IT Next April 2012 by Manan Mushtaq

APRIL 2012 / ` 100 VOLUME 03 / ISSUE 03

STRATEGY: Business Analytics on a Test Drive Mode

BOSS TALK: Evangelising is Crucial to Product Management

Amit Phadke Head, Systems & Technology, Kale Consultants Ltd

Best ways to get enterprise deployments right Pg 12

46 BIG Q

INTERVIEW Oracleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Sundar Ram on How Big Data Drives Big Decisions

Piloting Business Analytics Pg 51

Editorial

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Editorial

Master Tech Manoeuvring Success in everything you do will depend upon how well you manoeuvre and execute it. Technology too requires the art of manoeuvring for successful implementation. In this context, it is interesting to watch IT managers moving out of their conservative shells to catch up with the trend of strategising and strategic decision-making. IT managers are now clued in to the art of planning, mastering and executing strategies in a systematic manner. Be it with regard to project management, team management, crisis management or project implementation, they are exhibiting promising skills. IT Next cover feature, Mastering Hot Technologies, is an initiative to help IT managers plan their technology implementations. Through our survey we understood that they are surrounded by a plethora of technologies, some that are going to have far-reaching impact on their roles and business decisions, and others that are relatively new and complex to implement, but fascinating. My observation is that the IT manager fraternity is ready to try out new technologies and has been bowled over by them to such an extent that they are in a hurry to do it as quickly as possible. A word of caution hereâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; any implementation process calls for certain rules of engagement with stakeholders and there are best practices that must be adhered to. Our cover feature outlines some best practices that need to be followed before and during the process of implementing each of these technologies. We have focussed on cloud computing, virtualisation, business intelligence, green IT, storage management and information security, as there are multiple challenges around their implementation and methodology. The objective is to guide IT managers select the best deployment methodology for these technologies and solutions that will help them address their concerns.

itnext | A pril 2 0 1 2

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Any implementaion process calls for certain rules of engagement with stakeholders and has best practicesâ&#x20AC;? G e e t h a N an d i k o t k u r

Blogs To Watch! 20 Hot Technologies for 2012: The Indirect Evidence http://www.eogogics.com/ talkgogics/blog/survey12 Gartner Symposium Headlines Next Hot Technologies http://forwardthinking.pcmag. com/show-reports/289385gartner-symposium-headlinesnext-hot-technologies 10 hot areas of expertise for IT specialists http://www.techrepublic.com/ blog/10things/10-hot-areas-ofexpertise-for-it-specialists/2291 A Softchoice IT forecast: Hot technologies to watch in 2012 http://blogs.softchoice.com/ itgrok/2011/12/13/a-softchoiceit-forecast-hot-technologies-towatch-in-2012/

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Hot Technologies Best ways to get enterprise deployments right

Page

Cover Story

boss talk

interview

15 On a Virtual Mode IT managers are adopting virtualisation for better business benefits

19 Cloud is on the Upswing Despite security concerns, IT managers are confident of the cloud

24 Mastering Security Practices

27 Intelligence Multiplied c ov er des ign by s hi gi l n

cover photog raphy: jiten gandh i

Reputation is paramount and hence the need for security practices

Business intelligence has the power to empower enterprise

30 Making Green All Pervasive Green IT is a habit that tech teams are inculcating in organisations

33 Managing Storage Tops the Agenda IT managers are checking out solutions to surmount the data deluge

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05 Be a Product Evangelist| says Rajesh Ranjan, Programme Director, Product Engineering Services, MindTree Ltd

46 Big Data| Sundar Ram, VPTechnology Sales Consulting, Oracle Corp, APAC discusses the relevance of big data

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EDITORIAL

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Taking analytics for a test drive | A pilot is often the most manageable first step to starting a business analytics journey

insightS

42 In the User Experience

VMware View 5 enhances remote desktop throttling to improve performance

40 Collaboration Made Affordable Coupled with apps for iPad and iPhone, Alfresco Team gives smaller shops professional grade tools

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06 Develop the Go Green Plan | Jawahar Bekay, Chief

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Operating Officer, Microland Ltd, talks about green technologies that help reduce carbon footprint

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INBoX IT NEXT

IT IN BUSINESS | COVER STORY

COVER STORY | IT IN BUSINESS

MARCH 2012 / ` 100 VOLUME 03 / ISSUE 02

personality of the IT manager is exposed during turbulent times, when the expectations from the business are huge—pressure to ensure complete automation, evolve better business techniques, enhance business process through appropriate technology, real-time collaboration with right set of information, etc. On the brighter side though, it is clear that IT managers are now coming out of their cocoons, conscious of the new demands of their role and are making concerted efforts to create a blend of technical knowledge, strategic skills and tactical thinking.

The New IT Manager

Keen Understanding, Wide Knowledge

IT Next tries to find out the various languages that IT managers must now learn to understand the enterprise in depth, if they intend to grow professionally. There has been a noticeable change

“Basic understanding of finance, debit, credit, assets, liabilities comprising the general ledger, will enable them to evolve as effective persons”

Privy Organics Ltd’s Team FROM LEFT: Vijay Rao, Technical Director Jayant Meshram, Head-HR Narayan Iyer, VP-Finance SITTING: Kaushal Shah, Head-IT

IT NEXT values your feedback

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PHOTOG R A PHY: JITE N GA ND HI

no longer functions in a silo. With roles expanding and demands on them growing daily, it is easy for IT managers to get completely sucked into the daily rigmarole of corporate existence and lose sight of the bigger picture and the real scope of their role. With growing competition, business expansion and geographical progression on their growth radar, the expectations of senior management from IT are also multiplying. The business and finance functions now look to IT for reduction of overall cost and improvement in bottom line.

march 2012

VP-Finance, Privy Organics

PHOTOG RAPHY: JITEN GANDHI IMAG ING : PETERSON

BY N G E E T H A

Privy Organics Ltd’s Team FROM LEFT: DB Rao, Executive Director Jayant Meshram, Head-HR Narayan Iyer, VP-Finance Vijay Rao, Technical Director SITTING: Kaushal Shah, Head-IT

—Narayan Iyer

Business IT managers need greater involvement in business functions to enhance organisational benefits

IT managers need greater involvement in business functions to enhance organisational benefits Pg 15

VOLUME 03 | ISSUE 02

Mind Your

Most often, challenges arise due to lack of understanding. Concepts need to be framed in the language of the party in reference, and if one takes this pain, the job is half done. It is all about how well you heal the cracks within various groups and change their perception about your role. Narayan Iyer, VP, Finance, Privy Organics says, “If IT managers have

...Get Involved MIND YOUR BUSINESS

In my opinion, the role of IT or the IT managers doesn’t end here. If the top management has not carved out a vision map of growth for the IT manager, for whatever reasons, it is time that the IT manager creates a path for himself. Of course, to do so, the IT manager will have to undergo a certain amount of learning and unlearning to take on these new expanded roles and responsibilities. The most pertinent question here is what is hindering IT managers’ growth in an organisation. Most industry experts say it is their limited knowledge about business functions that impedes their growth.

in the way IT managers think—a testimony to their ambitious growth plans. In the fluid economic scenario, organisations increasingly find the need for more leaders evolving from the IT team who can boldly handle crisis management and work out a cost-effective financial plan for the organisation. There is a clear indication from the top management that they expect IT managers to shed their lackadaisical approach and take on a progressive outlook as a stakeholder in the business. BLV Rao, VP-IT, Infotech Ltd, says that the core

basic understanding of finance, debit, credit, assets, liabilities comprising the general ledger and understand why they have been asked to do so, it will enable them to evolve as effective persons.” One way to assured growth for IT managers is to be pre-emptive about business expectations, draw synergies, list out challenges, and have face-to-face communication, logical negotiations and be articulate about what the IT expects from the respective departmental heads, if these have to be met. Most experts say that understanding nuances of finance, getting clued into business functions and developing clarity on people and processes would enable IT managers to stride ahead.

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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.

I was a regular reader of IT Next even before I became a Next100 award winner in 2011. Since the magazine is very informative, I am keen that my fellow IT managers know about my company and its IT set-up. We are in the hospitality segment with a chain of restaurants in Chennai and Puducherry called The Pasta Bar Veneto (QSR). We are developing an application for TPBV which will run in 7” tablet and mobile devices. It will support order management and help procure orders through handheld devices. I request you to publish articles, on technologies to reach out to end-users.

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

Kanaka Durga Bhavani Prasad S, Sr IT Manager, Fifth Avenue Sourcing Pvt Ltd.

Demystifying Application Integration IT Next has been successfully focussing on contemporary topics. For example, IT infrastructure for cloud has been covered superbly. However, issues related to application development and migration to cloud are significant and need attention. Integration of rapidly developing technologies like collaboration and mobility, to cloud-hosted applications, make things pretty complex and forbidding. I believe, an effort to demystify these will be very helpful.

nology and strategies would make the right mix. I would strongly recommend avoiding focus on pure technology and implementation related content like other enterprise focussed magazines. I remember about two years ago I was with Quest Software when this magazine was launched. It is now shaping up very well. As far as content is concerned, the edit team has been doing a great job. My best wishes to IT Next and its team. Jayesh George, Head, Marketing & PR, Riverbed Technology India Pvt Ltd

I was overwhelmed at receiving the Next100 award in 2011. It is a great feeling to know that I am also one of the new genres of the CIOs. I am sure it will have a positive impact on my career growth. I appreciate and thank IT Next in making my dream come true. There is a small suggestion though, that I would like to make with regard to the awards selection process. I believe it would be ideal to have a parameter to conduct certain background verification (BGV) to drive more interest amongst the nominees. This will also result in Next100 reaching out to more real and deserving people and giving them the opportunity to move up to the next level in their professional and personal lives. On another note, if there are stories planned around cloud computing, green IT, big data, project management, etc, I would be keen to contribute my writeups and views on the same. Kapil Mehrotra, Former senior manager, iYOGI Technical Services Pvt Ltd

Dr PK Mishra, Chief Technology Advisor, Adapro Consulting

As a magazine, IT Next is catering to mid-level IT managers very well. I feel the focus should remain on surveys and researched reports, on what’s hot and what’s not in the tech space just like what your magazine has been doing in the recent months. Along with this, business tech-

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Boss talk | RAJESH RANJAN

P ro d u c t M a n a g emen t

Be a Product Evangelist

he ancient proverb, ‘You are what you think’, is changing as we see technological evolutions making an impact on the individual and the industry. It is interesting to watch this evolution bring about disruptive changes in the IT managers’ world and enable them to draw clear differentiations. Needless to say, cloud computing hype is adding to the confusion and throws up several questions at IT managers. These are: How do I cope with the growing challenges? What additional skills do I need to acquire to help me grow in the organisation? And so on.

Capex vs Opex The first question confronting IT managers is that of capex and opex. We have observed the IT transformation which is taking a solutions approach to address the challenge of commoditisation of IT, with a stronger focus on services and greater support to the customers than before. The reason for this is obvious—the users are getting more demanding regarding IT, as access to information has become easy. To sustain the growing user demand and also the technological changes along with growing business expectations, IT managers are donning a new role.

“Product management is no more just a nice to have skill, but a must-have skill that IT managers like you need to grow” Understand Customer Pain

Suggestion BOX

Synergising with customer needs and pain points is the most critical. From being ‘built to order’, enterprise IT is transforming itself to being a service provider. As an IT manager, you will have to take responsibility of not only maintaining but also delivering (many a times developing as well) flexible and configurable systems. This can only be done if there is a culture of putting oneself into the customer’s shoes and thinking like one.

Product Management Skills Must New Role IT managers now need to multitask. They not only have to manage the IT infrastructure, but also need to take active part in delivering enterprise-wide platform, components, and systems along with regulatory compliance. Customers in the past were more captive. But not anymore! IT managers now need to don the role of product managers, network, study the market, and work with the engineering team to create products that can suit a wide range of customers. They are an integral part of the product pre-sales team, taking the product to newer heights, as technology enablers.

“Great inspiration on life, learning and application of concepts... what you can be !”

Product management is no more just a nice to have skill, but a must have skill that IT managers like you need to grow and sustain yourselves in the world. These skills will not only allow you to grow and take larger roles in the organisation, it will also help you understand and deal with financial data and decisions. As an IT manager, you have to contribute to organisation-wide needs analysis, manage stakeholder expectations and create strategies and synergies. Your product management skills will come in handy.

title: SURELY YOU’RE JOKING, MR . FEYNMAN AUTHOR: R ICHARD P FEYNMAN PUBLISHER: WW NORTON, 1985 PRICE: NA

The author is a Program Director, Product Engineering Services, MindTree Ltd.

A P R I L 2 0 1 2 | itnext

Opinion

money wise Jawahar Bekay, Chief Operating Officer, Microland Ltd

Develop the Go Green Plan

he concept of green is becoming indispensable in our lives. Global warming threats have made it imperative for all sectors to invest in addressing the green factor. This means producing eco-friendly power and reducing carbon footprint to a large extent, and also generating energy through renewable energy sources such as sunlight or wind power. Going green means making the basic resources such as water and air available to all in a pure and affordable fashion. For enterprises, it translates into efforts at designing products and processes that minimise the use and generation of hazardous substances. It is also about revising technology lifecycle of products from the ‘cradle to grave’ design to a ‘cradle to cradle’ one. Rising energy costs and the threat of global warming are increasing the need to look at the benefits of green technologies which help in reducing the carbon footprints, wastage and pollution.

“With the threat of global warming looming large, green tech will help reduce carbon footprint, minimise costs, wastage and pollution”

Implementing Green IT The logical progression in ensuring the green environment for the IT managers is to drive virtualisation and consolidation of IT assets. The average annual energy cost absorbed by each server is approximately $1,200, which is equally proportional to the energy and cooling cost. A server consolidation is likely to bring this down by 50 per cent. This will also reduce the idle time and increase the overall utilisation of servers. An idle server usually consumes approximately 30 per cent energy at

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peak levels. Besides, moving to thin clients will have the benefits of reducing the power consumption per seat. Using power management solutions such as turning off unused IT assets like desktops, monitors, IP phones and other power consuming devices can reduce energy requirements significantly. Today’s tools and technologies allow you to do this in a systematic and automated manner. Making the environment green would also depend upon the IT manag-

ers’ purchase decisions wherein, going for energy-efficient servers or highefficiency power supplies will reduce energy consumption. Going for energy star certified servers and peripherals is a right step in this direction. Optimising the software codes with faster and efficient algorithms will drive better energy efficiency. The data flows through pockets across IP networks from one corner to another. This comes at a huge energy cost. Efficient algorithms and optimised codes help route the data traffic to data centres where energy costs are low thereby reducing the overall carbon footprint in the data intensive systems. Some other techniques to go green are extending, recycling and reducing e-waste by stretching the IT product lifecycles without compromising efficiency and capabilities. Videoconferencing and telecommuting will reduce commuting costs, use of fossil fuels and help the green initiative tremendously. LED lighting like retrofitting existing facilities and creating new ones using LED lighting will lead to tremendous savings in energy in the long run.

