IT Next April, 2013 by Manan Mushtaq

Editorial

Cloud in a Diverse Set-up The Cloud must be the most abused word in the industry. While so much has been said about the Cloud and discussions go on and on, thoughts of the Cloud continue to intrigue all. The future of the IT industry is enveloped by the Cloud; and every IT Head, whether he desires it or not, seems to be bitten by this bug. While there has been a contention about the form or forms of the Cloud which could be more appropriate to the industry or enterprises, the multiple facets of the Cloud would definitely address the concerns. IT Next’s cover feature on ‘Handbook on Cloud Technology’ in its current edition is an endeavour to bring to light various impressions and opinions of the Cloud and its applications in diverse scenarios and varied forms. It has delved deep into how the cloud computing model is being used by varied verticals and enterprises. It is rather interesting to find that most enterprise heads have followed a multi-faceted approach to Cloud adoption and integration for a business need. There is no doubt that the cloud computing model is maturing, though some amount of skepticism prevails. We notice that most users understand the benefits that the Cloud offers, having a higher level of integration that links the systems perfectly well and acting as a catalyst for value creation. But something’s missing somewhere. Most senior IT managers are challenged in terms of absorbing the Cloud in its truest sense or fullest form. The cover feature details certain cloud working models that the Government of India has initiated to provide better service to citizens; how CEOs of IT vendor companies have debated on effective steps to the Cloud and its value proposition to enterprises. Cloud experts have discussed easy steps to the Cloud and how it should be viewed in the complex scenario and framework that it needs.

“It is rather interesting to find that most enterprise heads have followed a multi-faceted approach to Cloud adoption and integration for a business need” Geetha Nandikotkur

Blogs To Watch! A typical cloud computing system and how it works http://computer.howstuffworks. com/cloud-computing/cloudcomputing.htm Final Version of NIST Cloud Computing Definition Published http://www.nist.gov/itl/csd/ cloud-102511.cfm Cloud Computing-A Collection of working white papers http://www.johnhagel.com/ cloudperspectives.pdf Advances in cloud computingResearch in future cloud computing http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ ict/ssai/docs/future-cc-2mayfinalreport-experts.pdf

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10 cover story

boss talk

interview

12 CEOs on the Cloud CEOs of IT companies debate the ‘Promise and Perils’ of cloud computing and what it can offer enterprises

22 Cloud isn’t a single entity Interview with Peter Cochrane, CEO & Chairman at Cochrane Associates-He delves deep into the cloud technology and trends

24 The Use of Cloud in Government Government departments under the NeGP program are experimenting with cloud based models to provide better services

28 The Cloud Honour The Cloud leadership award for the team that has successfully implemented a cloud based project IT NEXT

APRIL 2013 / ` 100 VOLUME 04 / ISSUE 03

FEATURE: Building a credible PPM Technique

OPEN DEBATE: Experts argue if Big Data is another analytical tool?

INTERVIEW: BOSS TALK Polycom’s Hayward on how Unleash the winning to integrate Cloud with UC potential Pg 06

cover Design: ANIL T

HANDBOOK ON CLOUD COMPUTING VOLUME 04 | ISSUE 03

A 9.9 Media Publication

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06 Otis Elevators’ Director IT & CIO, V Subramaniam on how to unleash the winning potential in you

38 Polycom’s Senior Director Product Management, Cary Hayward on the importance of integrating Cloud with UC

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EDITORIAL

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34 insights

Building ppm techniques| IT managers

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Update 08 Service led solution is the

Effective project and portfolio management techniques can help in improving innovation lifecycle and better decision making

approach to Future | Gartner says IT Service Providers should bridge legacy offerings with new services

35 Project & Portfolio Management Pay backs in terms of RoI | PPM ensures hard savings potential while also qualifying intangible savings from the effective utilisation of legacy applications.

DESIGN

need to leverage effective PPM methods to align their resources to drive better innovation

34 Right PPM Technique |

insight

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47 Experts comprising the

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INBoX

IT NEXT

COVER STORY | THE BIG DATA JOURNEY

MARCH 2013 / ` 100 VOLUME 04 / ISSUE 02

STRATEGY Easy Steps to Implementing BI

Big Data at Work

ON A

IT decision-makers are harnessing the benefits of big data to help businesses make intelligent decisions BY N GE E TH A I LLUSTRATI O N BY MANAV SACHDE V D ESI GN BY RAJ V E RMA

P HOTO I M AGI NG BY P ET ER SON PJ

TEST DRIVE

IT managers do agree that big data is being harnessed; and there is hope, with big data analytic discovery vendors supporting the big data trend with the tools necessary to discover and co-relate with the structured data. However, skepticism prevails because of the data warehousing projects in the past that never provided the promised business outcome. In some cases, IT managers are relatively leery of making additional investments in big data and advanced analytics because of the complexity of their current analytics program. According to Balasubramaniam Vedagiri, VP & Head Enterprise Technology Solutions, Mphasis, and Next100 winner, using modeling tools and algorithms to harness the big data predictive analytics will define the winners in the next few years. “Big data is being used in supply chain management to understand a car maker’s sudden increase of defect rates in the field. Similarly, healthcare practices of millions of people are continually scanned and intervened as part of customer service,” says Vedagiri. IT teams argue that in order to be a true differentiator, the right data set needs to be chosen, on which the models that predict and optimise business outcome can be built. In this context, Vedagiri believes that even before bringing the analytics flavour to the fore, identification of the right business unit as a pilot is the first step. With the ability of big data to achieve optimised reports/dashboards on large data sets with many petabytes, the right business opportunities can be spotted by challenging the key functions.

30 FEATURE

INTERVIEW Attachmate’s Dohsung on Collaborating for Smart IT

Apply right controls to prevent risks PG 24

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VOLUME 04 | ISSUE 02

enior IT decision makers are always on the threshold of being bombarded with various innovations, be it about technology or market related. After the Cloud, the next hype has been around big data, which refers to the new universe of data being created by web interactions, social media, mobile and others. The obvious question from IT heads or senior IT managers have been ‘how relevant is big data and how does it matter to me?’ And it is encouraging to find that senior IT managers are in sync with the fact that big data affects everyone. However, there’s one aspect that’s clear, that the big data project obviously is not driven by IT. IT NEXT embarked on a cover story to analyse the big data trend and its impact on senior IT managers and their role in making a big deal out of big data. Most vendors say that big data is definitely considered to be a big deal by IT managers, without whose help the big data puzzle cannot be resolved. Most agree that IT teams are the support systems which extract value of big data using the necessary analytical tools, making it a structured form that enables businesses to use it for their competitive advantage.

BOSS TALK Pine Labs’ CEO on PoS Innovations

BIG DATA ON A TEST DRIVE

“Big data users need to focus on the specific slices of the original diverse data sources to answer specific questions”

TEST DRIVE

A 9.9 Media Publication

ITDMs are harnessing the benefits of big data through a pilot program to help businesses Pg 10

march 2013

Ramendra Mandal Country Manager, Qlik Tech India Pvt. Ltd.

While finding insights that can improve business decisionmaking is not without inherent challenges, the first step that Ramendra Mandal, Country Manager, QlikTech India Pvt. Ltd, recommends is to isolate the area that the business is interested in. ‘Big data users need to focus on the specific slices of the original diverse data sources which are useful for answering specific business questions, without losing sight of the bigger picture,” says Mandal. According to Mandal, the role of IT heads in this process is critical. Not only does he or she need to amplify the value of data, he or she also needs to understand how to unify the business around it. “CIOs also need to fine-tune their approach to technology and a big data technology strategy should generally follow a portfolio approach,” says Mandal. According to Qlik Tech, a portfolio approach means that CIOs don’t just use one technology to solve all their problems. For CIOs who are looking at big data, and who feel it’s important to their business, there must be tools in their tool box that enable them to search, understand, analyse and model the data.

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IT NEXT thanks its Readers for the warm response

IT NEXT values your feedback

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

Keep up the great work! Dear Editor, IT Next is doing great. I love it. Keep up the great work. I spend about two-three hours reading it online. The most interesting sections are Cube Chat, 15 minute manager, Editorial and the case studies. I like reading these as they provide facts and future direction to aspiring CIOs. Spending time on reading these help me enrich my knowledge and thinking ability, which I think is another step forward to the goal. As we go forward, I would like to read more stories on leadership by way of small case studies; these would help us grow as leaders. Case studies about how IT managers have moved up to the role of a CIO, and of CIOs moving up the ladder to become CEOs would be of great interest. I wish IT Next will always be a leader innovating and offering great value to its readers/followers, with a promise from readers that they will contribute equally to its qualitative contents.

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A marvellous piece Dear Editor, I got to read the feature on BI in the online edition of IT Next. It is a marvellous piece, and I am happy to find such a talented team. I am also impressed with the quality of content and magazine design. I am excited to be associated with IT Next and look forward to writing articles. Sunil Ranka BI Professional

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Focus on verticals Dear Editor, IT Next brings interesting stories in every issue. One of the stories that I recall was the cover story on women, ‘Unlocking Women’s Potential.’ It made an interesting read as no one had attempted such a story for the IT managers community. The study show cased interesting perspectives and gave interesting insights about the personal and professional aspirations of women, their challenges and so on. I would like to read stories related to personal profiles such as Cube Chat, which is very absorbing. The cover story on the CIO and CFO debate was very well written with good insights. I understand IT Next is going to get aggressive on the digital front. Besides reading interesting profiles and case studies of successful people, IT managers would be keen to read about technology, and verticals-focused stories: if IT Next could categorise the content based on various verticals and speak about the best practices in technology in that category. For instance, I would like to read technological best practices from the hospitality sector; also case studies which show successful implementation of projects. It would be ideal if you could also showcase project failures which will help us understand the flipside. Going forward, I would be happy if IT Next brought out white papers from prominent research groups which hitherto could not be accessed by IT managers. As for me, I would visit the IT Next website to read also about Next100 and associated stories. I am keen to get updates on the Next100 winners, their successes in life. The next phase for the IT managers is to leverage the social platform effectively to get insights into the industry and peer development. Ashish Khanna Corporate Manager-IT Infrastructure, EIH (Note: Letters have been edited minimally, for brevity and clarity)

Boss talk | V Subramaniam

Team Management

Unleash the Potential, Win

inning’ inspires people to work harder; a winner gives hope to ordinary individuals and inspires them to stretch to make it to the

extra…ordinary. I wish to touch upon a few aspects relevant to IT managers from the standpoint of a winning culture. It is critical for most IT managers who aspire to grow in their careers to understand the importance of creating a winning culture in their organisations and in their teams.

Create a Winning Attitude “How do IT managers contribute to bring in a winning culture into the enterprise”? The quintessential approach is to create a winning attitude followed by a winning team. There are a few ingredients that IT managers must imbibe if such a culture needs to be built. They have to: Focus on common goal Possess a high level of commitment, responsibility, accountability Have a sense of ownership in making things happen beyond barriers Establish certain limitations by maximising their collective strengths as a winning team What does all this mean? For an IT manager, it is imperative to ensure the goals are clearly articulated and well defined to the team, while maintaining the necessary discipline in terms of project management, and taking into account the three pillars which form the scope: speed, time and quality.

A Positive Environment It is fundamental to create an environment for the team to unleash their potential--with skills and knowledge and a positive attitude which creates a winning habit. Another most crucial criterion is to have the right balance of team with the right skills, competencies and continual learning to acquire the skills required to be part of a winning team.

“For an IT manager, it is imperative to ensure the project goals are clearly articulated and well defined to the team” High performance and a high impact team create a winning team.

Play Like a Champion

Suggestion BOX

Mediocrity is unacceptable in a winning team. A winning team creates a winning culture. Winning that is shared is an inspiration and a winning team always inspires every team / member in the enterprise to create a winning situation and be a winner. A winning team always plays like champions…every match and every goal is important; it performs like a rock star…it’s about creating shows, not just managing them. Every show that guides us through problems is important for the team to win and drive a winning culture.

