of managing data loss is to understand the types of sensitive data and categorise them into buckets, based on their sensitivity and value. Obviously, the most valuable data is linked to the maximum number of controls, even if that leads to some sort of inconvenience to a section of employees.

Prioritise what you need to protect Data in an organisation has three dimensions. First, data in motion that includes any data that moves through the network to the outside world via the Internet. Second, the data at rest that includes information residing in files systems and databases. Third, the data that resides at endpoints like USB drives, external hard drives and mobile devices.

IT managers must evaluate the potential vulnerabilities and the associated loss for each data dimension. It thus makes sense to prioritise the dimension where the threat level is the highest.

Select comprehensive solution The adopted solution must be all-encompassing and comprehensive. A comprehensive data loss prevention (DLP) solution sets up tight policies and is capable of effectively detecting the breaches. Hence, IT managers

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BEST PRACTICES should consider implementing all, or some of these steps. l Analysis of the content of all major files and attachment types l Selective blocking of messages l Automatic enforcement of corporate encryption policies These steps require both well thought-out policies and processes.

Make IT invisible The most important aspect of a DLP solution

is that it should be invisible to the end-user. It should at no point in time impact worker productivity. For instance, any delay in e-mail or Internet page loading can dampen the speed of business and negatively impact the productivity of employees. At the same time, the solution must run consistently even in the wake of traffic volume surges.

No one company has the best-in-breed solutions that address all the three dimensions of data, so the best answer is to integrate solutions from different best-in-class vendors.

Data Warehousing

Start with single view of data RN Moorthy Sr GM-IT Jet Airways

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Identification and resolution of all inconsistencies is the cornerstone of data warehousing success With business intelligence (BI) gaining massive ground across all verticals, the emphasis on enterprise data warehousing (EDW) has also grown. Besides, increasing data volumes, number and diversity of users and ongoing user requests for decision support and reporting needs are increasing the complexity of DW projects.

Simply put, a data warehouse is “a repository of an organisation’s electronically stored data.” A typical data warehouse is designed to facilitate information analysis and produce meaningful reports for decision makers in an organisation.

What this means is that any organisation in a competitive environment dealing with high

BEST PRACTICES

Reaping benefits n EDW provides a common data model for all data of interest, regardless of the source of the data.

This makes it easier to report and analyse information from across multiple data models that used to retrieve information such as sales invoices, order receipts and general ledger charges. n Prior to loading data into the data warehouse, inconsistencies are identified and resolved. This helps the organisation simplify reporting and analysis, and provides for what is commonly referred to as “single version of truth”. n Since information in the data warehouse is under the control of data warehouse users, even if the source system data is purged over time, the information in the warehouse can be stored safely for extended periods of time. n Data warehouses facilitate decision support system applications such as trend reports (for example, the items with the most sales in a particular area within the last two years), exception reports, and reports that show actual performance versus goals. n Since data warehouses are separate from operational systems, the retrieval of data does not slow down operational systems. n Data warehouses can work in conjunction with and, hence, enhance the value of operational business applications, notably a customer relationship management system.

volume of business transactions, which requires data analysis on a continuous basis, is a candidate for data warehousing. In fact, EDW should not be considered only as versatile reporting tool, but also a strategic tool in the hands of decision makers.

However, it is important to remember that the success of an EDW implementation largely depends on identifying the requirements, focusing on quick-win areas

The lifecycle of EDW does not end with the initial deployment. Instead, it continues as the business requirements evolve and involvement of the senior management in the entire life cycle of implementation.

What helped us successfully implement EDW at Jet Airways was the clear-cut strategic plan. Use internal resources from business and IT to identify key areas that the project should focus on. Also provide extensive training for the core project team on BI tools.

In the airlines industry, where profit margins

are always under pressure, thanks to the competition and factors like volatile fuel prices, over capacity and infrastructural issues, understanding the profitability of each route is critical.