Ten Steps to Go Green Develop a three-year Go Green Plan Set annual goals with clear milestones, such as reducing the total carbon footprint by x per cent by the end of the Year 1 and x+y per cent by the end of Year n of the plan through reduced power usage, low paper consumption etc Have a cross functional team in place that will own and drive these goals Create organisation-wide awareness for the initiatives Get senior management buy-in from across functions Create winnable/poster projects that will demonstrate the efficiencies earned Use the refresh cycles to make green changes Target green-field projects Extend the product life cycle Execute, review, correct course and execute again.

opinion

d e c e m B E R 2 0 1 1 | itnext

update

IBM India Launches Smart Cloud Entry

It offers Indian enterprises the building blocks to create private clouds

TECH TRENDS | IBM India has recently announced the launch of

IBM Smart Cloud Entry, specifically designed to address customer requirements in India. This is an entry-level private cloud offering that is simple to deploy and easy to use. The cloud enables organisations to quickly deploy self-service provisioning of virtualised workloads, allowing them to easily start the transition to a cloud-based infrastructure and reap the benefits of a cloud delivery model. It uses a simple interface to provide the best overview, while

Mobile Industry Predictions Survey of 2012

Mobile The chart draws upon the collective wisdom of folks who are at the centre of the mobile evolution Apple/iOS 30%

The chart indicates 40% of mobile stories are centred on mobile data growth

BlackBerry 29% Android 21% Windows Mobile/Windows Phone 18% Symbian 3% 0%

10%

15%

Source: Annual survey by C hetan Sharma C onsulti ng

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20%

25%

30%

35%

trends deals products services people

increasing IT efficiency and lowering administration costs. Users can now request and provision an environment quickly through an easy-touse web-based interface, while IT managers and others can monitor and manage this environment for improved efficiency and utilisation of the data centre. This enables rapid scalability by allowing additional servers or blades to be added to the cloud infrastructure. It also includes basic workload metering to support a pay-per-use model. “Cloud computing is much more than simply saving on IT implementation costs because it offers an enormous opportunity to innovate. With the IBM Smart Cloud Entry, we will enable customers to transition smoothly to a cloudbased infrastructure through an easy-to-use web-based interface. The solution is competitively positioned for Indian enterprises to easily tap into the benefits of cloud,” said Rahul Bindal, Vice President, Growth Initiatives, Systems and Technology Group, IBM India, South Asia. IBM, with its years of experience in implementing and optimising cloud infrastructures, has helped over 2,000 clients successfully plan and implement private clouds in the past year alone. IBM Smart Cloud Entry is a part of the SmartCloud Foundation portfolio, which contains a core set of privatecloud functions, distilled from several client engagements and cloud-based transactions.

I llustrations : prince anto ny

Update I n d u s t r y

LG ANNOUNCES OPTIMUS 3D MAX

PLAYSTATION VITA IS HERE

NEW TABLET FROM SAMSUNG Canon

LG has announced Optimus 3D’s successor—the Optimus 3D Max. It features A TI OMAP 4430 dual-core processor clocked at 1.2 GHz with a 4.3 inch WWGA 3D IPS display. Price: Not announced

It is perhaps the most powerful handheld gaming device available today. Powered by an ARM Cortex and A9 quad-core chip, it allows nearly every form of input. Price: Rs 19,990.

PowerShot SX220HS makes for a good buy since it offers better image quality and more manual control. Performancewise it is much better as it has a 14X optical zoom and comes in a compact form factor. Price: 15,515

Dell Unveils 12th Generation Enterprise Solutions TECH TIDINGS | Dell has

announced a suite of new enterprise solutions to help Indian customers deliver faster results. Organisations today are dealing with fast changing market dynamics and unpredictable demands that calls for end-to-end IT solutions that enable them to respond to customer needs. With this announcement, Dell is delivering an end-toend IT platform that raises the bar on customer-centric innovation, providing simplified management, increased performance and superior long-term value. Through the launch, Dell plans

The new range of servers helps customers deliver results faster

to provide solutions with the best value, ease of use and flexibility to its customers and to further capture the growth opportunities in the evolving Indian enterprise market.

Around The World

“Customers tell us they want a high-performance infrastructure that is easy to manage and quick in delivering business outcomes. Today we are introducing a new set of data centre infrastructure solutions that share key capabilities across our entire portfolio, from servers to storage to networking,” said Sathyaseelan, Executive Director, Enterprise Solutions, Dell India. S Sridhar, Director, Enterprise Solutions Business, Global 500, India said, “We at Dell, provide end-to-end solutions platform and comprehensive approach to server consolidation that helps our customers accelerate productivity. We also deliver customised systems, software and services that ease management and can help in cost effective scaling.”

quick byte

I llustrations : photo s. com

Users prepared to pay for Mobile Video Content A global survey has found that India is leading the way in monetising mobile content with 50% of people having paid for mobile video content. The survey by Vidiator also said this compares to just 26% in the UK and 47% in Malaysia. However, over two-thirds of people would be willing to pay for content only if service providers can address some major challenges. The survey of 1,500 people found that people’s experience of watching video content on portable devices is blighted by problems.

Rajendra S Pawar, Chairman, NASSCOM

“India’s IT and ITes sectors will cross the $100-bn mark this fiscal but growth will slow down next fiscal as concerns over global economic situation loom large”

A P R I L 2 0 1 2 | itnext

update

Subroto Bagchi Elected Chairman of MindTree TECH TRENDS | MindTree Ltd,

Interview NIPUN MEHROTRA VP & GM, Sales & Business Development ibm India, South Asia

IT NEXT: What does the new agreement between IBM and Ingersoll Rand offer?

Subroto Bagchi is the newly appointed Chairman of MindTree Ltd

expertise-led and culturebacked organisation focussed on developing deep engagements with our clients.” Hieronimus will continue on the Board as Vice Chairman and will chair the Nomination and Governance and the Investor Grievances committees.

Omega Chooses Leviton Leviton. The 18,500 sq ft building was completed earlier this year and that its India division has been selected operations went live in mid-June. as the exclusive structured cabling soluLeviton CAT 6 UTP cabling was tions provider to Omega Healthcare, run throughout the facility, and the an offshore provider of medical coding, workstations and telecom room are billing, claims processing and accounts connected with the Leviton QuickPort receivable management for US CustomCAT 6 modular system: Blue and yellow ers. The company chose Leviton due to connectors for redundancy; the results of performance testBooted patch cords; Excella ing against several competitors’ wallplates and 24-port angled solutions, and Leviton’s brand patch panels. “Leviton has recognition and popularity. been an exceptional vendor Omega Healthcare’s recorded by throughout this project,” said newest facility in Trichy Indian BPO Kamalraj Chandrasekaran, (Tiruchirappalli), Tamil IN EXPORTS Associate VP, Omega Nadu, India is the first DURING 2011 Healthcare. to be connected through

tech trends | Leviton has announced

$11 billion

MEHROTRA: Buildings in India account for 30 per cent of energy consumption. Of this, a major consumption is due to HVAC (heating, ventilatation and air-conditioning) and lighting. As the Indian economy grows, it becomes essential to drive energyefficiency. The agreement between IBM and Ingersoll Rand will make available remote energy and asset management solutions to drive greater energy efficiency for organisations. This leverages IBM’s Intelligent Building Management (IIBM) system that is a combination of monitoring, asset management and advanced analytics along with Ingersoll Rand’s Energy optimisation technologies to create smarter buildings. How would IBM’s technologies help in smarter buildings? Technology can make it possible to listen to the abundance of information emitted from buildings. IBM is working towards building a smarter planet and its software, hardware and services help create, manage and maintain the world’s most intelligent and interconnected infrastructure from smarter buildings and cities.

Photo graphy: Jayan K Narayanan

a global IT and Product Engineering Services Company, has announced that Subroto Bagchi and Albert Hieronimus will assume new roles in the Company’s Board of Directors as Chairman and Vice Chairman, respectively, from April 1, 2012. “MindTree is now poised for scaling greater heights. Bagchi is clearly the best man for the job in this next phase of growth, profitability and customer satisfaction” said Hieronimus. Speaking on his appointment, Bagchi said, “We are grateful to Hieronimus and the Board of Directors for their strong support to MindTree over the years. It is an honour to be elected as Chairman of the Board of one of the most admired companies in the industry. Along with Krishnakumar’s support and the guidance by the Board of Directors, we will build an

What technologies go into IBM’s smarter buildings? Today buildings are talking and we need to listen to their data so big data comes into the picture. Collecting, managing and analysing data gives intelligence to energy and facilities management. By Manu Sharma

itnext | A P R I L 2 0 1 2

update

GoDB Tech and Intel Jointly Launch Project Darpan Project Darpan is a free of cost, multilingual graphical UI initiative, to simplify the computing experience

Tech Tidings| GoDB Tech and Intel have announced the launch of ‘Project Darpan’, a free of cost, multilingual user interface (UI) initiative, to simplify the computing experience for the common man and thereby increase the PC penetration in the Indian market. GoDB’s Darpan user interface will provide graphical access to the internet and provide the consumer the comfort of accessing relevant Indian content. Project Darpan is a software application based on an intensive research study conducted by Intel to explore ways to improve usage of computing devices among masses. The research also tried to find out methods to remove fear of technology

News @ blog

that prevents usage of internet and computing in India. The local language effort of Darpan will provide menus/ commands of Darpan application in six Indian languages. Mahavir Chand, Director, GoDB Tech, said, “The internet browsing experience is often limited to technology savvy and English literate users. Project Darpan will simplify the PC user experience for the common man and provide an easy to use internet graphical user interface.” It will create an ecosystem of content providers and innovative software companies which will impact the consumption of internet content in a big way.

Tech Tidings

KolorKode Installs HP Offset Press Hewlett-Packard has announced the launch of its first HP Indigo W7200 Digital Offset press for the Indian market. KolorKode grabs the first mover advantage to enhance its digital printing capabilities by installing the press in its printing press located in Bengaluru. KolorKode Digital Press is a reputable name in the printing industry in India. The company offers 360 degree printing assistance and in a short time, has evolved to become a one-stop solution provider in printing and communication, specialising in delivering fast, custom, short-run, on-demand solutions. Kayu Dhanbhoora, MD, KolorKode Digital Press, commented, “With the installation of India’s first HP Indigo W7200 we will be able to take on larger volume runs and provide a faster alternative to offset printing.” It caters to segments which include on-demand, short-run books, journals, manuals, brochures, catalogues, marketing collateral, yearbooks and magazines with unmatched offset quality and high-impact, high-volume personalised direct marketing campaigns in full colour.

Will Lenovo be the first to market Windows 8 tablet?

Blogs report that PC makers are fighting to be first in line to build hardware for Microsoft’s new OS

Windows 8 won’t be ready until fall, but that’s not stopping hardware makers from fighting to be the first to build hardware for Microsoft’s new operating system. Reports say Lenovo is planning to be the ‘first to market’ with a Windows 8 tablet. It says Lenovo will ship the device in October and it will have an Intel chip. It could be the one suspect: the IdeaPad Yoga. A P R I L 2 0 1 2 | itnext

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Hot technologies | cover story

Hot Technologies imag ing: shigil n photog raphy: jiten gandhi

Best ways to get enterprise deployments right By n g e e t h a

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cover story | Hot technologies

ech implementations are tricky and can really make or break a technology project. The success of any project implementation depends on various factors as does mastering the best practices associated with it. IT variables to success include leadership exhibited by the IT team to business group buy-in; quality of training to quality of products; technological roadmap to understanding of the business requirements; investment planning to the methodology of executing the project, etc. Most often, we observe that any new technology that creates a buzz in the market endorsed by a few early adopters, makes curious IT heads determined to bring it on board too. Industry has ample records of such hasty moves —mostly negative.

cloud computing, virtualisation, green IT, business intelligence, storage management and information security in 2012. The data on each technology was arrived at through subsequent surveys in March. The surveys attempted to understand the inherent challenges of each technology as faced by IT managers; the various business issues and requirements that prompted them to look at the particular technology, best practices to be adhered to for successful deployment of the technology and various ways to get it off the ground without a hitch. The graphs and percentages indicated across the technologies may not round off to a perfect 100, as the readers were allowed to tick multiple options.

Technologies for 2012

Each technology has its attendant challenges and there is no rule of thumb to define the exact challenges, best practices, investments, etc. However, a logical approach is mandatory and aligning the technology goal with the business goal is the key to success. The philosophy behind any technology implementation, be it cloud, virtualisation, BI or others, does not change as there are certain defined rules of engagement between various stakeholders. What could be different is investment planning, capacity planning, choosing the right partner, need for technology based on the existing life cycle management and so on. As Dhruv Singhal, Lead, Cloud Computing, Oracle India points, “For IT managers, the challenges related to any technology are prescribing clear business SLAs and evolving the capability to monitor and manoeuvre it keeping the complete infrastructure life cycle management in view.” Every technology implementation is bound to have certain lacunae which have to be dealt with. IT managers are prone to making certain common mistakes which might affect the entire project implementation and impact the end result.

IT Next’s cover story features the top technologies that would be the major focus and investment areas this year. The findings are based on the survey we carried out among the IT manager community in January this year. The feedback of the community has firmly put the spotlight on technologies such as

Get the Best

“The challenges related to any technology for IT managers are around prescribing clear SLAs and evolving the capability to monitor and manoeuvre it” —Dhruv Singhal Lead-Cloud Computing, Oracle India

Hot technologies | cover story For example, in complex technologies like business intelligence, IT managers are wooed by its business benefits and take a big bang approach to deployment or assume that the data is structured and clean and will provide the desired result. Change management process is one feature most IT managers overlook, and experts opine that this has a major impact on the implementation process and the RoI. There are instances which at the outset may look small, but have adverse manifestations if not addressed carefully.

From a best practice standpoint, everything is related to data and information, irrespective of the technology that is deployed. Singhal says, “As a best practice it is critical to focus on data integration, the level of integration desired and the applications that need integration. Besides, the process of integrating these with appropriate tools will ultimately determine the project’s success.” While mastering these hot technologies is essential, the bigger game is to get the rules right. Read on to learn more…

On a Virtual Mode VIrtualisation

t would not be an exaggeration to say that virtualisation as a technology is invading most customer places across industries. IT Next survey indicated that virtualisation is one of the technologies that would keep IT managers engaged, with nearly 60 per cent of them vouching for it. This encapsulates all the virtualisation categories—server, storage and desktop. It is imperative here to provide insights into the various challenges that the technology is throwing up at IT managers related to business, implementation, infrastructure and others. Against this backdrop, it becomes a prerequisite to discuss the growth drivers for virtualisation and then recommend solutions that will enable IT managers to develop better strategies around it.

Leaning Towards Virtualisation Virtualisation is going through a cultural shift and

IT managers are doing the necessary calibrations and corrections to adopt the best virtualisation practices for better business benefits

hence, application owner buying is very important. IT managers have come to a stage where they are forming core virtualisation teams as agents of change to ensure early success of their projects. Most companies that we spoke with, have allocated over Rs 50 lakh (minimum) in their budget to make an investment in virtualisation technologies and tools. IT Next survey indicated that 100 per cent respondents have invested in server virtualisation. About 40 per cent of them have gone in for storage virtualisation and 20 per cent have taken to desktop virtualisation and enterprise applications virtualisation respectively. The year 2012 holds greater promise for server and desktop virtualisation, as despite initial hiccups in implementation, IT managers are bent upon making the technology all pervasive. According to Paul Harapin, Vice President, Business Development and Cloud, Asia Pacific Japan, VMware, it is not the budgetary constraint that is the reason for lower uptake of virtualisation, but the organisational culture, on which IT managers need to train their spotlights.