Winning is a Habit, an Attitude The book inspires the readers to become good human beings. Being successful is not the only achievement. Writer: Shiv Khera Publisher: Macmill an Publishers India Ltd

As Maria Sharapova shared, “Tennis is made of losses and wins. Even if disappointed when one looses the game, one needs to stand up again and continue fighting for the next match.” Winning is a habit and an attitude. As leaders, we have to imbibe this within ourselves and inspire the team to imbibe it and be part of the winning team to create a winning culture across the organisation. V Subramaniam, Director-IT & CIO, Otis Elevators Ltd (India & Gulf)

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Service-Led Solution is the approach to Future TECH TRENDS | The drive of organisations toward increased standardization of infrastructure, applications and business processes, combined with expanding and more comprehensive provider ecosystems, shows that service-led solutins will displace traditional sourcing approaches through 2015, according to Gartner, Inc. To remain relevant, IT service providers must bridge legacy offerings and new services based on new technologies, new delivery models and new architectures. “The IT services market

CLOUD

Gartner IT Service Providers must bridge Legacy offerings and new services

Citizen Services Solving Accessibility Problems Number of e-transactions per 100 persons 200

Government of India’s statistics on the total e-transactions in the country spread across different states and average transaction per 100 persons

Total e-Transcations Numbers of transactions per 100 population

180 160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20

d an an dm An

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N ic ob An ar dh Isl un ra and ac Pr s ha ad l P es ra h de s As h sa m Ch Bi a ha Ch ndi r ha ga tt rh is ga rh De lh i G Gu oa Hi aj m ac Ha rat ha r y l P an ra a Jh des ar h k Ka ha rn nd at M ak ad hy Ke a r a Pr ala M ad ah e ar sh as h M tra an M eg ipu ha r N lay ag a al an d Po O r i nd ss ic a he rr Pu y Ra nja ja b st ha S n Ta ikk m im il N a Ut Tr du ta ip r P ur a Ut rad ta es r h W an es ch a tB l en ga l

Source: Cisco

trends deals products services people

plays a key role in bridging legacy offerings and new cloud delivery paradigms. IT services providers that are able to adapt to change, improve competitiveness and identify growth opportunities will thrive,” said Eric Rocco, managing VP at Gartner. “Growth opportunities certainly exist for service providers with life cycle solutions in relation to the Nexus of Forces (cloud, social, mobile and information). However, this requires IT services providers to adapt to significant changes, including the growing influence of business leaders in technology investment decisions.” Gartner predicts that the overall IT services market will grow 5.2 percent in 2013 and continue strong growth through 2016. Growth will largely come from changes and opportunities brought on by the Nexus of Forces and newer delivery models. Hardware support and software support are among the lower-growth opportunities in the IT services market while cloud-based Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and business process as a service (BPaaS) are growing strongly at 13.1 percent and 47.3 percent, respectively, in 2013. Agility, not cost, will be the primary reason that many organizations adopt cloud computing. Hybrid IT environments will dominate client IT architectures through 2016, underscoring the importance of skills in the old-world legacy environments as well as the new world “as a service” operating models. “The big squeeze is on for early IT services providers to achieve sustainable value-based differentiation,” said Mr. Rocco.

PHOTO by photos .com

Update I n d u s t r y

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So you love your underwater adventure sports as much as your Sony NEX6? Well, then Nauticam has an aluminium housing with patented lens attachment mechanism to allow you to shoot upto 100 metres below sea level: Rs 91,000.

Symantec simplifies the endpoint protection deployment Cloud Security | Symantec Corp. today announced Symantec Endpoint Protection Small Business Edition 2013, giving small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in India choice by offering a cloud-managed service and traditional on-premise management in a single endpoint protection product. By simplifying the deployment options, SMBs have the freedom to very easily move to the cloud when they’re ready without adding complexity to their environment. SMBs can also effortlessly protect their information at a time when targeted attacks have doubled against businesses with 250 or fewer employees, climb-

Cloud and On-Premise in a single product

ing to 36 per cent of all targeted attacks. “Today’s SMBs are four times more at risk of malware attacks than larger companies. Despite the risk, some just cross their fingers and wing it because buying, deploying and managing

security systems is too complicated. Anand Naik, Managing Director-Sales, India & SAARC, Symantec said, “It takes just minutes for a virus to destroy a business. Symantec Endpoint Protection Small Business Edition 2013 installs in minutes and updates automatically, so small businesses can be confident the lifeblood of their business--their information-- is always protected against viruses and malware.” Symantec Endpoint Protection Small Business Edition 2013 addresses these requirements by installing in minutes, protecting against viruses and malware, and updating automatically to deliver critical protection for laptops, desktops, and file servers. Built specifically for SMBs, this new solution delivers and helps in and protecting the business community around the world.

quick byte

Around The World

PHOTO by photos .com

CtrlS Expands Footprint Overseas CtrlS, a leading IT enabled Managed Service Provider(MSP) owning Asia’s largest Tier IV Datacenters, today announced the launch of its overseas operations by starting the world class datacenter in San Diego, California United States. The launch of overseas operations is an initiative by CtrlS to offer IT Infrastructure and quality services like Disaster Recovery, RIM Services for existing customers targeting the western markets.

Michael Eugene Porter, Management Consultant

“Strategy is about being different. It means deliberately choosing a different set of activities to deliver a unique mix of value and it is the result of choices.”

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Easy steps to implementing cloud computing forms amid diverse scenarios by T e a m I T N ext DESIGN BY R A J VER M A | I M AGI NG BY A NI L T

Inside Pages 12-20 | CEOs on Cloud 22-23 | Interview with Peter C 24-27 | Use of Cloud in Government 28-33 | Cloud Leadership Awards

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xploring cloud computing models specific to one’s technological and business needs has become the phenomenon now. The cloud is a subjective matter and is understood by different people in different forms and used in different environments. At the recently held Inflexion Convex 2013, an annual conference for India’s enterprise IT leaders and managers that aimed to generate actionable learning to facilitate effective delivery of IT services, over 700 CXOs, CIOs and ITDMs across verticals came together. The theme was ‘Cloud: The Easy Next Step.’ The focus: the use of cloud-based solutions for enterprises.

cover story Cloud Computing Convex What does it constitute?

For instance, Ashish Khanna, Corporate Manager-IT Infrastructure, The key objective of the convex EIH Ltd., said, “Inflexion was to find answers to four 2013 is a very nice concept important questions that are which invites IT leaders and top-of-the-mind for technolbusiness leaders together to ogy professionals. brainstorm on a particular They included: topic. What do business leaders This year’s theme on want? * How can technology ‘Cloud: The Easy Next Step’ deliver what your business has given a lot of insights needs? * How do you choose to CIOs and has answered and implement the right many unanswered questions technologies? * How do you from OEMS directly. take a leadership position The key takeaway was in both professional and to help in identifying areas personal spaces? where the Cloud can help The convex attempted to and fulfill our business capture various perspectives needs.” on the Cloud through According to Khanna, workshops, hands-on sessions the convex addressed many on how to get things done, key concerns around cloud Buyer’s Meet, opportunity computing like: Security to participate in one-on-one practices, Opting model, sessions with technology which is Private vs. Public or vendors to find cloud hybrid cloud, Maintaining solutions to specific business compliance and audit while needs, Leadership sessions using public cloud, Cloud - with industry leaders and vendor selection strategy. experts sharing their best Khanna feels assured of practices, CEO Debate – where the fact that both private and business heads shared their public clouds are very easy views and thoughts on what to deploy but it is dependent they expected from the Cloud on application compatibility and how it would impact their and migration strategy, business models. which determine the ease Ashish Khanna of deployment. Cloud Handbook Corporate Manager-IT Infrastructure, EIH Ltd Inadequate maturity of The IT Next team embarked vendors on this technology on a cover feature, ‘Cloud and lack of standard computing handbook,’ based frameworks available for on the messages and perspecdeploying and managing cloud are major deterrents in cloud tives that each of the speakers brought to light, and on the technology deployment in any organisation. next easy steps to the Cloud in their own understanding. He believed that cloud deployment in any organisation The story gleans insights from CEOs of IT companies debatshould be a journey and the enterprise must start small ing on the Cloud and its offerings to stakeholders, the Keyand first deploy non critical applications on the cloud and note speaker’s perspective on the Cloud and why customers then move critical applications. The high performance should adopt the Cloud, how the Government is encouraging intensive applications should be taken at the end. and implementing working cloud models to empower the cit“A standard framework is a must for organisations to guide izens of the country, and the cloud leadership Awards which them about a methodological approach of moving to the was given to IT teams for having implemented successful Cloud; in case of non-satisfaction with the existing vendor, cloud models within their enterprise. it will also guide organisations on how to separate from this vendor and move to a new vendor without user disturbance”, Key Takeaway points Khanna. Senior IT executives had useful takeaways from the Convex.

“The convex addressed many key concerns around cloud computing like: Security practices, Opting model, which is Private vs. Public etc., and also vendor selection”

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CEO Debate

CEOs of IT companies debate the ‘Promise and Perils’ of cloud computing and what it can offer enterprises

nflexion 2013 is an annual conference for India’s enterprise and government IT leaders that aims to generate actionable learning that will enable innovation and effective delivery of IT services. The theme for Inflexion 2013 was ‘Cloud: The Easy Next Step’. While cloud technologies and services offer significant benefits to enterprises, many IT decision-makers and decision-influencers continue to have concerns and questions about their utility, governance and management. To address some of these issues, Inflexion organised a CEO debate on the “Promise & Perils” of clouds.

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The panel comprised of CEOs and senior leaders from organisations involved in providing cloud technology and services. Panelists debated and discussed “hot button” topics and fielded questions from the audience, who comprised CIOs and senior IT executives. The CIOs and the participants comprising the senior IT executives threw up questions at the CEOs on cloud. Here are some thoughts put across by the CEOs on the current state and future prospects of cloud technologies—and how they will impact various business processes in an enterprise. The session was moderated by Dr Pramath Sinha, Managing Director, 9.9 Media.

cover story Cloud Computing Convex

Top 3 CIO Concerns about Cloud

op 3 CIO Concerns about the Cloud 1. Security 2. Privacy and 3. Regulatory compliance As per Unisphere Research conducted among IT and data managers and professionals with Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG) members, security issues continued to be a concern with the use of public cloud and online application services, making private clouds a more attractive option to enterprises. Cloud and compliance are often treated as opposing forces. While the Cloud encourages dynamism, compliance enforces caution and control.

Three Pieces of Advice on the Cloud Understand the applications you want to move to the Cloud: Organisations can start by moving non-critical applications to the Cloud to get a sense of the Cloud environment or even understand the integration level that the application has with other applications which may not be on the Cloud--as it could hamper day-to-day operations. Develop a vision for an optimised datacenter: Before embarking on the cloud platform, companies should always have in mind the vision of a modern, optimised datacenter. Deploy cloud-ready applications: A sincere piece of advice for all organisations evaluating a cloud environment would be to deploy cloud-ready solutions.

Three Value Propositions of a Cloud Customer adoption of cloud computing is seriously rising, and the key motivators are: 1. Cost savings, 2) Speed and 3) Flexibility Through self-service access to an available pool of computing resources, users can be up and running in minutes instead of weeks or months. Making adjustments to computing capacity is also fast, thanks to elastically scalable grid architecture offered in a cloud solution. The pay-per-use model operates at a high scale and is highly automated. Although public clouds are typically getting more attention in India due to their cost-saving benefit, private clouds potentially offer more significant advantages.

Should cloud solutions be evaluated and purchased by CIOs or Line of Business (LOB) heads? Why? CIOs and LOB heads need to concur on IT procurement decisions as the ultimate intent of the purchase is to improve employee productivity, business efficiency, provide superior customer service-all resulting in company good will and profitability.

Will moving to the Cloud really save money?

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Companies should have a vision of a modern, optimised data center before embarking on the cloud platformâ&#x20AC;? Sandeep Mathur, Managing Director, Oracle India

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Cloud computing, after years of being overhyped and underperforming, has become an ideal platform for driving those transformations in ways that are effective, affordable, and sustainable: deliver better and more engaging service to customers, align talent all across the company with business priorities and Reduce risk for compliance and reporting.

