IT Next May 2013 by Manan Mushtaq

INTERVIEW | Kevin Hughes, Director, Schneider | Pg 36

Techniques to build a cool data centre

f o r t h e n e x t g e n e r at i o n o f c i o s

level playing field Cloud based BI & analytics is creating a level playing field across small & large enterprises, which benefit from these solutions Pg 10

Managing Storage Made Easy: Utility based model to drive efficiency Pg 32

PLUS

Nuances of a Cloud Pilot: Have an experienced service partner Pg 27

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Editorial

New Beacon of Cloud Industry forums have been rife with discussions on BI and analytics, the hottest area of software. Many analysts, vendors, service providers and customers are endorsing this technology as the new beacon of cloud. In keeping with this, many research groups have conducted surveys to prove that cloud based BI and analytics will witness an uptake in the industry very soon. Are there strong reasons for this new wave to see a linear growth? For any technology to thrive in the industry or to reach a threshold, there are some strong factors that govern them. Most users agree that BI and analytics have been one of those cumbersome and expensive projects to implement as they depend upon many variables, thus adding to cost and complexity. Well, how will cloud change all that? In reality, there is a positive sentiment among users, cloud providers, and technology vendors that cloud is already pushing BI and analytics to a new level. The cover feature ‘Level Playing Field’ in the current edition of IT Next has attempted to include key reasons why customers are looking at or could look at cloud based BI and analytics. The feature may seem too futuristic in nature, given the fact that most enterprises are still wary about deploying BI and analytics on-premise solutions owing to the cost. In which case, the most obvious question is, why cloud? The objective is to indicate that despite this deterrent factor, looking at cloud as an alternate model would certainly help customers fulfil their wish of using BI and analytics solutions\tools to have that competitive edge in the market. If IT managers could plan their strategy well and pave a path to leveraging the advantages of cloud based BI and analytics, this can help them witness a positive change in their growth moves. Being futuristic or ahead of time and giving a heads-up to business groups about technology always helps them make better decisions - which invariably puts the IT team on a higher pedestal!

“If IT managers could plan their strategy well and pave a path to leveraging the advantages of cloud based BI and analytics, this can help them witness a positive change in growth” Geetha Nandikotkur

Blogs To Watch! The Power of Cloud-based BI and Analytics-Trends and Outliers http://spotfire.tibco.com/ blog/?p=8323 What is the Best Business Intelligence Solution for my Business? http://www.pointanalytics.com. au/blog/ Gartner: Business Intelligence and Analytics are Fastest Growing Software Market http://cloudtimes. org/2013/02/26/gartnerbusiness-intelligence-andanalytics-are-fastest-growingsoftware-market/ Cloud analytics is all smoke and no fire hhttp://scn.sap.com/ community/businessintelligence/blog/2013/04/08/ cloud-analytics-is-all-smokeand-no-fire

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LEVEL PLAYING FIELD

cover story

tech talk

interview

13 How to Sketch Cloud BI and Analytics Developing a positive mindset and considering the feasibility and viability of switching to cloud option is the primary concern

16 Cloud Model Provides the Level Play Cloud BI and Analytics model is throwing up equal opportunities for small and large enterprises to harness the power of cloud

20 Interview with Gartnerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Analyst on Cloud Bhavish Sood, Research Director, Gartner says SaaS BI is popular as use case when enterprises require a comparison of internal KPIs

22 Big Benefits to Business via cloud A cloud based BI and analytics model seems to resonate well with business needs INTERVIEW | KEVIN HUGHES, DIRECTOR, SCHNEIDER | Pg 36

Techniques to build a cool data centre

F O R T H E N E X T G E N E R AT I O N O F C I O s

LEVEL PLAYING FIELD

cover Design: SHIGIL NARAYANAN

Cloud based BI & analytics is creating a level playing field across small & large enterprises, which benefit from these solutions Pg 12

Managing Storage Made Easy: Utility based model to drive efficiency Pg 32

PLUS

Nuances of a Cloud Pilot: Have an experienced service partner Pg 27

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35 Sunil Kumar Soni, CIO of Ester Industries endorses that video collaboration will enhance productivity

36 Schneiderâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Business Development Director Hughes on the ingredients required to build a cool data centre

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Managing storage made easy| Hitachi’s

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

Abdessamad on the enterprises leveraging utility based model for storage efficiency

EDITORIAL Group Editor: R Giridhar Editor: Geetha Nandikotkur

Page

DESIGN Sr. Creative Director: Jayan K Narayanan Sr. Art Director: Anil VK Associate Art Directors: Atul Deshmukh & Anil T Sr. Visualisers: Manav Sachdev & Shokeen Saifi Visualiser: NV Baiju Sr. Designers: Raj Kishore Verma Shigil Narayanan & Haridas Balan Designers: Charu Dwivedi, Peterson PJ Midhun Mohan & Pradeep G Nair

Bigq 27 Nuances to a Successful

Cloud Pilot| Experts say that Vijay Khanna should involve vendors and partners and dive into cloud pilot without debating or deliberating too much around the benefits

MARCOM

Designer: Rahul Babu STUDIO

Chief Photographer: Subhojit Paul Sr. Photographer: Jiten Gandhi

Update

sales & marketing

06 Oracle rolls out India

Brand Manager: Siddhant Raizada (09873555231) Senior Vice President: Krishna Kumar (09810206034) National Manager -Print , Online & Events: Sachin Mhashilkar (09920348755) South: Satish K Kutty (09845207810) North: Deepak Sharma (09811791110) West: Saurabh Anand +91 9833608089 Assistant Brand Manager: Varun Kumra Ad co-ordination/Scheduling: Kishan Singh

Cloud Strategy | Best Practices for delivering fast innovation and driving business transformation using Oracle Cloud

cube chat 40 Create Value through IT

Production & Logistics

| Sourabh Chatterjee, AVP-IT,

ICICI Lombard is inspired by the entrepreneurs and the life and work of Steve Jobs and Narayana Murthy

Letters --------------------------04

Sr. GM. Operations: Shivshankar M Hiremath Manager Operations: Rakesh upadhyay Asst. Manager - Logistics: Vijay Menon Executive Logistics: Nilesh Shiravadekar Production Executive: Vilas Mhatre Logistics: MP Singh & Mohd. Ansari

Update -------------------------06

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Published, Printed and Owned by Nine Dot Nine Mediaworx Private Ltd. Published and printed on their behalf by Vikas Gupta. Published at A-262 Defence Colony, New Delhi-110024, India. Printed at Tara Art Printers Pvt ltd., A-46-47, Sector-5, NOIDA (U.P.) 201301. Editor: Geetha Nandikotkur

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Emerson 17—25 Cisco 31

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INBoX 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

HANDBOOK ON CLOUD COMPUTING VOLUME 04 | ISSUE 03

A 9.9 Media Publication

april 2013

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.

Stories on Cloud, BYOD and BI: very informative The cover feature on Cloud Computing and BYOD (Boon or Bane) were just excellent. “TPL-Leaders in the Making” was well covered, and the 15 minute manager story on BI Means Business was very informative. I like IT Next for its overall coverage of the latest trends along with their pros and cons; this makes it so useful. Efforts are taken to actually cover the practical aspects of day to day work, and co-relates to the normal working environment of CIOs. Some of the topics which would draw a lot of interest from the community would be about BI / Cloud Computing / SAP and the latest trends in Telecom. I prefer reading good stories online using issuu / magzter and spend around 1-2 hours online daily.

www.linkedin.com/ groups?gid= 2261770&trk= myg_ugrp_ovr 300 members

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

Kamal Matta Next100 Winner

Mentoring Programme, a Fantastic Platform The mentoring programme is a fantastic platform that IT Next will be giving each of us. Certainly, the long-term vision with which you people work will reap great benefits in the future. IT Next is the first mover, and with this advantage, it will definitely create history in this direction. I would like to thank each one of you on the 9dot9 team working towards this vision and on these transformations. Making something like this possible cannot happen overnight; there is a lot of work to be done in the backrooms to make this successful. My sincere appreciation to the entire enthusiastic team of IT Next. Mayank Malik Next100 Winner

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The Online Advantage Once IT Next decides to go digital, it’s most critical for it to grab readers’ attention as radio channels do. People hardly get time to read print media anymore; and now we have everything as an app on android or ios, as organisations look to digitisation. For example, there’s a twitter app where you can check out all kinds of short notes while you travel, whether by car, flight, bus or metro, and you feel connected. As for categorisation, IT Next should think of framing the sections, as people would love to have an indexing app which directs them to something of their choice. Another idea is that the application should make the provision to zoom text; and if the reader wants images or ads to turn off, then your app should have this facility as that will attract low cost smartphone users also, who don’t have a bigger screen. Further, the development team could focus on conducting audio or webinars on mobile. A live chat section would be a plus, where your reader could connect with or consult a CIO. Also, in case you are considering launching any messenger kind of app, no one has done it so far; only MAIA Intelligence Mumbai has CIO - Yammer apps. It would be record-breaking. Case studies are a must for higher level CIO/IT managers, but some winners are from small organisations. So you have to keep pushing stories which can groom them. It is important to seek answers from experts under the ‘Ask the Expert’ section on various vital aspects of IT; these could be about evolving cost effective IT strategy, or how to overcome key challenges and so on. Manish Sinha Sr IT Manager, Amtek

(Note: Letters have been edited minimally, for brevity and clarity)

Update I n d u s t r y

trends deals products services people

follows closely on the heels of the expansion of the Oracle Cloud services portfolio at Oracle Open World 2012. “Oracle’s long history of technology innovation along with seven years of relentless engineering and key strategic acquisitions has enabled us to launch the most comprehensive cloud offerings in the world, “said Sandeep Mathur, Managing Director, Oracle India.

Oracle rolls out India Cloud Strategy

Best Practices for Delivering Fast Innovation with Oracle Cloud

TECH TRENDS | Oracle hosted its first Cloud World global event series in

India, where senior Oracle executives, customers and partners discussed how they are driving business transformation using the Oracle Cloud. The key note address showcased Oracle’s strategy and roadmap for cloud and social. Additional sessions for line of business executives focused on sales and marketing, customer service and support, HR and Talent Management, and Finance and Operations. It also highlighted how organisations can best leverage social media to monitor, engage, and market to their customers. The debut of Oracle Cloud World

d Rogue Cloud Implementation Clotuin g How is the frequency of rogue cloud projects changing over time? s o C

40% deploying Rogue cloud reported exposure of confidential info

Symantec commissioned ReRez Research to conduct the 2013 on ‘Avoiding the Hidden Costs of Cloud’ in September and October of 2012. They contacted business and IT executives at 3,236 organizations in 29 countries. Respondents came from companies with a range of 5 to more than 5,000 employees. Source: Symantec

itnext | M a y 2 0 1 3

60%

40%

20%

14%

50%

25%

Becoming much less frequent

Becoming slightly less frequent

Staying the same

Becoming slightly more frequent

Becoming much more frequent

At CloudWorld, Oracle announced that more and more customers are embracing Oracle Cloud solutions in India primarily because Oracle offers a wide range of cloud solutions and a wider range of consumption choices, all of which are fully open, modular, and integrated. For Indian companies, Oracle Cloud solutions serve multiple business functions including customer experience management, sales and marketing and also critical functions like HCM, talent management, financial management, procurement, project management and governance, risk and compliance among others. According to Mathur, companies from ITes/ professional services, travel, transportation, automobile and auto ancillary, publishing, media, real estate, telecom, BFSI, manufacturing, retail, e-commerce, pharma & life sciences will see a lot of demand for cloud solutions. “Oracle’s cloud offerings span public and private clouds and extend to every level of our product portfolio: applications, middleware, database, servers, storage, networking, and associated OS and virtualization software,” said Sunil Jose, VP, Applications, Oracle India.