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cover story | Hot technologies What are the main challenges that you have faced while deploying or implementing virtualisation in your organisation? (Select all that apply)

80.0%

80 70

20 10

0.0%

20.0%

40.0%

60.0%

0.0%

Most often, as Harapin observes, the problem areas within the organisation will lead to opportunities, though IT managers need to be cautious about certain tricky ones before implementing a full-fledged virtualisation solution. As per the IT Next survey, the primary factor driving the need for virtualisation is centralisation of IT infrastructure and improvement of RoI from existing investments. About 80 per cent of the respondents indicated that business growth is the compelling reason for investing in virtualisation technology, be it around server, desktop or storage. Rajat Mehta, Country Head, Emerging Business, PSG India, Hewlett-Packard India Sales Pvt Ltd, believes that diverse and distributed workforce, need for anytime and anywhere compute, elasticity and dynamic provisioning and green computing are creating the need for desktop virtualisation. Seemant Chaudhry, Director, Enterprise, Citrix Systems India Pvt, broadly listed out flexibility of operations, time taken to hit the market, risk mitigation factors, executive mobility and the like as factors fuelling the need for desktop virtualisation in particular, and virtualisation at large.

80.0%

Response Percent

20.0% 0.0%

Business Drivers

0 Answer Options Lack of management tools associated with large scale virtualisation, Performance Optimisation/Training, Security and Compliance, Unused virtualisation features, Congested sub-systems, Virtualising licence issues, Lack of staff/skills, Low awareness of utilities/ management software, Lack of skills to implement technology effectively without disrupting the existing environment, Increase in risk profile

According to Vijay Sethi, VP and CIO, Hero MotoCorp Ltd, any company which has a reasonably large IT landscape is a perfect candidate for server virtualisation, as in most companies server utilisation is very low. The need for virtualisation arises, Sethi says, owing to space crunch in the data centre and/or energy bill going through the roof. Such a scenario provides a huge opportunity for cost saving to the organisation if virtualisation is adopted. The key reason for Rahul Mahajan, AVP-IT, K Raheja Corp, to adopt server virtualisation was that the server room was cluttered hosting more than 40 servers, while it was using a very small part of the server resource. Majority of these servers were of old technology and were past their use by date. It was also extremely difficult for the IT team to maintain these servers as support services had ceased from the principal company.

Implementation Hiccups The challenge for most IT managers is inappropri-

â&#x20AC;&#x153;The challenges are around selection of a solution and deciding what mission-critical applications to includeâ&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Rahul Mahajan, AVP-IT, K Raheja Corp

Hot technologies | cover story

“IT managers should take operational readiness into consideration while defining the architecture, capacity planning and process change before deploying virtualisation technology” —Paul Harapin VP, Business Development & Cloud, Asia Pacific Japan, VMware

ate estimation and planning which results into a mess. VMware’s Harapin observes that customers most often fail to conduct proper assessment of their data, the changed processes and capacity planning, which then results in bottlenecks in implementation of virtualisation technology. Mahajan says that the implementation challenges are around selection of a solution, taking a decision whether to, and what mission-critical applications to include in the virtualised stack, limited data centre resources like UPS power, cooling capacity, and space in server room to accommodate this parallel set-up for a month, etc. The key concerns for IT managers, according to Sethi, are with regard to management issues and software licensing, with the latter becoming unmanageable as the server sprawl and licensing requirements increase. “IT managers have difficulty finding or applying adequate monitoring and management tools that work across both virtual and physical landscapes,” says Sethi. IT Next survey indicated that 80 per cent of the respondents are challenged by the virtualisation software licence procurement and performance optimisation combined with training issues. Irrespective of the virtualisation technology, the hitch is also around capacity planning, according to HP’s Mehta, who believes legacy systems and applications, and lack of understanding of IT needs by decision-makers outside of IT are posing to be major hurdles in the adoption of virtualisation.

before deploying virtualisation technology.” Besides, he says it is essential to design the big picture, but deploy incrementally and target initial RoI within six months. Aligning with a key business driver is essential as a starting point. Citrix’s Chaudhry believes that choosing a vendor who has a comprehensive portfolio which enables proper consolidation of various applications is critical in virtualisation implementation planning. Sethi empathises with most IT managers over the challenges they face and recommends that they build a roadmap as a first step, factoring infrastructure planning in it—both the pre and post virtualisation process implementation. “It is essential to build a case in terms of resource utilisation, power and space saving, do a PoC, invest in training, plan a roll-out with test, QA environment and then get into production environment.” Mahajan shares his experience on adopting a best practice saying, “We have implemented VMware’s ESX Server virtualisation platform, besides as a best practice, deployed vMotion for migrating virtual machines with zero time; Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) for resource balancing aligned with our business goals

What are the main business factors that are driving investments in enterprise virtualisation solutions in your organisation ? (Select all that apply) 80.0% 0.0% 0.0% 20.0%

Smart Practices Virtualisation can prove to be a smart technology if IT managers adopt certain practices to make the infrastructure ready. Harapin says, “IT managers should take operational readiness into consideration while defining the architecture, capacity planning and process change

20.0% 0.0% 20.0% 0

60.0%

100.0% 100.0%

40.0%

100

Answer Options Growth or increase in business, Geographic expansion of the organisation, Setting up of new plants/manufacturing facilities, Adoption of new business models by the organisation, Need to increase operational efficiency, Centralisation of IT infrastructure/improvement of RoI from existing investments, Improving or enhancing customer service, Responding to demand from business partners, Regulatory compliance requirements, Need to keep up with the norms/standards for our industry, Need to enable staff with mobility solutions

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Hot technologies | cover story

Best Practices Choose technology solution, technology partner and implementation partner carefully Carry out appropriate infrastructure assessment Establish a phased workload selection plan End-to-end blueprint is essential Dynamic resource management Application and hardware provisioning Prepare to socialise benefits to business owners

and use the feature of high availability across the entire virtualised IT environment without the cost or complexity of traditional clustering solutions. These have proved beneficial for us.â&#x20AC;? Mehta opines that virtualisation should be an endto-end blueprint with phase-wise implementation for which calibrations and corrections are a must in the RoI measurement. By following these practices, virtualisation technology can lead to the desired impact and will make the life of IT managers easy. No wonder then that 100 per cent of the IT Next survey respondents aspire to bring in virtualisation in 2012.

cloud computing

Though wary on the security front, the IT manager community is confident of the benefits of the cloud By M a n u S h a rma

loud computing is fast gaining popularity as a key information technology. Nearly every enterprise is at some stage of evaluating or deploying cloud solutions. Even as enterprises turn to the cloud to reduce costs, streamline staff, and increase efficiencies, some IT managers and CIOs remain concerned about the security of their applications and data. While software-as-a-service (SaaS) has gained popularity among security solutions, many firms are still wary of handing over their application security to some unknown entity. The Cloud Computing Survey 2012, conducted by IT Next dwelt on the business benefits, challenges and expectations from the cloud and the applications hosted on it.

Microsoft Corp India says, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Enterprises understand the benefits cloud offers and are beginning to host some applications on it. However, security and privacy remain the main challenges for them.â&#x20AC;? In the survey, 100 per cent of the respondents (mostly CIOs and IT managers across verticals)

Lured by Cloud Benefits

Response Percent

66.7%

70 60 50

33.3% 0.0%

0.0%

33.3% 0.0%

33.3%

0.0%

Sanjay Manchanda, Director and Group Head,

What is the present status of cloud computing at your company?

Answer Options Using hybrid cloud computing, Have gone in for Private cloud, Using the public cloud computing model, We have plans to implement private cloud computing in 2012, We are implementing public cloud computing in 2012, We are implementing public and private cloud computing in 2012, We had to pull back on our public cloud implementation, We had to pull back on our private cloud implementation, We will consider hybrid cloud implementation, We have no plans to implement public or private cloud computing

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cover story | Hot technologies

Best Practices on cloud Measuring RoI at regular intervals is critical for enterprises Organisations need to categorise and institute performance measurement practices, to track the performance before and after cloud implementation The top management commitment is necessary to drive this important enterprise-wide initiative through extensive involvement of senior executives and a clear communication on the tangible and intangible RoI expected from the cloud enterprise applications Involving both the business and IT professionals throughout the implementation process is essential to ensure widespread adoption of cloud enterprise application across the organisation The prime focus of business transformation should be process optimisation and tailoring the functionality to the organisational vision with best business practices Formulate a targeted, realistic plan for adoption. Start with simple applications and services before migrating high-risk and missioncritical applications to the cloud Assessing the network bandwidth requirements for remote access, think through how you will handle IT services integration, and deliver against service level agreements Source: Sundara Raman, VP- RODE Product Development, Ramco Systems.

said that cloud computing is in a nascent stage but the software housed in the cloud can be beneficial as it can be easily accessed anywhere, anytime, providing an opportunity for the business to grow rapidly. All the survey participants are keen on moving certain non-confidential applications like CRM, brand websites, financial applications and HR to the cloud or plan to do so this year. However, they are sceptical of moving confidential data on the public cloud. About 33.3 per cent of the participants reported reduced capex; better RoI on IT investments and better utilisation of resources using cloud model. The survey indicated that 3.3 per cent of the respondents have been trying out hybrid or private and public cloud models, while 66.7 per cent revealed their plans to implement private cloud computing in 2012. About 77.7 per cent said they would roll out their cloud plans over the next six to 12 months. Pawan Bakshi, Manager-IT, Amway India Enterprises Pvt Ltd said, “We have opted for private cloud and will roll out our cloud plan over the next six to 12 months. We will move some applications including CRM, financial applications and HR to the cloud by 2012.” Santanu Ghose, Country Head, Converged Infrastructure Solutions, HP India, finds customers have a positive attitude towards cloud. “With the cost of manpower rising, technology moving fast and business challenges escalating combined with the pressure on capex and opex affecting IT heads, cloud is being seriously considered across enterprises.” Ghose sees the trend of cloud mapping across large enterprises to create business differentiators. “Most large enterprises, for instance banks, are depending upon cloud models. The shorter-term

“We have opted for private cloud and will roll out our cloud plan over the next six to 12 months and move some applications on it by 2012” —Pawan Bakshi Manager-IT, Amway India Enterprises Pvt Ltd

Hot technologies | cover story projects and campaigns are leveraging cloud models, which are outsourced to the cloud service providers as they are efficient and cost-effective.”

Major Challenges on the Cloud IT Next survey revealed that 66.7 per cent of IT managers found that virtual and physical management tools are required to encompass the entire environment and also that it is a complex vendor landscape, while 33.3 per cent said that high costs have been a challenge. Most agreed that business groups’ expectations from the cloud are increased RoI on infrastructure and IT as a whole, and lower IT spending, besides better utilisation of resources, ease of management and lower capex. One of the biggest challenges, according to Bakshi,

this is exorbitantly costly if a firm is to have its onsite applications certified. Besides, reports indicate that the level of availability, security, backup and disaster recovery offered by a SaaS supplier greatly exceeds what a company can provide if the application is housed onsite. Also, any e-commerce, CRM, or ERP application will run on a global or local scale in less time using SaaS than the time taken to prepare software and servers onsite.

Taking Disadvantages in Stride On the flip side of the cloud, as per the IT Next survey are the problems associated with system upgrades, uptime, scalability, maintenance, and security. These are often left to the cloud vendor and have kept several IT managers away. Some other common disad-

“The shorter-term projects and campaigns are increasingly leveraging cloud models, which are outsourced to cloud service providers for better cost efficiency” —Santanu Ghose Country Head, Converged Infrastructure Solutions, HP India

is the complex vendor landscape and too many point products. While a leading cloud provider, Sundara Raman, VP-RODE, Product Development, Ramco Systems, says their customers are using the public cloud computing model. He feels his customers fear the risk of lock-in and, as such, customisation is the biggest challenge on the cloud. Cloud vendors have architected cloud applications with the bottom-up approach to ensure better availability of applications as compared to traditional applications, which are housed onsite. According to Raman, most of the cloud computing suppliers commit 99.5 per cent uptime and offer data security, which is compliant with Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. However,

vantages include restrictions in the applications, operating systems, and infrastructure options. The most irking factor for IT managers is that cloud service providers do not add any value, as they can only offer what already exists. Also, a customer doesn’t really know where the data is stored because everything is on the cloud. But as a best practice, IT managers are opting for PCI Compliance, Private VLANs, network-layer firewalls and DdoS, and Virtual Private Network as the best security measures. Among the others, 34 per cent of the respondents opted for lower capex, more streamlined business process; better RoI on IT investments and data centre efficiency as the business benefits they would like to observe using cloud.

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information security

Mastering Security Practices

The need to maintain company reputation is motivating IT heads to adopt foolproof security

eakage of information and data and evolution of new threats is the order of the day across the globe and every IT manager is tasked to safeguard critical information. As threats become sophisticated, the challenges around information security are also becoming multifold. Vendors like Check Point observe that organisations of all sizes are being forced to re-evaluate their risk management strategies in the light of emerging technology trends and prescriptive c o m p l i a n c e requirements. Besides, certain regulatory mandates are also driving security deployments across companies. IT Next survey tried to understand the security challenges that are fuelling technology deployments and the best practices being adopted by managers to address emerging threats.

Secure IT Proactively protecting business against new threats Coping with zero day threats Assessing if security operational cost is rising with increased security complexity Comply with government and state regulations Leverage virtualisation as a security defence

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Organisations can protect their network and end points with unique browser virtualisation technology Developing a risk-based model by examining the potential frequency of various adverse events Devise operational procedures for controlling various key types of information

The survey indicated that over 66 per cent of IT managers felt security deployments to be important to business reputation. Over 60 per cent of the respondents found security deployment as being critical to ensure business continuity or disaster recovery and to maintain internal policy compliance as part of the corporate norms, while over 45 per cent of them felt the need to have good security solutions due to customer demand.

Why Threatened? The key concerns for IT heads as Michael Sentonas, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Asia Pacific, McAfee observes are, “The sophisticated nature of virus attacks on the intellectual property (IP) of the customers is putting serious pressure on IT heads to bring in sophisticated tools to counter them.” Sentonas opines that vertical-specific security challenges and threats combined with mobility, new technologies such as cloud, social media, imaging solutions, etc, are adding to the challenges. According to Sunil Sharma, VP, Cyberoam, rising costs are a challenge for any IT manager who has to deal with multiple network security solutions, one on top of the other. The basic rule is to understand what threats are out there and what they need to do to protect themselves from them, says Amit Nath, Country Manager, India & SAARC, Trend Micro and adds, “as business volume increases, IT heads are unable to completely understand the large number of complex information being collated.” It is beyond doubt that new threats are emerging and hackers are evolving. But IT managers have to deal with bigger issues than these. It could be product related, technology related, trend related and basic solutions specific too. The IT managers need to understand which of them would address their concerns.

Hot technologies | cover story While new viruses and security threats are invading the customer place, the key concern that Parag Deodhar, Chief Risk Officer and VP of Program Management and Process Excellence, Bharti AXA General Insurance Co Ltd, lists is: “Though many products claim to meet all requirements, it is difficult to find a perfect fit for your environment and business requirements. If by chance one fits, it is generally way over the budget.” Bhavanishankar Ramarao, Senior Group Manager, CISO-IS, iGatepatni Systems, admits, “While the business wants us to enable security for various devices like smartphones, laptops, tablets etc, the reality is that security is still in the nascent stage for these technologies.” Bipin Kumar Amin, Principle Consultant, Borderless Networks-Security, Cisco, believes that there are three major trends sweeping through the enterprise which are transforming business and forcing a fundamental shift in how security is developed and deployed. These include rapid rise of consumerised endpoint, the onset of virtualisation and cloud computing, and the growing use of highdefinition video conferencing.