Justifying Cloud Investment The CIO needs to look at the issues in his organisation which are still unresolved despite IT investments. These could be: time to market for new applications, inefficient use of resources, inability to handle major spikes in workload, etc. Several of these issues can be resolved by using cloud solutions.

cisco | it next custom series

Simplifying IT Management Through Cisco’s UCS In a series of interactive articles, Cisco will shed more light on its Unified Computing System (UCS), thereby enabling CIOs to better manage their IT infrastructure How can UCS help me in simplifying management of my IT resources? Dinesh Kaushik, Head IT, Caparo India Answer: Management solutions for an integrated data center infrastructure must help monitor the network and storage resources required by the computing platform. Complexity in server management software can increase as more products are used to develop and maintain an integrated infrastructure. Additionally, each component vendor will bring its own management interface and communication protocols. This simplification changes things for the better because it takes a lot of complication out of the equation. The Cisco UCS Manager runs embedded in the fabric interconnect and helps manage all components of the Cisco UCS with Intel® Xeon® processor through a single pane. Managing

the server, networking, and storage resources with a unified approach greatly decreases complexity, providing the capability to deploy and alter applications quickly through the innovative use of policies, role-based access control (RBAC), service profiles and templates.

Cisco’s UCS is no doubt an innovative solution. However, would deploying this lead to vendor lockin? How compatible is it with other IT infrastructure/solutions? Manoranjan Kumar, CIO, Kanoria Chemicals & Industries Answer: Deploying Cisco UCS with Intel® Xeon® processor will not result in a vendor lock-in. The difference lies in the architecture which provides a significant advantage based on how it is implemented. Standard Intel x86 processors are beneficial both from a connectivity and a management perspectives. Cisco UCS supports most operating systems

commercially available as well as third party storage devices. Therefore, it can be easily integrated along with any existing infrastructure. The following link gives the interoperability matrix with other vendors: http://cisco.in/ucs/matrix To learn more, you may also visit us at cisco.in/servers

For any queries regarding Cisco UCS, please send them to yashvendra.singh@9dot9.in

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Top three concerns about Cloud

op three concerns aboutCloud a) Technology lock-in---CIOs need to ensure that they are not locked into a proprietary single-vendor approach if they start embracing communication services from the

Cloud. b) Security--any approach that starts moving technology off-premise and into a more public domain will always raise questions on security. c) Flexibility / ability to exit--one of the potential benefits of cloud services is a more flexible delivery model. CIOs are often concerned that the model may not be flexible enough for them.

Three pieces of advice on the Cloud a) Look at the big picture--look at why you might be considering cloud service delivery for some services. Understand the reasons behind this. Is it purely a financial model, moving away from capex to opex? Or are there other drivers such as a flexible delivery model, instant availability etc? b) Secondly--look at the business areas and business processes that might benefit and also those that might not. Not all technologies or functions may be appropriate to shift towards cloud delivery. c) Don’t discount the potential of a private cloud--especially for video collaboration. Many organisations deliver the equivalent of a service provider “always-on” video service with department level chargeback.

Reasons Why CIOs don’t Adopt the Cloud Are they reluctant? We see an increasing trend across APAC for cloud delivery models, especially as video collaboration expands beyond the conference room to mobile and desktop devices.

Top three value propositions of a Cloud a) Always on--24 x 7 availability of the service. Within video collaboration, this typically takes the form of accessing video conference calls with the same ease and simplicity. b) Flexibility of deployment and growth--being able to pay as you use / pay as you grow enables organisations to be more flexible in how they implement next generation collaboration tools and ensures they can invest as they need, rather than potentially investing upfront to support their expected final user base. c) Operational expense delivery model--for many organisations, the primary driver to evaluate cloud delivery is the ability to move to a pure opex model rather than having to make upfront capital investments.

Who should decide on the Cloud--CIOs or Line of Business (LOB) heads? Why?

“Look at the business areas and processes that might benefit and also those that might not as all technologies may not be appropriate for it” Neeraj Gill, Managing Director - India & SAARC, Polycom

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Both should definitely be part of the discussion and decision-the LOB heads should define what they need from their cloud communication solution, how they want their workforce teams to collaborate, etc.

Justifying Cloud Investment Within the video collaboration space, we see some hybrid approaches to cloud delivery that ensure the best use of existing assets. These solutions range from simply outsourcing the management of the infrastructure (which remains onpremise) to a buy-out of existing infrastructure by a cloud provider, to an integrated approach with both on-premise and cloud delivery.

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Top Three Concerns about Cloud

op Three Concerns about the Cloud a) Security and privacy of data b) Are the applications on the Cloud ‘Enterprise grade’ and the integration with multiple applications on premise or on the Cloud? c) Availability and reliability

Three Pieces of Advice on the Cloud a) Know your journey (Evaluate the applications that can move to the Cloud with the least disruption); work through your strategy and route map. The option is aggressive strategy or gradual deployment

b) Free is Good--Use 30 Day Trials or POCs c) Don’t become a hostage--Contracts should be more than about a click.

Three Reasons for CIOs’ Reluctance to Adopt the Cloud a) Loss of control--losing the spend, large teams and authority b) Does it meet specific needs, since it appears to be one size fits all? c) Calculating TCO seems extremely complex.

Three Value Propositions of a Cloud: a) Operating cost reduces to a fraction, no capital expenditure anymore, b) Scalability and flexibility--pay as you grow and c) Stay updated with the latest technology as upgrades come inbuilt

Who should decide on the Cloud, CIOs or Line of Business (LOB) heads? Why? CIOs should not end up being relegated to the background and hence they need to engage business heads in all the evaluation and take a joint decision. The CIO’s role is transforming-from being the solution provider to service governance.

Three Big Risks of Adopting the Cloud Is it unsafe to transact on the net using your credit/debit card? Is your gold safe at home or in your bank locker? If the latter is true, the same analogy holds good for your data on the Cloud. Service providers are certified to counter the toughest security threats and probably are much less vulnerable than your in house infrastructure.

Security Standards for the Cloud There are various standards that ensure the security of the data like SAS70, PCI DSS, ISO 27001, FISMA, etc.. Further, there are various evolving standards on interoperability, interface and service level agreements.

“If you invest on on-premise infrastructure, you need an army of technical resources to keep your lights on” Virender Agarwal, CEO, Ramco Systems

Justifying Investment If you invest on on-premise infrastructure, you need an army of DBA/testers/functional/technical resources to keep your lights on. You probably spend 80 per cent of the IT budget in maintaining your existing system and 20 per cent on innovation or new adoption. With cloud computing, the ratio could be just the reverse; one can focus on introducing innovation and solving business problems rather than getting sucked into mundane ticket solving/bug fixing or refreshing worn out boxes.

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Top Three Cloud-related Concerns of CIOs

op Three Cloud-related Concerns of CIOs Data security, compliance with Industry regulations, control and vendor lock-in are the three concerns for CIO with regard to the Cloud.

Three Pieces of Advice on the Cloud a) Assess business drivers to move to the Cloud, b) Involve all business and decision stake holders early in the IT strategy, and c) Classify and assess IT systems and business divisions to map benefits of the Cloud at each layer of IT and business.

Three Reasons for CIOs’ Reluctance in Adopting the Cloud Major changes to the IT process and operation, lack of specialised knowledge workers (Cloud architects), initial investment and ROI.

Top Value Propositions for the Cloud Business agility, Automation in IT systems and process (provisioning, management, monitoring), mobility.

“Cloud decision should be led by CIOs in conjunction with LOB heads as it is an operational model enabled by technology that helps business to be more agile. While technology is managed by the CIO, the business team needs to adapt to the new operational model” Rajesh Janey, President - India & SAARC, EMC Corp

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Should the Cloud decision be evaluated by CIOs or Line of Business (LOB) heads? Why? It should be led by CIOs in conjunction with LOB heads. The Cloud is an operational model enabled by technology that helps businesses to be more agile. While technology is managed by the CIO, the business team which is the end user, needs to adapt to the new operational model to make the transformation successful.

Three Big Risks of Adopting Cloud Technologies Every new technology has an element of risk. With the right strategy, enablement and risk assessment approach, risks can be mitigated. The three big risks would be: a) Service level agreement and privacy agreement b) Location of the datacentre, in case of a public Cloud c) Security and data protection

Justifying the Cloud Investment Assess the utilisation of existing IT resources and analyse it against how well it drives business. If there is a need to address business agility, growth, reduce cost of operation etc., it would make a suitable case for evaluating the Cloud.

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Three measures to establish a cloud service provider

hree measures to establish a cloud service provider partnership . The measures would essentially be about the kind of contractual frameworks one has and the leeway these allow. Also, it depends on the kind of confidence that one has to be able to convey to prospective customers about the longevity of the infrastructure and the longevity of the business. If there is a potential possibility of getting stranded, and if one has to move out, then the question is what access one has to the data. Am I contractually bound, so that, irrespective of what happens, I will go down with the company going down, and so on and so forth.

The three Biggest Barriers to CIOs Adopting the Cloud

How can CIOs take better decisions?

“It is a question of confidence that one needs to generate internally and for the organisation around cloud”

Fundamentally, I think knowledge and information already exist. I have seen CIOs hold a tremendous amount of information. But at our end, what we typically try and do is to move the conversation to a phase wise adaptation of the Cloud. Meaning, if you are in a completely siloed environment, you could do with consolidation and virtualisation of the infrastructure. If there is certain non critical infrastructure that you have, then some of it may be moved over to a public Cloud provider. That way, you build experience on getting the organisation aligned on some of the shifts that have happened, because the Cloud as a technology is here to stay. It is a question of confidence that one needs to generate internally and for the organisation to rally around that confidence and make the shift.

Justification to Move To put myself in the CIOs’ shoes is too big a task to from On-premise to handle. I’ll take a shortcut to Private Cloud Rajesh Rege the question. Typically in my More often than not, the private VP (Datacenter & Cloud), Cisco Systems India conversations with CIOs, there cloud implementations that we are two or three things that have seen consist of rationalisacome up as areas of further tion and optimisation of infradiscussion or debate. One structure that large enterprises is the sense of confidence that people have on what kind of already have. And once the rationalisation and optimisation is SLAs or what kind of data confidentiality they will get: am done, getting a better sense of assigning appropriate cost weightI doing the right thing? If this conversation has to proceed, age depending on the consumption of the IT infrastructure in a then am I getting trapped with somebody who may or may conventional architecture is a little difficult. Secondly, once you not be there for a long time? The second question is in terms have the whole consolidation and virtualisation in place and are of whether this will take control away from me on IT deciutilising your infrastructure more effectively, the next step then sion making and those kinds of points. The third is: I have so of course is what you do with the newer services that you need. much invested right now; pretty much what I need has been This is where the whole toss up happens on whether you want to catered to; my challenges are on incremental budgeting and do it on premises--inside the organisation, or you source it from incremental project management. a service provider--outside.

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Top Three concerns of CIOs on the Cloud

hree concerns of CIOs on the Cloud. Managing the risk of placing IT assets under the management of third party providers. Data protection in a cloud environment. Customers question whether their end user data will be shared or leaked in any way breaching privacy laws. Implementing appropriate controls for Cloud adoption.

Three Pieces of Advice to CIOs on Cloud Strategy There are certain rules every CIO should adhere to while creating a cloud strategy. These include:

1. Creating a Security-as-a-Service adoption policy that states how new SaaS platforms can be assessed and endorsed by IT management. 2. Establishing a common cloud identity management strategy for SaaS/PaaS/IaaS. This should be iterated with existing identity management solutions and support user provisioning and revocation of access. 3. Reviewing current IT security implementations standards to ensure that they address cloud security needs.

Reasons for Reluctance to Adopt the Cloud? Some of the key barriers to cloud adoption are: First, security will remain the biggest topic in Cloud Computing, especially as even more enterprises demand greater transparency and security controls from their Cloud providers. The second question is that of trust and security, because every service and operation of the Cloud is handled by someone else. We expect certification of cloud providers and creation of standards to provide security benchmarks that can offer customers some assurance about the security a cloud provider can offer. The third is cloud standards which should help SaaS and cloud providers grow their businesses by overcoming security-related concerns.

Three Value Propositions of a Cloud The top three highlights of adopting a cloud solution for an enterprise include: 1. Improved Return on Capital Employed and reduced Opex 2. Reduced IT project time/improved agility 3. Data access from everywhere and increased agility rendered to the organisation

Should cloud decisions be evaluated and purchased by CIOs or Line of Business (LOB) heads? Why?

“The CIO should be responsive to the LOB needs to enable the business to adopt cloud technologies” Jagdish Mahapatra, Managing Director - India & SAARC, McAfee India

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The CIO should be responsive to the LOB needs to enable the business, and should be responsible for the adoption of cloud technologies. Ultimately the CIO is responsible for Information Systems end-to-end and has the support mechanisms to address the risk assessment when deviations occur.

