IT_Next_May_2010 by Manan Mushtaq

it next

may 2010 / Rs. 150 Volume 01 / Issue 05

IFRS: Gear up for the new accounting regime now

telecom: Getting more juice from strategic outsourcing

24 the big q

BI & ba: How to analyse the business information right?

How to live with a lost Blackberry? Pg.53

Tape Storage: Not Yet Dead

Tape Storage

volume 01 | Issue 05

Not Yet Dead Even with the ‘digital’ odds stacked against it, the gritty tape manages to hold ground. The big question is -- How long?

A 9.9 Media Publication

Edu Tech December 2009

Editorial

It’s about change, really A change is a change is a change, and

while one may call it by any other name, what does not change is the fact that all changes have an impact—both, positive and negative— on organisations and its people. This is more true in an environment where IT is not just changing by the day, but also getting intertwined with business and becoming virtually inseparable. Today, there is a need to change IT infrastructure to include organisational efficiency and effectiveness, enable newer business plans, programmes, or projects and roll out service improvement initiatives. Then there are policy and accounting changes like Goods and Service Tax (GST) and International Financial Regulatory Standards (IFRS) to deal with. And as if this was not enough, there is also the parallel emergence of the social media as a tool for many a corporate outreach programme, or for that matter, even few dirty corporate wars. The question is: how does one manage a change? From the service management perspective, it is important to adopt standardised methods and procedures or the ‘systems approach’ to roll out the change at all levels, and across departments. It is also critical to use the ‘team approach’ which is about involving all stake holders in the change process and providing adequate training to users. This is important for managing the emotional effects of change on people and, thereby, handling resistance better. However, the bigger question is whether ‘change managers’ themselves have evolved to drive transformation and effectively ‘integrate’ the multitude of technology, policy and social aspect. If not, it is time to re-define the role of the senior IT manager as an ‘integration and transformation’ manager. At the CIO level, such a shift is already underway. Earlier the role of a CIO changed from managing information assets to creating a technology roadmap for the organisation’s growth. Today, a CIO is stepping into the role of a Chief (change) Integration Officer. To quote Charles Darwin: “It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones who are most responsive to change.” Happy changing!

“It’s time to re-define the role of an IT manager as ‘integration and transformation’ manager” S h u b h e n d u Pa r t h

Blogs To Watch! Managing change: http://www. strategies-for-managing-change. com/john-kotter.html Six secrets of change: http:// www2.scholastic.com/browse/ article.jsp?id=3749561 Your views and opinion matter to us. Send your feedback on stories and the magazine at shubhendu.parth@9dot9. in or SMS us at 567678 (type ITNEXT<space>your feedback)

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tape

plays on! The

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insights

The archaic storage medium still survives even against the onslaught of the digital disc...

boss talk

interview

20 IT’s fair-value compliance time! 24 B Eye Success flows when the implementation team gazes at business issues and searches for business benefits

28 10 Freewares A listing of open source tools and freewares to aid the IT manager do things cheaply

32 Knowing is preventing A dossier on how to unravel the real persona of an alias in the cyber universive and effectively secure your organisation against the threat of cybercrime

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05 Build for the Business| Technology should be well aligned with business to be beneficial for the enterprise

38 “It’s time to switch over to 802.11N” | Ruckus Wireless’s CEO Selino Lo lists down the virtue of the new Wi-fi standard.

c ov er des ign: anoo p pc ; photography: shubho jit paul

As the countdown for the implementation of IFRS starts, IT managers need to gear up for the challenges that lie ahead

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

EDITORIAL

Page

Group Editor: R Giridhar Editor: Shubhendu Parth Consulting Editor: Pravin Prashant Associate Editor: Shashwat DC Sr Correspondent: Jatinder Singh

Outsourcing for value | Telecom operators seem to be in a hurry to outsource, not only to cut costs but also to scale up quick

opinion

12 Tech Talk: State if the... smart | by Yogesh Dhingra, COO & Finance Director, Blue Dart Express 10 Money Wise: Use IT for

Sr Creative Director: Jayan K Narayanan Art Director: Binesh Sreedharan Associate Art Director: Anil VK Manager Design: Chander Shekhar Sr Visualisers: Anoop PC, Santosh Kushwaha Sr Designers: Prasanth TR & Anil T Chief Photographer: Subhojit paul

52 Training Calendar | A list of career booster courses

the big Q

broader and deeper benefits| by Suresh Senapaty, CFO & Corporate EVP (Finance), Wipro

loss of a mobile device

15-Minute manager

58 Disciplined Doer | Binu

47 Have a team, not a hero| Super performers can be a pain if not handled properly

Lakshman, Manager IT, Honda Siel Cars, believes in making the best out of life in any situation