Securing BYOD Bring your own device (BYOD) is emerging as a necessary evil for most companies and increasing security heads’ concerns. The IT Next survey revealed that over 53.3 per cent of the security heads across

What are the best security practices you are recommending in your organisation? Response Percent

13.3% 53.3% 33.3%

20.0%

40.0% 13.3%

26.7%

20.0% 20.0%

53.3%

33.3

20.0%

Answer Options Deploying ISO standards, Going in for Outsourced model for security implementations, Introducing standards like CSI, ISF, BS2599, ISA, Acquiring EV SSL Certificates, Establish DNS management program, DLP, Stringent SLAs, Social and Compliance audits, Implement Security Systems Development Lifecycle Policy, Establish a comprehensive ISMS program, Regular assessment of internet facing infrastructure, Internal security training for the employees, Use of ‘Out of Band’ verification mechanisms

verticals would allow only a few executives to bring their own devices to ease the process. Over 46.7 per cent of them said that they would allow only company-given devices for business applications. About 33.3 per cent of the respondents would enable limited or selected applications to be run on mobile devices. Cisco’s Amin says, “To create an actionable capacity plan, it’s vital to have a historical point of view into the types of devices in your network, their relative growth, and the demands they place on network resources.” To effectively manage a network, security heads must include all device and user combinations, including guest users. iGatepatni’s Ramarao points, out, “With regard to BYOD, we are looking at MDM solutions to ensure right kinds of devices register to this service so that we can track them.”

Tighten the Leaks Like any industry, IT security too has certain best practices

“Implement good compliance process which gives you access to information” —Michael Sentonas, VP&CTO, Asia Pacific, McAfee

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“While many products claim to meet all requirements, it is difficult to find a perfect fit for your environment” —Parag Deodhar Chief Risk Officer & VP-Program Management and Process Excellence, Bharti AXA General Insurance Co Ltd

that the security chiefs need to adhere to. Several experiments are made to address challenges thrown up at various phases from the business users. However, as a prerequisite, Sentonas suggests, “Implement good compliance process which gives you access to information around network control, production, and other areas on an everyday basis and set up tools which can have self controls and protect themselves.” About 53.3 per cent of the participants of the IT Next survey indicated that internal security training for the employees is crucial, besides setting up DLP solutions at various levels. Bharti AXA’s Deodhar who spends approximately Rs 2 crore on security, believes in implementing a data privacy policy in line with new regulations, implementing comprehensive DLP solution with SSL inspection, besides relevant solutions to secure corporate data on BYOD. While iGatepatni, which spends around Rs 2.5 crore on IT security, recommends intrusion prevention system, data

How are you tackling the security issues arising from the trend of BYOD (Bring your own device)?

20.

.0%

20.0% 20.0

Response Percent

33.3%

46.7%

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53.3%

Answer Options We allow only company-given devices for business apps, We allow only a few executives to bring their own devices, We allow only limited or selected applications to be run on mobile devices, We are concerned about it, but not done anything yet, We are concerned and have put in place some policies, We are concerned and have deployed some solutions, BYOD security does not affect us as of now

leakage prevention and mobile data management solutions as best practice. Upasna Saluja, Operational Resiliency Manager, Product and Infrastructure Risk Management, Thomson Reuters, has assigned budget of $50 million towards security, which is of high priority. The best practices that Saluja swears by are: “Periodic and random audit, compliance, improving documentation, segregation of duties to prevent incidents, effective monitoring to have good response in first place rather than to reacting later, and so on.” Cyberoam’s Sharma points out, “Understanding the implications of applicable regulations, performing a security risk assessment and understand the relevance and meaning of achieving compliance are critical. The IT heads then need to understand the work effort that will be required to make compliance a reality.” Having a business-based security framework built upon leading practices that not only allows compliance with policy and regulations, but also a way to proactively identify risks, document compliance gaps, and report the state of the current security environment, imperative. The security framework must provide a sustainable process that allows ongoing management of risks and compliance and must be built upon leading practices, accepted standards, contractual requirements, and applicable laws. Cisco’s Amin says that IT managers must track new business models on the cloud, and if employees of the company use personal smartphones/tablets/ PCs/others for work, ensure that they are protected against vulnerabilities introduced by collaboration tools and social media sites and so on.” Some of the other smart moves for IT managers would be deploying ISO standards, opting for outsourced model for implementing security solutions, putting place stringent SLAs, ensure regular assessment of internet facing infrastructure, and similar precautions to ensure security.

Hot technologies | cover story

Intelligence Multiplied business intelligence

While business intelligence (BI) is being considered a white elephant by many in enterprise, IT managers are grappling with the challenges of empowering their organisations with BI solutions. Most agree that change in business dynamics has revolutionised information consumption and usability pattern. There are umpteen reasons for deploying BI solutions. As per the IT Next survey, BI is one of the technologies that is going to make an impact this year and will be a growth driver too. However, the conservative attitude and approach of the top management to BI is restricting IT managers from spreading the intelligence. Despite these challenges, IT managers are not ready to give up finding new ways to try this technology and prove its benefits to their top management.

IT managers are increasingly falling back on business intelligence to empower their organisations providing information in real time

Need Based Creating a need is very crucial for any technology to sustain or thrive. BI vendors and IT managers have been trying to create such a need and are working out ways to drive best practices around BI which would make sense at the end of the day. Akash Sahni, Sales Director, EPM & BI Applications, Oracle India says, “Change in business dynamics has led organisations to leverage BI tools and applications that provide much more than just access to information.” The IT Next survey indicated that 83.3 per cent of the participants found need for strategic planning, spotting market trends and intelligence, and providing information in real time to be the strong reasons for looking at business intelligence solution this year. KN Swaminathan, GM-IS, TVS Motors, says, “There is a mountain of data generated, thanks to the

“The effort of sieving out the appropriate solution is an intensive and time consuming exercise” —K N Swaminathan, GM-IS, TVS Motors

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“Greater value comes when BI is applied to make the organisation more effective” —Akash Sahni, Sales Director, EPM & BI Applications, Oracle India

various ERP implementations, information available on the web, social websites, etc, which have contributed to this deluge. I need a solution that can help me manage this intelligently and assist in making a quick summary, y convert it into meaningful information to give to my top management in real time.” The answer to these, Swaminathan thinks, lies in deploying an appropriate BI solution. Sanjay Mehta, CEO of MAIA Intelligence finds the market for BI platforms to be one of the fastest growing software markets despite sluggish economic growth. “Organisations continue to turn to BI as a vital tool for smarter, more agile and efficient business and are increasing the current usage scenario from just an information delivery mechanism,” says Mehta. As per Gartner’s annual global CIO survey, BI was ranked No. 5 on the list of the top 10 technology priorities in 2011. The key driver for BI as per Vinay Hinge, IT Consultant, BI & BA, is the growing need

What do you think are the reasons for deploying BI?

83.3% 50.0% 83.3% 16.7% 83.3% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0

Response Percent

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100

Answer Options Strategic planning, Product/market analytics, Market trends and intelligence, Streamlining business processes, To provide Information in realtime, Supply chain analytics, Others –pls specify, None

for BI in segments like retail and banking which is core to their operations and is considered as a part of their basic solution stack. “Changes in leadership or ownership, new initiatives such as entry into new markets, product launch, new business or change in business model, etc, are driving BI adoption,” says Hinge.

Why is it a Constraint? The challenges are several, say most IT managers. According to the IT Next survey, nearly 50 per cent of the participants find hiccups around the implementation process which they say is too long. There is lack of business group’s involvement and as the data is not structured, this could be reason for not getting the top management’s nod for BI. It’s been tough for IT managers to tide over these initial challenges. TVS’s Swaminathan has listed out four challenges confronting his team. A) Identifying detailed requirements of users, and as they are senior level executives, there are many unstated ones that need to be met B) There are myriad BI vendors who make tall claims about various solutions capability. It is an effort steering through all solutions and sieving out the appropriate one C) The technical challenge, which involves the process of mapping the source and target for the data, which is a huge task in itself d) Sustenance is the fourth challenge, which is a purely market related change

Hot technologies | cover story

Playing Safe with BI There are several innovations that BI is throwing p that are being tracked, and a few of them are being adopted by IT managers. Rajasekar Nonburaj, Head, BI professionals Group, opines that the best innovation is the mobile BI, where IT has the ability to view real-time data and features like dashboard and drill down. However, Nonburaj says, “Before deploying BI, the IT managers need to make sure that they have the perfect data available, so that it is easy to do analysis and reporting with it. Analysis of the existing architecture has to be done before deploying BI solutions.” Nonburaj recommends deploying a perfect fit BI tool rather than going for a word-of-mouth recommended one and says you must ask for a POC from the vendor, get it validated in the present environment and do an analysis. As a best practice, Oracle’s Sahni points out, “By consolidating common BI technology standards for the enterprise, organisations can reduce costs associated with training, system maintenance, redundant software licence and maintenance agreements, hardware redundancy, and other variables that impact TCO.”

50.0%

0.0%

16.7%

33.3%

50.0%

What are the top most business challenges in deploying Business Intelligence?

33.3%

According to MAIA’s Mehta, the primary business challenge for IT heads in deploying BI is the fact that business heads are not convinced by the idea of investing into a new technology in these cash crunch times. “Getting the right people on a project, particularly strong leadership from the top, is the key to any IT project and another spin on this point could be the importance of setting the right expectations and communicating it well to avoid disappointment for the business users,” points Mehta. Mehta says that change (process) management could be another challenge IT heads face while deploying BI. Many companies have formed, over time, as islands of information with many “versions of the truth”. A BI project seeks authoritative sources of data that define limited, concrete dimensional definitions of the business and use it to perform reporting. Getting multiple departments on the same page when defining what needs to be reported (i.e. what is a “customer”, what is a “product”, etc) can be a daunting task. Strong change management, either controlled from the technical and/or business side (preferred) is challenging. But despite the challenges, hope is not lost. IT managers are convinced about the business benefits that BI offers and the values it adds to business growth.

Answer Options Lack of proper tool from any vendor, Difficult to take a quick analysis of the business requirement, Implementation Process is long, BI is very expensive, Performance is not assured or subject to Terms and conditions, Lack of business group involvement, Data is not structured, No quality data available, Promise versus delivery gap is huge, Business outcome is not as expected

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“At the same time, business rules, metrics and definitions on user access privileges can be centralised to provide information that is more accurate, consistent, and secure,” he adds. Most organisations initially start by focussing on how to make enterprise reporting and analysis more efficient by compressing the time and expense of delivering critical information. “Greater value comes when BI is applied to make the organisation more effective through better business processes and greater alignment with business goals and plans,” says Sahni. Swaminathan has been using BI and analytics both for improving operational performance and for strategy execution. As said, operational performance is tracked through plan versus actual, improvement over previous year and alerts for exceptions.

Common Mistakes in BI G oing Big Bang: You may underestimate challenges. It’s better to go for limited scope pilot and then scale it up E xpecting clean data: There is nothing like clean data. So make sure that the project / deployment should work with less than perfect data C ompeting with Excel: Many warriors have fallen flat trying to kill Excel. Make Excel an important part of BI landscape I nability to find takers:

Without the champions and early adopters, BI projects cannot be sustained D o not go by pre-sales promises of vendors: Instead experiment with the tools and your own data. Understand the infrastructure requirements properly. Just going by size, may not do C hange management: BI projects succeed where the organisation has data culture. If your organisation does not have one, focus on it

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cover story | Hot technologies “Strategically, we have been using BI for benchmarking against competition and identifying patterns and trends in our data which we can leverage to deliver better products to our customers,” adds Swaminathan. Hinge says, “To get off the ground, you may not need big investments on day one. MS SQL has features such as SQL Reporting Services and SQL Analytical Services, which you can start using

without buying separate licences (if you already have MS SQL). Even BIG DATA tools such a Hadoop are free as an open source offering. Instead, if you have budget, use it on services such as consulting and training,” adds Hinge. To conclude, as pointed out by the IT Next survey, business intelligence tools are the need of the hour for enterprises to remain competitive.

Making Green All Pervasive green it

Tech teams are implementing green habits across the organisation for cost benefits and to improve energy efficiency

Global warming is alarming all industries and sending out signals in various forms to drive the green message through them. Adhering to the green credo, many companies across the globe are making their ‘conserve energy’ their marketing mantra and it is the IT manager’s task to ensure that the business is aligned to this goal. The IT Next survey findings say that green IT is one of the technologies predicted to make an impact on enterprise and a focus for IT managers in 2012. To 100 per cent of survey participants green IT means reducing overall power consumption by introducing energy saving tools to meet the set goal. Pratik Chube, GM of Products and Marketing, Emerson, agrees that about one to two per cent of the total cost of a data centre constitutes energy cost. “IT managers are realising that the power requirement is doubling every six months adding to the capex, as the compute capacity grows continuously within the data centre,” he adds.

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While most IT heads agree that reducing carbon footprints and reduced cost of cooling and power will drive better green environment, there are many hiccups in implementing green solutions. Jaybalan Velayudhan, Director, Strategy & Business Development, APC by Schneider Electric, opines that data centre operators are increasingly looking to optimise their performance metrics in order to squeeze out the much-needed capacity. “Reducing power bills is possible by opting for energy-efficient components and equipment and building eco-friendly facilities as well,” says Velayudhan. However, the hitch here, he says quoting Gartner’s observation is that most data centre operators are unaware of the loading and current power and cooling capability of their data centres, even at a total bulk level. They are installing equipment that exceeds the design density of the data centre, and the resultant stresses on the power and cooling systems cause downtime from overloads, overheating, and loss due to redundancy. Senthil Kumar, Director, Software Services, Bloomedha Info Solutions Ltd, believes in increasing

Hot technologies | cover story What does Green IT mean to you? (Select all that apply)

20.0%

resource efficiency and reducing carbon footprint to ensure a green environment. Sharat M Airani, Chief, IT Systems and Security, Forbes Marshall, believes in contributing to conserving energy to reduce electricity bills, heating bills and greenhouse gas emissions. While the intentions are clearly to have a green environment, there are several roadblocks in the implementation process.

80.0% Response Percent

Constraints in Green Kerala based R Adarsh, AGM-Systems, Kerala Financial Corporation, finds non-availability of a sustainable business practice to reduce the carbon footprint as a major challenge. “Lack of expertise to implement best practices combined with the age-old IT infrastructure is a pain in optimising LAN and power supply and is also time consuming,” says Adarsh. Senthil Kumar agrees that creating awareness about virtualisation, paperless office, conference calls instead of meetings, working from home, etc, within the organisation has been a challenge. “Educating our existing sub-contractors/ suppliers about green IT and encouraging them

40.0%

100.0%

Answer Options Data centre Efficiency, Reducing Overall power consumption, Reduced cost on cooling and power, Introducing energy saving tools, Reducing carbon footprints, Increase resource efficiency

60.0%

to adopt green IT technologies or look out for alternatives and justification, or building a business case to change the current infrastructure to adopt green IT solutions is a constraint,” says Kumar. Chube observes, “IT managers face challenges in gaining insights into micro level details owing to the complexity of the data centre environment, as most often they are enveloped with legacy systems and applications which consume more than 50 per cent of the energy.” Airani’s challenge has been around changing over to the new technology at a very premature stage. “Internally, we had to conduct a thorough, hands-on testing to gain the acceptance of the middle management and the whole process took some time,” he says. APC’s Velayudhan says, “CIOs and data centre managers have found it tough to strike the right chord between managing organisational pressures with limited budgets while maintaining efficiency and

“IT managers are working out the power tariffs and realise that the energy requirement is doubling every six months” —Pratik Chube, GM-Products & Marketing, Emerson

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“Internally, we had to conduct a thorough, hands-on testing to gain the acceptance of the middle management and the whole process took us some time” —Sharat M Airani Chief-IT Systems & Security, Forbes Marshall output with green IT. Challenges are umpteen, but certain best practices will enable IT managers to drive green culture.”