This was our primary focus when we decided to invest on an EDW solution. It allowed us to track our revenues and costs at the route level and also gave an insight into the booking profile. We further expanded the usage of EDW into areas of travel agency profiling, and corporate profiling.

In the phase two of the project, we plan to develop models for operational data such as aircraft usage, on-time performance, delay analysis, fuel consumption and aircraft maintenance cost. In this phase, we are focusing on our major costs as well as operational efficiencies.

For EDW to be successful, end users need to have passion for analytical work and deep understanding of their business and processes.

BI is a strategic tool for decision making and is not to be used as a glorified reporting tool.

However, lack of flexibility in responding to ongoing business users’ change requests can completely spoil the game. Remember that the lifecycle of DW does not end with the initial deployment. Instead, it continues as the business requirements evolve.

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CRM

The customer matters Just stick to a few guiding principles and you will never go wrong. However, do insist for a solution that suits your customer needs Ashok RV GM-IS Sundaram Clayton

The most important part in customer relationship management (CRM) is indeed the customer himself. While acquiring customers is a critical function of any business, a far more important and difficult part is retaining them.

Indeed, CRM is about creating a customercentric business philosophy and culture.

However, from the IT manager’s standpoint, adhering to a few good principles can help

Leave the implementation and training part for an expert, as it will bring in an element of third-party objectivity too go a long way in ironing-out difficulties that usually comes in the way of effectively rolling out the solution.

Understand where you want to go: Like

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Julie Andrews sang in the Sound of Music, it’s always a good idea to start from the scratch, and note the high-level customerrelated issues that the organisation wishes to address, before procuring a CRM solution.

If all that a company needs is a good sales forecasting tool, the good old Excel can do a pretty decent job. But if the need is to map the entire customer life cycle, from someone being a prospect customer to a repeat one, a full-blow CRM solution will fit the bill.

Fit your needs, not the other way around: It is best to opt for a solution that fits your needs perfectly rather than be a retro-fit.

For instance, if the top three things that your company is trying to accomplish are going to change, your application must be ready to respond and deliver the reports, the metrics and the dashboards in a suitable manner.

Look for ease of use: That’s probably the most important thing when you’re rolling out an application for your sales, marketing and services professionals. If they are unable to get the hang of it in a few minutes, they just give up.

BEST PRACTICES Make sure your data is safe: Many small businesses don’t often think about the critical customer data that sits on the typical salesperson’s PC just waiting to be downloaded onto a USB drive by someone and taken away.

So, when considering a CRM solution, make sure you think about securing the data and discuss any issues you may have with vendors.

Hire experts to implement and train: It’s important to let experts manage the implementation and training part for the simple reason that sometimes the hiccups in erecting the system can be frustrating and time consuming. And getting an expert to train is also a good way to show to the sales force what the system can do rather what it cannot.

Outsourcing

Look for a cultural match Outsourcing is like keeping a part of your organisation in another body, and a mismatch could lead to failure S Ilango Sr Manager—IT Aditya Birla Group

An outsourcing relationship is like a marriage—it’s for the keeps, in thick and thin. So choosing the outsourcing partner has to be a meticulous and detailed exercise, as you don’t want to be stuck in an abusive relationship.

Sure, you must see to it that your outsourcing partner has a wide set of skills and strengths as well as a strong track record of delivering results. Another important aspect is that they must offer a competitive pricing… that’s a key reason why you are outsourcing, right?

Establish clear objectives: A failure to plan is a sure-shot plan to failure—it’s not that the best-laid plans that go astray at times; it’s that they often are not the best-laid plans in the first place. Hence, be absolutely clear about the objectives of outsourcing from the word go. Is it about cost or process improvement or about freeing up management time for the core business? Identifying the key objectives

will help determine the way you shortlist and select the partner.

Ensure alignment of cultures: Make sure the service provider understands more than just how to code or implement.