48 Office Yoga | Asanas for BACK PAIN

off the shelf

49 Getting your data card right | A comparative analysis of

60 Fujitsu

the different wireless data cards that are available in the market as of now

DESIGN

50 Unwind | 5 steps to a great vacation

53 How to live with a lost Blackberry? | Coping with the

sales & marketing VP Sales & Marketing: Naveen Chand Singh (09971794688) Brand Manager: Siddhant Raizada (09990388390) National Manager-Events & Special Projects: Mahantesh Godi (09880436623) National Manager Online: Nitin Walia (09811772466) GM South: Vinodh Kaliappan(09740714817) GM North: Pranav Saran(09312685289) GM West: Sachin N Mhashilkar(09920348755) Assistant Brand Manager: Arpita Ganguli

cube chat

launches cloud extension server| A new product that helps scale up the datacenter in a jiffy

Production & Logistics Sr. GM Operations: Shivshankar M Hiremath Production Executive: Vilas Mhatre Logistics: MP Singh, Mohamed Ansari, Shashi Shekhar Singh

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m a y 2 0 1 0 | it next

boss talk | Surinder Kumar

leadership

Build for the business

or most business executives, IT is confusing and expensive, with everescalating capital expenditures and operating budgets and poorly understood RoI. Does it need to be that way? The answer is no. In the coming decades, all functional leaders will need to understand technology to work cohesively with other business functions. This is important for ensuring that organisations maintain their competitive edge, something that can only be driven by IT leaders who understand business and can communicate with functions departments in their language, not IT language. I have been fortunate to have worked in quite a few CPG companies. While I have seen many CEOs completely frustrated with IT, I have also seen two companies where IT was highly respected. The differentiator was the IT leadership. Let me illustrate this with examples. Example #1: I joined Frito Lay in 1982 as a Senior Director of R&D. As an organisation, Frito Lay was run as a hybrid of centralised and decentralised functions. Some functions such as R&D and IT were centralised while other functions such as sales were decentralised. Charlie Feld, the CIO at Frito Lay had a clear belief that IT can and should help drive business growth. He used a two-pronged approach to achieve this: 1. Understand key drivers of business growth and provide an IT technology solution 2. Ensure that all business and functional leaders at Frito Lay understood what IT could do for them and to ensure that they had a reasonable understanding of the systems and technology. Feld explained what IT systems could do for driving sales and profits in ways that business people understood. The IT function at Frito Lay has been a vital part of the company’s success for the past three decades.

“IT needs to be seen as an integrating discipline for all other business functions to operate as a well-run team”

Suggestion BOX

Written by former Frito-Lay CIO, the book provides a clear road map for IT leaders to help transform their businesses Writer: Charlie Feld Publisher: Olive Press Price: INR 1200

Example #2: The Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company had experienced steady growth for over a hundred years. In the year 2000, when Bill Wrigley, Jr. took over as the CEO, the company’s growth rate was in low single digits. He decided to get a new team to revitalise the growth rate. One of those executives was Donagh Herlihy, who came in as the CIO. Herlihy developed a business-focused strategy that was simple, clear and easily understood by other business leaders. Clear statement of business case and constant communications with business leaders led to a strong role for IT in the company. IT played a significant part in catapulting company’s sales from one billion dollars to over five billion dollars within seven years. It is indeed all about leadership. Great IT leaders have excellent technical competencies, but they also have good business understanding, communication skills, and people relationship capabilities. Effective IT leaders focus on providing technology solutions for business. The author is President, Arora Innovations and had been associated with Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company, USA as its Chief Innovation Officer. His book, Riding the Blue Train, A Leadership Plan for Explosive Growth, has been published in several languages

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Edu Tech December 2009

update

Luis Murguia, Senior VP, SME, SAP EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) and India

SAP betting big on SME TECH TIDINGS | German software firm SAP is focusing heavily on the

SME segment to pocket one billion customers by 2015. The company currently has over seven lakh SME clients globally, representing more than 77% of its worldwide customer base in 25 countries. The company has also announced its partnership with Wipro to offer a subscription-based business delivery model (the SAP Business All-in-One solutions suite) targeted at small- and mid-sized companies. The alliance, according to the company, will help it to

100 80

Source: IAMAI/IMRB 2010

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2009

2008

This surge is primarily due to the growing user base in the remote urban pockets (small metros and towns)

71 million Indians have in some ways used Internet in 2009. The ‘claimed users’ is an important category for understanding future trends in active user base (Numbers in million)

2007

usage

2006

et intern

The company has announced a pay per use business delivery model for the small & medium enterprises

trends deals products services people

reach out to clusters and even micro SMEs in class B and C cities across the country. The new option is targeted at helping midsize companies get started with a lower up-front cost by eliminating the capital outlay traditionally required for acquiring software license or IT hardware. “In SME segment, most of the Indian companies are growing at a very fast pace. They are registering an incredible growth rate of more than 30% and they need technology to sustain the growth,” says Luis Murguia, Senior VP, SME, SAP EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) and India. In India, SAP serves over 3,300 SME customers and provides pre-configured, customised license, implementing and hosting based solutions. The company is presently focusing on the localisation of its products according to the core business needs. “Today SAP has around 32-34% of business that comes from SMEs. And even in challenging times we were able to maintain the 20% y-o-y growth from this business. Our 70% of new customers come from below 100-crore companies” Murguia added. Besides having a focus on manufacturing companies, SAP is eyeing education sector as a next big opportunity to cherish its SME ambitions in the global market. The company currently has Mumbai University, ISB and Manipal Education as its clients in the Indian eductaion space.