Smart Moves The IT Next survey indicates that there is a positive trend with regard to spending on green IT. About 40 per cent of the participants claim to be spending nearly Rs 1 crore on deploying green IT solutions in 2012. Enterprises are inclined to adopt industry best practices to make the environment green. Forbes’ Airani’s approach to power management is derived by discover, measure, analyse, save and adopt policies based on power consumption, system and application usage. He recommends adopting a dashboard to show the real-time status,

greening IT smartly Data centre efficiency: Use of virtualisation, higher density servers, application tuning, change of data centre location, accurate forecasting

Data visibility and control over larger data-sharing platforms

Data centre optimisation: Optimisation of space, use of blade servers, server consolidation, virtualisation

Installing software to integrate complete architecture within a data centre will give full visibility on energy cost and CO2 footprint management through smarter analytics

Infrastructure management: Better management of supporting infrastructure to derive reduced power and cooling costs. Use of advanced systems for reduction in cooling and power usage

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Audits and assessments will help in identifying gaps and potential pitfalls

Emission management: Manage IT assets pragmatically with better forecasting infrastructure

events, power consumption, peak load and savings. “Detailed reporting enables you to track and manage your energy consumption in the organisation, and with integrated performance and energy measurements, you can manage the IT utilisation, energy usage, capacity and the demand efficiently.” According to him there are utilities which allow defining power policies centrally and applying them to desktops and servers remotely. Airani emphasises the point that it is unjustified to start working on RoI from day one. Rather, it is ideal to consider the longterm usage and then calculate the RoI. Virtualisation and consolidation play an important role as the technology is mature at this stage, he adds. Overall, consider the entire IT equipment, taking into account both the data centre and the outside environment at the same time, the reason being that we can save much more outside the data centre. Elaborating on his methodology to achieve this, Airani said, “I have a standardised hardware platform, applied central policy and activated light or non-graphic screensavers, and the reason for using such power management features are to save up money.” Emerson’s Chube recommends deployment of data centre infrastructure management (DCIM) solutions and use of Blades, which can lower the TCO. WhileVelayudhan finds DCIM, DCFM and ITSM helpful in realising energy savings and optimisation across three domains. Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) prescribes 10 commandments to drive better energy efficiency which include: use of lower power processor, high efficiency power supplies server power management and blade servers, all of which would provide 30 per cent savings. BEE also recommends use of server virtualisation, power distribution architecture, implementing cooling best practices, which drives 11 per cent savings. Besides, use of variable-capacity cooling, high-density supplemental cooling and monitoring and optimisation that will further ensure 11 per cent saving on the data centres.

Hot technologies | cover story

Managing Storage Tops the Agenda storage management

IT managers aim to create a dynamic and non-disruptive environment that supports data growth while retaining productivity balance As IT becomes pervasive, the explosion of data at a geometrical progression is inevitable. Mobility and its application is so high, that the statistics say 48 million people worldwide do not have access to electricity but have mobile phones. By 2015, the number of people , without electricity, but with a mobile would reach 125 million. This is just one of the instances. What does it indicate? Obviously, it is data acceleration by the mobile users.

So what is bothering IT managers with regard to storage? The growth in data within an organisation with users on the rise and with it stored all over and in many manifestations, surely a recipe for major stress. IT managers have been looking at various solutions in various permutations and combinations to manage this data tsunami. The buzz around big data is further adding to their nervousness and increasing the challenges of data management.

Inherent Concerns The IT Next survey revealed that 50 per cent of the participants found scaling up capacity and performance of storage systems and implementing storage pooling or storage virtualisation to be the greatest challenges in managing data growth. Syed Masroor, Head, NetApp India, says the main challenge in storage

â&#x20AC;&#x153;The flash cache trend is used to optimise the performance of the storage systemâ&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Syed Masroor is Head, Technology & Solutions Organisation, NetApp India

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“As the demand for storage escalates, it brings the challenge of having effective control over vast data that is created” —Amit Phadke Head, Systems & Technology, Kale Consultants Limited management is the architecture which has gone through several evolutions in the last 10 years and is fast changing, and this itself poses great challenges for IT managers. “The challenges are allocation of resources, experimentation with virtualisation technologies and tools which compound the issues of security; while grappling with changing storage architecture and aiming for performance enhancement,” says Masroor. For V Srinivas, CIO of Nagarjuna Fertilisers and Chemicals Ltd (NFCL), the challenge in storage management, is identifying the data from the existing workload as part of the capacity management activity, to see what can be virtualised. According to him, storage management as part of

doing storage right Understand data structure and growth Get clear visibility into physical, logical and tiered storage Since virtualised environments these days have high interdependencies; rapid isolation and problem management process should be clearly spelt out Storage management software can provide capacity reporting and analysis,

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performance monitoring, endto-end infra view, alerting, etc, which are beneficial Go for a single best of breed solution which is easy to deploy and manage Scale-out storage architecture is ideal for capacity planning Create dynamic, non-disruptive environment that supports data growth --Source: Sundara Raman, VP- RODE Product Development, Ramco Systems

the infrastructure lifecycle management process has become a separate profit centre with the entire data requiring a joint stakeholder from IT and business. Amit Phadke, Head, Systems and Technology, Kale Consultants Ltd is concerned, “As the demand for storage is escalating, it brings with it the challenge of effectively controlling the vast data being created, stored and accessed.” Phadke adds, “To address data growth without interrupting business operations, faster deployment of storage and IT resources to meet increasing demand becomes a function of scalability.” The other challenge for Phadke is related to forecasting relative data growth, faster provisioning of capacity, and improving system performance at the same or reduced operational cost—challenges that one faces with regard to virtualisation. For NR Satyapalan, GM-MS & CIO, National Fertilisers Ltd, the key challenges are around unified management of storage systems, scaling up capacity and performance of storage systems, implementing storage pooling and storage virtualisation, ensuring security of storage and better utilisation of storage systems among many others.

Hot technologies | cover story

100.0% 50.0%

75.0% 50.0%

25.0%

50.0%

0.0%

Answer Options Using single storage architecture for all workloads, Difficulty in proving RoI for storage solutions, Unified Management of Storage systems, Scaling up capacity and performance of storage systems, Implementing Storage pooling or storage virtualisation, Configuring, Provisioning and deploying storage systems, Optimising the storage cost or performance, Ensuring Security of storage systems, Improving Storage efficiency, better utilisation of storage systems, Implementing reliable disaster recovery and business continuity plans, Ensuring continuous data availability/non-stop operations, Achieving savings on power, space and cooling for storage systems, Another Storage Tier, Tools to effective define, collect and manage data by category, Automatic tiering of data

Will you be migrating to any of these as part of best storage management practice/s?

25.0

75.0%

It is obvious that organisations have insatiable appetite for data consumption and managing them has become the IT managers’ top agenda. While adding more storage is not a concern given the spend and cost of storage dropping, IT managers want to derive more from storage and drive optimal utilisation of the existing storage. Gartner says storage pool is like a dead sea where almost 90 per cent of the data is never taken stock of. Netapp’s Masroor recommends that IT managers go for a single source which is easy to deploy with stringent SLAs on the deliverables. “I would suggest that IT managers opt for a two-tier model of storing data which is on the disk and flash cache for optimal performance,” says Masroor. “The flash cache trend is used to optimise the performance of the storage system without adding disk drives and also helps in conserving power, cooling and space,” adds Masoor. According to him, IT managers can use Flash Cache in combination with SATA drives for many workloads to increase storage capacity. About 16 TB of read cache can be configured in a storage system using Flash Cache cards. About 75 per cent of IT Next survey participants said that they would go for data de-duplication technology as storage management practice this year. NFCL’s Srinivas recommends using data de-duplication tools for backup. Dynamic provisioning of data and automatic tiering is also the practice that Srinivas says would give positive results. “I am using 24 TB of data storage and will add another 10TB in this year and distribute using the above methods,” says Srinivas. “While solid state drives (SSDs) are gaining momentum and vendors are creating a buzz, I see it to be an expensive proposition at this point of time, nearly one and half times more than the cost of other tools,” Srinivas warns. However, Phadke’s primary objective to meet the scaling virtue is to create a dynamic, non-disruptive environment that supports data growth in such a way that system capabilities remain as balanced and productive as possible. The key for any organisation searching for an optimum solution is to understand which of its goals are most important. It depends on various factors such as available topologies and their associations with the different scaling approaches. The eventual decision will almost certainly take other factors like functionality, price, TCO, skill/

Response Percent

100

25.0%

Storage Fine Print

What are the main challenges that you face with respect to managing storage systems?

0.0%

The challenge for the IT managers is also with regard to identifying suitable solutions, though most participants said that they looked at the best of breed solutions to justify their requirements.

0% 25. Response Percent 25.0% 50.0% 50.0%25.0% 50.0% 50.0% 50.0%

Answer Options Dynamic provisioning, Thin provisioning, Data dedupe, Automatic tiering, Solid state Drives, Fibre Channel, SAS, SATA, Virtualisation at source or storage level, Caching

50.0% 50.0%

comfort levels, etc, into account. These might include predicted changes and growth across the organisation. Scale-out and scale-up vendors will battle over their relative values in terms of overall economic efficiency, operational efficiency and ‘greenness’ which makes decision-making further complicated. “I personally favour scale-out storage due to its various advantages like seamless capacity addition. It eliminates the need to pre-determine a performance or capacity ceiling to restricted compute power, can add more processing for higher I/O performance at any stage, etc,” says Phadke. Kale Consultants, which is using 80 TB of storage capacity, will add about 25 TB in the next six months. “I will implement server virtualisation, infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and storage as a service (SaaS) for backup, says Phadke. Besides, Phadke recommends automatic tiering, SSDs, caching, data de-duplication among others.

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insight | Business analytics

Taking Analytics for a e v Test D r i A pilot programme is often the most manageable first step to starting a business analytics journey By Ja n e G r i f f i n

he goal of business analytics (BA) is to help organisations make better decisions. Whether management wants to know the next thousand customers the organisation is likely to lose, or what location makes the most sense for setting up a new distribution centre, business analyt-

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ics can provide actual answers to complex questions, as well as a path to improved performance. Still, many companies are reluctant to start a BA initiative. For some, the idea of unearthing the necessary data seems daunting. For others, the job of securing crossfunctional buy-in and participation seems next to impossible. For most, the question, “Where do we start?” looms large.

A pilot programme is often the most manageable first step on an analytics journey. Effective pilots share several characteristics, including minimal initial technology and infrastructure investment, simplicity in the approach and involvement by a business owner who ‘gets it’. Because a pilot programme is a highly visible initiative, other parts of the organisation will watch to see

Business analytics | insight

Reasons to Initiate an Analytics Pilot Programme and its Benefits a) Demonstrating value: Starting with a pilot project offers management a proof of concept with tangible benefits upfront, before significant time, capital and resources are invested.

if the benefits were worth the effort. So itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s critical to have the proper focus from the start. An analytics pilot programme should: Be important enough to matter, but focussed enough to manage Have goals that are achievable without the need for new infrastructure or large technology investments Be simple in approach and refined in scope to prevent disruption to the business before, during or after the pilot Have support from a business owner with a vision for how improved hindsight, insight and foresight can improve decisionmaking and operations within that function; and Address an area that is highly relevant and current, but which many enterprises may not have a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;dataâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; handle on yet (for example, cloud computing, social media and mobile analytics) to offer immediate business opportunities

b) Reducing upfront investment: There is no need to buy enterprise software or hardware until you know that it works. c) Leveraging resources: Since a pilot is narrow in scope with defined boundaries, there is no need for a large team and broad cross-functional involvement. d) Offering manageability: A pilot does not require an organisation to have the highest level of enterprise data quality. Since the pilot will likely leverage limited data sets, companies can start where they are and enhance data quality as they add to the pilot. e) Tackling critical questions first: An analytics pilot helps companies address vital questions quickly. By targeting the more critical value systems first, you can get most pressing issues addressed upfront. f) Jump-starting problem solving: The pilot initiative can uncover big problems quickly, which can give the organisation a head start on fixing them. If you fix problems in the target data set, you can establish a method for fixing them at the enterprise level. g) Mitigating risk: If things go wrong in the pilot, repercussions are limited because they are not felt at the enterprise level. You can fix the problems more easily because they are not organisation wide. h) Achieving buy-in: The pilot helps identify champions and supporters. Since results are demonstrable and easily understood, executive sponsorship can be secured for a larger analytics initiative.

Choosing Your Route Once these critical requirements are met, it is time to explore the functional areas and project types that make good candidates for a BA pilot, such as customer analytics, supply chain management, finance, human resources and risk assessment. A customer analytics pilot can offer tangible benefits quickly. For example, a large, national investment bank gained rapid results from its customer analytics pilot programme. Looking to enhance its customer segmentation capabilities,

the bank undertook an effort to reclassify customers into segments that had the most potential for growth. The project team segmented customers by brand fit, revenue potential, potential growth rate, current accessibility and market fit. As a result of the pilot, the

bank was able to identify and target a new customer base and focus its marketing efforts on previously untapped segments. The new segments were single female investors older than 35, risk-averse immigrants and middle-income customers that were atypically risk-inclined.

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insight | Business analytics

Forming a Team A successful BA pilot leverages the skills of people in the appropriate areas and takes advantage of talents that may not be evident in an individual’s current role within the company. For example, a business may identify people who are passionate statisticians and analytical by nature, giving them an opportunity to participate in the pilot programme. This approach builds analytics champions and makes efficient use of existing resources without hiring from outside. These individuals can then take the good news of analytics to their functional areas.

Roles that determine pilot’s success The executive champion is a senior-level executive who can establish the vision, demonstrate the value to other seniorlevel staff, analyse and measure results, and celebrate the benefits. The business liaison can translate what is happening at an analytical level into the language of business value. Analytics professionals are skilled architects, developers and visualisation resources who work as troops on the ground. Business partners are external resources experienced in the business processes or technology aspects of analytics and they may be willing to put some skin in the game.

Launching the Pilot

“A successful BA pilot leverages the skills of people in the appropriate areas”

$33.9

billion market for business analytics by 2012, 8.2% growth from 2011 —IDC Software Tracker

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A successful pilot achieves a balance between being narrow enough to manage and broad enough to demonstrate real business benefits quickly. One key to launching a pilot you can build on, is to include the basic visualisation components, so that future efforts can leverage the pilot’s underlying structure. While the pilot has a defined start and end point, the goal is to deliver enough value to create a foundation for future initiatives. The lifespan of a BA pilot is usually three to four months and includes the following phases: Gaining Consensus: Before embarking on the pilot, get buyin from the functional area or business units involved. Communicate, listen and respond to questions and concerns. Pilot Planning: Define a very specific hypotheses, objective and business problem for the pilot to address. Resource Planning: Involve internal resources as much as possible, so that the pilot is

viewed as a ‘family affair’. If you don’t possess the experience inhouse, look externally for help. Training: The pilot should focus on training the staff involved. However, for future phases, everyone in the business should be trained on the basics of analytics. Infrastructure Assessment: Pilots should leverage your existing infrastructure and systems whenever possible. The goal is to build a more aware and nimble organisation. Kick-off: Make sure the parameters, scope and time frame of the pilot is communicated ahead of kickoff and that schedules are adhered to throughout. Testing/Validation: Test, validate, document and publicise insights internally. Measuring and Communicating Results: Measure results—savings, efficiency gains, risk mitigation, etc—and communicate benefits companywide.