An outsourcer needs to be compatible with your company’s culture and business objectives, with the right experience, communications skills, and working style. The employees of your outsourcing partner will become an extended part of your organisation and need to fit in the way your employees do.

Get the communications right: Make sure the outsourced service provider understands the project specifications.

Be as detailed, and equally precise as possible. When IT functions go outside your organisation, it will result in a lot of coordination and back-and-forth communication. The initial volume of

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Besides the right skill sets and experience, an outsourcer needs to be compatible with your company’s culture and business objectives communication and efforts exerted for coordination will be far larger than what the IT manager will exert if the function was retained internally.

Avoid short-term gain, long-term loss: A myopic approach to outsourcing is a sureshot recipe for disaster. Decision makers often get lost in the fine print of the deal. And often, in an attempt to save the company money, the emphasis shifts to compromising on the benefits and locking prices down.

Often missing is a focus on the long-term result desired to justify such adjustments. While it is a good thing to pay attention to the cost, an equal attention on performance measurement is a must.

By paying attention to these details, you will be able to bring in quality of relationship with your provider. And that’s also a key to successful outsourcing!

Disaster Management

Leave no threat unattended!

List out the responsibilities very clearly and classify the risks under appropriate heads to make the plan foolproof Manish Jain IT Manager JuxtConsult

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Threats to IT systems today come in multiple formats—viruses, hacking attacks, sabotage, power outages, natural disasters, and maybe even a doomsday catastrophe.

The challenge for the helpline, however,

doesn’t change, no matter what the nature of the threat is—it has to keep working in all situations.

Sure, all organisations that value their information assets have a disaster recovery

BEST PRACTICES strategy in place and also keep re-examining it on a periodic basis. Indeed, it has become an essential ongoing exercise in the wake of today’s complex threat scenario, to which newer strands are being added with each passing day.

Segregate BCP from DR, and split them as two separate initiatives, each with its own set of policies and goals While that is good, it’s not enough. It is the adoption of some key best practises that will give the IT department the required peace of mind.

Fix the ownership Today, more and more organisations are looking to increase the involvement of business managers in the development and maintenance of their business continuity plans (BCP).

What this means is that business continuity is now increasingly being seen as a line function rather than a staff function. This also means that it will be a good idea to segregate BCP from disaster recovery, and split them as two separate initiatives, each with its own set of policies and goals.

For disaster recovery, the goal is technical recovery, and the plan is created and managed by developers and engineers. Business continuity on the other hand should aim to achieve business process stability, and it will be more effective if the plan is chalked out by business managers or owners of respective processes. Of course, it goes without saying that the plan should be developed in close coordination with the IT team.

Classify the risks When evaluating risks and threats, effort should be made to categorise them into different classes. This will help prioritise the assets that need to be protected first. For starters, it’s always a good idea to tag the risks into five basic categories.

External risk: External risks are those that cannot be associated with a failure within the enterprise. They are very significant in that they are not directly under the control of the organisation that faces the damages. These will include natural disasters and civil unrests.

Facility risk: Facility risks are the ones that affect only local facilities. These typically cover aspects such as electricity outages and physical structural faults.

Data systems risk: These are related to the use of shared infrastructure, such as networks, file servers and software applications that could impact multiple departments. A key objective in analysing these risks is to identify all single points of failure within the data systems architecture.

Departmental risk: Departmental risks pertain to failures within specific departments. These would be events such as a fire within an area where flammable liquids are stored, or a missing door key preventing a specific operation.

Desk-level risk: These comprise all the risks that can potentially limit or stop the day-to-day personal work of an individual employee.

Make it independent There is a strong likelihood that when disaster strikes, the architect of the disaster recovery plan will not be available. Remember this key assumption before working out a plan. At the IT manager’s end, care must be taken to ensure that the plan will work with or without the people who developed it.

Also, in a development environment, disaster recovery and application development should be aligned and synchronised.