Justifying Cloud Investment Organisations should embrace their transition to the Cloud as a strategy to reduce costs and increase business agility. With each new IT project, the appropriateness of cloud should be considered. The metrics should focus on risk management, return on capital employed and responsiveness to business needs.

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cloud related mandates “The easy-to-use, cloud based service needs no professional training and allows the small business owner to take datadriven business decisions on the move” Nikhil Arora, Vice President & Managing Director - India, Intuit India Software Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

“If a CIO has made a lot of investment in IT infrastructure and solutions, how does he or she justify the move to cloud solutions and what would be the value proposition?” S C Mittal, Group CTO, Iffco

“Will using cloud solutions make business or enterprise unsafe and what are the three big risks of adopting cloud technologies and solutions and the standards available?” Bikram Seth, CIO, VLCC Healthcare Ltd

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INTERVIEW

Peter Cochrane delves deep into the latest technology and business trends in Cloud Computing

here are about 700 million customers using the Cloud and almost none of them are in India. And we have to ask the question why? â&#x20AC;&#x153;The reason is security,â&#x20AC;? says Dr Peter Cochrane, CEO & Chairman at Cochrane Associates who was the keynote speaker at the recently concluded Inflexion 2013 conference in New Delhi. Cochrane is a passionate cloud evangelist. He believes that cloud computing is the most secure and most creative environment we have experienced so far. And that in the new world where corporate rules and loyalty to a company do not matter, where Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is a big trend, where business is social, the Cloud and its attendant security risks

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offer enormous opportunities to Indian companies to once again sell new services to the world.

What do you think are the major factors hindering the adoption of the Cloud? The biggest factor that prevents a company from adopting the cloud is the old mindset of the managers in the IT department. These IT departments have to go. They have no future in a world that is fast moving, very innovative, where young people are taking initiatives and working in groups in and out of the company. IT departments are way behind. Security systems are not working when you have young people coming into the company who know more than the IT department. So the challenge is to get the board and the management of the company

cover story Cloud Computing Convex to understand this and to make the necessary changes. There is a funny paradox here; the IT department will insist that there should be a control on computers and mobile phones and board members, and managers do not care about this. They will insist on connecting their iPhone or iPad to connect to the corporate network. So it is not such a big step to make people understand the change but we have to change the mode of operation.

ment clouds, corporate clouds, personal clouds, institutional clouds. Technology is in place, people just have to think.

What are the easy steps that senior IT managers need to walk through? I would suggest corporations to think about the Cloud in the following way. They should think about what it is that really needs to be secure in their company. Is it the email, or source engineering, or the management? Information is really important to the company. Is it the research, the strategic decisions, investment details, M&A details? I think it is important to free the people because what they are doing is a necessity.

Do you agree and recommend that IT Heads make the Cloud a part of corporate strategy? I would like to ask some pertinent questions when we are looking at corporate strategy. Do IT heads have their people as good as Google, CISCO, IBM or HP? Do you really think You have always they can provide the level of referred to cloud service and security to these comprising people and giant corporations for people things. What does it mean? who specialise in the subject? Cloud computing is about the I personally don’t think so. innovation and freedom that Very often, IT departments are it gives to people and things blissfully unaware about what to do. It demands a mindset is happening and the security change in the way we think Peter Cochrane, departments cannot keep up about connectivity, security, CEO & Chairman at Cochrane Associates with the changes. We are now networking, applications, stortalking about organised crime. age, and other working pracHuge resources are used to tices. Then the key question get into cyber espionage. One does not even know when such here would be why we need change. We need change because attacks come, they just come, take your secrets and walk away. we have a history of under delivery, very high costs and cannot meet our varied and dynamic future needs having a huge centralised system programs. What kind of steps should IT Heads of a large The younger generation and IT need more freedom and feel enterprise take to have a good cloud strategy? more empowered than anything that they have had before and Because there have been instances where high end more cost effective than anything that they have seen before. companies are not willing to go on to a public cloud. The demand is for problem solving; skills and timely ability are Where do you see this heading? starting to out rank pure academic attainment. My worry is people will run (transition) into the Cloud and Cloud computing gives those new degrees of freedom—no just change nothing. They will continue doing the same things single log-on device, no single log-on location, variable log-on that they have always done which would be close to fatal. If routine, distributed applications, distributed filing system, the move to the Cloud has to succeed, we have to think and act parsed and distributed data, multiple clouds and providers, differently. If we continue doing what we have done, security dynamic creating of clouds, and cloud interconnection, interrisks are going to get worse. Whether we actually outsource or cloud encryption and coding, corporate strength security for all build the security systems ourselves, we have to think differand real time global response to all threats. The cloud is dynamic ently about how to do it. The cloud isn’t a single entity, it isn’t in form, location, content, connect, people and things. fixed, and it comes in different elements. You can have govern-

“Very often, IT departments are blissfully unaware about what is happening and security departments cannot keep up the new changes”

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Cloud in Government

Government departments under the NeGP program are experimenting with several cloud based models to empower citizens and improve service delivery models

hile the industry has witnessed the governmentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lackadaisical attitude towards absorbing new technologies, there have actually been positive strides towards cloud vision: experts say that government departments across India, including Central and State, have evolved a cloud vision. While there have been an umpteen number of technological challenges, the bureaucrats responsible for Cloud initiatives have successfully devised cloud strategy and have worked out a suitable framework. The testimony to this fact is

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cover story Cloud Computing Convex

The GI cloud is the Government of India’s cloud computing environment that will be used by government departments or agencies at the centre and states. IT will enable the government to leverage cloud computing for effective delivery of e-services, which is being carried out in two parts-under the initiative named RRAC and the implementation” R Sri Kumar, Vigilance Commissioner, Central Vigilance Commission

that government departments have ushered in a shared vision for ICT and adopted a cloud vision with a strategy to migrate towards a shared private cloud environment. Experts R Sri Kumar, Vigilance Commissioner, Central Vigilance Commission, and Prakash Kumar, Director, Internet Business Solutions Group, Cisco, showcased the working model of the Cloud in the government scenario during the recently organised cloud convex, Inflexion 2013: Cloud…the Easy Next Step. R Sri Kumar, Vigilance Commissioner, Central Vigilance Commission, brings to light how technology has empowered and safeguarded the citizen. The key questions before the government are: How are IT solutions impacting and empowering the lives and livelihoods of Indian citizens (email, web services, mobile services, social NWs) and what are the risks to citizens from these new technologies (spam, phishing, scams, rumour mongering, terrorism, etc)? How can technology be used for providing greater safety and security to the citizen, and controlling unethical behaviour? What are the technological, policy, ethical and privacy challenges in implementing the requisite monitoring, control and safeguards? According to Sri Kumar, CaaS, citizen as a service, is gaining prominence with IT empowerment of the citizen getting to be critical. What are the key aspects of the Cloud today? This would include Infrastructure as a service, platform as a service, software as a service, data as a service and network as a service. The future of the Cloud would include content as a service, value added as a service, analytics as a service, public cloud versus private greed.

Government of India’s Cloud Strategic Direction The Government of India has already established various ICT initiatives under the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) which has led to the build-up of ICT infrastructure both at the centre as well as state level. The infrastructure thus created will further provide the baseline for adoption of cloud computing for the government with an aim to optimally utilise the existing infrastructure, re-use of applications and efficient service delivery to citizens and increasing the number of e-transactions within the country, thus addressing one of the major goals of the NeGP. To harness the benefits of the Cloud, Deity has embarked upon an ambitious project termed ‘GI Cloud’. The ‘GI Cloud’ is the Government of India’s cloud computing environment that will be used by government departments or agencies at the centre and states. In other words, it will enable the government to leverage cloud computing for effective delivery of e-services. The entire initiative is being carried out in two parts. Part I, named ‘Rapid Replication of Applications on Cloud,’ comprises replicating some of the successfully impleContinue on page 27

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THE negp Vision

rakash Kumar, Director, Internet Business Solutions Group Cisco, on how technology is being used to solve accessibility problems for citizens Take the case of improving service delivery by automating which can help accessing from anywhere on any device. According to Kumar, NeGP has designed the vision supported by certain building blocks: ICT Infro (SWAN, SDC, CSC) Mission Mode project and Core policies He emphasised the fact that infrastructure has progressed much more quickly than e-enablement of services. The above mentioned NeGP projects which are part of the pre-NeGP phase are operational now. Implementation has started although formal scheme approval is still to be processed. (SFC approval has been taken for specific phases). Under this project, about 10.3 crores of e-transactions have been fulfilled in November 2012.

Challenges in making citizen services available in a ubiquitous fashion The key issues have been regarding accessibility for people, digital literacy, lack of connectivity for all government offices, hosting of applications and availability of service in electronic form. Things are moving in the direction of creating more than 94,000 CSCs; efforts are on in providing vertical and horizontal connectivity provided in most of the states/UTs, and setting up of SDCs in a majority o f states and NIC DCs in all states.

New Approach Governments across India (Central and State) agree to cooperate on a shared vision for ICT infrastructure and services, and adopting an “all of government” services (cloud) vision with a strategy to migrate towards a shared private cloud environment over time, facilitated by a suitable framework. a) Cloud based services provided by Application owner State has not happened Politically not feasible States find it difficult to run the services for their own constituents. Providing to others is a tall task, even through a State Designated Agency b) Cloud based services provided by a third party which does customisation, BPR, handholding etc. in addition to cloud based service delivery

What is the way out? The Third Party buys the successful Applications and provides

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Governments across India agree to cooperate on a shared vision for ICT infrastructure and services, and adopting cloud vision” Prakash Kumar, Director, Internet Business Solutions Group Cisco

them as Cloud based service to other States; it is feasible provided following are taken care of: Applications are white labelled There are 3 or 4 such parties for competition and price discovery The Government has substantial stake in the Third party This mechanism is approved by the government (Central as well as State governments)

E-Governance Service Delivery through NIUs Provisioning of of “Application as a Service” (either by configuring/ customising applications from other states or developing new

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Continued from page 25 ones with the required local language interface) Provisioning of Compute and Storage Training of staff Deployment at all field offices Help procure HW for field offices, if required At a later date, ICT infra of state like SWAN/SDC etc., can be managed.

Who could be the Third Party-National Information Utility? Ownership: Total private ownership should be at least 51 per cent. No single private entity should own more than 25per cent of the shares in an NIU. The ownership share of the Government in an NIU should be at least 26per cent Institutions that have a direct conflict of interest (eg. software companies which have developed applications running in states or would do so for the NIU) should not be permitted to be shareholders. If a Third party buy on happens effectively with proper implementation mechanism using the Cloud model, the Cloud based service delivery will lead to rapid deployment of applications, adoption of standards, inter-operability of data and optimum usage of existing infrastructure.

GI Cloud Vision 1 Cloud computing platforms – National and State Clouds 2 A common platform to host and run applications eGov Appstore 3 GI Cloud Services Directory will act as the single window or portal for GI Cloud service delivery 4 Integrated infrastructure acting as a backbone for delivering cloud services 5 A common set of protocols, guidelines and standards for GI Cloud 6 Governing body for policy

creation and enforcement, overseeing of the overall initiative and providing strategic direction 7 Agencies responsible to operate cloud environments and provide cloud services 8 Centre of Excellence for cloud computing for awareness building, creation of best practices, providing advisory services to the departments on cloud adoption, showcasing cloud technologies, international collaboration and research and development.

mented applications across the country. Part II will comprise the formation and implementation of a cloud computing environment at a national level that will act as a common respository of cloud-based infrastructure resources and applications available on a shared basis.