Measuring Success An analytics pilot—focussed on a specific functional area and staffed with a team of enthusiastic people who have well-defined roles, lets organisations test-drive analytics before investing for the long term. But to pave the road forward, it is important to establish metrics for success upfront. At the highest level, the pilot should align with the organisation’s strategic objectives, addressing a well-defined and specific issue that is readily measurable and meaningful to executives. If the pilot shows sufficient results, it can gain momentum and can be expanded to become an enterprise solution and a valuable corporate asset. Jane Griffin is a principal with Deloitte Consulting LLP, janegriffin@ deloitte.com.

Business analytics | insight

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insight | collaboration

Collaboration

Coupled with apps for iPad and iPhone, Alfresco Team gives smaller shops professionalgrade tools

Made Simple & Affordable

By PJ C o n n o l ly

ollaboration tools used to be a big-IT, PC-based affair. The object was to link the work product but they may be needed most desperately in the small or midsize organisation. The challenge has been how to package these capabilities. Some shops are comfortable using cloud-based services, while others wish to keep everything inside the server room. Of course, cost is always an issue, and traditional site-licensing models may not offer the desired flexibility of commitment. To make matters more interesting, no matter how small the organisation is, the need for mobile access is increasingly paramount. Alfresco Software attempts to address the small and mid-range customer with Alfresco Team, based on the Alfresco Enterprise architecture used by nearly 2,000 businesses, including Home Kingdomâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s National Health Service. It can be deployed in a traditional premises-based environment running Linux or Windows, or on an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instance. The pricing for Alfresco Team is designed to hook the customer with a five-user, 500-document â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;free foreverâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; licence as an obvious incentive to kick some tires. Of course, the idea is that the customers love the software so much that they decide to pony up for paid licences. These start at $1,990 per year for 10 users and include technical support during business hours. If one chooses to go whole hog, upgrades to Alfresco Enterprise are also available. One thing that distinguishes the Team and makes collaboration simple, from the full-blown Alfresco Enterprise is the degree to which the customer can modify

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collaboration | insight

“One thing that distinguishes the Team and makes collaboration simple, from the full-blown Alfresco Enterprise is the degree to which the customer can modify the installation”

of data and the bulkloading tools of the installation. The company draws Alfresco Team will make the job a a distinction between configuration little easier. However, I would prefer changes, which are allowed and codeuploading entire folders in bulk, rather level customisation, which is not—if it than having to go one at a time. The affects or bypasses any of the code or loader currently aborts the upload of scripts in the Team software, through the folder, which it apparently sees as predefined roles of ‘consumer’, just another document. ‘contributor’ and ‘collaborator’; while The mobile revolution has seen the ‘site managers’ have full privileges. scope of collaboration tools expand onto User management is a relatively smartphones and tablets, putting people straightforward process in Alfresco in touch with their data on a greater Team, with the ability to invite external variety of platforms than ever. Alfresco users to join the collaborative effort. has taken advantage of that with tools for These external users can have rights iOS devices, such as the iPad and iPhone. through the Manager level, and it’s a These tools are free for download from matter of a few clicks to send an invite Apple’s iTunes App Store. to the Alfresco instance through email. Alfresco Mobile allows users to Content management is one of capture audio, video, still photos on the Alfresco’s strongest suits, and Alfresco device and upload them into the data Team offers a powerfully equipped store, with tags created on the fly or document library that scales as far as as authorised in the Alfresco instance one is willing to pay for. The documentby the site administrator. Editing handling tools are easy to use, and documents is also possible using mobile in a nod to social media, users have applications such as Apple’s iWork been provided with the ability to ‘like’ suite, DocsToGo or QuickOffice. particularly valuable items. Alfresco Team is a good package of For my testing, I used a hosted instance collaboration tools that can be quickly of Alfresco Team, accessed from Safari deployed for a small workgroup or a 5.1.2 for Mac OS X. It takes only a few pilot project, and easily scale to fit keystrokes to begin the process of one’s needs. It works well with setting up a site. The dashboards the Alfresco Mobile tools for at each level of Alfresco Team iOS, which themselves provide the user with an *Pricing for Alfresco Team is designed to hook the open up entirely new at-a-glance view of what’s customer with a five-user, 500-document ‘free forever’ ways for business happening in the site, licence as an obvious incentive to kick some tires. to capture and use with a list of recently images and sound. added documents, * Group and team-based access controls provide a secure gate to By giving the usual calendar the content, which users can monitor for changes or updates. away Alfresco and task-driven lists, * Alfresco Team is a good package of collaboration tools that can be Team to the and other dashlets quickly deployed for a small workgroup or pilot project, and one that smallest organproviding RSS can easily scale to fit one’s needs. isations and feeds, document and w orkgroups, meeting workspaces, * Alfresco Mobile allows users to capture audio, video or still photos the company is or the user profile. on the device and upload them into the data store, with tags scattering seeds Populating the created on the fly or as authorised in the Alfresco instance by the in the breeze—but Alfresco document site administrator. ones that should library with a random * Content management is one of Alfresco’s strongest land on welcoming selection of items can suits, and Alfresco Team offers a powerfully equipped ground. be handled as a dragdocument library that scales as far as one is and-drop process, but with willing to pay for. some limitations. The worst eWEEK Labs Senior Analyst part of deploying any content PJ Connolly can be contacted at pj.connolly@eweek.com. management tool is the initial seeding

Key TakeAways

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insight | VIRTUAL Desktop

VMware View 5 enhances remote desktop throttling to improve performance By C a m e r o n St u r d e va n t

hen VMware launched View 5 in the fall last year, the goal was to improve the user experience. VMware View 5 improves the user experience through a number of enhancements that touched on everything from performance to management. It improves the end-user experience when employing PC over Internet Protocol (PCoIP) display compression technology by adding throttling that cuts back network usage.

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VIRTUAL Desktop | insight View 5 also adds Persona, VMware’s entry into user-profile management, a much-needed feature to keep up in the competitive virtual-desktop arena. The improved user experience for View 5 also includes the release of View client support for Mac and Androidbased devices. While these changes add functionality to View, much of the performance improvements that showed stemmed from new ways to restrict features. In particular, PCoIP bandwidth controls make it easier to smooth out View client network usage. The trade-off for this gain in responsiveness is at least a temporary decrease in image fidelity. Installing and using View 5 is no small task. Only organisations with significant technology expertise on staff and a plan that calls for replacing traditional desktops with virtual machines hosted in the data centre should consider installing View 5. Successfully rolling out View 5 will require senior engineers with expert implementation skills in local and wide-area networking, desktop deployment, and storage, virtual and physical system management, database and Active Directory planning and management—at a minimum. On top of these technical experts, add licence analysts to thoroughly assess the VMware and end user licence costs of the project. The VMware Licensing upset (tinyurl. com/7cggumt) that happened when vSphere 5 was released in the summer of 2011 doesn’t significantly affect View 5 implementations, virtual desktop infrastructure, including those licensed separately from VMware’s server virtualisation products when used for desktop deployments. VMware View 5 became available last October, and costs $150 per concurrent use for the Enterprise licence or $250 per concurrent use for the Premier licence. The main difference between users is to get access to the new View Persona user profile capability.

How I Tested View 5 I started the testing by spending a lot of time with the more than 700 pages of documentation that come with View 5.

How the Cloud is Transforming IT Cloud computing provides a vastly more efficient, flexible, and cost-effective way for IT to meet escalating business needs: IT as a Service. VMware offers you an evolutionary and practical path to this new model, with solutions that harness the power of the cloud while ensuring security and preserving the value of your existing technology investments.

Deliver Desktop Services from Your Cloud Simplify desktop and application management while increasing security and control with VMware View. Deliver a personalised high fidelity experience for end-users across sessions and devices. Enable higher availability and agility of desktop services unmatched by traditional PCs while reducing the total cost of desktop ownership up to 50 per cent. End-users can enjoy new levels of productivity and the freedom to access desktops from more devices and locations while giving IT greater policy control.

Cloud Computing Availability and Scalability Built on industry leading VMware vSphere, VMware View revolutionises desktops into highly available and agile services delivered from your cloud. Delivers new levels of availability, scalability, reliability to desktops unmatched by traditional PCs. VMware ESXi, the gold standard for hypervisors delivers security, simplicity and standardisation to accelerate your data centre transformation to private cloud. Optimised for desktop delivery, vSphere easily scales to support thousands of high performance virtual desktops. Easily ensures high availability of desktop services with automatic failover and cost-effective protection against unplanned downtime to meet service level agreements. Source: http://www.vmware.com/

Most of the work involved in setting up a View 5 infrastructure should be figured out on paper long before the first piece of View 5 infrastructure is in place. The heart of a View 5 deployment is the View Connection server. I installed it on a virtual machine running Windows Server 2008 R2 with SP1. As required,

“Configuration changes in View 5 will provide IT managers the ability to set parameters on how virtual desktop systems use network resources”

the View Connection Server was part of my Windows Active Directory domain and was also managed by the same VMware vCenter Server as the virtual desktop systems I used in my test. Since I also tested systems that used local (disconnected desktop) mode, I installed a special variant of the View Connection server, called a View Transfer server, on a VM that was identically configured to the specification of the View Connection standard server. The View Transfer server manages check-in/ check-out and transfers files between the data centre and the local desktop. Local mode hasn’t changed that much since the previous version. The new Persona user profile management changes can’t be used with local-mode desktops. Since these systems are usually dedicated to individual users, this limitation isn’t material to most View 5 deployments. View Composer 2.7 is an optional feature I installed on the vCenter Server because I mainly deployed linked-clone desktop pools in my test environment.

a p r i l 2 0 1 2 | itnext

insight | VIRTUAL Desktop View Composer uses a SQL Server (in my case) or Oracle database to store information about connections and components, including vCenter Server connections. In addition to installing the View Connection and Transfer servers, I also created Windows 7 and Windows XP virtual desktop systems and used snapshots (for linked-clone pools) and templates to fill out my View 5 test environment.

PCoIP Microsoft RDP/RemoteFX, Citrix ICA/ HDX and VMware/Teradici PCoIP are remote desktop technologies that try to overcome the laws of physics to make virtual desktop systems hosted in a data centre appear as if they were executing locally to the end user. The changes to VMwareâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s flavour of this partner provided technology were mainly to deal with making the protocol use more sensitive to bandwidth constraints. In my tests, I used Microsoft Group Policy administrative templates provided with VMware View 5 to configure how PCoIP would handle image quality, USB redirection and client-side caching to ensure smooth operation in my test environment. Overall, these changes worked as expected to provide IT managers with the ability to generally set parameters on how virtual desktop systems use network resources. Network and desktop administrators will need to work in concert to get these settings right. For example, I was able to set the PCoIP minimum-session bandwidth-transmission rate. While this meant better responsiveness when

Product Positioning VMware vSphere Essentials: Provides an all-in-one solution for small offices to consolidate and manage many application workloads while reducing hardware and operating costs with a low up-front investment. VMware vSphere Essentials Plus: Adds high application availability and data protection for a complete server consolidation and business continuity solution for the small office IT environment. VMware vSphere Enterprise: Minimises downtime, protects data, and automates resource management. VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus: Delivers the benefits of VMware vSphere and transforms your IT infrastructure into the next generation of flexible, reliable IT services. VMware vCenter Product Family: Helps deliver the highest SLAs across the IT infrastructure with VMware vCenter virtualisation management products. VMare View for Desktop Virtualisation: Delivers rich, personalised virtual desktops as a managed service from a virtualisation platform built to deliver the entire desktop, not just applications. VMware View allows you to consolidate virtual desktops on data centre servers and manage operating systems, applications, and data independently for greater business agility. Source: (IBM United States Software Announcement 211-505, dated December 6, 2011.)

I used my virtual desktop systems, it was possible to oversubscribe the network bandwidth available for all systems. I did this once during my tests and spent several hours troubleshooting the situation before discovering this mis-configuration on my part.

Personality VMware View 5 Persona, available in the Premier version, let me use less costly (with smaller memory footprint and less administrative overhead) state-

View 5 Key Advantages View desktops without the need for specialised graphics cards or client devices

more use cases while enabling user personalisation to persist between sessions

Integrated VOIP and View desktop experience for the end-user with an architecture to provide optimised performance for both the desktop and unified communication

Collects over 20 session statistics for monitoring, trending and troubleshooting end-user support issues

IT administrators can deploy easier to manage stateless floating desktops to

itnext | a p r i l 2 0 1 2

Enables IT administrators to configure the bandwidth settings by use case, user or network requirements to consume up to 75 per cent less bandwidth

less linked clones and still provide personalised virtual desktop systems. This type of functionality came from thirdparty add-on products in the previous version of View. View 5 Persona can also be used in conjunction with Windows Roaming Profiles, although my tests employed only Persona to synchronise user-specific data and desktop settings. Implementing View 5 Persona is a major endeavour, and current VMware View administrators will need to devote significant time to planning the rollout of this feature. I needed to create a new data repository and prepare new virtual desktop systems again using the Vmware provided templates to enable and manage the personalisation settings for my View 5 Persona desktops. I used View 5 Persona to specify files that should be immediately downloaded when a user logged on to a virtual desktop. It was also possible to keep these files in a local file that was maintained on the userâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s local system. Cameron Sturdevant, eWeek Labs Technical Director; csturdevant@eweek.com

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Sundar Ram | interview

Big Data Needs Big Decisions Data tsunami is devastating organisations everywhere, leading to newer evolutions in data storage. Sundar Ram, Vice President, Technology Sales Consulting, Oracle Corporation, Asia Pacific, in a conversation with N Geetha discusses how big data is triggering IT managers to think of better storage management techniques At this point of time, how relevant is big data to IT heads? How is it perceived? For decades, companies have been making business decisions based on transactional data stored in relational databases. Beyond that critical data, however, is a potential treasure trove of non-traditional, less structured data: blogs, social media, email, sensors, and photographs that can be mined for useful information. IT heads are grappling with tools to manage the data deluge, besides insufficient skills. While big data is not as obvious as ERP which has a direct impact on the RoI, reduced capex and so on; it is not as quantifiable, but holds the potential to be part of the business intelligence analysis. Decreases in the cost of both storage and compute power have made it feasible to collect this data, which would have been thrown away only a few years ago. As a result, more and more companies are looking to include non-traditional yet potentially

very valuable data with their traditional enterprise data into their business intelligence analysis. IT heads can benefit from the fact that when big data is distilled and analysed in combination with traditional enterprise data, enterprises can develop a more thorough and insightful understanding of their business, which can lead to enhanced productivity, a stronger competitive position and greater innovation, all of which can have a significant impact on the bottom line. It will enable them to study the behavioural pattern across each market segment and work a costbenefit analysis.

technological hype and tools available is a big challenge. Lack of information architecture is also a challenge. While big data is not a challenge in itself, it can help them build a structure with the existing data. For instance, IT managers can evolve their current enterprises data architecture to incorporate big data and deliver business value, leveraging the proven platforms to address their big data requirements. Big data is adopted where there is enormous data flow and sectors including healthcare and telecom are likely to be the early adopters.