Photo graph y: photo s.c om

Update I n d u s t r y

Mouse in your pocket

Simplifying data centre needs

Storage on the move

Inspan Infotech’s Genius Traveler 900 is apparently the smallest wireless mouse in market. The wireless mouse is priced at Rs.1,499 and carries a three-year warranty.

Extreme Network’s XNV is a data center management solution to deliver dynamic virtualisation management across the network. The solution also increases operational efficiency and security.

LACS has introduced an on-the-move touch media device (TMD). The device has a wide touch screen and storage capabilities of around 8GB and is priced at Rs 8,999.

Verizon expands its CaaS portfolio Tech Tidings | Taking a step further to increase its cloud market share, Verizon Business has announced the enhancements for its on-demand, computing as a service (CaaS) solution. According to the company, the enhancements will provide business customers better control and flexibility over the computing environments. Based on the customer demand, the company has added some new features like server cloning, application and operating system expansion, streamlined networking options – virtual router and shared

The server cloning feature helps customise CaaS configuration

virtual private networks. According to the company, the server cloning feature will provide IT administrators the option to customise the

Around The World

configuration of a CaaS virtual server and then create a golden or reference server image. This will eliminate the need to manually create the same server image multiple times and will enable the rapid deployment of server clones supporting the same corporate application. In addition, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 has been added as a clickto-provision database server option. In addition to adding new features, Verizon has successfully completed the first annual SAS 70 Type II examination of controls for its CaaS data centres. The current market for cloud services, according to market research firm Gartner, is pegged at US $46.4 billion and is expected to reach around US $150.1 billion by 2013.

quick byte

Worldwide IT spending to grow 5.3% in 2010 Buoyed by strong hardware sales in first quarter of 2010, the global market for IT spending is poised to reach US $3.4 trillion in 2010, a 5.3% increase from IT spending of US $3.2 trillion in 2009, says Gartner. According to the research firm, robust consumer spending on mobile PCs will drive hardware spending in 2010. It further says that the enterprise hardware spending will grow again in 2010, but it will remain below its 2008 level through 2014.

Marc Benioff CEO, Salesforce on Cloud

“We are in the era of Cloud 2, where social networking use has surpassed e-mail and new devices like the iPad are creating entirely new ways to interact with information”

m a y 2 0 1 0 | it next

update

Microsoft launches Visual Studio 2010 TECH TIDINGS | Microsoft

Interview Manisha Kapur Director, Continuous Improvement, India and EMEA, Convergys Corporation IT NEXT: What is the significance of

It will simplify the development process and enable developers to target new platforms and build high-quality applications

reduces the runtime size by over 80%, making it easier for developers to get applications up and running faster. Silverlight 4 offers powerful media and business application capabilities that help deliver compelling application experiences on or off the Web.

TCS, Rolls-Royce join hands to expand engineering services footprint in India Tech Alliance | Rolls-Royce, the

global power systems company, has joined hands with IT major Tata Consultancy Service (TCS) for strengthening its engineering services footprint in India. As part of the agreement, TCS will set up an engineering centre to cater to Rolls-Royce’s design and engineering requirements in Bangalore. RollsRoyce chose to partner with TCS for their technical and project management capabilities, following a comprehensive and competitive evaluation process. Aerospace and defence sectors have

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been a major focus for TCS and it has significantly expanded its engineering capabilities in this field. The agreement represents an important milestone for TCS in the aeronautical sector. TCS, over the years, has consolidated its position in the field of engineering services as a player with growing capabilities in the field of design and development. Today, there are over 1,300 RollsRoyce engines in service in India. The company’s global market sectors – civil aerospace, defense aerospace, marine and energy—are all well represented in the country.

quality management in today’s cutthroat business environment? Kapur: Today’s evolved customers are looking for not only the quality of the product but also the quality of the pre- and post-sales support. For example, recently, we have witnessed new players entering the market with unbelievably low prices. And many of the customers who had transitioned to the new ISPs due to the initial price attractiveness are back with their earlier service providers as the new ISPs were unable to match the quality of service. What are the critical challenges that need to be addressed? IT managers should understand that variation is natural and the manager’s role is to reduce variation and not remove it and while performance targets are the average of the team performance, don’t rest on the performance of few good performers. Make sure that the entire team is delivering value. How important is the role of analytical support in this space? The need for analytical support has arisen as more and more clients outsource a significant amount of their after-sales customer service. A properly deployed analytical support can help keep clients close to their customer’s wants and needs. Photo graph y: Jayan K Narayanan

announced the launch of Visual Studio 2010 along with .NET framework 4 and Silverlight 4. According to the company, the new editor uses Windows Presentation Foundation and supports the use of multiple monitors, thereby enabling a developer to have one monitor with code, another with the user interface designer, and yet another with database structure. .NET Framework 4 adds additional support for industry standards, more language choice, new support for highperformance middle-tier applications including parallel programming and side-byside installation with .NET Framework 3.5. The .NET Framework 4 client profile