How can cloud computing assist governance and empower citizens? Five reasons why Apps.gov should become a trendsetter for Good Governance in India: Vendor neutral IT service catalog Core categories of citizen’s services available from a single window Automation to improve efficiencies and/or removal of bureaucratic red tape Adopt at your own pace” syndrome to make inclusive growth possible Cloud not defined by who runs it, but by the quality of service provided

Business Considerations--Better Profits/RoIs The implementation of the Cloud model would help in reduced ongoing and life cycle costs; it means more profits, being always on and available, value for money, having a competitive advantage, a platform for easier and faster information sharing, mobile and empowered workforce, inexpensive disaster recovery options and pay-as-you-go, play in advance and try before you buy. Governance policies - TEAM INDIA PLUS Reduced ongoing and life cycle Transparency and technology leveraged Efficiency and empowerment Audit trail and accountability Metric and mutual assistance Democratic decision making support system

So what is happening in India? Are we anywhere near all this and more? How does the Cloud help in profit and governance? Take the case of Namma Bengaluru. Brihat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has collected funds and processes and made payments totalling `10 billion in 2012-13, received in January 2013. Bengaluru citizens have received payment receipts from the BBMP cloud after depositing-house tax, building cess, conservancy charges and fees for birth and death registration etc. Project Vigeye is another cloud intiative from CVC, a citizen centric programme to blow the whistle on corrupt and underhand deals.

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CLOUD AWARDS

The Cloud leadership award for the team that has successfully implemented a cloud based project

he Inflexion Convex 2013: Cloud… The Easy Next Step,” threw up certain cloud challenges at the participants, comprising CIOs and senior IT managers. The convex intended to help participants determine the next steps needed to leverage the capabilities of cloud computing, choosing and implementing the most effective cloud solutions, while mitigating the risks associated with the implementation of ‘Cloud’; Alongside, the Cloud Leadership Awards aimed to recognise innovative and useful enterprise projects that have delivered competitive advantages or other tangible benefits to an organisation. The recipients of the awards were people who had

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made a difference through their knowledge, skills, ingenuity and foresight--and could serve as an inspiration to the community of IT professionals. Inflexion solicited nominations from the CIOs and teams from across industry verticals for the Cloud Leadership Award; they were also expected to submit a case study around their cloud based implementation project.

Award Process Once the nominations were received, as part of the awards process one member (a minimum from the team representing the company which submitted the case study) was asked to make a presentation to the jury during Inflexion. The presentation slots were assigned on a first-come first-served basis; each

cover story Cloud Computing Convex presenter got 5-7 minutes to present the project, followed by the Q&A session by the Jury for three minutes.

Scoring Pattern The award process laid out certain parameters with a clear-cut scoring pattern to enable the jury to detail the score. The parameters defined evaluation criterion, weight given to each criterion with a maximum score of 10 against each score awarded by the jury against each criterion and weighted score. The evaluation criterion included these questions: To what extent does the application provide evidence that the organisation or the IT department is strategically thinking about cloud technologies and solutions? What is the role of the applicants in formulating and executing the strategy? Does the application suggest that there is senior/top-level management interest in cloud solutions? To what extent does the application indicate that the implementation strategy is innovative, novel or different from the routine? Is there evidence of use of innovative techniques or approaches? To what extent does the application

provide evidence that the implemented solution is linked to market drivers, customer needs or business requirements? Has solution implementation been done through engagement with relevant stakeholders? What is the role of consultants and solution providers? To what extent does the application provide evidence that the cloud implementation was well planned and executed? Does the application suggest or demonstrate that the project has adopted cloud best practices? To what extent does the application provide evidence of quantifiable or tangible benefits to the organisation? To what extent does the application provide evidence of proper metrics and benchmarking? Does it indicate futurestate maps or plans? To what extent does the application show that the organisation has made investments in the tools and technologies required to ensure effective governance and management of the cloud-based solution?

Paybacks As is obvious, every award has its benefits and interesting takeaways besides

building one’s confidence. The award carried a prize of `1,00,000 in cash for the winning team, `75,000 for the first runner up and ` 25,000 for the second runner-up. Besides, winners were awarded a trophy and certificates. There were 17 case studies in all that were received towards nominations. After tabulating the scores, they were ranked in this order: 1. HCL 2. JASPER (SNAPDEAL) 3. JBM 4. Department of IT, Government of Maharashtra 5. Ericson 6. Vodafone 7. University of Petroleum 8. Mahindra Vehicle Manufacturing 9. Thermax 10. CSIR 11. Mynd Solution 12. Bajaj Electrical The Jury included: Vijay Sethi, VP-IT &CIO, Honda MotoCorp Yashpal Soni, CIO, Everest Industries Ltd Dheeraj Sinha, CIO, Apollo Tyres

case study HCL

Private cloud service(Iaas) Principal Applicant Ashu Kakkar, Operations Director Team members Manpreet Singh Khurana, Associate Vice President Ashu Kakkar, Operations Director Inder Pal Singh, Deputy General Manager Vineet Mahajan, Senior Technical Architect

The type of cloud deployment used for the project Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), IT as a service (ITaaS) Others:

Business Objectives Offering Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) to control and optimise cost with a fully managed service to meet Project specific requirement with a well defined Service catalog & SLA

Speed up Revenue–the Project Team can focus immediately on value creation and not on foundation tasks, which provides more scope to innovate on revenuegenerating and/or cost-saving IT projects Business Agility--Elimination of lengthy IT procurement and implementation cycles, as well as on-demand access to IT resources, means that the time needed for application development and deployment can be measured in days or weeks rather than months

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cover story Cloud Computing Convex

Winning Team HCL receiving the coveted Cloud leadership award at Inflexion 2013 Cost reduction--Capex is eliminated and Opex has been greatly reduced on the pay-as-you-go model (monthly billing with no long term commitment). The multi-tenancy model provides shared allocations of management and operational overheads for lower operating costs. Greener IT--Flexibility and Scalability of GIT Cloud reduces the environmental impact caused due to surplus energy consumption and carbon emissions accompanying overprovisioning of servers, while making it far more resource efficient. Reliability--GIT Cloud is deployed on highly available, resilient and redundant infrastructure, perfect for 24x7 operations. It is a well managed dedicated service with a committed 24x7 Cloud team, operating with well-defined SLAs to make sure service is up and running.

Technical Objectives To reduce physical server installation lead time to 4 days in projects with lower cost, and provide flexibility to scale up and scale down resources as per requirements. Managed IT Services for project teams to cater to their IT infrastructure requirements.

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What did the project cover? HCL Global IT team planned to start a Private Cloud Service (IaaS) to overcome all the challenges faced by the project team while procuring servers and their maintenance. The Cloud Infrastructure set up a self-service portal to be used for auto server provisioning & deprovisioning. The project team could place the server request through the Cloud portal; with just two approvals, servers were provisioned within 4 days. Cloud Servers were provided on a Pay As You Go model (where Project could rent and release the servers back to the Cloud as per the need, fully managed by Cloud team). This not only reduced huge Capex of project team but also minimised their operating cost. The Cloud would also help in consolidating server hardware across HCL Data Centers, reducing the carbon foot print. Prior to implementation of the Cloud, Project Teams were using their servers seamlessly and hosting their web applications on any network port. HCL Global IT Cloud has been implemented with Perimeter firewall, further using L3 Network created on firewall (this means each customer will have a firewalled network); as per security best

practices, only standard ports (80, 443, 22) were enabled in a cloud environment. RDP of Servers could be taken only using specified Jump Servers (Terminal Servers). Now within HCL, Project Teams are using Cloud environments and running their application on standard ports. Now we have reached a state where Project Teams are appreciating the security best practices. Project Implemented: HCL GIT Private Cloud to meet all Infrastructure needs of Internal projects for Testing & Development, QA, and Production. Tools: Self Service Portal for Provisioning and De-provisioning of resources Remedy Methodologies: Infrastructure as a Service (Virtual Servers on Demand) Process: Work Flow integrated for Provisioning and De-provisioning of resources, Change Management.

Business and Technical Challenges Setting up a Private Cloud in HCL required a huge upfront investment of $ 2.5 MN; convincing the management about it was a challenge Convincing Projects to move from a Capex to Opex model was a challenge

cover story Cloud Computing Convex as the Cloud services were offered as bundled offering, while the customer would compare the physical server cost with the cloud server without considering Cloud features/benefits like weekly backup, HA, 24* 7 support, Load balancing, AV, Firewall, IPS, IDS, DLP, Monitoring, OS patching etc. Integration of inhouse Orchestration software with VCE Vblock hardware. Using inhouse developed orchestration software instead of industry proven tools which required much customisation before rolling out services to end users.

Main business benefits Enablement of new services and channels, better business coordination and control, higher business agility and flexibility, cost savings and cost control, risk reduction and improvement in compliance, improvement in business and process visibility, enablement and implementation of best practices, improved customer service.

Main IT benefits Quicker availability of IT resources to end-users, better scalability of IT

infrastructure, the ability to deliver more features and functionality to end-users, creation of more reliable IT infrastructure/ ensuring higher availability, better. IT security and risk reduction, improved IT services to end-user departments, better management of IT resources, enhanced business and process visibility for the IT department, time and resource savings for the IT department, implementation of best practices, improved IT governance etc.

case study Jasper india

Re-building the website Jasper India Infotech Principal Applicant Prasad Vootla, Director, Engineering Operations Team members Amitabh Misra, Vice President, Technology Vineet Sharma, Lead, Production operations Sanjay Kumar, Sr. Engeering Manager, Development Rahul Narang, Architect, Development The type of cloud deployment used for the project Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), Storage as a service (STaaS), Software as a service (SaaS), Email as a Service (EaaS), Data as a service (DaaS),

Business Objectives Build www.snapdeal.com website to host both the deals and products with a capacity to take at least million orders a day. The capacity to have a catalog of 10 million products

Team leader of Jasper India Infotech receiving the coveted first Runner Up Cloud Leadership Award Increase the traffic on www.snapdeal.com from 1000 hits per second to 10000 hits per second.

Technical Objectives Have the feature built out in less than 2

weeks from requirements to ship out. Have the technology team focus time / efforts on the best design and Coding, with minimal time spent on infrastructure availability and delays thereof.

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cover story Cloud Computing Convex Have the entire end-to-end e-commerce features built on the same site. Have a high performing site that makes it possible to identify and complete the purchase of a product in less than a minute.

What did the project cover?

Too many engineers asking for separate cloud instances as instance firing is instantly done adding to the cost and hence. budget. Technology compatibility with the cloud platform. Framework scalability had to be planned keeping cloud constraints and supported techologies in mind.

The project covered the entire rebuilding of the Snapdealâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s website with both the deals and products on the same website.

What makes this project unique?

What were the constraints of the project? 1. Identifying the right infrastructure and having it scale on need. 2. Having features with a focus on timeto-market.

Solution Provider used for the project Amazon, Cloud platform providers Akamai, Site acceleration Project Details (What was done) The site www.snapdeal.com with all the deals and products under the same umbrella has been launched. Other details cannot be disclosed.

Business and Technical Challenges

The entire rebuilding (with the goals mentioned and accomplished) has been done on less number of servers than what it usually takes. There was a lot of consolidation based on the resource usage. The storage features were utilised based on the cost and performance.

Key take-away The infrastructure procurement and the delays have been eliminated.

Business function or processes that have benefited Enablement of new services and channels, such as sales & order processing, Customer Relationship (CRM), customer billing & payment, Call Center support, marketing Management, online shop/e-

commerce, purchasing & procurement, vendor & supplier management, Supply chain management, distribution management, project management, product lifecycle management (PLM), software development & testing,

Main IT benefits Quicker availability of IT resources to end-users, better scalability of IT infrastructure, ability to deliver more features and functionality to endusers, creation of more reliable IT infrastructure/ ensuring higher availability, better management of IT resources, enhanced business and process visibility for IT department, time and resource savings for the IT department, implementation of best practices, cost savings and cost control, ability to bill users for usage of IT.

case study JBM

BCP deployment for SAP JBM Group Principal Applicant V Ranganathan Iyer, CIO Team members

deployment used for the project Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), Storage as a service (STaaS), Security as a Service (EaaS), IT as a service (ITaaS)

Lalit Kaushik, Sr. Manager, Execution Subhash Yadavn, Sr. Manager, Execution

Business function or processes that have benefited

The type of cloud

Business Intelligence, sales and order processing, customer billing and pay-

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ment, purchasing & procurement, materials management, supply chain management, payroll, HR Process management, manufacturing management, project management, corporate IT infrastructure BCP (DR)

Main business benefits Cost savings and cost control, risk reduction and improvement in compliance, enablement and implementation

cover story Cloud Computing Convex of best practices and improved customer service.

Main IT benefits Better scalability of IT infrastructure, creation of more reliable IT infrastructure/ ensuring higher availability, better IT security and risk reduction, improved IT services to end-user departments, time and resource savings for IT department, implementation of best practices, cost savings and cost control.