What are the top challenges in big data (operational, data characterisation, interpretation, data visualisation, relevancy and so on)? The greatest challenge for IT managers is with regard to contextualising the technology and data to suit market intelligence and make it user-friendly. Characterisation of data, given the

What kind of business requirements do you see to build a big data platform? IT managers would need right tools to capture and organise a wide variety of data types from different sources to derive real business value from big data. Big data appliances come with features which can have hardware, software, storage and

A P R I L 2 0 1 2 | itnext

interview | Sundar Ram networking needs. Before looking for appliances, it is critical to understand what big data is all about. Traditional enterprise data, including customer information from CRM, transactional ERP data, web store transactions, and general ledger data comprises big data. Besides machine-generated/ sensor data including call detail records (CDR), web logs, smart meters, manufacturing sensors, equipment logs, trading systems data, data generated from social media platforms too gets categorised as big data. Big data revolves around volume, velocity, value and variety. The infrastructure requirements in big data span data acquisition, data organisation and data analysis. It is important to create a single framework to address all the three areas. NoSQL databases are critical to collect and store big data, particularly for the data structures that are scalable and frequently changing. Organising data is the next step in big data management where IT managers could use Hadoop technology that allows large data volumes to be organised and to be kept on the original data storage cluster. Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) is a long-term storage system for web logs. From analysis standpoint the infrastructure required for big data to support deeper analytics, including statistical analysis and data mining and inventory is done from a smart vending machine which will dictate the product mix and replenishment schedule.

What innovations are happening around big data that are driving down costs? The first value proposition that the IT managers will think of is to rationalise the storage consumption and deploy robust

itnext | A P R I L 2 0 1 2

solutions particularly given the increasing magnitude of internal users and customers. New technologies have emerged to address the IT infrastructure. Technologies like NoSQL are used to manage, secure RDBMS. Distributed file systems and transaction stores are primarily used to capture data. To get the most from NoSQL solutions and turn them from specialising, developer-centric solutions and solutions for the enterprise, they must be combined with SQL solutions into a single proven infrastructure that meets the manageability and security requirements. We encourage customers to use our big data appliance which comes with software and

â&#x20AC;&#x153;IT managers should understand that the big data platform is engineered to explore a new chapter of data analyticsâ&#x20AC;? hardware engineered into one to address the challenge.

Which are the technologies that are capitalising on big data? Big data is throwing up opportunities at varied technologies. Most of the hardware and software applications have been embedded into this big data appliance using the exadata and exalytics series. Open source

Sundar Ram | interview

distribution framework is also catching up to leverage big data which is tweaked with databases.

How will IT heads benefit by addressing big data issues in their organisation (in terms of their individual growth). The benefit that the IT heads observe is to go back to the business to tell how to streamline data growth and tame data deluge using big data appliance. IT managersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; conversation should no longer be on which product or tool to deploy to manage storage, but what kind of SLAs should be worked out to address the data growth and big data. According to industry reports, humans created 150 exabytes of data in 2005, and that number

Find other interviews online on the website www.itnext. in/resources/ interviews

grew eight times to 1,200 exabytes by 2010. Similarly, as per industry estimates enterprise data is growing nearly 60 per cent per year (90% of that being unstructured) and the average amount of data stored per company is 200 terabytes. This flood of information creates a wealth of opportunities for businesses. For example, in the delivery of healthcare services, management of chronic or long-term conditions is expensive. Use of in-home monitoring devices to measure vital signs, and monitor progress is just one way that sensor data can be used to improve patient health and reduce both office visits and hospital admittance. Manufacturing companies deploy sensors in their products to return a stream of telemetry. This telemetry also reveals usage patterns, failure rates and other opportunities for product improvement that can reduce development and assembly costs. The proliferation of smartphones and other GPS devices offers advertisers an opportunity to target consumers when they are in close proximity to a store, a coffee shop or a restaurant. This opens up new revenue for service providers and offers many businesses a chance to target new customers. Retailers usually know who buys their products. Use of social media and web log files from their e-commerce sites can help them understand who didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t buy and why they chose not to; information not available to them today. This can enable more effective micro customer segmentation and targeted marketing campaigns, as well as improve supply chain efficiencies. Finally, social media sites of various business models requires a personalised experience on the web, which can only be delivered by capturing

and using all the available data about a user or member. IT managers should understand that the big data platform is engineered to explore a new chapter of data analytics which has the potential to generate business insights from different data sets changing the way organisations traditionally use information. It is a new application that can address storage management challenges.

How will big data get addressed in the cloud environment? In the cloud, big data refers to specific solution as it is broken down to smaller solutions. Big data is currently in the testing phase and not being considered as a cloud option. What is the list of things that you recommend IT heads do to address big data related challenges? There are a few things IT managers should prioritise. a) Analyse and collate the pieces of data that hold value for them b) Work out a strategy to manage this data with the existing information architecture c) Experiment with the storage and other technologies in streamlining the data that can attract serious attention from the business groups d) Assess organisational preparedness and availability of resources to manage the growing data e) Understand growing business needs and expansion plans before deploying new applications to address storage management requirements There is a lot of buzz in the telecom, banking, insurance and the travel industries to look at big data applications as they grow and experience increased web traffic.

A P R I L 2 0 1 2 | itnext

the big

Business Analytics

PILOT is must EXPERT PANEL

Vijay Sethi, VP & CIO, Hero MotoCor p Ltd

The Situation...

Cut it from he re

How will Vivek Singh provide better answers to management’s complex questions and create a path for improved performance? The goal and motto of every IT head is to provide a platform, which enables the business and top management to make better decisions. Most business heads are keen to have market intelligence at their fingertips and expect their IT team to provide it, unaware of the complexities involved in it. Vivek Singh, Senior IT Manager of a large manufacturing industry needs the right technology and tools to help him address these business expectations of his bosses. A few things that his top management wants to know include: the next 1,000 odd customers that his organisation needs to retain as they are being eyed by competitors; new locations with the potential for future business and profit; emerging market trends which can help the company be ahead of time; new growth areas which can add value to the business and the like. Your responses count. Log on to www.itnext.in/bigQ to submit your replies. The best entry will be published in the next print edition.

SunilKuma r Soni, CIO,Ester Industr ies

Hilal Khan, Head, Corporate IT, Honda Motor India Pvt Ltd

The company is already using some business intelligence tools, but Singh requires specific tools, which can help in better business decisions. The good part is that Singh is involved in taking decisions regarding appropriate technology deployment and his senior colleagues have full faith in his capabilities to spot the right tools. However, the varied suggestions and recommendations from different sources have left Singh rather confused. Some peers have also suggested that he include business analytics (BA) as one of the critical tools to find the right answers to complex questions. BA is still in the nascent test drive stages though the vendors have many positive stories to recount. The most complicated task for Singh, thus, is to unearth necessary data to buy in his business head’s concurrence over BA deployment. Singh however is sold on the virtues of BA and is working out ways to convince his senior management. But before he takes the final leap, he seeks expert views on the merits of BA tools.

A P R I L 2 0 1 2 | itnext

the big q

the big questions... Should VIvek Singh go in for a BA pilot programme? What

functionalities does he he need to look at and how does he prepare for BA deployment?

What kinds of challenges is he likely to face during implementation and how does he work out a good RoI blueprint, which can convince his top management?

Here are the answers... MEANINGFUL INSIGHTS MUST FIRST ANSWER

Vijay Sethi VP&CIO, Hero MotoCorp Ltd About me: Taken up IT leadership roles across global IT management and planning, and in the development, deployment and maintenance of enterprise-wide applications and infrastructure projects

Yes, Vivek Singh should go in for a pilot programme. The objective of a pilot programme is not to test technology but to ensure that BA tools work in Vivekâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s environment. However, success of a BA project is not dependant just on technology. There are other factorsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;people (users), processes (of data collation, extraction, review, etc) and the culture of the organisation. Based on the learning of pilot, rollouts should be undertaken. In this case, he has to cater to both structured and unstructured data to have more meaningful insights that will help his company. So, some of the functionalities that he should look into would include: Good ETL capabilities/ability to import from various kinds of data sources; nice dashboards and charting features; set of pre-developed reports/dashboards and ease of reports/dashboard development; web interface; role-based security; rule-based broadcasting features; interface with mobile devices like iPad, BlackBerry, etc. Some others which could be differentiating ones would include: capability of patternbased analytics; ability to handle large data sets, specifically for unstructured data as larger the data set, more accurate are the results; in-memory analytical capabilities; predictive analytics. As a preparation to BA, Singh has to first convince himself that as far as implementation of any analytical tool is concerned, it needs to be taken up as a journey instead of project because as capabilities are demonstrated, demand for information increases. Rules of aggregation generally tend to apply over a period of time, as initially managers have a tendency to ask for transactional information and with passage of time, their demand moves from reporting to intelligence to analytics (both IT and users undergo an evolution on this one). Considerable change management efforts are required to make users use these kinds of systems, as generally they are more comfortable in their excel sheets and pivot tables. But accuracy of data increases with time as usage increases and then demand for analysis increases.

Second Answer The major challenges that Vivek is likely to face while implementing any analytical tools, are user education and change management, resistance to sharing information which are in local excel sheets by some employees as they may fear losing control, delay in data updation in source system, quality of data and so on, besides user support and system performance once the system is running. From an RoI perspective, investment in a BA tool has to be considered as strategic in nature as it empowers business through timely delivery of quality information enabling it to take right and timely decisions, instead of quantitative RoI calculations.

itnext | A P R I L 2 0 1 2

A P R I L 2 0 1 2 | itnext

the big q

DEFINE OBJECTIVES, IDENTIFY KPIs FIRST ANSWER There are two options with business analytics—to build or to buy. Singh can either build a customised solution with business intelligence tools or he can buy an application relevant to his business environment. The recommended approach for him would be to buy a business analytics application or application suite that will provide process support, integrated with data, while having the ability to function independently of an organisation’s transactional applications. Built on extensive experience and data and process inventory, an analytic application can be matched to the specific requirements of any particular department/organisation. Preparation for this implementation would include a thorough situation analysis of the current environment and short-term and long-term goals. He should start by defining business objectives, identifying key performance indicators (KPIs) and the functions/ departments with the strongest impact on the defined KPIs. The next step would be to secure the feedback and participation of the relevant department heads and other business stakeholders, and then select and implement the analytic application best suited to streamlining decision-making for the chosen business function. Training the users, while measuring and evaluating improvement based on previously defined KPIs is critical

Sunil Kumar Soni CIO, Ester Industries About me: Responsible for shaping Ester’s long-term tech vision and driving innovation. With more than 25 years of experience in the industry, I carry a blend of technical, business and team management know-how

Second Answer Challenges for Singh would be handling increasingly complex data footprint, lack of expert users and company’s culture. It is important to have defined business objectives and KPIs to ensure that the analytics project offers the ability to cover the relevant range of related decisions. Another challenge that Singh would face is to find individuals who are both trained in analytical techniques as well as aware of the business issues. Prebuilt analytic applications can help address this issue with the participation of the relevant departments. The key to a successful pitch is extensive groundwork that involves clearly defining business objectives and KPIs followed by the steps mentioned previously. It’s important to secure the participation of all the relevant business stakeholders to ensure that their expertise is leveraged and their needs are addressed.

Top mobile platforms on corporate networks

ess busin tics y l a n a

Apple’s iOS is the most popular mobile platform among corporate workers according to a survey from mobile security provider Check Point Software 30%

Apple/iOS

29%

BlackBerry 21%

Android

18%

Windows Mabile/Windows Phone 3%

Symbian 0%

itnext | A P R I L 2 0 1 2

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

the big q

PREDICTIVE ANALYSIS: THE FIRST STEP FIRST ANSWER

Hilal Khan Head, Corporate IT, Honda Motor India Pvt Ltd About me: Responsible for driving business growth through corporate information technology planning and strategy

There are a few fundamental aspects that Singh needs to take into account before jumping into a pilot programme. As a first step, he needs to do a predictive analysis to understand the complexity of the situation as the BA solution itself is a complex one. For instance, the need to retain his customers comes with the fact that Singh has to do right analysis and define the problem, and get the input data before embarking BA deployment. The data needs to be in an unstructured and structured format and segregated under different categories based on the data source. It is imperative to ensure that there is no discrepancy in data categorisation or formatting, else it will result in analytical inaccuracy and he will not be in a position to establish its authenticity. The primary task for Singh is to create an ecosystem with teams from both IT and business to collate the required data and also to set the business objectives. A clear roadmap of internal systems, business requirements, deficiencies, deliveries, quality of information, etc, needs to be evolved before the pilot.

Second Answer The RoI is a biggest challenge as Singh has to take activity into account to work out the RoI blueprint. For instance, take the task of lead generation for the organisation. He has to think of a tool which will enable procurement of data around lead generation, provide accurate conversion ratio of leads into real enquiries and then into orders. A proper time analysis, resource availability and investment ratio need to be worked out for this.

Notes NOTEs

More Resources

Virtual Storage Platform anniversary: http://blogs.hds.com/hu/2011/09/happy-birthday-vsp.html How to avoid information overload: http://marksblog.emc.com/2011/09/episode-108-.html

A P R I L 2 0 1 2 | itnext

update

open Debate

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

Will big data change the way IT Heads work?

Dr B Muthukumaran IT Professional & Consultant

Amit Phadke Head, Systems & Technology, Kale Consultants Ltd

N Ranganathan Manager-IT, M & M Financial Services Ltd

Big data is emerging as the most influential aspect in the enterprise, enabling business growth and leading to an era of data-driven decisions. CIOs, CTOs and IT managers are extending the strategic advantage of big data to business. This new kid on the block calls for a different skill set and level of unlearning. There are spectrums of various technologies built over evolving platforms that need to be mastered to handle data ripples and changing data patterns representing the key basis of competition. Big data has its sphere of influence around best management practices.

Definition or size of big data varies from organisation to organisation. For some, it may be hundreds of GB, for others it might be hundreds of TB. However, this data deluge is going to bring in technical change in areas of distributed databases, parallel processing of databases, scalable and tiered storage systems, tiering at server level, InfiniBand or equivalent GBoE networks, etc, which will challenge IT managers. IT managers will enforce functional style changes in the way data is consolidated, compressed, backed up, made available during disasters, keeping or improving the performance of applications.

Change in style of functioning of IT managers will depend on the current working and environment. With big data coming in, IT managers need to focus on building structures that allow them to access it more easily, augment it and manipulate it faster. The IT manager needs to address big data challenges, as the business case arises, and be the best supporting actor to the heroic role of his CIO. Leaders believe there is information locked up that can help them make better decisions. IT teams will be spending more time working closely with marketing and business users as they have the biggest data requirement.

Thinking, Fast & Slow Title: Thinking, Fast and Slow Author: Daniel Kahneman Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux Number of pages: 499 Price: Rs 1,605 Reviewed by: Anoop Verma

Daniel Kahneman is a psychologist who won the Nobel Prize in economic science in 2002. It was in early 1970s that Kahneman began the process of dismantling the idea that there existed economically rational decision-maker inside the human mind. Quite significantly, human irrationality is Kahnemanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s great theme. His book can help modern professionals, including the community of CIOs, to develop an outlook on the decisions that they make. Synthesising decades of his research as well as that of colleagues, Kahneman lays out architecture of human decision-making. According to Daniel Kahneman, it is easy for human beings to move away from rationality. The irrational sensibilities are so deeply entrenched in our psyche that repeatedly we get tempted to make choices that are quite unreasonable. The work carries an air of conviction as it builds its case through a number of examples, which serve as a microcosm of the biases that we suffer from. IT NEXT VERDICT Through its focus on the irrational aspects involved in the decisions we make, the book can be helpful in nudging us towards better decisions.