To ensure the long term success, IT manager should be clear about the problem that he is trying to solve and the goal of the improvement effort. By Jatinder Singh

update

Masplantiz unveils webbased EMS The software helps map realtime energy consumption within the enterprise

TECH Trends | Masplantiz has

control thorough digital inputs and launched an energy management soluoutputs (DIO), which helps the facility tion to help organisations monitor manager to switch off loads that are energy consumption pattern over the not required. web, and reduce wastages. AccordThe company claims that by ing to the company, the MIMTIS EMS displaying real-time consumption software collects real-time information, users see How does it help energy data, with intervals the immediate impact of enterprise? as short as one minute and their actions which can l Reduces operaas large as one month. The lead to a 7% reduction in tional and maintedata is collected from energy nance costs consumption. l Reduces energy meters, sensors, devices, MIMTIS EMS is offered automation systems, or other costs by up to 20% as a hosted service for l Creates new revsources. The software also SMEs wanting to monitor enue opportunities allows acquisition of data their energy consumption l Creates competilike temperature, humidover the web. Larger tive advantage l Automated ity and lighting intensity customers can purchase alarms to field staff via analogue sensors. The MIMTIS EMS license for via SMS and email software supports discrete onsite installation.

News @ blog

TECH ALLIANCE

Huawei, PerSay to develop biometrics Huawei has entered into an alliance with PerSay, to offer multifactor authentication solutions to help enterprises in providing secure and efficient access to their contact centres. The solutions are intended to reduce fraud and increase customer satisfaction. According to the company, PerSay’s technology can work with any contact center platform by integrating with the IVRS and CTI. Utilising the Voice Biometrics, PerSay provides both text dependent and text independent authentication through its proprietary voice biometric engine. “We are very excited on our alliance with PerSay. Enterprises that take advantage of our solution will have the power to provide their customers with a safe, secure and convenient access.” says Louis Victor Jayaraj, global director enterprise solutions, Huawei. The integration of Huawei’s IP contact center product suite and PerSay’s text dependent VocalPassword and text independent FreeSpeech Voice Biometrics products were completed at Huawei’s India lab.

Don’t fall for fake Facebook e-mails McAfee’s warns about the latest scam being perpetrated in the online space | Moira Cronin in McAfee’s Security Insight Blog<http://siblog.mcafee.com/uncategorized/don%E2%80%99t-fall-for-fake-facebook-emails/>

A new scam has been spreading in the form of an e-Mail from Facebook alerting you that your password has been reset or needs to be reset. In McAfee’s second Consumer Threat Alert, Internet users are warned that a password stealing virus has been appearing in inboxes all over the world and is targeting the 400 million Facebook users. m a y 2 0 1 0 | it next

Opinion

money wise Suresh Senapaty CFO & Corporate EVP (Finance), Wipro

Use IT for broader and deeper benefits

ompanies are serious today about using technology for competitive advantage. They are learning that IT is strategic to their business and delivers business value. By interlinking IT solutions and business strategy, companies are finding that business benefits are often broader and deeper than originally anticipated. Broadly speaking, IT investments at an organisation can be put under two broad categories: n Automation and information led n Strategic and shared services Automation led investments are used primarily to cut costs or increase throughput at the same cost. Informational investments provide information for purposes such as accounting, reporting, compliance, communication or analysis. Strategic investments are used to gain competitive advantage by supporting entry into new markets or by helping to develop new products, services or business processes. A good example in relation to strategic IT is the work Wipro is engaged in with a large township developer in India, where one of the key objectives is to monetise IT investments to provide technology-based services to residents in the township, thereby transforming IT from a cost centre to a profit centre. Shared IT service investments are used by multiple applications such as servers, networks, laptops and customer databases. Depending on the service, the objective of such investments is to provide a flexible model for future business initiatives or to reduce long-

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“Automation led investments help cut costs whereas strategic investments are used to gain competitive edge” term IT costs through consolidation. Coming to measuring returns on IT investments, it differs based on the objective of the IT investment. The former is measured using the traditional total cost of ownership (TCO) metric that is well understood and widely practiced but has a few shortcomings. However, the latter is much more complex and needs a more holistic measure. One such measure is to compute the total value over the cycle of ownership. This comprises four elements—measurement against expected outcomes, cost/benefit

analysis; approach and processes that integrate IT into business and strategy planning of the organisation; and using business judgment to make difficult tradeoffs effectively. For any strategic IT investment, it is critical that the expected outcome is clearly articulated. The outcome could be in terms of financial metrics, operational metrics or even qualitative milestones. Cost-benefit categories cover the onetime IT and business costs involved in the decision, the ongoing IT and business costs that will be incurred, and the incremental business revenue generated as a result of the investment. Easy-to-quantify measures such as the cost of new hardware or savings in resources after a process has been automated are easy to obtain. Qualitative effects such as market share gains are harder to quantify and depend on uncontrollable factors such as customer adoption rate but can be estimated through simple analysis. Other benefits such as improved competitive position or increased operational agility are uncertain and difficult to quantify, but must be estimated using business judgments if organisations are to arrive at the holistic picture. With new technologies such as cloud computing and virtualisation, RoI acquires a totally new meaning. IT is thus set to be even more integral to business. Another effect of cloud we are likely to witness is the fact that businesses will be driving spending decisions as opposed to procurement and IT. Organisations that integrate their IT strategies with their business strategies are at an advantage vis-à-vis the competition. But identifying and investing IT in the right quantum and right business areas is only a beginning. This needs to be backed up by effective management capabilities if companies are to achieve appreciably higher returns from IT investments.