Business Objectives Data, the base for business decisions should be protected on real time basis. Increase JV Stake holder’s confidence with sustained Customer services.

Technical Objectives IT should not hinder business process continuity.Technology to support Just In Time (JIT) supply to customer.

What did the project cover? Deployment of BCP for SAP ERP, BIW & Business Objects of only productive systems.

Project Constraints No prior exposure; no reference customer for the proposed solution Legal compliance for exit after hand shake; difficult to calculate ROI; no scientific procedure to calculate the price, though Capex has gone down.

Who were the key project beneficiaries? External stake holders like JV partners, share holders internal and external.

Solution Provider used for the project IBM Quest for Backup

Project Details (What was done) Concept of DR on cloud was coming up. We had detailed discussions with IBM about this. We listed out various issues and points for action. We formed a team where 2 were from IT, 1 from purchase and 1 from accounts to understand vari-

Team leader of JBM Group receiving the coveted Second Runner Up Cloud Leadership Award ous options available in the industry. The team travelled and understood different options available across different suppliers. We first gave the order to one supplier; they declined to execute the order; finally, we discussed it with IBM and closed the order. This is a 100 per cent opex model. The payout will be one in a quarter after the production drill is done. IBM had to do the following: IBM had to procure the hardware, including service, networking equipment, security equipment’s including storage. This hardware will be used for multiple customers. Minimum configuration is committed where DR is not invoked. Maximum configuration is committed when DR is invoked. All Data Center, application software, security arrangements along with backup will be IBM’s responsibility IBM would install application software, data guard to enable DR JBM Responsibility Provide all non AIX operating system Provide all application software including back up software Provide all licenses including data guard etc. Provide access DC in controlled manner. Provide media for taking back-up Provide 2 dedicated resources for DR deployment. The highlight is that after

the decision and hardware has been done, we could implement it in just 5 weeks.

Business & Technical Challenges Business Challenges: Who will declare DR, make the people / management understand it was a Herculean task. Aligning external agencies is very crucial; for example, if we wanted to enable DR, all plants should be ready to connect to the DR server; our MPLS service provide should act fast and make the required corrections to enable end users to connect. Challenges in educating end users what DR is all about and making them select the right option to do normal business transactions

What makes this project unique? No Reference customers; this also means the supplier wanted reference customers No internal resources had any prior exposure about DR Suppliers did right job when it really mattered.

Key Take-away Real planning with the right kind of people for the right things to happen with the right spend; spending more time on analysis and taking right decision; the rest will fall in place.

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Build a

Credible Portfolio Management Technique

IT managers must leverage effective portfolio management methods to align resources and improve the innovation lifecycle to make better decisions and drive business

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Management (PPM) allows business leaders manage their strategic portfolios including IT, new product development, service or applications efficiently; they can then spend less time on integration and more on innovation. Â Besides, the PPM concept enables organisations in aligning resources, requirements and schedules to continually improve the innovation lifecycle, while adopting new methods and approaches more easily and ultimately make better decisions to drive business.

PPM and Hurdles It is rather disappointing when the office of the CIO does not leverage project and portfolio management techniques fully, nor acknowledge its importance in the

project delivery. They are often under pressure to keep up the uptime, but devote less time to innovate. If the PPM tool has to be introduced and deployed efficiently, there are a few challenges inherent within the IT team which cannot be ignored. In any project, most CIOs and teams experience concern about improving visibility of projects, costs and resources. This means replacing its disparate management systems and manual processes. IT managers need to understand the applications required by business users. Given the mobile penetration, the nearly 4 million smart phones in existence and the emergence of enterprise mobility and BYOD, challenges have increased multi-fold. Portfolio management

IL LUSTRATIO N by raj verma

uture CIOs have a mandate: to focus completely on improving speed, accuracy, agility and decision-making. This will invariably amount to stretching resources and exerting pressure. Additionally, the pervasiveness of information and communication technology will drive intense levels of change, requiring businesses to adapt in ways that organisations are not currently structured to address effectively. Hence, faster decision-making will be the key enabler to drive innovation in business. As a result, smart decisions will require an effective and agile way to manage the innovation lifecycle, from idea to delivery. A comprehensive Project and Portfolio

by Lo k es h J i n da l

Portfolio Management Techniques | insight

In Any Given Scenario… IT managers should gauge the IT infrastructure framework and take stock of the inventory, particularly the legacy applications, as part of the application portfolio management process. They must gauge how much supporting these legacy systems cost and take decisive action. It is natural that, over time, a business accumulates a wide assortment of applications, some of which may now be redundant, underused, or obsolete. Some may be out of alignment with your strategic platform directions or out of compliance with policies. Others may complicate business processes or simply be out of alignment with business needs. Lack of governance of these applications slows business and increases IT costs. The process of identifying applications to be reduced or retired may be overwhelming. If a simple inventory of your applications can be difficult, the prospect of transforming that inventory of applications can appear totally out of reach.

Set the House in Order using PPM tools While project portfolio management solutions do address the overall IT framework, a comprehensive deployment of Application Portfolio Management (APM) helps in understanding the applications spread within your enterprise better. APM can take you from an unclear inventory of applications with a limited understanding of each to a defined inventory with comprehensive

PPM Paybacks in Terms of RoI

here is no doubt that the PPM tool emphasises on reviewing the customer scenario amidst all the ambiguities. Besides this, it reviews available data and benchmarks and focuses on ‘hard’ savings potential while also qualifying intangible savings from the effective utilisation of legacy applications. A thorough discovery and conservative value calculations build credibility and a successful RoI business case earns a complete ‘buy in.’ The key business drivers of any PPM solution would help the following objectives: Make fact-based decisions about initiatives and investments through comprehensive portfolio planning and analysis Maximise utilisation of the most valuable asset--people Execute programs flawlessly utilising best-practice methodologies

Gain financial transparency on programs, projects and service costs Automate manual processes to speed decision-making, improve consistency and reduce cycle time For any typical business case, the RoI factors in the financial metrics revolve around certain facts. For any best case, the RoI would be around 264 per cent. The pay back would be ensured in seven months. The ramp-up time would be observed in a 4-6 month period. The internal rate of return would be about 318 per cent. An IT organisation will see benefits ranging from increased staff availability to a clear cloud strategy. However, the largest benefit of Application Portfolio Management will be observed by both the business and the IT organisation as the needs of each are brought into better alignment.

PPM for IT Governance

IT PortfolioManagement

Requirements Planning

Business Relationship Project Program Management Management

Demand Management

Project Portfolio Management

Cost and Time Management

data on the business value and technical condition of each application. There are a few steps that the IT team needs to adhere to: a) Spot redundant, under-used, and obsolete applications--Applications, which are termed legacy, can get complex, and may not be compliant with policies or platforms. They may not be visible either, and as a result, hardware resources, staff time and maintenance fees are wasted every year. b) Inadequate Performance Slows Down the Business--Many older

IT Financial Management

Resource Management

Dashboard and Reporting

sour ce :ca

techniques demand certain insights from IT managers: Does an IT manager truly understand the business goals and business user’s demands? Is the IT team equipped (or does it have the ability) to deliver portfolio management solutions from a strategic business standpoint? Is the IT team in a position to work out the cost associated with a particular service that is provided to the business user? Do IT teams feel privileged to be driving value for their business groups or are they driving their own IT agenda? These questions are very pertinent to IT departments.

applications slow down your business by not supporting business processes that require functionality that is more robust or through duplicate applications being used for similar functions. Business users themselves often do not have insights from enough perspectives to understand how these applications can be optimised. c) Apps not Aligned with your IT Strategy Many of your applications may be out of alignment with your IT strategies and policies, yet they continue to live on. An in-depth evaluation is

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insight | Portfolio Management Techniques

“PPM concept enables organisations in aligning resources, requirements and schedules to continually improve the innovation lifecycle, while adopting new methods and approaches more easily and ultimately make better decisions to drive business” —Lokesh Jindal GM, Service and Portfolio Management, CA Technologies

necessary to identify the areas where these applications run counter to your strategies. Without these insights and an objective APM program manager to evaluate and recommend options, it can be difficult to convince the business of the need for change or upgrade of applications.

Where to start? Getting a handle on your application portfolio may be an overwhelming task.

The necessary data collection and evaluation can be daunting. There are 10 steps which are mandatory to be followed to ensure an efficient PPM task: 1. Appoint an APM (Application Project Management) program manager who reports no lower than one level below the CIO 2. Define what an application is to your business--one definition to work with in order to assemble the inventory 3. Conduct an inventory--collect

“IT Portfolio management is very important in navigating the priorities and delivering business value by IT with right strategy and helps in delivering business requirements by taking holistic view, achieving optimal use of resources for operations” —BLV Rao CTO, Infotech Ltd.

relevant information on all applications meeting the definition and capture the data in the PPM tools, manually or by import, and categorise data around status, business process and acquisition source and also who is responsible for the data 4. Define the evaluation metrics based on business value, costs, benefits, strategic fit, technical condition and vendor rating 5. Assess the business value by soliciting opinion from a varied portfolio of people including individuals, contributors, managers, business analysts, application managers, etc. 6. Assess the technical condition relating to quality, performance and strategic fit to your architecture 7. Assess the risk by developing a risk profile for the applications, taking into account areas such as security, disaster recovery and vendor viability 8. Analyse the portfolio and the tool will enable the team to analyse each application individually, within segments of the portfolio 9. Decide on actions to take based on the scenario such as impact to budget, staff, policies, etc. 10. Implementing the decisions and typical projects would include migrating applications, retiring applications, modernising applications and so on.

xt Gen uting

other food groups I mentioned in my previous answer, is outstripped by the capabiliADVERTORIAL ask the expert ties of the mainstream processor family, which in today’s incarnation is Intel’s Xeon E5 2600 series. In response to this phenomenon, Intel subdivided the Xeon lineup to include a new “EN” class of processors, the E5-2400 series, which ease back on the gas pedal of Moore’s law for designs that don’t require as much processing power in relation to local storage and memory. This creates a new class of cost & performance optimized systems for lighter workloads or for storage heavy systems (think big data) at the entry end of the portfolio. various permutations of server designs Three of our new UCS M3 series systems required to cover the myriad of workloads fall in this category: the B22, C22 and C24. most efficiently. Think of these as your four At the same time, Intel has brought four server subsystem food groups. Architecsocket server options, formerly the provture purists will remind us that everything ince of the mission critical, “EX” end of the outside the processors and their cache spectrum, down into the mainstream. An falls into the category of “I/O” but let’s not example of this is our new UCS B420 blade. get pedantic that will mess up my if you want fourthat socket core count Q: RLC because is India’s largest reverse logistics company So intelligence solutions we can put on top ofand large with around 500 people in our 15 offices in India. We amount of customer and product data which would food group analogy. performance but don’t necessarily need the have developed a world class proprietary, open help us make intelligent strategic business decisions. In Cisco UCS, I/O is effectively taken source solution. This open source solution tracks a comprehensive RAS features of an EX class returned product from the point of return all the way till A: Analytic solutions are available on a license as well off theittable a design worry because now have a price/performance gets aas new lease of life through our repair factory system, as cloudyou model which can help create a GTM to and getsgets sold through retail andofe-tail network. We optimized address more customers every server its fullour USRDA netsolution forand thatunderstand need. customer are looking for our IT team to seamlessly integrate buying patterns/user profiles. We have an end to end working through the VIC: helping pormobile technology into our ordering systems so we infrastructure solution and work closely with analytics For any queries regarding UCS, please send can reach out to even more customers vendors like SAP, SAS and Greenplum to help solve tions of bandwidth, rich with Fabric and scale our them yashvendra.singh@9dot9.in business. We also need help identifying business theirtoproblems. From a mobility perspective many solution providers have such applications and can Extender technology vitamins that yield customise a ground up application based on the hundreds of Ethernet and FC adaptoutput required. We work closely with such independent BROUGHT TO YOU BY software vendors (ISVs) to provide these solutions. ers through one physical device. Gone are the days of hemming and hawing over how many mezz card slots your Ashish Wattal blade has or how many cards you’re going National Product Manager– UCS to need to feed that hungry stack of VM’s on Cisco India & SAARC your rack server. Intel, the Intel logo, Xeon, and Xeon inside are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries This simplification changes things for the

articles, Cisco will shed Computing System CIOs to better manage

Hitendra Chaturvedi Founder, Reverse Logistics Company (RLC)

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Cary Hayward | interview

Unified with Cloud Cary Hayward, Senior Director Product Management at Polycom is responsible for leading the planning and strategy efforts for Polycom’s cloud collaboration solutions and products, including the recently announced RealPresence CloudAXIS Suite. In conversation with N Geetha, Hayward discusses the importance of integrating cloud with Unified Communication in real time What challenges confront senior IT executives now with regard to the Unified Communication (UC) space? Senior IT managers across industry verticals now confront challenges owing to innovations happening in the Unified Communications (UC) technology; this is more to do with the complexity that technology brings in with regard to user interfaces. While there is increased complexity in dealing with the new tools, the challenge is also about cost structure, access control and also granting ease of access to users to the networks, amid growing competition. Besides, the changing IT landscape has also thrown up ample challenges with Cloud adoption proliferating and giving free access to all devices. Cloud capable devices are growing, demanding ease of use, and ubiquitous connectivity is viewed as a barrier to faster growth. Let’s go a step further to analyse access getting out of control. There

are about 950 million mobile devices and approximately 6 per cent using 3G compatible smart phones. It is consuming huge amount of bandwidth and the 3G market is growing at a faster CAGR. All of these call for right interoperability standards creating barriers to UC. Service providers face the common problem with the uptake on the access through web browsers and email imports and scheduling, which is resulting in huge risks. UC vendors and service providers need to plan a meticulous approach to address growing concerns and have intelligence built into the solutions to rule out any inter-operability issues.