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

Star Value:

A P R I L 2 0 1 2 | itnext

cube chat | SANDEEP SINGH WALIA

Hardwork Leads to Success “I follow the sayings of Bhagawad Gita and believe in honesty and dedication and being ready for any challenge in life,” says Sandeep Singh Walia, AGM of Information Security, HT Media ByMANU SHA R M A

T My sucess

mantra There’s no substitute for hard work

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here are no shortcuts to success and hard work combined with continuous learning are the prerequisites for success in IT, feels Sandeep Singh Walia. True to this, it has been hard work and learning that is paying off in his career. Like all computer engineers, Walia’s first love was programming of languages like Java, C++, etc. He opted for a Bachelor’s degree in computers and it was at Kurukshetra University that he had the first opportunity to get hands-on experience in computers. Another learning experience was his stint at Mindmill Software, where he learnt programming in Java and later on being associated with e-banking projects. “It was a lot of hard work as I had to go through a self-learning process, with some handholding from my project manager.” Destiny took a different turn for Walia, taking him away from his passion. While he had

been hired for the programmer’s position, he was made in-charge of administration in Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL), a large PSU, for 10 long years. “As an engineer, they expected me to do everything. They shifted me in different job roles like networking and security, but it was all administrative and I was never involved in programming,” recalls Walia. Implementing the Integrated Document Management System (IDMS) was the first project which he handled. Walia never faltered from the course of hard work and for the first time he learnt how IT can bring efficiency to the system. “While working with the human resources department, I gasped when I saw bundles of files (employee dossiers). But later with the use of IDMS we brought in higher saving in terms of real estate and ensured better RoI,” he says.

cube chat

Fact File NAME SANDEEP SINGH WALI A D esignati on AGM of INFORMATI ON SECURI T Y CURREN T ROLE I T SECURI T Y & G OVERNANCE, HT MED I A AND GR OUP COMPANIES

Photograph y: Subhojit Paul

“My job is more than just putting firewalls. I put my learning into use in implementing information security policy which calls for programming techniques as well” Another learning experience came in 2003, when BPCL decided to establish a DR data centre and Walia was made responsible for the LAN and WAN implementation. “Working on a greenfield project at Noida was the biggest learning. I had to do everything from design, networking and migration from C+ band to KV band and manage the entire user migrations with zero downtime.” When Walia moved to HT Media as an Information Security Officer, it was an altogether a different experience. As expected, he had to work harder, as it was a new industry and the expectations from him were also different. “Here the challenges were that there were two sets of users— editorial and non-editorial—and I needed to understand individual needs and block whatever was not needed by each.”

In the last two years, Walia has designed the Information Security Management System (ISMS) based on the ISO 27001 standards. “I took the top down approach in putting up a security policy. For instance, most organisations were still debating on BYOD (Bring your own Device), whereas in media you can’t stop people from bringing their own device.” The challenges for him were twofold— on the one end the business demands stringent security measures, and on the other end implementing such measures may hamper productivity of editorial staff. Walia aspires to become a CIO in the next five years. He is self-motivated and says his father, a mathematician, is his first teacher. He also admires Steve Jobs as someone who made technology simple.

EDUCATI ON 1999: B TECH (Co mpu ters ), KURUKSHE TRA UNIVERSI T Y 2005: PGDM SCDL PROFESSI O NAL QUALI FICATI ON CERTI FIED ETHICAL HACKER (2009)EC COUNCIL; CERTI FIED ANALYST & LICENc E PENETRATI ON TESTER 2010); IS O 27001 LEAD AUDI TOR (2008); MCSE (2001); 5 PMP (2012) WORK EXPERIeNCE 1999 -2000: JAVA PROGRAMMER, MINDM I L L S OFT WARE 2000 -2010: BHARAT PETRO LEUM C ORPORATI ON LTD 2010 -PRESENT: HT MEDIA LTD JOB ROLES * SECURI T Y ADMINISTRATOR (2006 -2010) * NET WORK ADMINISTRATOR (2002-2006) * SERVER ADMINISTRATOR (2000 -2002)

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update

off the shelf

A sneak preview of enterprise products, solutions and services

ASUS launches Eee Pad Transformer Prime It comes with 10.1” WXGA Glare (LED), focussing on user experience and aesthetics

Nokia to Launch Lumia 900 in India Soon MOBILE If reports are to be believed, Nokia will be launching a non-4G version of its Lumia 900 smartphone in India soon. The Windows Phone 7.5-based Lumia 900 smartphone was launched at the Mobile World Congress 2012 held in Barcelona earlier this year. Nokia has already launched Lumia 800 and 710 smartphones in India.

TABLET| ASUS Technology has unveiled

key features

its long anticipated Eee Pad Trans* At 8.3mm, it’s thinner than others former Prime, paired and primed to * The device has metallic spun finish perfection, powered by NVIDIA Tegra * It is finger print resistant 3. The impressive Eee Pad Transformer * Powered by a NVIDIA Tegra 3 Prime is available with 10.1” WXGA quad-core CPU Glare (LED), focussing on user experience and aesthetics. To develop this state of the art product, ASUS development team focussed on four key incredible principles that guided the development team during the designing phase of Transformer Prime. The first tablet to use the NVIDIA Tegra 3 Quad-Core CPU, the Transformer Prime browses the web and plays 1080p HD video at blazing speeds. The Tegra 3 also empowers the Transformer Prime to deliver a gaming experience comparable to that of a game console. Tegra 3 enables up to 61 per cent lower power consumption. This translates into an industry-leading 12 hours of battery life for HD video playback. The Transformer Prime is equipped with the most advanced CMOS sensor and a large aperture designed to ensure sufficient light exposure and the ability to defocus the background and put emphasis on the object, making the photos bright and clear.

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The Nokia Lumia 900 is touted as the first LTE network supporting Windows Phone device from Nokia. The device sports a 4.3-inch with 800x480 pixel resolution. It is powered by a single core 1.4 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon APQ8055+processor on the MDM9200 mobile chipset, along with 512 MB RAM and 16 GB on-board storage. It also features an 8 MP main camera and 1 MP front camera. The Nokia Lumia 900 is expected to be priced at Rs 31,500 in India and is going to be pitted against the likes of Samsung Galaxy S II and the iPhone 4S. Nokia is a major player in the Indian mobile phone market, and may just launch the device at a lower price. Product Features * Supports Windows Phone device * Powered by 1.4 GHz Qualcomm processor * 512 MB RAM and 16 GB on-board storage * 8 MP main camera and 1 MP front camera

update

Save & Share with Samsung WB150F

e.go Aero Range from Wipro

RICH FEATURES * 18x optical super zoom * 24mm wide-angle lens * Stream video remotely * Microsoft Sky Drive * Smart Auto 2.0

CAMERA | Instant sharing and saving simply with WiFi connectivity and Auto Backup features Samsung Electronics has announced the launch of a new camera—the WB150F. Enhanced with the advanced optical zoom and image quality, the WB150 with its WiFi capability facilitates sharing and saving of images, wherever the user may be. Housed in compact, light and durable body, the new WB150F camera from Samsung makes the perfect travel companion. The WB150F makes it easy to capture incredible details through its impressive 18x optical super zoom and precision-cut 24mm wide-angle lens that makes it simple to get detailed up-close shots that were once out of reach. While you can get more from your lens, it has to be steady too. That’s where the WB150F’s OIS (Optical Image Stabilisation) comes in handy. “Samsung’s new smart WiFi technology in the WB150F aims to change the way consumers take pictures. The built-in WiFi capability makes sharing quicker and easier,” said Raj Kumar Rishi, VP-Audio Video Business, Samsung India.

Store data on the cloud HARD DISK| Store your data on the drive and

connect your tablet or smartphone free of wires to the satellite. With devices such as tablets and smartphones increasingly being used for media consumption, the capacities on offer on these devices do not really evoke glee. Imagine having 100s of HD movies, or 1000s of songs which you may want to carry along and watch or listen to on your tablet or smartphone. The only way to do that was to carry an external HDD, transfer the movies to a laptop, sync your tablet or smartphone with that content and then get only a fraction of it on your device. Pretty time-consuming, and involving lots of cords or wires.

ULTRABOOK Claiming to be India’s first 14-inch and slimmest Ultrabook, Wipro Infotech has recently launched e.go Aero range of ultraportable notebooks which include the e.go Aero Ultra. From 11.6” ultra-light notebook to the slimmest 14” Ultrabook, the e.go Aero is a range of mobile computing devices to suit every need. The range comprises e.go Aero Alpha, e.go Aero Book and e.go Aero Ultra. e.go Aero Alpha is an efficient, optimal and light notebook; just right for everyday workloads. e.go Aero Book is powered by the latest second generation Intel Core i5 processors and a 11.6” LED HD display. With a planner-book styling in an elegant small size, the e.go Aero Book is for those who value style and substance. e.go Aero Ultra is the ultraslim Ultrabook. Enveloped in magnesium alloy, the e.go Aero Ultra is a design marvel.

Key Advantages * Inbuilt WiFi adapter * Manage on your iOS device * Works with other WiFi devices * GoFlex connector compatible

Seagate GoFlex Satellite which is a network attached storage device with a difference. Instead of having a LAN port on the 500 GB drive, the Satellite has an inbuilt WiFi adapter. The concept of the GoFlex Satellite is very simple. Seagate’s intention is market this drive to those who are looking to the watch movies while in the car. Store your data on the drive, then connect your tablet or smartphone wirelessly to the Satellite and stream content.

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the web f r o m

www.itnext.in Read IT Next stories published online. The links of these stories can also be accessed through your mobiles/smartphones using QR code.

ACQUISATION NEWS

Cisco Plans to Acquire NDS for $5 bn

HOT NEWS

No Cheer for IT Sector in Budget 2012-13 Top IT execs and managers are disappointed with the Budget as Nasscom, Mait proposals ignored. According to Ganesh Natarajan, Vice Chairman and CEO of Zensar Technologies, there’s nothing much in the budget for IT. The booming technology sector is set to cross the $100 billion mark this year with $69 billion from exports and $32 billion from the domestic market. Archie Jackson, Sr Manager and IT Services Delivery Manager, Steria India Ltd, said, “Despite the big boom in the IT sector, the government has announced nothing worthwhile.” http://www.itnext.in/content/no-cheer-it-sectorbudget-2012-13.html TELECOM REVIVAL NEWS

Reliance Adds Six Million Subscribers Reliance engaged SAS to optimise campaign management and nurture its best customers. The project involved understanding 150 million individual customers. http://www.itnext.in/ content/reliance-adds6-mn-subscribersmonth-help-sas.html

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Cisco Systems has announced its intent to acquire NDS Group Ltd, a leading provider of video software and content security solutions that enable service providers and media companies to securely deliver and monetise new video entertainment experiences. It aims to expand its capability to deliver next generation video experiences on multiple devices to subscribers. NDS uses the combination of a software platform and services to create differentiated video offerings for service providers that enable subscribers to intuitively view, search and navigate digital content. http://www.itnext.in/content/ciscoacquire-nds-5-billion.html

OPINION

Don’t Tech it Easy! In our digitally loaded lives, it’s hard to imagine what we would do without technology; on the contrary, we would achieve certain things faster if tech didn’t play spoilsport, says Sanjay Gupta, Consulting Editor, IT Next .

http://www.itnext.in/content/dont-techit-easy.html

HI-TECH CITY NEWS

Hyderabad Fastest in Internet Speed in India: Report According to an Akamai report, broadband penetration in India has reached the threshold of 10 per cent. Akamai Technologies released its third quarter, 2011 State of the Internet report, based on data gathered from the Akamai Intelligent Platform—a distributed computing platform comprising thousands of servers across the world that is used to monitor and speed up access on the internet. The report provides insight into key India statistics such as internet penetration, mobile traffic and data consumption, global and regional connection speeds, and observed attack traffic. The report says that Hyderabad and Chennai are the fastest cities in India with average connection speeds of 1.5 Mbps and 1.2 Mbps. The average connection speeds in New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, and Kolkata are 0.8 Mbps, 0.8 Mbps, 1.1 Mbps, and 1.1 Mbps. http://www.itnext.in/ content/hyderabadfastest-internet-speedindia-report.html

from the web SECURITY NEWS

Deep Security 8.0 to Help in Securing Cloud Trend Micro, a global player in cloud security has announced the launch of Deep Security 8.0 that further expands its server security platform across physical, virtual and cloud computing environments. With an all new agent-less integrity monitoring capability purpose built for VMware vSphere 5 virtual environments and other cloudsourced innovations, Deep Security 8.0 is designed to lower the barrier to adoption of file integrity monitoring across the data centre and help small and midsize businesses (SMBs) achieve higher levels of data protection and compliance.

http://www.itnext.in/content/deep-security-80-helpsecuring-cloud.html

VENDOR NEWS

Wipro Launches Machine to Machine Solution for Telcos Wipro Technologies has announced the launch of Wipro M2M, a comprehensive solution that enables Communication Service Providers (CSPs) launch machine-to-machine (M2M) services quickly and costeffectively. M2M refers to technologies that use both wireless and wireline networks to enable direct communication between devices and applications. CSPs are investing heavily in M2M, because it offers tremendous potential to replace declining revenues in legacy business areas, such as voice and broadband services. http://www.itnext.in/ content/wipro-launchesmachine-machine-solntelcos.html

INSIGHT NEWS

Challenges to Governing Remote Information Records and Information Management (RIM) offers reduced risk to organisations sending data to the cloud. In recent years, some organisations sent data first and then asked records analysts to manage the information—

CIO SURVIVAL NEWS

CIOs to be History in Five Years? The role of the CIO may not exist in 5 years time, according to Getronics. The survey of 203 key decision-makers in companies with 1,000 or more employees, found that almost one in five CFOs (17%) believe that IT stands in jeopardy. About 43 per cent believe that the role will merge with finance and a third (31%) believe that CIOs will come from a non-technical background. http://www.itnext.in/content/ cios-role-cease-exist-5-years. html

an inverted sequence that produced problems. Even when well planned, records management in the cloud is a serious challenge. The latest attempt to define ageold records management comes from ARMA International’s Generally Accepted Record-keeping Principles (GARP). These principles apply millennia of learning through a universal system to management of records. http://www.itnext.in/ content/challengesgoverning-remoteinformation.html

GREEN ENERGY NEWS

Fujitsu is World Record Holder in Energy Efficiency Primergy RX300 S7 becomes the first to break milestone Fujitsu’s recently announced Primergy RX300 S7 server generation sets the new target to beat for single-node server efficiency, achieving a new world record and debuting as the first to break the milestone. http://www.itnext.in/content/fujitsu-server-world-record-holder-energy-efficiency.html

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Open Government/Open Innovation ICT for Development Social Media for Citizen Empowerment Policymakers' Panel SOME OF OUR SPEAKERS Mr. Kapil Sibal Minister for Communications & Information Technology and Human Resource Development, Government of India Mr. Nandan Nilekani Chairman, Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) Mr. Arun Maira Member Planning Commission, Government of India Mr. David Hume Executive Director, Citizen Engagement, Government of British Columbia, Canada Mr. Jānis Kārkliņš Assistant Director-General, Communication and Information Sector, UNESCO Prof. Geoff Walsham Judge Business School, Cambridge University, UK Dr. Samantha Liscio Corporate Chief Strategist, Ontario Public Service, Government of Ontario, Canada Mr. Ajit Balakrishnan Founder, Chairman & CEO, Rediff.com Mr. Padamvir Singh Director, Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, India Prof. Ashok Jhunjhunwala Indian Institute of Technology - Madras, India amongst many more...

AGRICULTURE: Developing solutions for food security and public distribution, raising productivity and improving farmers' quality of life EDUCATION: Adapting new, innovative educational tools and assessing IT interventions to improve learning and building a high-quality workforce e-GOVERNANCE: Empowering the State's agenda of delivering ‘anytime, anywhere’ services to its citizens, building capacities and fostering transparency HEALTH: Creating viable public health management systems; effective service delivery channels to improve health outcomes and better human resource management

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