PHOTO by photos .com

Cloud Success in India

ADATA UC500 32GB

Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF5 A mirror less compact system camera, which houses a 12.1MP Live MOS sensor and comes, bundled with a Lumix G Vario14-42mm power zoom lens which has a comparatively slimmer profile. Price: Rs 49,990

Wickedleak Wammy Titan

LThis 32GB wine-bottle shaped USB2.0 pen drive looks smart and comes with a rubber beak. Price: Rs1400

Wickedleadk Wammy Titan comes at an economical price which is good enough for such a device. IT has a good display, decent battery life and a stock Android OS. Price: Rs 12,600

MakeMy Trip uses HP Software for efficient transaction TECH TRENDS | MakeMyTrip.

com provides booking access for domestic and international airlines, Indian Railways, major bus operators and more than 10,300 hotels and guesthouses across the country. With the proliferation of Internet and data services in emerging markets throughout India, MakeMyTrip.com has experienced significant growth. In December 2012 alone, the company’s website received 8.5 million monthly unique visitors. In order for MakeMyTrip.com to meet the growing needs of these visitors, it needed to improve processes for application development and testing for simpler and faster online transactions.

MyTrip.com, has selected HP Software to enhance the online booking

MakeMyTrip.com selected HP Service Manager Enterprise Suite to standardize and automate management of key IT processes for faster application delivery. The HP solution helps MakeMyTrip.com design

Around The World

and implement new products that simplify the online travel and booking process for its customers. “To stay ahead of competition, online businesses need to accelerate product development cycles and deliver solutions that provide a compelling end-user experience,” said Sanket Atal, CTO, MakeMyTrip.com. “With HP Software, we have optimized IT processes to reduce development times of new online applications. This allows usto quickly deliver an enriched experience for visitors to our site.” The HP solution also helps the IT team to monitor application changes in real-time. The improved efficiency and monitoring has helped reduce application downtime by 70 per cent. This enables MakeMyTrip. com to meet its business goals and end user travel booking needs.

quick byte

Gartner says 52 PC of the CEOs have a Digital Strategy Gartner to examine the survey findings and the implications this will have on IT 2013 will be a turning point year as CEOs and senior executives, by a ratio of more than four to one, plan to increase IT investment in 2013, rather than cut it, according to a recent survey by Gartner, Inc. The 2013 Gartner CEO and Senior Executive Survey found that, as macro uncertainties abate, 78 percent of CEOs now feel able to plan their 2013 and 2014 investments.

Eric Schmidt, Google’s Chairman

“The Internet has emerged in many countries, there are quite a few countries with no law for the Internet. India’s strong system for freedom of expression needs clarifications (in the law)”

M a y 2 0 1 3 | itnext

Global technology provider achieves three-fold increase in data centre capacity With volatility, economic uncertainty, fast evolving technologies and ever-changing customer needs eroding business and IT capabilities, the stakes have never been as high as it is today. Enterprise efficiency, operational results and prompt client responsiveness are no longer good to have but a necessity in today’s cut-throat marketplace. At UST Global, a next generation IT service and business process outsourcing provider to Global 1000 firms, client responsiveness was a critical business mandate. However, an ageing and overburdened IT infrastructure meant that its system could no longer keep pace with customer service demands. This posed a huge challenge as UST Global was unable to predict storage allocations, resulting in unnecessary purchases of extra capacity and subsequent administrative overheads. UST Global accordingly turned to Dell to enable them to take advantage of the latest virtualization technologies in its journey to data centre transformation. Virtualization: Future Proofing the Data Centre Dell’s transformative solutions, powered by Intel® technology were critical in accelerating UST Global’s journey to the next-generation data centre. Intelligent storage management Leveraging the powerful combination of PowerEdge™ blade servers, Compellent™ storage arrays and VMware® vSphere™ 5 technology, Dell created a custom-built, virtualized data centre for UST Global. The extensive design and engineering of Dell’s virtualization solution enables UST Global to quickly deploy network and storage resources into production environments, thus ensuring prompt responses to client requests.

Assured business continuity Dell Compellent’s in-built architect for continuous availability and a 60-minutes system recovery ensures business processes continue uninterrupted at UST Global. What more, Dell Copilot Support, the most proactive, comprehensive 24x7 support in the industry, drives optimal day-to-day operations at UST Global.

Today, UST Global’s future-proof, virtualized data centre has completely transformed its IT operations, resulting in significant benefits to the business. With a three-fold increase in server capacity, lower data centre footprint, and a dramatic reduction in resource provisioning time from six weeks to mere hours, UST Global is able to meet its customers’ requirements and drive business growth with ease. Last, but not least, UST Global has achieved ROI 50% faster than anticipated - an amazing feat, made possible by Dell. To know more on how Dell Enterprise Solutions & Services, powered by Intel® technology, can help you overcome your business challenges, visit www.dell.co.in/domore

The Challenge Data centre storage capacity and performance capabilities stretched

Huge administrative overheads for the IT team es

The Strategy A future-proof, virtualized data centre to meet growing business demands

Results Enhanced productivity & performance

ROI achieved 50% faster than planned

Improved client responsiveness

ROI Speed

Important Dell Details: DELL’s TERMS AND CONDITIONS: All sales subject to Dell’s terms and conditions, see http://www.dell.co.in/tnc OR provided on request. MISTAKES: While all efforts are made to check pricing and other errors, inadvertent errors do occur from time to time and Dell reserves the right to decline orders arising from such errors. MORE INFORMATION: Go to http://dell.co.in/details. TRADEMARKS: Intel and the Intel logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. | © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.

LEVEL PLAYING FIELD

INSIDE How to Plan Pg. 16 Cloud Level Play Pg. 20 Interview Pg. 22 Cloud Business Pg. 13

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Cloud BI & Analytics | cover story

Cloud based BI and analytics is creating a level playing field across small and large enterprises, which benefit from these solutions by N Geet ha illu str ati on by s h igil na raya na n p h oto imagi n g by p eters on pj Des i gn by RAJ VERMA

ow users can benefit from using cloud based BI and analytics is now becoming a reality. Whether it is about reducing cost, avoiding hardware and infrastructure related cost, resource allocation etc., itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s all thanks to cloud based BI and analytics. In fact, Gartner has projected that Indian business intelligence (BI) software revenue will reach US$101.5 million in 2012, a 17.53 per cent increase from the 2011 revenue of $86.4 million. This forecast includes revenue for BI platforms, analytic applications and corporate performance management (CPM) software. While analysts are slightly skeptical about the cloud based BI and Analytics model becoming as ubiquitous as other cloud forms, application vendors have a different view. They argue in favour of the cloud model pushing intelligence

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cover story | Cloud BI & Analytics and analytics to a new level. There is reason to believe this when Archana S Awasthi, Vice President & Head- BFSI, Ramco Systems, avers that the cloud is a revolutionary business model that dramatically changes the way businesses are run. “We have been working on cloud technology to offer simple, agile, easy and less expensive solutions that can handle complex business situations; I see less resistance from the banking sector in the adoption to cloud on BI and analytics in particular,” says Awasthi.

IT Next embarked on a cover feature to find out how cloud based BI and analytics is throwing up equal opportunity for small and medium enterprises as also those from large enterprises increase in Indian who have not deployed any on-premise BI or business intelligence analytics to effectively leverage the cloud model. (BI) software revenue in 2012 from 2011 It was a revelation that IT heads have an open standing at mind and are positive about the benefits that US$101.5 million the cloud model offers and that they therefore strongly believe that the cloud model will enable them to compete in the industry. Very soon, the industry will see an increase in the adoption of the cloud based BI and analytics model.

17.53%

Need for Cloud BI & Analytics For every new technology that surfaces, there has to be a buyin from users. This means that there has to be a need and that the need arises due to the data looming large and the challenges in handling it. Due to deploying on-premise solutions on BI and analytics getting to be too expensive, and with the complexity surrounding implementation and other resources, most IT heads think the cloud to be a viable option. Awasthi agrees that there is a need for BI and that enterprises face many challenges. “What are the problems IT heads face? Obviously it is to do with huge volumes of data, no support in the decision making process, non-interactive and static reports and multiple disparate systems,” points out Awasthi. According to her, there is a need to support IT heads with necessary tools in MIS, data integrity from multiple sources and converting data into insights. Ramco is working towards fusing both these platforms to offer a product that is capable of covering the entire business cycle from transaction to analytics.

Cloud, so what? IT heads intend to overcome the challenges associated with on premise BI and analytics deployment. They are willing to harness the cloud model to enjoy the broad range of capabilities that it offers: faster deployment, low upfront cost, no hassles of hiring people, scalability and ease of operations. However, the cloud could be of advantage if IT decision makers plan the cloud strategy well and follow certain steps meticulously. Besides, they need to get complete insights into their data and processes to be able to jump onto the cloud model, while understanding the nuances of the cloud BI and analytics strategy.

“We have been working on cloud technology to offer simple, agile, easy and less expensive solutions that can handle complex business situations; I see less resistance from the banking sector in the adoption to cloud on BI and analytics in particular” Archana S Awasthi, Vice President & Head- BFSI, Ramco Systems

Cloud BI & Analytics | cover story

c l o u d

p l a n n i n g

How to Sketch Cloud BI and Analytics Developing a positive mindset and considering the feasibility and viability of switching to Cloud Options is the primary concern for IT heads

he initial undertaking is crucial for all IT heads while deciding on the Cloud Strategy. Besides, the case of Cloud-based Business Intelligence (BI) and Analytics is highly complex for most enterprises as it still is a developing concept. However, those who have taken the initiative on the Cloud-based BI and Analytics Model have stated a few meticulous steps, which can ease out the process.

The critical ones according to him are:

Step 1 Make up your mind. One needs to fully understand the concepts and implications of cloud computing before taking a decision on whether to maintain an IT investment in-house or whether to buy it as a service through the Cloud. Understand fully the pros and cons of public vs. private vs. hybrid cloud.

Feasibility & Viability Form the Crux Most enterprises have made huge investments on the BI platform and this calls for a feasibility and viability study when thinking of switching to the BI and Analytics Cloud-based Model. According to Sandeep Bhagat, Principal Architect, Big Data & Analytics, Infosys Ltd., while Cloud promises the moon, the aspects such as leveraging existing investments, tool set support, compatibility and integration of existing applications needs to be analysed before zeroing down on the Cloud strategy. Bhagat outlines the importance of getting a buy-in from businesses. “Most of the BI systems hold confidential analytical data about enterprises and hence it is important to get buy-ins from businesses to host business sensitive data on the Cloud environment. As the first step, enterprises can consider shifting routine and not critical tasks to the Cloud environment”, says Bhagat.

Align with Key Stakeholders as a Strategy Vijay Sethi, VP-Information Systems & CIO, Hero MotoCorp Ltd., believes that the Cloud computing strategy needs to be built and brought to an agreement with key stakeholders as he lays down steps that any enterprise needs to delve into.

Stages of Planning for Cloud Enterprises can consider shifting routine and not critical

tasks to the Cloud environment

Cloud is here to stay and it is not a question of ‘if’ but

‘when’ and ‘what’. Not everything can be Cloud enabled, but is a question of ‘how much

While Cloud promises the moon, the aspects such as

leveraging existing investments, tool set support, com patibility and integration of existing applications needs to be analysed before zeroing down on the Cloud Strategy.

As CIO, one needs to decide on ‘what’, ‘when’ and ‘how’

during the development of the Cloud and be in agreement with key stakeholders, the IT team and the business

IT managers need to share their data outlets, be it client

related data, service data, marketing data, etc., with the service providers

m a y 2 0 1 3 | itnext

cover story | Cloud BI & Analytics Look at the overall ROI (Return on Investment).One cannot rip and replace the existing infrastructure, but one also needs to look at shortterm costs vs. long-term gains. One has to compare not just hardware/software/licensing/implementation/maitenance costs but also bandwidth and related costs especially in case one is moving enterprise applications to Cloud. One may also need to enhance internet bandwidths significantly. Security, monitoring and compliance are major areas of discussion when one talks about Cloud. This should be addressed upfront and the consensus of all stake holders must be taken before moving forward. The CIO has to first make up his/her mind before under taking this initiation and have full conviction.