The author, is a Chartered Accountant and also heads the legal, business planning, treasury and controllership functions at Wipro

Opinion

tech talk Yogesh Dhingra COO & Finance Director, Blue Dart Express

State of the... smart!

great IT investment is one that wins on the parameters of speed, accuracy, convenience, flexibility, cost and return on investment. Blue Dart Express Limited, South Asia’s leading express air and logistic company, has invested over Rs one billion to continuously upgrade its technology quotient and keep ahead of market trends. Blue Dart’s technology innovations have played a key role in its premium positioning and in bringing global standards to the Indian customers’ doorstep. Such has been the ramifications of these offerings that more than 79% of Blue Dart’s regular customers use them actively. Blue Dart uses GPS technology in its vehicles to track shipments effectively. It also uses mobility solutions for real time visibility and several other in-house applications to provide effective business solutions. In one of the recent technological initiatives that Blue Dart has undertaken, it has implemented a fully automated, in-motion data capture solution for capturing the weight and dimension of each consignment at its Bangalore air-side facility. The complete solution is integrated with the conveyor system and is capable of handling packages at the rate of 1,800 packages an hour, which can be further scaled up to 2,500 packages per hour. Parcels are automatically gapped when object spacing is not maintained, thus ensuring accurately dimensioned, weighed and identified packages. Handling everything from small items

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“The solution is a benchmark IT project that is versatile and deliver multiple benefits” to big parcels, the solution provides a complete data profile with dimensions, weight and identification of most objects. It is a proven technology over years and ensures reliable dimensioning with an accuracy of ±2 mm. The data capture software measures most sizes and shapes with the highest precision. This results in exact data on each item, guaranteeing a correct foundation for material handling procedures. The high-speed capacity and fully automatic mode helps in maximising throughput. This, coupled with accurate read-rates, increases productivity and ensures billing accuracy.

The readings from the four barcode scanners ensure that the consignment is scanned from multiple directions. The load cell takes the dead weight and a dimensioner reads the image of the consignment to derive the length, breadth and height. All these readers merge their individual data into a common stream to make one complete data profile of an object. And all this happen while the consignment is in-motion, travelling at a speed of 55 meters per minute. The system does all these computations in two seconds flat. In case of an exception, in which it is unable to weigh or gather the dimension, the system sends a reject signal and the conveyor automatically stops. Only after an override the system starts its operation again. Such rejected consignments are rectified and re-conveyed again through the system. The data stream is configured to integrate with the Blue Dart’s tracking system and automatically incorporate the changes in weights and dimensions of each package. This results in freight re-computation and reflects the corrected amount for the customer. This equipment is an absolutely stateof-the-art tool and possibly the first installation in India for the logistics Industry. The investment made by Blue Dart is unique in many ways. The technology saves high cost of manpower for movement of cargo at warehouses. It has enabled capturing the accurate weight of packages, thus accounting for transparency and authenticating the weight charged to the customer. The project has enabled faster realisation of receivables and immediate returns on the investment made. While adding tremendous value to Blue Dart’s quality processes, the project has helped in saving costs and enhancing the bottom-line. The author is an expert with over 24 years of industry experience, the last 18 years at Blue Dart where he has been driving the overall growth and ensuring excellence in financial, technological and operational quality

cover story | Storage

e ag

or St gh

r th e th

i maging : ani l t

e ag

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tape

storage | cover story

plays on! The

The storage medium delivers unparalleled value to enterprises on three key aspectsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;archival, compliance and cost By S h ash wat D C

40000 BC Cave Paintings

100 BC Paper

2000 BC Papyrus

For American Express (Amex) that occupied several floors in the WTC 3 and 7 towers, the deliberate crashing of the hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 Boeing 767-223ER was severely debilitating. The WTC complex housed not only the corporate headquarters of the renowned credit card company but also its technology center. As the twin towers collapsed under the impact, Amex faced a major crisis; all its systems and accounts had shut down. Chaos reigned supreme. Fortunately, the company had an offsite backup policy in place and within 48 hours of the attack,

1750 Punch Card

1877 Phonograph

1440 Printing 1845 Punched Tape

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cover story | Storage it was able to move its operation to Jersey City and resume operations. While many other enterprises that had their offices in WTC were severely impacted and some of them could never be on their feet again; a few of them did manage to scrape through and survive in spite of all the odds. With 9/11, the world woke up to the threat of global terror but also to the need for disaster recovery and offsite archival strategy. The attack also played a role into an unintended consequence; the tape as a medium of storage was saved from the very verge of extinction. In the years leading to 9/11, most of the IT analysts and media had predicted the gradual decline and the subsequent demise of tapes as a backup medium in the enterprise. With storage capacity of the HDD increasing manifold as prices fell southwards, the tape had literally been made redundant. The unwieldy magnetic medium was dubbed as a relic of the past and it was in the past where it really belonged; that was the vox populi. And suddenly, many companies woke up to a realisation that the storage media invented in the 1950s still had a role to play and quite unlike the gloomy predictions, it was neither dead nor going to die in the near future.