When you speak about cloud integration, how do you see it adding value to UC strategy in an enterprise? Understanding cloud strategy is most critical for any IT manager to enhance the efficiency of the UC platform. It should be tightly integrated with the cloud framework.

Let’s first talk about the Cloud. What is the new value it would bring in? It enables you to pay for what you use, it lowers predictable costs, it enables a shift from Capex to Opex and it helps in accelerating speed to value. The other advantage is that there is no patching or maintenance of infrastructure required, there’s faster deployment of applications, robust multi-layered security and reliable and faulttolerant framework. From a UC standpoint, the Cloud economics provides the latest software for users, Internet collaboration, anywhere access and instant self-provisioning, all of which enhances productivity. However, the most vital aspect is the journey from the Cloud to realtime Clouds in a UC framework. The flip side is that the Cloud has not been extended to communications applications like it has with services and data. According to Frost & Sullivan, the interesting phenomenon is that the journey involved various stages starting with ISP 1.0 giving access

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interview | Cary Hayward to the internet; ISP 2.0, access to servers as the internet access point; Colo 1.0, racks for CLBs at the internet access point; ASP 1.0 model hosting applications on servers at the internet access point; introducing cloud-internet based software services in the Cloud and last but not the least, the real-time cloud intelligent optimised internet infrastructure. The question here would be how to integrate the real-time Cloud with the UC strategy; and there are best architectures defined by key cloud characteristics. The integration is made possible using: n On-demand self-service which enables adhoc/scheduled calls to be put on a single pool of resources. The key elements in this would include E164 and SIP URI support, Interop with Carrier class NAT/FW solution for enterprise/ Government, SIP and H323 supported, Integration with leading call control vendors and migration to SIP in the core. nMobile location on independent resource pooling in which multiple media bridges in one virtual pool for massive scale and flexibility. The supporting elements provide policy control points to SP/ govt/Ent via Multi-tenant Management System for scheduling, device management, reporting, monitoring interface and API Suite for service integration. n Virtualisation always-on availability that involves multitenant scheduling, management, provisioning, directory, real-time switching decisions on SVC vx AVC, SIP vs H323 and the Cloud elements with multiple MCUs in one virtual pool for scale and resiliency, multiple RSSs under one virtual pool for recording and streaming, for adhoc and scheduled calls, SIP/H323/UC, single and multi-codec, Cisco, MSFT and H264 high profile, road map for greater scale (SVC).

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n Ubiquitous

open network access that provides web client support, inter-vendor B2B Open Exchange, single to single and multi to multi interop on Polycom end points, APIs for integration into 3rd party systems. The elements would include SBC certification/ Customer options, SIP/IMS-E164, signaling GW and scheduling/ Traffic/Policy API.

How much are your customers involved in any kind of product innovation? The office of the CTO and product engineering are involved directly with customers. There is formal honorarium extended to the team to solicit customer feedback on various

“There is an organised customer feedback mechanism process that we follow by way of having ‘Customer Councils’ to seek opinions from specific industry verticals” products and during the development process. For instance, Polycom’s data process group generates feedback on the end points and absorbs customer observations in the designs and functionality. There is an organised feedback mechanism process that we follow by way of having ‘Customer Councils’ to seek opinions from specific verticals. Currently, we solicit opinion through this council from the government, healthcare, retail and service

Now coming to India!

Gartner Business Intelligence & Information Management Summit 2013 10 – 11 June | Mumbai, India gartner.com/in/bi

Analyze. Predict. Act. Agenda Tracks: A Data and Information Management Getting the data and information right is key to delivering BI and analytics. This track looks in detail at how to best use capabilities like data warehousing, BI platforms, data integration and data quality tools, to build the right foundation.

B Business Intelligence and Analytics

This track explores how interrelated factors, like having the right organization structure, strategy and portfolio of tools, are critical in bringing business users together with IT to drive greater adoption of BI. It also highlights best practices for justifying, establishing and managing a BI and analytics program.

HoT TopIcS • Self Service BI • Big Data • Master Data Management • Predictive Analytics • Information Infrastructure • Effective BI Strategy

Visit gartner.com/in/bi for the full agenda, session descriptions, brochure, Gartner analysts, guest speakers and much more.

Save INR 5,500 off the standard conference rate Register using the promotion code BII1AD1

© 2013 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Gartner is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. or its affiliates. For more information, email info@gartner.com or visit gartner.com.

Cary Hayward | interview using the email address of the user they want to invite and using imported contact information from Skype Gtalk, Facebook. The unique part is that via the CloudAxis, any known or unknown user can join via web browser to any Polycom EP and infrastructure inheriting 20+ years of interoperability and codec quality.

How do you ensure that such an integrated platform is risk free? There are three types of security measures we address when we develop a solution and extend to the end user. We tighten the security at the access level with encryption and a stringent password enabled mechanism. We use various cryptographic tools from Symantec, AES and other security vendors. We prescribe stringent mullti-tenancy policies for branch offices. For HR and marketing teams, we create a separate traffic and bandwidth platform to generate information.

providers and make necessary changes in product functionality. For instance, features such as non-complexity in the Unified platform, ease of use capability etc., are incorporated based on customer feedback. Our recent launch of RealPresence CloudAxis is developed on customer needs. This is an innovation where the product extends the RP platform to provide B2B and B2C experience. The solution enables external/internal users meeting on a bridge from Web, Mobile, Desktops and rooms. It also provides host portal for adhoc/scheduled meetings pulling social contacts. RealPresence will enable a two-way communication process and two ways a host can initiate a ‘call’. This is made possible

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

How are your customers leveraging new functionalities and how do you differentiate yourself? We have a huge customer base globally and a good number in India, spread across almost all industry verticals. From a market positioning standpoint, as per Frost & Sullivan’s “Video Conferencing Endpoints & Infrastructure Market in India CY 2011” report that came out in H2, 2012, Polycom leads the video conferencing systems and infrastructure market in India with 50.2 per cent market share in 2011. Since we are a pure play unified communication vendor, we collaborate with various vendors to created interoperability labs for audio and video and address every end-point. We help customers in their investment protection plan on using office productivity tools.

We have recently launched advanced innovative video capabilities in our Telepresence solution in collaboration with AT&T. This is a cloud-delivered video communication model enabling customers to collaborate in any manner. The Real Presence Platform is a comprehensive software infrastructure for universal video, on-premises or in the cloud collaboration, inter-operating with the broadest set of applications, devices and network protocols. Some of the new capabilities that customers would leverage from the collaborated platform would be: nNew on-demand virtual meeting room capabilities that increase customer choice through expanded interoperability n Flexible and easy-to-use video collaboration experiences that deliver a lower total cost of ownership nNew forms of collaboration with business customers, partners and suppliers on the AT&T Business Exchange. Telepresence Solution customers will now have access to a range of Polycom® RealPresence™ video solutions offered in 40 countries--including immersive and multipurpose rooms and personal systems--as part of a managed service bundle. This approach helps customers reduce their capital expenditures by providing the video equipment as part of the managed service for a monthly fee, while also helping to reduce the burden on internal IT resources, leaving customers more time to focus on businesscritical activities. The network will carry Polycom video, voice and data communications including access to the AT&T Business Exchange to and from over 80 locations around the globe, including Polycom customer experience and briefing centres.

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'The Innovation Steeplechase' In his or her mind, each of us wants to be 'innovative'. Innovation is the new mantra for success for corporations and individuals within them. It is the answer to problems of growth, profitability, productivity, and organisational logjams. It is also the ready response expected from 'leaders' - functional or otherwise. But like leadership, innovation remains elusive and daunting. How does innovation come about and how can you bring it about - across the organisation or within your department? Most CXOs feel constrained due to 'too much to do in too little time'... and therefore none left over to innovate or fight deeply entrenched systems that come in the way of change. Equally inertia could result from the feeling that what you do is too mundane to innovate. Misconceptions around innovation only make 'getting started' tougher! Given how critical innovation is for raising the bar - every time, every day - the 9.9 Leadership Institute is launching a series of 'Innovation Workshops' to help with 'winning the innovation steeplechase' irrespective of where you are in the race - before the start line, in the uncertain middle, or closer to the finish line...

Depending on which of these questions dominates your thoughts around innovation, the 9.9 Innovation Team will design a workshop or programme for you and your team.

What the '9.9 Innovation Team' can do for you... Companies and senior executives are grappling with answers to one or all of the questions below in the innovation context.

The Why

The What

Why should I innovate? Can I be innovative? This question is answered through awareness around innovation, including: - Addressing myths and misconceptions - And why each one of us can be 'innovative' If you spend all your time making tiny process improvements and watching competitors steal your customers with innovative new products and services, then "The Why" applies to you.

What areas should you innovate for maximum benefit? We outline areas where innovation can deliver serious benefits and identify the most popular application areas across organisations. The most obvious approaches begin with a need for: - Topline growth - Bottomline improvement Your business is going fine, sales and profits are a bit flat perhaps but they will pick up... or will they? If this is your concern, then "The What" applies to you.

The How How do I execute and implement? Here we offer our Creativity & Innovation Toolkit to help you kickstart the process to: - Deliver specific outcomes - Sustain the process - Embed programmes to influence the DNA of the organization If you are unaware of the one right problem to solve that creates "unfair" advantage for your organization in the marketplace, then "The How" applies to you. We offer Initiation Workshops; Toolkits; Projects and Embedding Programmes with durations ranging from 2 hours to 2 days to 2 months and beyond.

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT Email: akanksha.pundir@9dot9.in Phone: +91-9999799614 Email: anuradha.mathur@9dot9.in

cube chat | Sandeep Mhalgi

Pursuing with passion “Challenges are what makes work interesting and overcoming them is what makes work meaningful,” says Sandeep Mhalgi, Sr. Manager-IS, Sudarshan Chemical Industries Limited By asit verm a

S My sucess

mantra Passion and ability to adapt to changes

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andeep Mhalgi believes that application of smart reading techniques is a must for catching up with the latest information as it becomes available in web, books, magazines and other visual media. He says that rigorous and long working hours allow IT professionals with very little time for catching-up with the world. He often applies speed-reading techniques to capture as much qualitative information as possible from the web, books, magazines and other visual media. As Head of Corporate IT function, Sandeep Mhalgi is responsible for developing and delivering a comprehensive IT roadmap for the organisation. IT Operations Management, Project & Cost Management are inherent parts of the responsibilities that he is handling. Two words would be most appropriate for describing the reasons for which Sandeep Mhalgi has selected IT as a career - passion and adaptability.