Pain Points in Cloud Model While the IT Heads are drawn towards deploying cloud based BI and analytics model, there are certain barriers to cloud adoption, which needs to be addressed. Why do I need cloud when it is happening with virtualization Encryption—security issues No clarity of SLAs as it is purely dependent on individual companies Work load elasticity Are there standardized interfaces to address inter-operability issues Data governance Ability to make changes Lack of control—Data governance, ownership, regulatory and compliance still remain a concern Pricing models: Lack of standardized pricing models which makes it difficult for customers to select the right vendor

Step 2 Ensure that the key members of your IT team are on board. “I think there can always be resistance from the team that is managing the current infrastructure or applications– for this culture, mindset has to change– and this could be perhaps the most difficult barrier in the adoption of Cloud Computing”, says Sethi. “The mindset in the organisation– not just the IT managers’, needs to be in-line with the fact that there will be a transition from on-premises to offpremises computing. This is not easy. E.g.,while there is an obvious advantage in terms of the fact that someone else is managing my dayto-day issues, this has to be weighed against the fact that we are leaving the business-critical information resources in the hands of third parties.”

“It is not just the IT managers who need to have the right mindset, but the entire organisation needs to be in-line with the fact that there will be a transition from on-premises to off-premises computing which would not be an easy task” Vijay Sethi, CIO, HeroMotoCorp

“Most of the BI systems hold confidential analytical data about enterprises and hence it is important to get buy-ins from businesses to host business sensitive data on the Cloud environment” Sandeep Bhagat, Principal Architect, Big Data & Analytics, Infosys Ltd

Step 3 Draw up your Cloud computing strategy and come to an agreement with key stakeholders. Sethi argues that in today’s times, one has to realize that Cloud is here to stay and it is not a question of ‘if’ but ‘when’ and ‘what’. Not everything can be Cloud enabled, but is a question of ‘how much’. The Cloud strategy of one organisation may or may not work for another as it would need tweaking the infrastructure, the priorities, the plans, the culture and the ecosystem of the organization. As CIO, one needs to decide on ‘what’, ‘when’ and ‘how’ during the development of the Cloud and be in ag reement with key stakeholders, the IT team and the business. The strategy can further evolve and get refined as one takes steps but an agreement at all stages is very critical.

Step 4 Carry out evaluation of the partners involved in the Cloud– cloud service providers, consultants/SIs if required, etc. Sethi emphasizes on the point that apart from the routine

evaluation we conduct for projects, one has to also focus specifically on the services being offered by providers– in terms of uptime, response time, performance, etc. Focus also has to be on the implementation time, whether it will be more efficient (in terms of the time to deploy or the scaling-up of an application infrastructure) by going the cloud computing way or one has in-house capabilities. The other steps, as per Sethi, would involve finalizing the contract- taking into consideration all areas related to technical, commercial and risk mitigation. He recommends IT managers to start small and do the proof-of-concept first and review results or make necessary adjustments and get on to the Cloud journey. Rajesh Shewani, Technical Sales Head, Business Analytics, IBM India/SA strongly believes that IT managers should feel confident about the data being on the Cloud when they think of the Cloud-based Analytics and BI Model. “IT managers need to share their data outlets, be it client related data, service data, marketing data, etc., with the service providers, which is the first step towards switching to the Cloud Model”, says Shewani.

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Cloud Model Provides the Level Play

Cloud BI and analytics is throwing up equal opportunities for small and large enterprise to harness the power of cloud

Analytics, IBM India/SA observes that disruptive business models, enabled by analytic and cloud technologies, will change the game of corporate sales and supply chain operations--quite similar to the way the book, Moneyball tells how professional athletes changed baseball by leveling the playing field with cash-rich teams through the innovative use of analytic. Shewani affirms that IT teams are mapping their data using cloud based tools effectively. “Customers are using both our BI and analytics tools across various pre-defined scenarios spread across account receivables, various other transactions, production etc.,” says Shewani.

he concept of cloud is no longer relegated to noncritical applications, but is actually extending to business intelligence and analytics, thus pushing it to a new level. So far, the industry has witnessed large enterprises harnessing the power of cloud based BI and analytics model. But now, mid-sized and smaller companies are gearing up; so much so that the BFSI segment is leveraging it to a great extent. In other words, a cloud based BI and analytics strategy is creating a level playing field across small enterprises. One key reason for this, as most BI and analytics vendors and users agree, is that cloud-based services can support a huge amount of data; and it is one easy and cost effective way to deploy BI and analytics solutions, thus giving it that competitive edge. Most industry players echo the opinion that cloud Based BI is particularly important to SMBs who are primarily leveraging the public cloud, as most of the large enterprises are opting for hybrid models. Rajesh Shewani, Technical Sales Head, Business

How does cloud BI & Analytics Map your Data? While the term “cloud” can mean different things to different people, IBM’s Shewani says cloud services typically require technologies and approaches such as standardisation, virtualisation and automation, and they typically consist of the following characteristics:

Cloud’s business enablers can help address analytic challenges

Cost Flexibility

Need for easy access to new sources of data

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Provides limitless, costefficient computing capacity to support growth

Shifts fixed to variable cost Pay as and when needed Upfront costs for hardware, software and skills

Business Scalability

Ecosystem Connectivity

Significant computing resource requirements at peak times

Analytic challenges and barriers to success

Variety of information

New value nets Potential new businesses

Requires new ways to deliver insights

Context-driven Variability User defined experiences Increases relevance

Market Adaptability Faster time to market Supports experimentation

Increased demand for solutions-not able to react quickly enough Need to address broader set of users

Masked Complexity Expands product sophistication Simpler for customers/users

s ource: ibm

“Areas of investment that BI and analytics solutions draw, if we take the life span of at least 8 years, major would be the cost of the data scientist who works on the tool to get major insights” TG Dhandapani, CIO, TVS Motors

On demand self-service Broad network access Shared resource pools Rapid elasticity—dynamically assigned resources Measured service—pay as you go According to him, organisations are using the power of cloud to build enduring customer relationships, deliver IT without boundaries, improve speed and dexterity and transform the economics of innovation; and cloud analytics refers to applications that use cloud resources for analytics processing or the delivery of analytical insights. Shewani goes on to say that customers are increasingly using cloud based analytics and BI to reassess outdated strategies and identify new ways to improve efficiency at a lower cost. “As part of our strategy to deploy private cloud computing environment for business analytics, we launched an internal project to standardise BI across departments—not only to better understand key business objectives and deliver leading solutions and services to clients, but also to maintain budget and, where possible, uncover new savings,” says Shewani.

An enterprise, which leveraged cloud BI & Analytics Elaborating on a case, he said a large enterprise from an IT vertical needed a centralised business intelligence solution that

was highly scalable for a distributed workforce, available to more users, provided ease-of-use and allowed the organisation to execute its BI strategy. The solution Blue Insight was deployed; it provided always-on access to the right information at the right time for smarter business decision-making, while enabling the company to cut down on infrastructure cost and complexity, and reduce siloed data and duplication of efforts. The key benefits, according to Shewani, was a 70 per cent decrease in cost for BI delivery, standardisation on a centralised, scalable infrastructure, consolidation of many multi-product, departmental BI deployments, and access to information from nearly 100 different data sources for real-time decision-making. Vendor like Ramandeep Singh, CEO, Alten Calsoft Labs, argues that the unprecedented data growth offers opportunities as well as challenges for enterprises. According to him, cloud based data inference provides enterprises an opportunity to analyse structured and unstructured data and take strategic action. “CIOs and IT decision makers see the use of Business Intelligence (BI) in the cloud as a game-changer, as it makes BI affordable and easily available as compared to traditional BI,” says Singh. Singh points out that BI/DW applications demand high infrastructure requirements, handle unpredictable load

cover story | Cloud BI & Analytics

Harnessing the Cloud BI and Analytics

very complex and take many volumes, involve high upfront man-months to implement. investment, high development The vendor has leveraged its and maintenance costs, take a existing ERP customers to deploy longer duration for provisioning Now, mid-sized and smaller companies are OnDemand—Analytics and and have so far displayed a high gearing up. Gateway products on the Cloud, reliance on IT. On the other hand, which comprises a comprehensive cloud based BI can be adopted IT teams are mapping their data using BI platform to address faster with low initial investment cloud based BI and analytics and using the large, scale enterprise data on infrastructure and overhead tools effectively. warehousing requirements. costs, which is why it can be Cloud based BI and analytics strategy is Awasthi observes that the cloud leveraged by medium businesses creating a level playing field across small model would enable customers to and those who have not tried out enterprises. quickly and easily adopt business on-premise solutions. Sandeep applications and then graduate to a Bhagat, Principal Architect, Big Cloud-based services can support a huge full-fledged ERP, without replacing data & Analytics, Infosys, says, “In amount of data; and it is one easy and cost the existing system. Gateway late 2011, only about 13 per cent of effective way to deploy BI and analytics products offer a fusion of enterprises worldwide had cloud solutions, thus giving it that competitive edge. transaction and decision support based BI solutions. In 2012, cloud Cloud based BI can be adopted faster with low systems (i.e. ERP with selfbased BI saw an 84 per cent CAGR. initial investment on infrastructure and over contained Analytics), thereby On a more positive note, head costs, which is why it can be leveraged by supporting both operations and Archana S Awasthi, Vice President medium businesses and those who have decision-making. & Head- BFSI, Ramco Systems, says not tried out on-premise solutions. “This will ensure that customers, cloud based BI and Analytics is no who hitherto could not afford an longer a novice as most customers in the BFSI segment are leveraging the model under the public Analytics offering, can start using the solution easily,” she says. cloud. “Customers are looking at a data centric BI cloud model; we have brought in standardisation in the cloud based model, What IT Heads foretell while creating industry templates,” says Awasthi. She says IT Heads agree with vendors on the cloud based BI and analytthat traditional analytics solutions are built ground-up, are ics throwing up equal opportunity to small, medium businesses who are constrained by the cost. To this effect, T G Dhandapani, CIO, TVS Motors, explains that BI and Analytics being strategic initiatives, this tool is housed on private cloud. “There are three different BI and analytics platforms: two for BI, of which one is open source. The third platform is for doing data mining. BI is centrally developed and offered in the private cloud model as shared services for the group,” says Dhandapani.

“While there are challenges for most functions, I would definitely look at delivery management functionality on the cloud model for BI and BA for faster transactions and meet compliance needs” Kaushal Shah, Head-IT of Privy Organics

Cloud BI & Analytics | cover story

Best Practices in Cloud BI & Analytics While there is nothing called perfection or well-defined methods in deploying cloud based BI and analytics, it could a viable option for most enterprises that have not deployed BI for varied reasons. Certain best practices would help them in their journey. To ensure that the fundamental building blocks for product / applications / platform or various service offerings are consistent and can be universally understood & compared across providers – a question very often asked--how to judge Cloud offering of a provider ‘A’ is better than of ‘B’ can be based on extent of standards / protocols being followed Standards also help to enable compatibility and interoperability between differ-

ent products and services and thus while for the vendors it simplifies product development and improves time-to-market from a customer perspective it gives one confidence of inter-connectivity and interoperability and also migration from one provider to another. Inter operability– A standard to ensure that if the relationship with a provider goes bad or one has to change the provider due to any reason – if one moves data to other provider – data formats / applications APIs etc have to be such that customer does not suffer and data can be easily moved Data centre hosting, DR and High availability – A linked standard has to be on hosting of data centers, ensuring disaster

Let’s take a look at the areas of investment that BI and analytics solutions draw. In any given scenario, as Dhandapani observes, “If we take the life span of the tool to be at least 8 years, the major cost is the cost of the data Scientist who works on the tool to get major insights. The initial investment in licensing, servers, storage and AMC constitute around 40% of the total cost spend in a span of 8 years. As for the initial investment, the cost of implementation is significant followed by licensing and storage.” Against this backdrop, the cloud model does seem to be a viable proposition. Kaushal Shah, Head-IT of Privy Organics, who has plans to deploy BI and analytics solutions in the near future, intends to try the cloud-based model for the delivery management solution, to begin with. “Every organisation has its unique model around planning management, capacity management, availability and operations and delivery management. While there are challenges to adopting a cloud model for most functions, I would definitely look at delivery management functionality on the cloud model for BI and analytics which would allow me to execute faster transactions and meet compliance needs,” avers Shah. Shah agrees that this model would help enterprises in creating a level playing field by bringing in sustainability and efficiency into the system.

recovery, business continuity and high availability etc. SLAs have to be customer specific Customers need to still go through the deployment and development process as there is some amount of customization required Feel comfortable to migrate legacy data to cloud Remember that it is a value based pricing which needs to be worked out In a BI cloud model, the customer should be able to clearly articulate where the data resides which will enable the service provider to do better analysis Companies that respond fastest to their data will put themselves a step ahead.