The IT team must incorporate disaster recovery into the application development processes. For example, the businesscontinuity database should include a report on application-testing status, so that the IT manager knows when a system was last tested and whether it demands his or her attention to assure its performance in the event of a recovery.

test the plan While it is important to review your “on paper” disaster management and business

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BEST PRACTICES continuity plan on a regular basis, doing just that is not enough. Strengthen your initiative with disaster simulations that can go a long way to test the preparedness of the disaster management team.

And what you derive out of the results of the test will form a further input to the

disaster recovery plan. For example, if you are recovering without third-party services, create an action-item checklist of what worked well and what didn’t. And if you are working with a vendor, document what went wrong and use that report to outline your needs from the next simulation exercise.

Vendor Management

Build partners, deliver business value Gaurav Kohli IT Consultant Xebia Architects India

An effective vendor management is one that will bring commitment to total value creation—beyond SLAs—on the table Businesses are no more about stand-alone deliveries and competition. They are increasingly about ecosystems comprising suppliers, vendors and outsourcing partners. All of these are important parts of the same whole and demand proper attention and management.

Effective vendor management can have benefits that extend from cost reductions and efficiency improvement to enhanced customer satisfaction and improved focus on key competences. It also helps organisations manage their multiple vendor contracts better.

Here are some time-tested tips that can help IT managers achieve the desired objectives.

Defining the contract Well begun is half done, they say. The foundation of the relationship should be laid on well researched grounds. The selected vendor should be able to demonstrate a desired level of insight and appreciation of the business and should also be able to identify and suggest some key success factors instead of

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merely aiming to define the SLAs. To achieve this, they may conduct some pre-contract, pre-operations research, using a standardised methodology. This initial investment by the vendor in understanding the business goes a long way in aligning their offerings to your organisation’s long-term business goals.

Ability to manage transition Managing the transition is a combination of science and art, and like the saying goes: things get worse before they get better. Mature vendors look at themselves as strategic partners and will have a well defined approach to managing transition. It is during the transition phase that the service level agreements (SLAs) should be defined in detail. And the transition process should include full process mapping, linked to a rigorous review of the documentation. Each step in the transition process should incorporate a set of reviews and measurements, with a defined output.

BEST PRACTICES Driving excellence in delivery SLAs are the first measure of success or failure, but they should be treated as a baseline rather than the last word on performance delivery. Once the outsourcing vendor has achieved the baseline SLAs, the responsibility

Sticking to defined SLAs can be self defeating because SLAs by their nature are focused on specific objectives only should then be to continually improve performance and the vendor should show initiative to propose new or changed SLAs. IT managers should look at selecting a partner who is inclined to help the enterprise achieve its broader business goals.

Multi-dimensional relationship The vendor should be able to view the relationship as one that has many dimensions

and the impact of which cuts across various aspects of the organisation. Thus, measuring the success of a relationship by monitoring the agreed SLAs can be self defeating.

Do remember that SLAs by their nature are focused on specific objectives, whereas overall performance measurement across multiple factors is the true measure of success. Finding the right mix of governance, contract, relationship, experience and operational delivery will contribute to a total value creation, and this must be measured too.

People are the foundation It is also important to find out whether the vendor has the right kind of workforce to build and maintain the solution or the service it is offering. It is also vital for the vendor to have a robust practices in recruitment, HR, training, and performance management. Besides, look out for a vendor who either has the domain knowledge and competencies across specified business functions or is looking at building these. This will translate into an enhanced capability at their end—one that will promise potential value adds for your organisation.

Energy Efficiency

Use lean to go green Thin clients, virtualisation, server consolidation are all about being lean—and they all reduce energy usage Vishwajeet Singh Head—IT FCm Travel Solutions India

When economic concerns got precedence, environmental sustainability had to take a back seat in many organisations.

The fact however, remains that being “lean

and green” is good for both the business and the environment. Any organisation that focuses on this will see clear benefits coming in soon.