“Tape is the lowest cost medium of all storage media. It can be taken offsite to allow for disaster recovery in case primary site is lost due to fire, earthquake, flood, or theft” —Basant Chaturvedi, Head IT, Perfetti Van Melle India

“Data backup on tape is time consuming. And since tape backups store and retrieve data sequentially, one needs to go through the entire length of tape even to retrieve the last backed up file”

Saved by archive In was in 1951, when the magnetic tape was first used to record computer data on the Eckert-Mauchly UNIVAC I. Then, the bulky Uniservo drive recording medium was a thin metal

1946 Williams Tube

1928 Magnetic Tape

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—SK Rudra, Manager (Group IT), Usha Martin Group

1949 Delay Line Memory

1946 Selectron Tube

1963 DRAM

1956 Hard Disk

1971 8” Floppy

1970 Bubble Memory

1976 5.25” Floppy

storage | cover story

What tape offers over HDD It’s a more reliable form of storage, and uses advanced error correction codes distributed across length of the tape. It can withstand higher levels of shock, temperature, and humidity than an HDD can. It has longer shelf life than an HDD, and is able to store data reliability for decades. It can be easily rotated, while standard size cartridges make auto loaders and libraries possible. It can easily be taken off-site to further ensure protection of data, even in the event of a physical disaster such as flood or fire. Tapes consume less space than a portable HDD, and are far less susceptible to damage caused by transportation. (By Greg Curry, CTO, Efficient Technologies LLC)

strip of rolled up tape with a capacity of a few MB data at best. Contrasting it with today, where the storage tubs have crossed the TB limit and is racing towards PB scales, the tape seems arcane. So what are the options in front of the IT manager, who not only has to ensure that the data is safe and protected but also efficiently managed? The logical thing would be to invest in the future, shift to optical media or the cloud for that matter. However the choice is not as easy as it seems, the biggest issue is that many enterprises have spent years perfecting that tried and tested method of data protection using a tape and have invested substantial sums in people,

1980 CD (Compact Disc)

1981 3.5” Floppy

training, and money along the way. Thus, while the disk-based data protection might be making steady inroads in the area of backup solutions, tape still has a role to play, especially in larger organisations. Tape is simply being moved downstream to the archival tier rather than the backup tier of the storage infrastructure. So even if many IT managers find tape to be cumbersome and bulky, they cannot find any other medium that can replace the portability and the cost associated with it. Basant Chaturvedi, Head IT, Perfetti Van Melle India, confirms this when he says, “Tape has always been easily transportable. Tape cartridges can be

1989 DDS (Digital Data Storage)

1984 CD-ROM

1987 DAT (Digital Audio Tape)

shipped offsite in boxes, transported by truck or hand carried to remote locations for secure offsite storage. If a disaster occurs in the data centre, the offsite tapes can be retrieved to restore applications. Tape is the lowest cost medium of all media. It can be taken offsite to allow for disaster recovery in case the primary site is lost due to fire, earthquake, flood or theft. Tape is proven to have a shelf life of 30 years when stored in proper conditions.” Compliance requirement is the other significant aspect that tape addresses, as Patrick Gavisk, IT Manager, WATPS, LLC, states. “Our office is required to store HIPAA data for very long periods of time, and we feel pretty confident about the durability of tape under proper storage conditions. We have considered doing some interim backups to disk, but the final storage would be tape,” he says.

The cost factor Besides the archival and the compliance requirements, the single biggest factor that works in tape’s favour is the cost. Even with the continuous decline in disk prices, tapes are still the most cost effective medium for storing vast amount of data. Price-wise, tapes tend to be less expensive in the long run than disks. So if data needs to be stored for say 10+ years the total cost of ownership for tape will be less compared to the disk. Balasubramanian M, Deputy General Manager, Saipem India, agrees, “Tape is

1994 CompactFlash

1992 MiniDisc

1990 MOD (Magneto Optical Disc)

1993 DLT (Digital Linear Tape)

m a y 2 0 1 0 | it next

cover story | Storage still a viable medium for storage since it can store large amounts of data cost effectively. Random access storage like DVD is too small in capacity and hard disks are expensive to buy and maintain. We are using tape in our enterprise. We have a tape library and the systems to back up data and restore from tape.” In a white paper from the Linear Tape-Open (LTO) Program, David Reine and Mike Kahn of The Clipper Group looked at total costs of ownership over a five-year period for the longterm storage of data in tiered diskto-disk-to-tape versus disk-to-disk solutions. Factoring in acquisition costs of equipment and media, as well as electricity and data centre floor space costs, The Clipper Group found that the total cost of Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) disk solutions was about 23 times more than tape solutions for archiving.