Vijay Sethi, VP-Information Systems & CIO of Hero MotoCorp recommends that IT managers initiate cloud BA project with a pilot; the objective being not to test technology but to ensure that the team and users get comfortable with analytics. “However, the success of a BA project does not depend only on technology – there are other factors: people (users), processes (of data collation, extraction, review etc) and the culture of the organisation. Based on learnings of the pilot, rollouts should be undertaken,” says Sethi. From the preparation perspective, the CIO has to first convince himself that as far as implementation of any analytical tool is concerned, it needs to be taken up as a journey instead of project because: As capabilities are demonstrated, the demand for information increases. The rules of aggregation generally tend to undergo an evolution over a period of time: initially managers have a tendency to ask for transactional information, but with time, it moves from reporting to intelligence to analytics Considerable change management effort required to make users use these kinds of systems – in most cases, they are more comfortable with their excel sheets and pivot tables.

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i e w i n t e r v

SaaS BI popular as use case for KPIs Bhavish Sood, Research Director at Gartner says SaaS BI is attractive as a use case when enterprises require a comparison of internal KPIs

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How is the cloud-based BI and Analytics model perceivedÂ by the industry? Although SaaS-based BI is an emerging market, a considerable enhancement has occurred in the number of offerings and the acceptance of clients, owing to the pricing and delivery model. Early adopters have been in the mid-market and at the departmental level of large enterprises, but the size and sophistication of implementation have just started expanding to become enterprise focused initiatives. Despite the increasing maturity of SaaS provider offerings, in future, SaaS BI solution providers will compete

Cloud BI & Analytics | cover story by leveraging cloud service infrastructure from multiple providers such as Amazon and Joyent, rather than building it in-house. My observation is that there is very little uptake of core BI reporting on the Cloud. This may possibly be due to competition from open source and data discovery solutions. The second aspect is that verticalised analytics solutions and CRM analytics adoption is maturing and growing client interest.

At the end of the day, SaaS is just a delivery model. It provides business users with the opportunity to focus on the use and application of information while also providing greater flexibility to IT staff. As a result, the staff can focus on the outcomes of the BI initiatives, rather than worry about underlying application and technology issues. The following factors are driving SaaS BI adoption: Overall market momentum on SaaS because of the curent economic situation where clients want to avoid making capital expenditures Low barrier to entry; improves focus on impact of BI and thus promotes faster ROI Availability of high-quality (best-of-breed or stack origin) solutions at low cost Lower application development costs due to the out sourced nature of work

How is the cloud model being used to map BI and Analytics usage in an enterprise? As per our understanding, Web analytics is the most mature SaaS BI solution offering. Almost the entire Web analytics market is delivered as SaaS. SaaS BI is most attractive as a use case when enterprises require a comparison of internal key performance indicators (KPIs) or data with industry benchmarks. Point analytics solutions that require specialised skill What are the pain points sets that enterprises do not that IT heads face regarding want to build, such as spend adopting the Cloud model for analytics, are an additional deploying BI and Analytics? area of high suitability for this Despite the availability of many delivery model. service offerings, the following factors may slow broader The other challenge would be adoption: telecom connectivity issues f o r a) Little understanding of the total accessing SaaS applications over outlay for the application due to public Internet in many regions; the nature of various pricing modcosts associated with data transels of SaaS BI offerings (for examfer to the hosted environment are ple per user, per year or per report) major growth inhibitors. b) Perception regarding technical Increasing push by busiand security risks for mission-critnesses to gain insights into ical deployments and customers the health of their businesses, rallying around tried and tested rather than worry about techni Bhavish Sood, Research Director at Gartner vendors and delivery model percal issues, is forcing many CIOs to ceived as safe. look at this alternate model. c) Cost and risk of integrating with on-premises information infra Key vertical opportunities for vendors are increasing as they encounter complex merger and acquisition IT integration issues structure as well as those requiring point solutions for reporting and analytics (such as warranty analytics for an automotive vendor). What do you think customers should expect and not SaaS applications with architectures that allow the flexibility to expect from cloud based BI and Analytics? move the data and reporting behind the corporate firewall when There is a conflict between the compelling value proposition required will have larger resonance with clients. that SaaS BI provides (the ability to create BI solutions in a scalable manner without an upfront investment) and the two primary barriers to SaaS-based BI: Trusting data to a third What kind of strategy is being used to buy in the line party and overcoming, and the inertia involved with moving to a of business regarding deployment of cloud-based BI new architecture. and Analytics?

“Early adopters have been in the midmarket and at the departmental level of large enterprises, but the size and sophistication of implementation have just started expanding”

cover story | Cloud BI & Analytics

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Big Benefits to Business via Cloud A cloud based BI and Analytics model seems to resonate well with business needs, making for an effective cost model

ost often, IT heads are lured by cloudbased offerings as they provide immense benefits. In the case of a cloud based BI and analytics model, it appears it’s even better as it resonates well with business needs and benefits, drives growth and ensures better RoI. IT heads are leveraging various cloud forms to address business needs, which will eventually help them buy in the line of business.

4 Pronged Cloud Approach According to Ramandeep Singh, CEO, Alten Calsoft Labs, there are four different cloud usage models for BI and Analytics implementation being leveraged: Public cloud-based IaaS for a BI system: This option involves subscribing to an IaaS vendor and a pay-as-youuse model on the hardware and systems software. In this model, enterprises can deploy their own Extract Transfer and Load, DBMS and BI software on top of this. This model helps enterprises to convert their CAPEX to OPEX. BI/DW Platform as a Service (PaaS): Using this option, enterprises can deploy the BI/DW system on a public cloud or an externally hosted BI/DW for building one’s own cloudbased BI system using one or more third party products. This model is useful for SMBs, and for Custom Analytic applications, Enterprise BI systems, Data Mining, and Prototyping Analytics on the Cloud: This is a relatively new space with many new vendors offering pre-built solutions in a pay per use model Public cloud or externally hosted SaaS BI for operational

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reporting on cloud-based operational data: Enterprises can opt for this model for building a cloud-based reporting system on operational data from a cloud based transaction processing system or social media data Private cloud-based BI system running internally: This model can be used for an existing large BI & DW system, which is hosted in-house to optimize resource usage

Lower Expense, Merrier it is Ashok Kannan, AVP-IT, Ashok Leyland John Deere Construction Equipment Company Pvt Ltd., expects CFOs to be happy, as expenses shift from CAPEX to OPEX in case the pay-per-use model is chosen.

Merits of Cloud BI & Analytics Public cloud-based IaaS for a BI system helps enterprises to convert their CAPEX to OPEX Analytics on the Cloud, new space with many new vendors offering pre-built solutions in a pay per use model Investment in a business analytical tool has to be considered strategic in nature as it empowers business through timely delivery of quality information Three areas of focus for customers are MIS, data integrity from multiple sources and as a tool to convert data into insights Cloud models drivesbenefits for the corporate performance management framework comprising dashboards, score boards and KPIs, collaborative decision making.

“Enterprises can opt for public cloud or externally hosted SaaS BI for building a cloudbased reporting system on operational data from a cloud based transaction processing system or social media data” Ramandeep Singh, CEO, Alten Calsoft Labs

“Going by the cloud model, management reporting will be planned and scoped, and discussed and finalised with all stakeholders. The best practices for requirement gathering will be globally analysed and tailored to meet our requirements. A project plan will be finalised for implementation, and the plan will be executed,” says Kannan.

“Having said all this, I see that the nature of analytical tools and capabilities of products on cloud will undergo a change. Considering the business problems one has to respond to, we need to cater to not just structured data but also unstructured data so as to have more meaningful insights that will help our company,” says Sethi.

Single Version of Truth

3 Benefit Areas

Vijay Sethi, VP-Information Systems & CIO, Hero MotoCorp, says that as far as ROI is concerned, investment in a business analytical tool (whether as a product or as a service on cloud) has to be considered strategic in nature as it empowers business through timely delivery of quality information enabling right and timely decisions, instead of quantitative ROI calculations. The two benefits that strike Sethi about using the cloud model are: Using information analysis to achieve business objectives: With the implementation of an analytical tool, many advanced analytical capabilities are added on; these enable the business to analyse situations from various perspectives, thus improving the quality of decisions and helping in speedier decisions. Reliable presentation of information (‘one version of the truth’): The data, which analytical tools present, will become the single window of information for all the information needs of the organisation.

The benefits of using cloud BI and analytics, according to Archana S Awasthi, Vice President & Head- BFSI, Ramco Systems, would be faster deployment and quicker understanding of RoI. “We have witnessed deployment done within a month using cloud based BI or analytics, as against the traditional model which takes a few months; this is the most attractive part,” says Awasthi. Awasthi reiterates that customers are looking at three areas in terms of support: M.I.S, data integrity from multiple sources and as a tool to convert data into insights. “Customers are increasingly looking at benefits for the corporate performance management framework comprising dashboards, scoreboards and KPIs, collaborative decision making. They analyse cause effect relationships, trends and comparisons in the cloud model,” avers Awasthi.

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Cloud Pilot

the big

Nuances of a Successful Cloud Pilot EXPERT PANEL

Professor Peter Coch rane, Co-Founder, Cochrane Associates

The Situation...

Cut it from he re

IT heads and Senior IT managers most often are unclear whether a cloud project would turn out successful or a hurricane in the making. Despite the hype surrounding the cloud and industry experts talking about the Cloud in a big way, it is still a new environment and many enterprises experience hiccups in getting started. A similar situation faces Vijay Khanna, Senior IT manager of a large pharmaceutical company, who is uncertain about the pilot project that he has ventured into. Will it lead to success? While his business users and top management are eager to take the plunge into the Cloud and eager to test its benefits, Khanna is wary and wants proof that the pilot can work well; that it can be used safely without massive rework. While Khanna is cognizant with the fact that a well-managed cloud pilot with clear goals and meaningful results can provide much-needed clarity, he does experience anxious moments. He wants to evaluate the Cloud in the form of a pilot directed by his top boss. Your responses count. Log on to www.itnext.in/bigQ to submit your replies. The best entry will be published in the next print edition.

Anoop Handa, Executive Vice President / CIO, Fullerton India

Subhasish Saha, CTO, Apeejay Group

As senior IT manager of a large pharmaceutical organisation with operations worldwide, Khanna has been struggling with issues familiar to this industry. He has to be responsive to business deliverables, contain capital expenditure and operating costs. Besides, a wave of acquisitions resulting in multiple data centres and having to consolidate them have thrown up several challenges and growing business needs. The dilemma Khanna faces is whether to first put down the agenda to understand what needs to be accomplished in the Cloud. Is it capex reduction, faster provisioning or better throughput for distributed teams? Khanna’s key concern is to prove that the pilot gets started and make all possible efforts to make it a success; this will help him plan for focused implementation. In the process, he is anxious about security, networking, and application migration, deploying etc. Another vital dilemma is how to measure the performance in a pilot, which would help him address his goal or result, as well as address business issues. Amid such ambiguities, Khanna seeks answers from experts who can guide him through his pilot.

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the big q

the big questions... What are the steps, to start with, to run the Cloud pilot and what

should be the goals or tasks that need to be short-listed (and which can be accomplished via cloud)?

What are key benefits that he needs to expect in the pilot stage of cloud deployment that can justify his effort and help business users understand and enjoy Cloud advantages?