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BEST PRACTICES I’m a great believer in Green IT and strongly feel that a few small steps and best practices can go a long way in bringing benefits of ‘green’ to the table.

Optimum utilisation of resources: An optimum use of all the available resources can bring down our energy wastage to its minimum level. This is not only applicable for a data centre environment; it can easily be applied to a regular office condition too.

Many times we don’t realise that we actually don’t need powerful workstations, even thin-client architecture can work absolutely fine for many of our requirements.

We should actually do a proper study on our department wise setups and accordingly

Energy-efficient operation also means operating a device that uses only as much energy as necessary to fulfil its intended function provide what is needed.

Energy-efficient operation also means operating a device that uses only as much energy as necessary to fulfil its intended function. The primary objective of an effective energy management is to eliminate or minimise energy wastage while maintaining a comfortable and safe environment.

Adoption of virtualisation: As we all know, our servers are among the most energy consuming devices, so it is very important to know our server requirements clearly. Today, we are being asked to improve efficiency, not only from a capital expenditure perspective, but also with regard to operational overheads.

By migrating applications from physical to virtual machines and consolidating applications onto shared physical hardware we can save a lot on energy bills, year-on-year maintenance costs, cooling needs and real estate cost.

Run routine checkup of all passive devices: Often we don’t actually look into the energy utilisation of our passive devices like UPS, which itself is an energy

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consuming piece of equipment. On one side, it gives us an uninterrupted power supply, on the other it also burns a significant amount of energy.

A proper audit and maintenance of devices, like UPS and air conditioners, can help bring down their energy utilisation to optimum levels.

Motivate your people: We all understand that money works and what is the harm in sharing it when you are gaining on the other side. Incentives schemes can help you achieve remarkable results in a relatively short period of time, if you apply them properly.

Policies can be deployed in data centres for services like standby option and display time out. But if you let your user know quantitatively how much they are burning on each computer every day, they will understand the importance of switching off their screens while going away for tea and other short breaks. And let them know if the organisation achieved a significant cut in energy bills, they will get some incentives as a token of appreciation.

In addition, the office building also plays a major role when it comes to green efforts.

The buildings use approximately 66% of the electric energy, and according to an estimate, the overall power consumption in buildings has doubled between 1989 and 2005.

Also, energy represents as much as 30% of a building’s operating costs. Now consider this: undertaking energy efficiency measures can reduce energy consumption and thus, utility bills by 30% or more. These savings will add directly to the bottom line.

Most energy efficiency measures also improve the comfort and attractiveness of the indoor environment. This is common sense. Lighting retrofits, for example, reduce energy consumption and improve visual acuity. Better vision, in turn, helps workers complete tasks more efficiently while reducing eyestrain.

And the best part is that these improvements to energy efficiency can often be attained through low-cost or even no-cost projects.

The views expressed in the articles are those of the authors and do not, in any ways, reflect the policies or views of the companies they are working for.

update

open Debate

book For you A platform to air your views on the latest developments and issues that impact you

Can Apple iPad be a good enterprise device?

Dork

The incredible adventure of an unlikely corporate hero Publisher : Penguin Books India Price : INR 199

Is success always directly proportionate to the knowledge and efforts you put in, or are there factors that make a difference? Is it just the cultural fit or about managing to be in the “good books” of those who matter?

MANOJ JOSHI MANAGER IT, NSE INFOTECH SERVICES It will take some time before we can get a clear picture of how effective the iPad is. Apple is a great consumer product company, but it is still to deliver a killer application for the enterprises. Even the much touted iPhone has not been able to make much inroads into the enterprise space.

Thus, I sincerely doubt the usefulness of this product.

As of now, Blackberry is clearly driving the enterprise space, meeting both communication and data needs of mobile workers.

With no communication capabilities built in, I doubt if iPad will be able to make a major dent in the space.

JOHN RAJ MANAGER IT, VIDYUT METALLICS We need to look into the technical features and capabilities of the product.