Pitfalls and challenges Nonetheless, for all the virtues of tape as a medium, there are still a lot of vices. Ask IT managers who have grappled with magnetic media in the past and they will tell you the story. The most common complaint is that tapes are slow and unmanageable. There is a lot of manual intervention required with tape and not everyone can understand and operate the tape libraries. Not to mention the special care required because of the lack of software tools.

1996 CD-RW (Compact Disc – Rewritable)

1995 DVD (Digital Video Disc)

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“In the hierarchical storage definition, tape is at the base level, while fast disks could be at the top. So based on need, each plays an important role and offers differing RoIs”

—Arun Gupta, Group CIO, K Raheja Corp SK Rudra, Manager (Group IT), Usha Martin Group, elaborates, “Data backup on tape is time consuming. And since tape backups store and retrieve data sequentially, one needs to go through the entire length of tape even to retrieve the last backed up file, which is again time consuming. Not to mention the fact that tapes are also quite vulnerable to thefts and damage.” Nandu Bhatt, GM (IT), Wilson Sandhu Logistics, echoes similar views, “The biggest challenge with tape is file restoration. Tapes can be immensely slow when it comes to data restoration, also due to the fact that there are not many software tools available that can

2000 LTO-1 (Linear Tape-Open - 1)

1998 Memory Stick

1997 Multimedia Card

help in the process.” Besides, tapes are also prone to magnetic data erasure, and special storage space is required to store tapes for longer durations. There have also been instances of how a certain IT manager was caught in a bad mess when he accidentally erased a tape. To counter these issues, Chaturvedi advises a structured solution that needs to be well thought out. “If you are planning for old data archiving, storing image and video files, which don’t need frequent access, tapes are the right media. Thus, decide upon whether you need among DATs, DLTs and LTOs based on the organisational

1999 Microdrive

2003 Blue-ray

2001 SD (Secure Digital) Card

2003 xD-Picture card

storage | cover story backup requirement. This determines one-time cost of the tape device and recurring cost of tapes, which one needs to use for application backup. If the backup size is more than 2 TB, you may need to think over usage of various tape libraries, which is a more viable solution. Interestingly, this doesn’t need manual intervention,” he states.

Bleak future? While the tape is very much alive and kicking now, what does the future portend? Will it continue to exist in the days to come, or will newer technologies and inventions like Blue Ray and Holographic storage finally make it redundant? The answer is yes and no. While newer technologies have made other storage media far easier and

manageable, the tape is evolving as well. The biggest indication of this is in the form of the LTO Consortium that has members like IBM, HP and Seagate, which directs development and manages licensing and certification of media and mechanism manufacturers. The standard form factor of LTO technology goes by the name Ultrium, and the most recent version was released in 2010 and can hold 1.5 TB in a single cartridge. According to many reports, LTO has been the best selling “super tape” format and is widely used with small and large computer systems alike, especially for backup. There is also much action on the software side, with players like NetApp and Symantec working on newer technologies like data deduplication on tape and virtual tape libraries that can

be managed quite effortlessly. Arun Gupta, Group CIO, K Raheja Corp & Shoppers Stop, puts it succinctly, “Tape and NAS/SAN are not comparable as different media types offer different capabilities and thus are used for different purposes. In the hierarchical storage definition, tape is at the base level, while fast disks could be at the top. So based on need, each plays an important role and offers differing RoI.” The tape is very much going to exist in the enterprise as long as the need for long-term storage or archival remains. Just as the adage goes, never put all your eggs in one basket, similarly never bet all your data storage on one format. Till that is the case, tapes will always find a humidity-free space beyond the NAS and SAN boxes.

tape vs disc: Tapes might be slow, but last long, very long Tape Archiving

Disc Archiving

Sequential access

Random access

Relatively slow

Fast

Portable and can be shipped offsite

Less Portable, electronically vaulted

In expensive media

More expensive

No dedupe

Dedupe

Longer shelf life

Shorter shelf life

Less power consumption

Higher power consumption

2003 LTO-2 (Linear Tape-Open - 2)

2004 Windows Media High Definition Video

2004 High Definition –Digital Video Disc

2005 LTO-3 (Linear Tape-Open - 3)

2007 LTO-4 (Linear Tape-Open - 4)

2010 LTO-5 (Linear Tape-Open - 5)

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insight | Accounting

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fair-value

compliance

time! In a year, India will adopt IFRS accounting standardsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; the countdown for IT readiness has begun

Photo graphy: photo s.c om

By Jat i n d e r S i n gh

it next | m a y 2 0 1 0

Accounting | insight Sundays were never too hectic for Reema Seth till the last month. For this senior IT manager at one of the leading tin manufacturers, the erstwhile lazy weekend afternoons have all of a sudden been packed with a series of tutorial classes and practical sessions. She never thought that the last year’s announcement made by Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), to make International Financial Regulatory Standards (IFRS) mandatory for Indian organisations from FY 2011, will compel IT managers like her to deal with alienated terms—asset, liability, equity, revenue and expense, at such fundamental level. Reema was recently given the additional responsibility of leading the change management team set up to evaluate the technical complexities in transiting from Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) to IFRS. The context: India has decided to join the pool of 150 countries that are determined to embrace IFRS standards in 2011. Though the decision for a common accounting language will certainly relieve enterprises from filing multiple financial reports and will help them compete better, the process of transformation will see organisations making massive changes in their books and information systems. Until now, many organisations have had separate procedures for tax, statutory (US and Canadian GAAP), and management reporting. The adoption of IFRS gives them the chance to more closely synchronise these areas.