Here are the answers... Follow the Existence theorem FIRST ANSWER

Co-Founder, Cochrane Associates About me: An engineer, scientist, entrepreneur, futurist and consultant. He is the former CTO and head of research at BT, with a career in telecoms and IT spanning more than 40 years

SECOND ANSWER The benefits that Khanna can witness are lowered cost, greater output per man-day and more creativity. Business users get it all ready as they are frustrated by the constraints of backward looking and control freak IT departments. Cloud Computing could be the biggest single opportunity for a significant improvement in our network and information security for decades. Multiple operators and suppliers offering multiple access points, services and applications that we can tap at the same time will give us a diversity of new protection mechanisms way beyond those we enjoy today.Â For sure, we need to improve our log-on processes, firewalls and malware protection, but thin clients change the name of the game. A lack of memory and processing power leverage down any malware sophistication, whilst access and utilisation will be harder to compromise when we choose different devices and servers at random. If we also sign up for applications and services from multiple players, and disperse our information in parsed and scattered locations that are never connected in the same manner more than once, then infiltration will be orders of magnitude more difficult.Â A moving target is harder to hit, and the Cloud might be the ultimate target!

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PHOTO /I LLUSTRATIO N/IMAG ING CRE DIT

Professor Peter Cochrane

Vijay Khanna should observe that there are now so many big organisations that are 100 per cent into the Cloud and there is an existence theorem around this. Obviously, the benefits are substantial; also, there is never a time with any project or technology change that you can know for sure will work 100 per cent. In fact, one could be contented that over 80 per cent improvements and enhancements do happen with new technologies. I would recommend that Khanna take a decision and move on without deliberating too much about the cost and complexities around the Cloud, as any decision is better than no decision at all. A pilot is a sensible move, but it is important to ensure that it is big enough. Khanna should remember that one size seldom fits all. Do not implement a rigid and inflexible cloud governed by old corporate thinking and mind set. The cloud is about the individual and his initiative and not the company. The combination of the cloud and BYOD gives the biggest win. Khanna should not struggle with any logistics challenges. He should be worrying about the overall direction, strategy and future of the company including big data, modelling, and decision support and helping the main board steer the company towards of success. His primary task is to put experts at the back of the pack and first talk to as many companies as possible â&#x20AC;&#x201C; companies which have put in this process. It is critical to put the user centre stage and forget about controlling anything. Do not go for the Cloud alone; go for BYOD also at the same time. Gift your users their machines and phones and stop supplying them these through corporate. Outsource all IT provisioning, service support, and close down the IT department in totality.

the big q

Look for partner with credentials FIRST ANSWER ‘Cloud Computing’ has been in existence for a while now; and the journey of the Cloud from being mere hype to having real life practical implementation success stories should provide enough comfort to Khanna that he is not the only one doing this pilot. As Khanna embarks on the Cloud journey, he should spend significant time on planning, partner evaluation and identification of opportunities to leverage benefits of cloud computing. One size doesn’t fit all! Therefore, it is most vital to select a partner who has the abilities and proven credentials to meet his ‘specific’ needs. Cloud agreements and partnerships, largely, are long-term engagements and therefore spending time on due diligence on the partner will definitely mean a favourable outcome. Cloud provides immense benefits: n Reduction in upfront capital expenditure n Availability of opex based ‘pay per use’ models n Accelerated provisioning of technology – infra, business applica tions and development platforms n A single point of contact/ single partner for managing hardware, software, licensing and support rather than having multiple partners or in-house teams for these n Ability to manage peak demand in the most cost effective way Khanna has, therefore, to be clear in identifying his priorities on benefits that should be aligned to business needs and objectives. The success criteria need to be well articulated and should have S.M.A.R.T goals to have comprehensive evaluation of the outcome of the pilot.

SECOND ANSWER Cloud offers a flexible, cost effective, ‘pay per use’ operating model whereby one can avoid huge capital investments and still take advantage of world-class infrastructure in an opex model. Cloud also increases the affordability of world-class business applications and a resilient IT infrastructure for SMEs and start-ups; these would otherwise not have had an appetite for significant investments in building up their IT Infrastructure and the capacity to leverage the power of proven industry software applications for their business. Depending on the key objective for cloud, Khanna should be able to demonstrate to his peers and leadership how he has been able to achieve the set goal with cloud. It would benefit him if he could share the comparison of achieving the same result had he followed the traditional ‘build’ option.

cloud 80 . 0 % 70.0%

PHOTO /I LLUSTRATIO N/IMAG ING CRE DIT

60 . 0 %

Executive Vice President / CIO, Fullerton India About me: Business focussed IT Leader with proven record of accomplishment and over 23 years of extensive, multidisciplinary global experience in Technology, coupled with deep domain knowledge of the Financial Services industry.

High Growth Expected in Cloud Infrastructure Services B PaaS S aaS PaaS IaaS Mgmt & Sec

CAGR ( 20 1 1 -20 1 6) IaaS 41 .7% PaaS 2 6.6% SaaS 1 7.4%

U S $ B il l ion s 30 25

IaaS Pa a S SaaS

50 . 0 %

40 . 0 % 30 . 0 %

41 .7%

20.0%

2 6.6% 1 7.4%

10 . 0 % 0. 0 %

Anoop Handa

20 11 20 12 20 13 20 14 20 15 2 01 6

10 5 0

2 01 0 2 01 1 2 01 2 2 01 3 2 014 2 01 5 2 01 6 Source: Public cloud service forecast.Gartner

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the big q

scaling and sizing should be exact FIRST ANSWER

Subhasish Saha

Looking at the industry and the business environment in which Khanna is operating, the Cloud in both forms (private and public) would make immense sense. As a technology, cloud is no more a “niche” concept and there are thousands of success stories around. I would suggest that Khanna picks “server virtualisation and consolidation” as a priority project. The following is a list of key action points: a. To clearly state the current issues; let’s say, heterogeneous environment, multiple data centre, reduced utilisation, etc. b. To devise a correct strategy of cloud deployment between private and public cloud. The best way to handle this is to list down all critical IT deliveries and look at the demand vs supply list. Let us say “the current utilisation is “15%”; we want to make it 70%.” c. Migrate i n batches but build for thefuture: Though Khanna will have to pilot fast, he should have a clear vision of the future; the scale and sizing should be done accordingly. two business applications as well.

CTO, Apeejay Group About me: An alumnus of Indian Statistical Institute, with PG in Computer Science. ITIL Certified with strong business and functional knowledge in the area of Sales and Commercial Processes and supply chain processes etc.

SECOND ANSWER All the following KPIs and measurement of performance should be well quantified: a) Resource utilisation - percentage improvement for that pilot b) Replicability/ scalability of the pilot project c) Improvement in response towards business deliveries d) Clear comparison of Capex and cloud model in terms of investment.

More Resources

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SLA Best Practices: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk869/tk769/technologies_white_ paper09186a008011e783.shtml What about SLAs?: http://www.itbusinessedge.com/cm/blogs/all/saas-bpo-convergence-what-aboutslas/?cs=38590

PHOTO /I LLUSTRATIO N/IMAG ING CRE DIT

Notes NOTEs

ADVERTORIAL

ask the expert

Vijay Kumar Arora Founder, LT Foods Q: LT Foods is the leading processor and exporter of packaged basmati rice. We are a ` 2,000 crore company with 1,100 people across the globe. We use an upgraded ERP Hardware platform, and intranet for internal communication with employees, and an enhanced BI application for data analysis. Looking at the long term, we plan to actively manage the short, mid- and long-term viability of our technology and services portfolio as a portfolio to monitor contributions according to business case parameters and service level agreements. We also want to develop expertise

in business process reengineering and shore up any weakness in solution design and deployment. A: A datacenter or DC has many layers of disparate applications, each of which behave differently from the other. Some of these applications are multithreaded like the Web Server Apps. Cisco has a framework of architectures called CVDs (Cisco Validated Design) which provide architectural guidelines for different types of workloads. These designs are certified to co-exist with multiple storage solutions and other applications like DB, Exchange, Virtualization, SharePoint etc. They can be implemented based on the specific guidelines that we have created using best practices for multiple solutions.

Ashish Wattal National Product Manager– UCS Cisco India & SAARC Intel , the Intel logo, Xeon , and Xeon inside are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries ®

Man Stora Mad Enterprises begin to reduce capitalisation of their own infrastructure and move to a consumption or utility based model to manage their storage efficiently, says Hicham Abdessamad, Senior VP, Global Services, Hitachi Data Systems By N G e e t h a

Storage Management | insight

ne cannot deny the fact that growth in data is causing a radical shift in the role of IT within organisations. Investments in process based projects such as infrastructure and core applications are being replaced by investments in “information” based projects such as analytics, collaboration and communications. However, continuing to invest in new business intelligence and analytics platforms makes no business sense without adopting the right storage strategy and approach as well. Rather than merely adding more physical infrastructure, enterprises are beginning to adopt new models that view the IT department as a value and profit centre. With the uptake in cloud and service based models, Abdessamad finds the alignment and need to leverage these models in the storage industry as well. According to him, it is no longer viable to just add more storage boxes to the growing data. Professional services are taking over the task of easing storage management and helping IT managers drive better profitability using new trends. Abdessamad outlines a few trends, which will invade the storage segment, and in course of time, become all pervasive, enabling users to drive down the cost of storage and manage it efficiently.

Trends that will Impact Storage Hitachi’s Abdessamad spots four major trends that will draw IT managers’ attention: a) Converged Platform is paving a big way towards bringing various aspects of cost of storage, cost of going to market, best of breed and scalability factors under one umbrella, resulting in easy management of storage.

Pay as you use Storage What are the challenges facing IT managers today? They have more on their plate now than ever before as storage systems are both heterogeneous and geographically distributed. Proliferation of data and storage complexity adds even more pressure on the already stretched IT department. Another challenge is that enterprise operations and financial models are often neglected, which results in production inefficiency and an out-of-balance cost of ownership. According to Abdessamad, in order to be able to quickly and flexibly respond to these demands, the pay as you use storage will serve well; it is a Managed Storage Solutions service model that is fast catching up. The service allows users access Hitachi’s hardware, software and services on a storage-consumptiononly cost basis. Costs are determined by a comprehensive per-gigabyte usage model. It will be a disruptive trend, and customers are working on clear SLAs around it. “The advantage that IT managers see is that they can seamlessly manage their storage environment, besides witnessing IT transformation and breakthrough economics that deliver consistent and predictable costs and align those costs to storage usage,” believes Abdessamad.

What kind of services can customers expect? Always-available storage that is priced based on your consumption; the forward looking pricing protects your savings as the cost of hardware continues to decrease Solutions delivered as a service, with Assets owned by Hitachi Data Systems A simple commercial mechanism that supports your business development (fully inclusive pricing) The ability to flex storage up or each month based on your unique business needs Managed Storage Solutions are end-to-end solutions with a customised infrastructure, as well as software and management services. They are designed for negotiated service level agreements (SLAs), not only today but also for the life of the contract

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ILLUSTRATI ON BY RAJ V ERMA

aging ge e Easy

b) Converged protocols is another trend in storage which will rope in file, block, structured and unstructured storage products under one roof to enable users to manage heterogeneous storage devices efficiently. c) Market consumption is considered to be a disruptive trend, a utility based service model. IT managers will adopt a storage consumption model which will be based on the consumption pattern of the user and pay as you use model. d) Storage economics which delves into working on the capabilities that can help enhance storage utilisation.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;IT managers are seamlessly managing their storage and are

witnessing IT transformation and breakthrough economics that deliver consistent and predictable costs and aligning those costs to storage usageâ&#x20AC;? Hicham Abdessamad, Senior VP, Global Services, Hitachi Data Systems Pay back from Pay as you Use

Details include:

250TB per location Minimum hardware, software and service Management customised offerings Combined custom solutions offered with a per-month gigabyte usage fee; Hitachi Data Systems will contract to specific SLAs determined during the contract phase. Flex service pack i) Transformation and transition services ii) Operations processing framework iii) Delivery operations management iv) Governance oversight v) SLA management

Business/Applications File Servers

Database Servers

Information Consumers

Backup Servers

Other Consumers

SLAs Storage Services Service Management Framework

Data Accessibility Services Ethernet Network

SLO, SLA Management Governance Service Delivery Continuous Improvement KPI Reporting ITIL Service Management Capacity Performance Incident or Problem Configuration Mgmt. Database Asset Management

Block

Content

File Storage Area Network Storage Tiers

Tier 1

Tier 2

Tier

Tier 4

Data Management Services Dynamic Tiering

Dynamic Provisioning

Policy-based Management

Data Protection Services Intra-system Intra-system Replication or COW Replication

Offsite Replication

SLA=service level agreement. SLO= service level objective, KPL= KEY performance indictor, ITIL= Information Technology Infrastructure Library,

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The most vital benefits from this model would be a Lowered TCO resulting from significantly improved utilisation, increased useful life of assets, reduced extended maintenance, and a unique financial and support model Increased flexibility through Infrastructure, a pay-per-use model with the ability to increase usage and payments in one month and lower usage and payments the next month. Operations, with always-available skilled storage consultants at your service. Improved service levels, with technology, enhanced management and best practices along with reduced operational risk and improved productivity, because existing resources can be refocused on what really matters most to the business.