I personally feel that iPad will help the mobile or remote work-force replace the larger form factor laptops. However, security can turn out to be a big challenge while managing these devices at the enterprise level. The next big challenge would be to ensure support from software vendors. Since there are scores of enterprise application from multiple vendors, I am not quite sure how many of them will be able to support the iPad platform. Overall, the size and existing features seem to be pretty good.

NANDKISHOR JAISWAL MANAGER IT, HOLIDAY INN The new decade has come with promises of lots of innovation, particularly on the wireless front. Apple’s new iPad is a smart gadget, with solutions geared to address customer requirements, comfort and security. This will certainly help shape the way companies operate in the future. I am hopeful about the success of iPad and feel that such devices can be a big draw in the enterprise space. We have already seen a massive growth in the adoption rate of devices like the Blackberry. With new applications and software, it can definitely emerge as the hottest enterprise gaget.

While Dork by Sidin Vadukt, is a laugh riot as it takes you through the diary of a business graduate from one of India’s best B-school, it is also a commentary on the present day work culture where sycophancy, gadgets and social networking go hand in hand to determine success.

Through the incredible story of stunning blunders, mishaps and inadvertent errors, Robin, the protagonist, begins to make his superiors rue the day they were driven by desperation into hiring him. And while he was just about to be fired, a blunder committed under the influence of alcohol changes the fortune—of Robin and his company.

There is another clear message as well: Don’t underestimate the power of media, which can instantly turn a substandard consultant facing disciplinary action into a management guru.

IT NEXT Verdict A hilarious acount of office culture and romance, and how social networking tools can make a hero out of a super-dork. And beware!

Alcohol can do blunders (and sometimes

Your views and opinion matter to us. Send us your feedback on stories and the magazine to the Editor at editor@itnext.in

wonders) in your life!

Star Value:

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my log

Shashwat DC Associate Editor, IT Next

Damocles’ Sword

Who needs the tech writer, when there is no dearth of IT managers who can double up for the role!

The Ennio Morricone’s ‘good, bad and ugly’ tone was ringing on my cell-phone, letting me know that it was the editor saab who wished to talk. Since, we had just packed up the magazine I was not particularly inclined to take the call, more so, because I knew that it was meant to plan out the March issue.

This meant more work and more follow ups, and more sleepless nights. Yet, for all my disinclinations, there was little that I could do to avoid taking the call.

“We are planning a special issue for March, and since you guys have been complaining about the workload a lot, we will have the community write the whole issue. You guys can take an off.

Cheerio.”

To say that I was stunned after the voice at the other end had died down would be an under-statement. “How could the issue go without my contribution? Who is going to write the interviews and the analysis,” I thought. If I had become so redundant for the magazine, my future was indeed bleak.

Adding to the misery was the fact that it was a special issue. Under normal circumstances, special issues are synonymous with more work and sleepless nights. And here the editor was telling me

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to have fun. A chill ran through my spine.

Was I about to lose my job?

Yet, there was a little flicker of hope in some corner of my heart. I hoped that not many people would volunteer to write.

After all, fixing an ERP issue is one thing and writing how to do it is another.

Over the next few days, much water was poured over the little flicker, as I realised that lot many IT managers were willing to jot their thoughts and share their experience. Worse, most of them were fairly well written and well researched.

As the articles kept pouring in, my agonies were exacerbated. Apparently, there seems to be no paucity of articulate IT managers in India and that does not bode well for technology writers like me.

Finally, as a consolation, I was asked to jot down my thoughts for this page—My Log. However, I still continue to live with a Damocles sword over my head, thinking about the days when writers like me were the toast of any IT magazine, indulged and pampered by the editors.

I also hope that IT managers are so inundated with work that they lose their coherence with words. And finally, I am waiting for the good, bad and ugly ringtone of my phone to buzz again. So far it hasn’t, I do hope that it does soon..

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