He is of the opinion that certain degree of passion for what you are doing, and the ability to adapt to changing circumstances and technologies is important for a career in IT. He believes that the field of IT is quite unique as it offers a range of innovative solutions to solve our problems. An IT professional has to use his creativity to choose the technology that is most appropriate for any particular task. “It is a challenge to keep step-in-step with technology, which keeps changing at a very fast pace,” says Sandeep Mhalgi. “At times it so happens that the new solutions you implement lead to seminal alternations in the previously installed solutions.” It was 17 years ago that Sandeep started his career in IT. Today he has extensive experience in areas of Project Management, ERP (SAP), Enterprise Connectivity, Infrastructure Management and others. During his career he has met with a number

cube chat

Fact File Name Sand eep M halgi

PHOTO by jiten gandh i/IMAGING pe te rs on pj

“An IT professional has to use his creativity in choosing the technology that is most appropriate for any particular given task” of challenges, which required considerable amount of ingenuity to overcome. He says that the biggest challenge materialised itself during the SAP SCM (Warehouse Management) Project in his current job. The purpose of the project was to capture material movement in real time into the SAP ERP system. The challenge was two-fold. On the technology front, it was a challenge to bring down the system through-put time from 24 minutes to a level that could match the material movement time which was an average of 3 minutes. Sandeep says, “I overcame the technological challenge by building an innovative solution that has won us the SAP ACE Best Run SCM Award. My vendor management, team-management and leadership skills also stood me in good stead on the human

side and helped in delivering the project on time.” “The most unique thing about SAP SCM (Warehouse Management) implementation was to extend the SAP operations in the hands of warehouse operators,” adds Sandeep. Sandeep agrees that he has a number of fond dreams that are yet to be fulfilled, but being a seasoned optimist, he is quite eager to see all of them getting fulfilled. With a smile he says, “I am too young to call my dreams unfulfilled, as I see all of them turning into reality as I go along.” In the field of IT, he is inspired by who else, but N R Narayana Murthy, the co-founder of Infosys. A man of varied interests, Sandeep Mhalgi is also interested in Classical Music and Cricket.

C urrent Organisat io n: Sudars han C hemi c a l Ind ustries Li mit ed C urrent Des ignat io n: Sr. M anager – Informati on Syst em s C urrent Role: IT – Head Work Experience: 17 Years Favouri te quot e: Your best friend is your i nner voice Favourite boo k: Lead er Who Had No Title by Robin Sh a rm a Favouri te foo d : Prawns C urry Favourite d esti nat io n: Luzern, Swi tzerl a nd / M anali , Hi mach a l Prad es h Favourite gad get fo r wo rk: Bl ackBerry Favourite gad get fo r pers onal us e: iPad

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update

open Debate

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

The Signal and the Noise Why So Many Predictions Fail-But Some Don’t

Is big data just another analytics tool?

Akbar Ladak Senior Consultant & Innovation Evangelist CTO Office | Wipro Limited

Balasubramaniam Vedagiri VP & Head - Enterprise Technology Solutions Mphasis

Big Data is not another analytics tool. However, it allows analysis of data on a scale on which it wasn’t possible earlier. Data collection has become easier and cheaper. Cost of data storage has also reduced. IT enables reduction in the cost of data processing and analysis to gain business insights. This completes the missing link that truly enables a datadriven enterprise. It has absolutely made a difference to IT decision makers. Decision makers who are ahead of the curve are convinced of cost savings of over 50 per cent using big data.

Usage of big data certainly lets business to take advantage of greater volume and velocity of data. With more accurate predictions, better decisions and precise interventions, it offers an organisation a chance to support a wider range of business analytics and applications. Using modeling tools and algorithms to harness the big data predictive analytics will define the winners in the next few years. To be a true differentiator, the right data set needs to be chosen on which the models that predict and optimize business outcome can be built.

Subhamoy Chakraborti GM-IT, Magma Fincorp Limited From business benefit perspective; there is hardly any change from BI to Business Analytics to Big Data. However under the hood, things got changed. Now we are talking about disparate sources of data including social, mobile, video etc. and then (here goes the similarity) make a decision out of them in lesser cost in lesser time. BI tools had made a basic assumption that all the analytical questions are known beforehand. That is not going to be the case in future. The traditional way of separating operational and analytical tasks may not exist in future.

Author: Nate Silver Publisher: Penguin Press Pages: 545 Price: Rupees 1585

The book’s title is derived from electrical engineering, where a signal is something that conveys information, while noise is superfluous and often an arbitrary addition to the signal. In case the noise is as strong as, or stronger than, the signal, there can be problems. So how do you recognise which is which? For a CIO, the connection between electric noise, and the noise that gets generated by predictions in the IT space, will be easy to make. Today the data we have available to make predictions has grown almost unimaginably large. According to the author every day we add 2.5 quintillion bytes of new data each day. This is enough zeros and ones to fill a billion books of 10 million pages each. But the problem is that our ability to ferret the signal from the noise has not grown nearly as fast. Hence we have plenty of data but we lack the ability to extract truth from it and to build models that accurately predict the future that data portends. IT NEXT Verdict The book carries a measured, cool-headed, almost therapeutic tone. The author’s main contention is that there is so much random noise being generated by big data that we

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

have lost the ability to predict. Star Value:

a p r i l 2 0 1 3 | itnext

my log

Sangita thakur varma

: raj verma

Managing Editor, India Now

Ill

ust

r at i o n

Clothes Do Maketh the Man(ager) In today’s world of high end designer corporate wear, image management is an art best perfected

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3 Essential Read CARY HAYWARD | INTERVIEW

UNIFIED WITH CLOUD Cary Hayward, Senior Director Product Management at Polycom is responsible for leading the planning and strategy efforts for Polycom’s cloud collaboration solutions and products, including the recently announced RealPresence CloudAXIS Suite. In conversation with N Geetha, Hayward discusses the importance of integrating cloud with Unified Communication in real time What challenges confront senior IT executives now with regard to the Unified Communication (UC) space? Senior IT managers across industry verticals now confront challenges owing to innovations happening in the Unified Communications (UC) technology; this is more to do with the complexity that technology brings in with regard to user interfaces. While there is increased complexity in dealing with the new tools, the challenge is also about cost structure, access control and also granting ease of access to users to the networks, amid growing competition. Besides, the changing IT landscape has also thrown up ample challenges with Cloud adoption proliferating and giving free access to all devices. Cloud capable devices are growing, demanding ease of use, and ubiquitous connectivity is viewed as a barrier to faster growth. Let’s go a step further to analyse access getting out of control. There

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Polycom's Sr Director, Hayward on unifying cloud with UC Pg 38 PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES | INSIGHT

BUILD A

CREDIBLE PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT

TECHNIQUE

IT managers must leverage effective portfolio management methods to align resources and improve the innovation lifecycle to make better decisions and drive business BY LO K ES H J I NDA L

Portfolio Management (PPM) allows business leaders manage their strategic portfolios including IT, new product development, service or applications efficiently; they can then spend less time on integration and more on innovation. Besides, the PPM concept enables organisations in aligning resources, requirements and schedules to continually improve the innovation lifecycle, while adopting new methods and approaches more easily and ultimately make better decisions to drive business.

PPM and Hurdles It is rather disappointing when the office of the CIO does not leverage project and portfolio management techniques fully, nor acknowledge its importance in the

PPM Paybacks in Terms of RoI

PPM for IT Governance

IT PortfolioManagement

Requirements Planning

Business Relationship Project Program Management Management

Demand Management

IT Financial Management

Project Portfolio Management

Cost and Time Management

Resource Management

Dashboard and Reporting

SOU RCE :C A

I LLUSTR ATION BY RA J VER MA

funded expansion and modernisation project going on. The company was also conducting personnel development workshops simultaneously to bring the workforce at par with the international standards. One of the first lessons that were imparted at the workshop series concerned image management and it started with an internal communiqué asking all employees to observe the formal dress code beginning the first day of the workshop. The lessons learnt thereof have stuck. Have you noticed the confidence with which a woman dressed to the hilt sails through in a party, preening and peering around like a queen? Same goes for a dapper man dressed in a formal suit waiting in the lobby of an airport or the lounge of a 5-star hotel. They exude confidence because they know they are looking great and the world is admiring them. Image management teaches you to dress the part, look the part and create the desired impression. Your clothes or more aptly your appearance is your window to the world. The way you dress is how the world perceives your personality—a loud dresser is crass says the world, a sloppy dresser is a shoddy worker, and a smart dresser is of course the best woman/man for the job. Dress right and be your company’s Brand Image.

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Building a credible Project & Portfolio Management Techniques Pg 34

CUBE CHAT | SANDEEP MHALGI

CUBE CHAT

Pursuing with passion

FACT FIL E NA ME SA NDE E P MHA LG I

“Challenges are what makes work interesting and overcoming them is what makes work meaningful,” says Sandeep Mhalgi, Sr. Manager-IS, Sudarshan Chemical Industries Limited

“An IT professional has to use his creativity in choosing the technology that is most appropriate for any particular given task”

BY AS IT V ERM A

S MY SUCESS

MANTRA Passion and ability to adapt to changes

ITNEXT | A P R I L 2 0 1 3

P H OTO BY J I T E N GA N D H I /I M AG I N G P E TE R SO N PJ

Ah those carefree days of a collegian! A pair of Levi’s jeans or track pants paired with a T-shirt and you is ready to tackle the world. How we wish our wardrobe choices were as simple and uncomplicated as then! Many of us do not place such a premium by the clothes that we wear to our workplace, believing the adage “clothes do not make the man or woman”. There are chances you may find a couple of workers sporting the grunge look or looking plain scruffy—the overnight shadow of a beard a la Ranbir Kapoor or long dreadlocks pulled back into a messy ponytail. There is our sloppily dressed specimen of women workers too, to be fair to both the sexes. Ripped jeans, rubber flip-flops, or on the other extreme tacky or flashy neon dresses, sky high heels and over the top makeup. Secretly, I admire the confidence and nonchalance of these young office-goers. They care a hang about how the world perceives them and carry their college attitude to the work place, the chewing gum moving like the cud, firmly planted in the jowl. But some 20 years back, when I stepped into the corporate world, among the first few questions that were on the top of my mind were the “office dress code”. I could see everybody nattily dressed in formals and semi formals and felt quite intimidated among the top honchos. We had an international clientele with a World Bank

of challenges, which required considerable amount of ingenuity to overcome. He says that the biggest challenge materialised itself during the SAP SCM (Warehouse Management) Project in his current job. The purpose of the project was to capture material movement in real time into the SAP ERP system. The challenge was two-fold. On the technology front, it was a challenge to bring down the system through-put time from 24 minutes to a level that could match the material movement time which was an average of 3 minutes. Sandeep says, “I overcame the technological challenge by building an innovative solution that has won us the SAP ACE Best Run SCM Award. My vendor management, team-management and leadership skills also stood me in good stead

on the human side and helped in delivering the project on time.” “The most unique thing about SAP SCM (Warehouse Management) implementation was to extend the SAP operations in the hands of warehouse operators,” adds Sandeep. Sandeep agrees that he has a number of fond dreams that are yet to be fulfilled, but being a seasoned optimist, he is quite eager to see all of them getting fulfilled. With a smile he says, “I am too young to call my dreams unfulfilled, as I see all of them turning into reality as I go along.” In the field of IT, he is inspired by who else, but N R Narayana Murthy, the co-founder of Infosys. A man of varied interests, Sandeep Mhalgi is also interested in Classical Music and Cricket.

CU R R E NT O R GA NISAT IO N: S U DA R S HA N CHE MICA L INDU ST R IES L IMIT E D CU R R E NT DES IG NAT IO N: S R . MA NAG E R – INFO R MAT IO N SYST E MS CU R R E NT R O L E : IT – HE A D WO R K EXPE R IE NCE : 17 Y E A R S FAVO U R IT E Q U OT E : YO U R BEST FR IE ND IS YO U R INNE R VO ICE FAVO U R IT E BO O K: L E A DE R WHO HA D NO T IT L E BY R O BIN S HA R MA FAVO U R IT E FO O D: PR AWNS CU R RY FAVO U R IT E DEST INAT IO N: LU Z E R N, S WIT Z E R L A ND / MA NA L I, HIMACHA L PR A DES H FAVO U R IT E GA DG E T FO R WO R K: BL ACKBE R RY FAVO U R IT E GA DG E T FO R PE R S O NA L U S E : IPA D

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Sandeep Mhalgi believes in pursuiing IT with Passion Pg 44