Content Platform for Efficient Storage Management Another interesting trend is the content platform, a distributed object store that provides advanced storage and data management capabilities which help to address challenges posed by ever-growing volumes of unstructured data. How does it work? The single content platform can be divided into multiple virtual object stores, secure access to each and uniquely configure them for particular workloads. Storage silos can be eliminated with a single object storage infrastructure that supports a wide range of data types, applications and users with different service level needs in enterprise and cloud environments. This platform supports traditional IT and cloud with a single platform, keeps data accessible and recoverable in its original form, preserves data for long periods of time, whether for legal, compliance, business or IT practice. Besides, one can observe that there is a reduction in or elimination of traditional tapebased backups of unstructured data.

tech talk

Opinion

Sunil Kumar Soni Chief Information Officer, Ester Industries

Stream Success via Video

fter a detailed reality check, CIOs and their teams believe that video collaboration indeed enhances productivity as well as business efficiency, even as it streamlines supply chain momentum. With the global economic outlook in flux, small and large businesses across verticals continue to foster innovation in business processes to increase productivity and retain their competitive edge. It has never been more critical for businesses to synchronise efforts across geographies and draw on the strength of a global workforce and partner network to create a seamless service experience for customers. While corporations continue to strengthen ties with existing networks and conquer new markets, business leaders are increasingly on the lookout for costeffective collaboration tools that allow them to operate efficiently across time zones. Video technology is proving to be one such tool that helps global businesses reduce costs and increase productivity.

Business Via Video Declining budgets have made businesses streamline expenses. One area where companies can save costs while helping the environment is business travel. As companies continue to expand operations in a tough economy, clients, customers and partners are welcoming more economical avenues of collaboration while retaining the effectiveness of face-to-face communication. Hence, business via video. Video technology has come a long way over the last few years. Once characterised by poor audio-video quality, today’s business video solutions such as

collaboration is integral to the success of the new breed of global businesses that are running on increasingly fragmented operational models. Global product teams can now collaborate with a centralised marketing team and coordinate efforts around their next big launch. A client looking to expand to a new region can now have a virtual meeting with multiple in-country teams as if they were all sitting in the same room. What does this mean? Time spent on innovation as large enterprises get a healthy dose of fresh ideas with effective collaboration.

Where does Video Collaboration Stand?

“Mitigating the effects of cultural and physical distances through this seamless collaboration is integral to the success of the new breed of global businesses” Telepresence create glitch-free, immersive virtual meeting experiences bringing together users from any part of the world at any time of the day at the touch of a button. The business benefits are tremendous. Companies with limited resources can now count on the availability of the expertise of their entire global network, including suppliers, partners, advisers and stakeholders, at all times. As processes are outsourced to save costs, the supply chains are now better managed with this ready access. Mitigating the effects of cultural and physical distances through this seamless

Video collaboration has evolved from a subpar, unreliable experience that came with significant infrastructure investment and maintenance costs to an increasingly flexible, device-agnostic high definition experience. The technology is now much more accessible and easy to use and is available in different forms. Companies that do not want to invest in their own Telepresence infrastructure can now avail the service at public Telepresence rooms on a pay-peruse basis. The systems are reliable and simple with 24/7 customer support. Organisations that choose to invest in their own private facilities can not only link to other private rooms, but also to the public rooms all over the world. This allows them to connect with partners who do not have Telepresence facilities of their own. Telepresence solutions have now become a managed service with providers offering 24/7 conference support, as well as supervising customers’ infrastructure and ensuring a high-quality experience. The various usability models and the flexibility of the solution have made business video an incredibly adaptable productivity tool for businesses of all sizes. With the trends pointing towards greater availability of hosted services and organisations using video as a key element of the completely collaborative process, it is now up to providers to help businesses optimise their video technology investments and help them unlock its tremendous benefits. The author is a CIO of Ester Industries

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Kevin Hughes | interview

Data centres can get cool Kevin Hughes, Business Development Director, Cooling Line of Business – Asia, Pacific and Japan, Schneider Electric IT Business, elaborates on the importance of cooling for data centres, considering parameters like density, peak versus average load and other day-to-day operational efficiency. In conversation with N Geetha, Hughes reiterates how CIOs are increasingly evaluating a hybrid model of multiple cooling solutions to address their specific needs

What are the new trends emerging in data cooling? The power hungry infrastructure is consuming huge energy, which demands huge cooling power; and as a result, the cost and complexity of cooling increases. This also demands a change in the architecture in the data centres, which dynamically manages the hot and cold effects. Cooling systems today are often scalable; and variable speed fans, for example, can increase or decrease the speed as needed, based on the heat load. As the overall IT load decreases after initial virtualisation, fans can run at a much lower speed thereby reducing proportional losses (power consumed by the system that is proportional to its load); which also helps improve PUE. Scalable physical infrastructure closely aligned with real-time management can help provide the right amount of power and cooling where it’s needed, when it’s needed. Another instance is that unless power and cooling are down-sized to bring loading back within normal operating limits, the effects of extreme under

loading could result in expenses that negate some of the energy savings or, in some cases, pose a risk to availability. As a trend, we are looking at flexible cooling solutions that take the IT load that helped IT managers enhance their operational efficiency through a modular approach.IT virualisation and cloud computing methods are also evolving as a trend in driving energy efficiency.

How are IT heads leveraging the innovations in the data centre with regard to cooling? Large enterprises are leveraging innovation in the engineering industry with high-density applications. Today’s data centre managers face increased financial and regulatory pressure to improve the efficiency of their data centres. In parallel, the IT environment is changing – loads are more dynamic – making a flexible, more predictable physical infrastructure a necessity. Cooling as a part of the physical IT equipment that manages the energy consumption is particularly of critical importance, as it takes up most of

the power draw. Some of the innovations or mechanisms that are key to driving efficient performance of energy consumption are to create the ideal cooling system for data centres, considering parameters like density, peak vs. average load, and other criteria for day-to-day operations. It is interesting to note that CIOs will increasingly evaluate a hybrid of multiple cooling solutions – like room, row, and rack cooling solutions—to address their unique requirements. Our aim is to provide a comprehensive cooling portfolio and the deepest level of expertise in cooling, making it a one-stop solution provider for all cooling needs— from rack, room, building and data centres. It has the industry’s largest R&D investment in cooling, which ensures development of solutions.

How does virtualisation and cloud computing enhance the energy efficiency of a data centre? IT virtualisation, the engine behind cloud computing, can have significant consequences on

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interview | Kevin Hughes the Data Centre Physical Infrastructure (DCPI). The fault-tolerant nature of a highly virtualised environment could raise questions about the level of redundancy required in the physical infrastructure. Without question, IT virtualisation—the abstraction of physical network, server, and storage resources--has greatly increased the ability to utilise and scale compute power. While the benefits of this technology and service delivery model are well known, understood, and increasingly being taken advantage of, their effects on the DCPI are less understood. There are four effects or attributes of IT virtualisation that would impact the data centre: 1. The rise of high density – Higher power density is likely to result from virtualisation, at least in some racks. Areas of high density can pose cooling challenges that, if left unaddressed, could threaten the reliability of the overall data centre. 2. Reduced IT load can affect PUE – After virtualisation, the data centre’s power usage effectiveness (PUE) is likely to worsen. This is despite the fact that the initial physical server consolidation results in lower overall energy use. If the power and cooling infrastructure is not right-sized to the new lower overall load, physical infrastructure efficiency measured as PUE will degrade. 3. Dynamic IT loads – Virtualised IT loads, particularly in a highly virtualised, cloud data centre, can vary in both time and location. In order to ensure availability in such a system, it’s critical that rack-level power and cooling health be considered before changes are made. 4. Lower redundancy requirements are possible–A highly virtualised data centre designed and operated with a high level of

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IT fault-toler ance may reduce the necessity for redundancy in the physical infrastructure. This effect could have a significantly positive impact on data centre planning and capital costs. There are certain methods for cooling high-density racks to prevent “hot spots”. Higher rack power densities should encourage data centre operators to examine their existing cooling infrastructure to see if it can still sufficiently cool the load. Several approaches for cooling highdensity racks exist. Perhaps the most common method is to simply “spread out” the high-density equipment throughout the data centre floor rather than group them together. By spreading out the loads in this way, no single

“The most common method of cooling is to simply “spread out” the highdensity equipment throughout the data centre floor rather than group them together” rack will exceed the design power density, and consequently, cooling performance is more predictable. However, this approach has several serious disadvantages including increased floor space consumption, higher cabling costs, possible reduced electrical efficiency related to uncontained air paths and the perception that half-filled racks are wasteful. That being said, this

Kevin Hughes | interview and/or air containment (e.g., hot or cold aisle containment) could then be brought to these isolated high-density pods to ensure they received the predictable cooling needed at any given time. The advantages include better space utilisation, high efficiency, and enabling maximum density per rack. Careful planning and on-going management is required to ensure VMs are only placed where healthy power and cooling exists. By constructing sound VM policies and by integrating DCIM software with the VM manager, this on-going management can be automated. Finally, the high level of fault tolerance that is possible with today’s VM manager software makes it possible to employ a less redundant power and cooling infrastructure.

simple approach may be a viable option particularly… n When the resulting average data centre power density (kW/rack or watts/sq foot of white space) is about the same or less than it was before virtualisation. n When “U” space is available in existing racks to allow the spreading to happen. A more efficient approach may be to isolate higher density equipment in a separate location from lower density equipment. This high-density pod would involve consolidating all high-density systems down to a single rack or row(s) of racks. Dedicated cooling air distribution (e.g., rack and row-based air conditioners)

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What kind of DC design changes do you think are necessary to drive better energy efficiency? We at Schneider would advocate electrical efficiency modelling for data centres. New technologies in a hybrid model go hand in hand with servers and mine different applications in a data centre, deploy specific tools to address legacy applications; this would be possible if a proper bench marking is done to segregate mission critical applications. More than the design, a simple, more accurate efficiency model is described that provides a rational basis to identify and quantify waste in power and cooling equipment. It is critical to understand what data centre efficiency is and the power consumption pattern in a data centre efficiency model, if any hybrid approach is taken to drive efficiency. Data centre efficiency is defined as the fraction of input power delivered to the IT load. In an efficiency model, “waste” is everything other than what has been defined as the system’s

useful output. Clearly, the data center’s DCPI (data center physical infrastructure) does other useful things besides provide power to the IT load--these are called “secondary support.” It could be argued that the useful output of these DCPI subsystems (cooling or lighting, for example) should also be considered part of the data centre’s “useful output.” Data centres are not built to produce cooling or fire protection or any of the other good things DCPI accomplishes. While these DCPI outputs are extremely useful to the internal workings of the data centre in helping it to produce and protect its useful output (computing), they are not themselves “useful output” of the data centre; nor is there any reason to believe that they must consume electricity. Non-power-path DCPI activities should be considered a necessary evil in supporting the data centre’s computing— therefore, in the data centre efficiency model they are considered “waste” that should be minimised to the extent possible. An improved model for overall data centre efficiency also depends on how accurately individual components, such as UPS, are modelled. Characterising power and cooling components by using a single efficiency value is the common method. The actual efficiency of a component such as a UPS is not constant, but rather a function of the IT loads. To conclude, conventional models of data centre efficiency typically overstate efficiency because they do not properly comprehend the degree to which equipment is oversized, nor do they comprehend reduction of efficiency at the reduced loads where most data centres operate. An improved model provides more accurate numeric values for data centre efficiency, as well as insights into where the losses go and how they can be reduced.

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cube chat | Sourabh Chatterjee

Create Value through IT “When I think of IT, I think of the supreme entrepreneurs, who have founded the world’s iconic IT companies. I am inspired by the life and work of Steve Jobs and N R Narayana Murthy,” says Sourabh Chatterjee, AVP-IT, ICICI Lombard By asit verm a

My sucess

mantra Doing one’s job with passion and utmost humility

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passionate technology leader, Sourabh Chatterjee is of the firm view that technology must be used for creating values that will drive better business results. With over13 years of experience in executing large IT projects for Fortune 500 clients across the globe, he is inspired by the idea of making a tangible impact on the lives of the people to whom he is providing services. While in college, he was attracted to IT, mainly because it offered greater chances of getting high paying jobs, but once he took it up as a profession, he fell in love with the systematic and disciplined nature of work that goes into Information Technology. Nowadays, he is working for ICICI Lombard, India’s largest private general insurance carrier. He is mainly responsible for managing external (front office) and internal customer (back office) portfolio of applications comprising

of flagship online channel, telesales, CRM and internal productivity suite of apps. Total portfolio size comprises of 150+ FTE’s with five reporting AVP’s and three large global systems integration vendors. Chatterjee is accountable for running a cross functional group driving a portfolio of projects under the technology and process innovation umbrella. “Keeping everything up-to-date is not always necessary,” says Chatterjee. “Having a conscious strategy related to technology that impacts your business and having a solid understanding of value that IT can provide to the business is the key. This approach works much better if you have the system of differentiating between what is core and non-core. Then the right approach towards core systems can be taken to ensure that IT continues to provide optimum value to the business,” affirms Chatterjee.

cube chat Fact File Name Sourabh Chatterjee Current Designation: AVP-IT, ICICI Lombard Current Role: Managing the entire Customer and Partner Ecosystem of Applications at ICICI Lombard

PHOTO by jiten gandh i

“The experience that I have had has helped me mature as a professional, as I have now seen the world from the perspective of an insurer in addition to that of an IT services company like Infosys” As he is deeply involved in the fast changing landscape of IT, he has faced quite a few challenges in his professional life. He learned about the immense value that mentors play in corporate settings very early in his life. “I had a fantastic learning experience with my mentors, and because of the guidance and inspiration that I have received, I have now developed the capability of executing every project with sincerity, efficiency and energy. While IT is his passion, he is also a quintessential family guy. He likes to spend all his free time with his family. The entire family goes out together for vacations. Reading books is Saurabh’s favourite hobby. When asked about any favourite dream that still remains unfulfilled, Saurabh instantly replies, “My entrepreneurial dream...” It is

pertinent to note that he leaves the statement hanging in the air, perhaps to indicate that he is hoping to see the dream being fulfilled in very near future. Chatterjee feels that he has been fortunate to have worked in two great organisations -Infosys and his current employer ICICI Lombard. It is Infosys that provided a very sound footing to his career. While he was with the company, he learned the value of humility and doing one’s job with passion. He says that his current employer ICICI Lombard is a wonderful place for developing the qualities of an entrepreneur. This is because ICICI Lombard provides immense opportunities for trying new things; the company offers its employees immense freedom to implement ideas and gives room for making genuine mistakes.

Expertise: Project & Program Management (Application development, Testing, Support & Infrastructure projects) Client Rel ationship Management/Account Management IT Strategy and Pl anning Enterprise Architecture Strategic Business & Technology Consulting IT Procurement/Vendor/ Contract Management Portfolio & Risk Management Budget & Account finance Management Leadership & People/ Talent Management Favourite Quote: “Your work is going to fill a l arge part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it,” Steve Jobs Favourite Book: Screw It, Let’s Do It – by Richard Branson of Virgin Atl antic Favourite Food: Italian dish - Chicken Marsal a with hot marsal a sauce and red wine Favourite destination: Smoky Mountains, USA Favourite gadget: Apple iPad

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interview | Commscope

Visualize with imVision

James Young, Technical Director, Asia Pacific, Commscope reiterates the importance of incorporating intelligence into the network infrastructure. Young recommends having an overarching view of the infrastructure which is always beneficent to enhance efficiency Q: What pressures are data centre managers facing in the currentday scenario? A: IT managers and data centre managers today need to keep their networks up and running round the clock, reduce expensive downtime, conform to budgets, reduce energy usage in their networks and yet manage to find the time to plan their networksâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; upgrade paths. It is imperative for managers to update their technology infrastructure at regular intervals using new hardware and software solutions to make data centres more efficient and to effectively deal with the growing complexity of technological enhancements today. Amid such uncertainty, one factor that seems constant is the rapid growth in complexity that new technologies bring in, which,

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if not managed aptly, can easily translate into risk. Ascertaining automated processes or strategies are key to mitigating the risks arising from complex situations. One such solution is Data Centre Information Management (DCIM), concept driven by the pressing need to monitor and measure the operation of data centres. The Global Enterprise Survey conducted by CommScope validates this trend. A third of the 1100 IT professionals surveyed are convinced that intelligent infrastructure is key to enabling greater demand for productivity. Q: What are the top priorities of IT managers with regard to data centres? A: According to the recent CommScope Global Enterprise Survey, IT professionals have listed out quite a number of priorities

that include driving productivity through the use of intelligent infrastructure, future proofing data centres using 40GbE and 100GbE, and reducing energy consumption. However, the reliability of the data infrastructure is the top priority for most IT managers, irrespective of the physical location of the data centres. According to the survey, 33 per cent (33%) of the respondents felt that the issue is the frequency of mistakes caused by human error. Additionally, connecting users with data, while ensuring a consistent user experience with a flawless network, is the solution. Q: What are the ideal structures recommended for a data centre? A: A reliable structure not only forms the foundation for developing a physical infra-

Commscope | interview

structure but also helps in determining and choosing the most optimal physical layer infrastructure that addresses key requirements of a data centre’s day-to-day operations. Using modular reference designs, intelligent infrastructure solutions and clear migration paths to next generation technologies, data centre managers can efficiently manage the infrastructure and make better decisions, ultimately enabling greater Return on Investment (ROI).Some key points to bear in mind:: Using intelligent solutions provides the data centre operator more control over the infrastructure. Using high quality and reliable layering cables enable better performance. Using pre-terminated cabling for both copper and fiber cables will provide higher performance, faster installation and better reliability.

and the line-of-the-business measures the cost benefits. Using DCIM enables enterprises to gather, organize and categorize the data centre information to facilitate coordinated planning and operations. Q: How does imVision help in managing the infrastructure efficiently for bottom-line benefits? A: CommScope imVision is an intelligent solution for infrastructure management enabling IT managers with unprecedented control over their networks. It fulfills the basic data centre requirements of providing flexibility, reliability and control over the physical layer network. CommScope’s imVision automates the physical network assets and provides planning and optimization of the physical layer

result is over provisioning of resources. This drives capital and operating costs higher than necessary. Awareness of the availability of resources and using an expert provisioning system to deploy moves and changes results in immediate savings for the data centre operator. A significant advantage of completing the system relationships with network cabling and pathways results in increased reliability on the infrastructure. Automation further reduces operational costs and reduces risks. Decreased MTTR is beneficial to enterprises, which translates into little or no downtime, giving customers unmatchable reliability. Q: What are the elements required to manage the network infrastructure efficiently? A: Today’s data centres are spread over

“Connecting users with data, while ensuring a consistent user experience with a flawless network, is the solution. Therefore, physical networks can no longer be taken for granted as they form a critical part of the foundation for reliable computing" — James Young, Technical Director, Asia Pacific, Commscope

Media and connectivity choices should be made based on providing optimal performance for the current and future needs that may include more ports, increased bandwidth and potential changes in the architecture. Data centre efficiency also depends on a coordinated strategy, which involves Information Technology Services (ITS), facilities management, and also the real estate and stakeholders’ management of the industry that it caters to. This is because the measurement and the management systems within the data centres are divided among the following: power and cooling facilities, asset management and operations of ITS,

cabling and pathway resources. In addition, imVision enables rapid response for moves and changes and also dramatically reduces the mean time to repair (MTTR). This translates into bottom-line benefits with little or no downtime issues and results in reduction of manpower resources and ensures increased productivity. Q: Can you elaborate on how the solutions have helped in lowering the TCO? A: Our solutions help numerous customers drive better ROI by using solutions such as imVision which helps track their asset utilization. Often, network resources go unused for a variety of reasons and the net

large areas. They envelope many data sources which are operational and situational and difficult to physically manage. Incorporating intelligence into the network infrastructure is crucial and having an overarching view of the infrastructure helps to enhance efficiency. Integrating DCIM solutions into infrastructure management is essential. Challenges such as integrating individual solutions provided by vendors for hardware management but lacking in measurement and monitoring capabilities for some key areas like the physical layer networks can cause frustration and hinder data centre managers from building an overarching DCIM strategy.

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interview |panduit

5 pillars of Intelligent Data Center Panduit's Regional Business Director, S Vasunandan recommends tighter integration of physical to logical architectures into the DC environment to drive business agility and network performance Q: Despite considerable advancements in hardware/software technologies, networking, datacenter design etc., why is it that running a data center a challenge for IT managers? A: Most IT managers are running data centers that, by design, consume vast amounts of energy in a wasteful manner. For example, online companies typically run their facilities at maximum capacity around the clock, irrespective of the need. As a result, data centers can waste 90 per cent or more of the electricity they pull off the grid. To guard against a power failure, IT managers further rely on banks of generators that emit diesel exhaust. All of these steps used in running a data center result in pollution that has increasingly been cited

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by the authorities as violating clean air regulations. In addition, IT department budgets are likely to remain at current levels of decline, which is adding to the issue. Furthermore, in the traditional data center environment, IT staff focuses about 70 per cent or more of its activity on maintenance tasks required to keep existing infrastructure operating properly. Q: Tell us about Panduit's approach to having unified physical and logical systems architecture and its relevance in today's times? A: Panduit’s partner ecosystem supports Panduit’s systems engineered approach to intelligent data center deployment

and management. Partners are chosen because they have proven expertise and a commitment to providing quality solutions that support Panduit’s vision and ecosustainability initiatives. Panduit has a tightly integrated portfolio of innovative physical infrastructure solutions and collaborates closely with industry and technological leaders to build comprehensive data center deployments. This comprehensive approach to infrastructure design, deployment, and management also allows benefits to be realized across the entire enterprise through systems supported by the data center. Q: Future proofing data center investments has long been a key objective

panduit | interview

for most enterprises. How does your strategy justify this objective? A: For any data center, the foremost objective is that it should be scalable and flexible. Panduit’s data center solutions enable physical to logical architecture integration, and deliver robust, scalable physical infrastructures that address: Visibility and control for managing and automating real-time data processes and documentation Convergence of new technologies and high-speed data applications Operational efficiency through process improvement and IT initiatives, such as cooling conservation through energy-efficient data cabinets Capacity management for greater real estate utilization Modular pods designed to support highdensity applications and provide consistent, reliable deployments while lowering infrastructure risk and costs Panduit’s intelligent data center solutions facilitate faster implementation and simple specification among others. Q: For businesses seeking high QoS (Quality of Service) and scalability from their data center infrastructure, Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) has become an increasingly important component. Does your unified approach include this component as well? A: Panduit acquired Unite Technologies Ltd. in 2012. Unite specializes in energy management, power, security, and environmental monitoring solutions for the enterprise and the data center. With this acquisition, Panduit now addresses a complete range of asset management tools. Panduit PIM™ software platform and PanView iQ™ hardware help ensure that a client’s physical infrastructure remains in alignment with organizational objectives by monitoring and analyzing data, empowering clients to make informed business decisions aligned to best practices, policies and procedures. The solution helps to define mission-critical business services, and maps IT (e.g., servers, switches and software applications) to facilities (e.g., power, cooling, and

IT managers need to understand how their decisions can mould into their operational needs. This approach will allow them to identify and prioritise the operational decisions that drive their organisation’s success, introduce business rules as a foundation to automate these decisions and link these decisions to data mining" — S Vasunandan, Regional Business Director - India & SW Asia

cabling). Panduit solutions provide: Centralized tracking of IT infrastructure assets on a single platform Power consumption and energy management and reporting Proactive capacity trend analysis and insights into capacity limitations and stranded capacity and so on. Q: Can you elaborate on the expertise that you bring to the table? A: Panduit, along with its partners, has integrated physical to logical architectures into these environments to increase business agility and network performance, while providing interoperability and security to establish an enhanced infrastructure design that meets private cloud and enterprise requirements in today’s intelligent data centers. The key pillars of Panduit’s Intelligent Data Center Solution include: Data Center Advisory Services Intelligent Software and Hardware Energy Efficient Cabinets Pre-Configured Physical Infrastructures High Speed Data Transport (HSDT) Copper and Fiber Cabling Systems Panduit’s UPI-based approach aligns with and reinforces the technology vision and strategy of these industry leaders. with a tightly integrated portfolio of innovative physical infrastructure solutions and services. Q: How is this integration made possible? A: New technologies such as mobile com-

puting, virtualization, and cloud computing are putting an increased strain on data center operations, demanding greater availability, reliability, and higher speed connectivity to meet business objectives. At the same time, data center managers increasingly face mandates to reduce costs, increase efficiency, and provide additional capacity to meet business needs. Panduit Data Center Physical Infrastructure design services are based on a deep understanding of logical network design, overall infrastructure, and business objectives. The UPI approach considers the physical infrastructure as a distinct foundation that integrates critical systems and supporting platforms by employing industry standards best practices and reference architectures By optimizing the physical and logical infrastructures, this approach minimizes risk, increases flexibility, and delivers maximum performance throughout your network. Q: What are the best practices that IT managers should deploy to improve business processes? A: IT managers need to understand how their decisions can mould into their operational needs. This approach will allow them to identify and prioritise the operational decisions that drive their organisation’s success, introduce business rules as a foundation to automate these decisions, link these decisions to data mining and predictive analytics and plan how to ensure continuous improvement and competitive advantage using adaptive control.

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interview | Ketan Kothari

Modular DC will drive Agility Ketan Kothari, the MD of Sigma-Byte Computers, provides his invaluable insights on the dynamics of the data centre market, emerging trends, and also how to improve their efficiency

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Ketan Kothari | interview

Q: How have the dynamics of the data centre (DC) market changed in the recent times? What are some of the emerging trends you see on the horizon? A: Data centres have now become a part of everyday life. Few years back, they used to be limited to financial and banking sector and large corporate. With the penetration of Internet in India and the growth in online business, be it in retail, travel, banking or entertainment, the data centres now provide crucial infrastructure to support these activities. Even the SME segment has started moving their servers/applications to the third part DCs. We will now see more and more consumer services coming out of DCs like online gaming, streaming audio and video services, and managed physical security services. On the corporate side, we are seeing more and more migration towards virtualisation, cloud services, and Big Data analytics convergence. 40G/100G services are the newer technologies that will see higher adoption over the coming years. Q: What are some of the key drivers that can make the data centre more efficient and bring in business agility? A: A modular concept to building data centre can bring in tremendous efficiency and agility. Simultaneously a lower PUE with most efficient power and cooling are pre-requisites for any modern data centre. Another important factor is Tier Certification from Uptime Institute, which will demonstrate the ability to guarantee continuous services in adverse situations. Q: As an integrator, what are the best practices that you recommend for optimal utilisation of data centre assets? A: The most important factor is optimum utilisation of spaces within a data centre. The design should be based on POD build out strategy with optimum design for placement of cabinets within the DC so as to allow modularity and flexibility in

â&#x20AC;&#x153;We will now see more and more consumer services coming out of DCs like online gaming, streaming audio and video services, and managed physical security services. On the corporate side, we are seeing more and more migration towards virtualisation, cloud services, and Big Data analytics convergence. 40G/100G services are the newer technologies that will see higher adoption over the coming yearsâ&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Ketan Kothari, MD, Sigma-Byte Computers

placement of network equipment, servers and storage devices. This will also allow efficient distribution of power, cooling and cabling, which are the most important services within the DC. Q: Wha are the essential factors that customers need to bear in mind while designing a DC? A: Technologies will change and so will the requirement over the years. Do not limit the design to current requirement. Opt for scalable, modular design that will provide flexibility when the need for change arises. While designing a data centre, also bear in mind that a captive DC has a different requirement from a third-party DC. Q: What are the key pitfalls to avoid while designing passive infrastructure for data centre? A: The passive infrastructure should be

designed in such a way that it should be able to support upcoming technologies with no or minimum changes in the passive infrastructure design. Aesthetics also play a very important role here. It is important that containment system design should be done in such a way that the cabling does not stand out as a sore point to the eyes. Q: What are the recent changes in cabling standards with regard to the data centre? A: There have been several revisions in the cabling standards for DC. TIA has released 942-A in August 2012, ISO/IEC 24764 has come out with Addendum, and BICSI has released ANSI/BICSI-002 for DC design and implementation best practices. Key changes are that the recommended media for copper is CAT6A. For fibre, it is OM3 at minimum and the recommended media is OM4. TIA 942-A has added a new section on energy efficiency.

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my log

Sangita thakur varma Managing Editor, India Now

: ra j

verma

Forgetting to be leader-mentors?

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3 Essential reads KEVIN HUGHES | INTERVIEW

DATA CENTRES CAN GET COOL Kevin Hughes, Business Development Director, Cooling Line of Business – Asia, Pacific and Japan, Schneider Electric IT Business, elaborates on the importance of cooling for data centres, considering parameters like density, peak versus average load and other day-to-day operational efficiency. In conversation with N Geetha, Hughes reiterates how CIOs are increasingly evaluating a hybrid model of multiple cooling solutions to address their specific needs

How does virtualisation and cloud computing enhance the energy efficiency of a data centre? IT virtualisation, the engine behind cloud computing, can have significant consequences on

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Schneider's Kevin Hughes on how to build a cool data centre Pg 36 STORAGE MANAGEMENT | INSIGHT

Managing Storage Made Easy Enterprises begin to reduce capitalisation of their own infrastructure and move to a consumption or utility based model to manage their storage efficiently, says Hicham Abdessamad, Senior VP, Global Services, Hitachi Data Systems

BY N GE E T HA

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I LLU STR AT IO N BY RA J VE R MA

self-centred individualistic approach towards work may set a good precedent and add to your reputation as a hard working, sincere, dedicated manager who turns up impeccable work, on target. And your bosses may sing paeans to you, holding you up as an example worth emulating, but it leaves a large vacuum in your team that remains unfulfilled. A leader-mentor does not only possess high IQ but also exceptional EQ. He makes time for his team, gives timely feedback to them, is hands on with their individual projects (but does not micromanage) so as to provide guidance and troubleshoot, if called in. This type of leader is not bottom line obsessed. He provides invaluable insight into company vision, values, culture, etc., to the team. No individual, not even the best of us, at the height of our career, can claim not to have needed some guidance or mentoring at some point. In fact, I have no qualms in admitting that my worldview has been shaped by the guidance that I got throughout my career from my managers. Today, I try to emulate them as a leader-mentor and hope to keep the flame of their mentoring alive. Here’s hoping that many of you reading this column will also work toward enriching the legacy of your leader-mentors and leave a richer heritage for the next generation of leaders.

Hitachi's Abdessamad on the storage innovations which can help in managing efficiently Pg 32

CUBE CHAT | SOURABH CHATTERJEE

CUBE CHAT FACT FILE NAME SOURABH CHATTERJEE

Create Value through IT

CURRENT DESIGNATION: AVP-IT, ICICI LOMBARD CURRENT ROLE: MANAGING THE ENTIRE CUSTOMER AND PARTNER ECOSYSTEM OF APPLICATIONS AT ICICI LOMBARD

“When I think of IT, I think of the supreme entrepreneurs, who have founded the world’s iconic IT companies. I am inspired by the life and work of Steve Jobs and N R Narayana Murthy,” says Sourabh Chatterjee, AVP-IT, ICICI Lombard

“The experience that I have had panies has helped me mature as a professional, as I have now seen the world from the perspective of an insurer in addition to that of an IT services company like Infosys,”

BY AS IT V ER MA

MY SUCESS

MANTRA Doing one’s job with passion and utmost humility

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PHOTO BY JIT EN GAN D H I

They guide the team on vision, mission and work-life balance among other things. Fortunate are those managers who have had leader-mentors to teach, guide and show the way. With so much buzz surrounding leadership today, the mentoring role that a leader plays has somewhat become drowned in the din and there are more manager-leaders than leader-mentors dotting the corporate skyline. You may be working under one of these dynamic go-getter manager-leaders who inspire you to emulate their success. They talk of impossible feats, legendary tales of taming the impossible downturn, leading the company’s overseas acquisitions expedition, boardroom victories and bourses innings. They are trailblazers. You are in awe of them. But as your manager, were they there when you needed them the most? In the evolution process of an executive, the manager is the primal stage. In our overly competitive workspaces today, most managers are busy carving out niches as leaders. Too busy trying to reach deadlines and turning in faultless projects; the natural tendency is towards a guarded private space which excludes team mentoring. Managers find little time to spare for team members who may be looking to them for some handholding and guidance but are too timid to approach. This

Most evolved of the managerial species, leader-mentors are not obsessed with bottom line

As he is deeply involved in the fast changing landscape of IT, he has faced quite a few challenges in his professional life. He learned about the immense value that mentors play in corporate settings very early in his life. “I had a fantastic learning experience with my mentors, and because of the guidance and inspiration that I have received, I have now developed the capability of executing every project with sincerity, efficiency and energy. While IT is his passion, he is also a quintessential family guy. He likes to spend all his free time with his family. The entire family goes out together for vacations. Reading books is Saurabh’s favourite hobby. When asked about any favourite dream that still remains unfulfilled, Saurabh instantly replies, “My entrepreneurial dream...” It is

EXPERTISE: PROJECT & PROGRAM MANAGEMENT (APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT, TESTING, SUPPORT & INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS) CLIENT REL ATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT/ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT IT STRATEGY AND PL ANNING ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE STRATEGIC BUSINESS & TECHNOLOGY CONSULTING IT PROCUREMENT/VENDOR/ CONTRACT MANAGEMENT PORTFOLIO & RISK MANAGEMENT BUDGET & ACCOUNT FINANCE MANAGEMENT LEADERSHIP & PEOPLE/ TALENT MANAGEMENT FAVOURITE QUOTE: “YOUR WORK IS GOING TO FILL A L ARGE PART OF YOUR LIFE, AND THE ONLY WAY TO BE TRULY SATISFIED IS TO DO WHAT YOU BELIEVE IS GREAT WORK. AND THE ONLY WAY TO DO GREAT WORK IS TO LOVE WHAT YOU DO. IF YOU HAVEN’T FOUND IT YET, KEEP LOOKING. DON’T SETTLE. AS WITH ALL MATTERS OF THE HEART, YOU’LL KNOW WHEN YOU FIND IT,” STEVE JOBS FAVOURITE BOOK: SCREW IT, LET’S DO IT – BY RICHARD BRANSON OF VIRGIN ATL ANTIC FAVOURITE FOOD: ITALIAN DISH - CHICKEN MARSAL A WITH HOT MARSAL A SAUCE AND RED WINE FAVOURITE DESTINATION: SMOKEY MOUNTAINS, USA FAVOURITE GADGET: APPLE IPAD

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Chatterjee, AVP-IT, ICICI Lombard on his entrepreneurial journey Pg 40