A structural exercise The conversion from Indian GAAP to IFRS requires significant efforts. The consequences are far wider than financial reporting issues and extend to various significant business and regulatory matters. These include compliance with debt covenants, structuring of ESOP schemes, training of employees, modification of IT systems and tax planning, change in new data requirements, charts of accounts, reconfiguration, interface and mapping, consolidation of entities, reporting packs,

financial reporting tools and workability of new operating systems compliant for IFRS processes. “The IT implications of conversion to IFRS can be extremely challenging because of the different information systems present within an organisation,” says Abhishek Asthana, Director, Piron Operations “The problem is further complicated by the fact that the country has very limited number of IT professionals with thorough understanding of IFRS, and the ability to interpret and translate IFRS requirements into IT changes,” he adds. According to a recent survey commissioned by Resources Global Professionals India, only 27% of blue chip foreign and Indian multinational corporations said they were prepared for the conversion to IFRS from the current Indian GAAP. Moreover, nearly 60% reported that critical milestones and success factors for a clean and cost-effective conversion have either been overlooked or are not properly understood. It is critical to note that IFRS, by no means is just a reporting issue. For any organisation or IT manager, understanding the significance of the overall impact the standard will have on the organisation, its philosophy, and operational IT systems at both corporate and subsidiary levels is very important. “There are lots of disclosure requirements which are coming in for the first time. Some new fields may have to be introduced. Getting the data mining right could be very challenging,” says Sunder Iyer, Partner, PwC “For an IT manager, it is going to be also about change management. Earlier, they were focusing on a particular set of accounting to get information, but now they will have to modify their systems. The real challenge with IFRS will be to ascertain the information that was either never captured or only partially captured,” he adds. The new accounting standard should be seen as an opportunity to institute effective changes to the internal operations and decision-making systems of an organisation.

“At the end of the day, training both finance and non-finance staff on changes of policies, procedures, contractual and legal obligations will determine the overall success” —Shaleen Khetarpaul, Sr Manager, IT, Reliance Infrastructure

Watch out for... eople-related issues, espeP cially upgrading of skills Impact on company results and equity Debt covenants Management reporting Communication with investors and other stakeholders Required changes in standard business contracts

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insight | Accounting

The FAQs What is IFRS? Previously known as International Accounting Standards (IAS), IFRS is a set of standards and interpretations adopted by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). It’s a new accounting system, which is said to be more transparent and have a global acceptance

When will it come into effect? The Indian government has set the deadline of April 1, 2011.

Why IFRS?

“Themajorissue comeswhenthe organisation fails to do an impact analysis,ahead oftheactual implementation date” —Gaurav Kohli, IT Consultant Xebia Architects India

“The broad nature of the project requires the support and participation of management at the highest level,” —Simon Dale, Senior Vice President, SAP Asia-Pacific

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IFRS promises more accurate, qualitative, reliable, relevant, comprehensive and timely financial information. A key aspect is the ‘fair value accounting’ and will help investors in the long run. Once companies report their statements in an IFRS format, comparison of performances will be more meaningful and objective. Investors will be in a position to compare their investments at a global level.

Shaleen Khetarpaul, Sr Manager, IT, Reliance Infrastructure agrees, “The challenge is much bigger than what it appears. Everything from accounting policies and procedures, financial reporting and disclosures to IT systems and the processes used to accumulate and report financial report information will be affected.” “At the end of the day, training both finance and non-finance staff on changes to policies, procedures, and contractual and legal obligations will make key differences in overall success of the transformation,” Khetarpaul comments. However, for Arun Dixit, CEO, Udyog Software, things are not that difficult as they appear to be. According to him, it is only a presentation layer—so it will take minimal time and investment. “Indian CIOs and IT managers are smartest. In India, one has to address taxation and various regulatory needs by way of a number of reports over specific intervals,” Dixit elaborates. “They have also implemented a lot of complicated processes and procedures in global ERPs. It is not a big challenge for this community at all,” he points out.

Making transition strategies IFRS is ‘principles-based’ and not ‘prescriptive-based’. Therefore, a comprehensive review of regulated reports is needed to assess the differences between current reporting data and processes and the new data and processes that will be required under IFRS. Both the scope and the nature of the required information will change,

as will the means by which it is recorded and managed. Therefore, it is critical to evaluate the potential impact of the IFRS transition process on your organisation and formulate a realistic IFRS transition strategy. IT Next recommends taking a close look at some of the best practices that will help you to control costs, manage the scope of implementation and create a smooth transition plan. First, it is extremely important to verify that your existing financial consolidation system should support the transition.

7 steps

successful transition 1

ake up and start the process, the W earlier you start the better

Manage the transition in project mode

Allocate and mobilise adequate resources

Map the IFRS change impact for all transactions

Determine the approach for parallel running multi gap reporting

Identify the sources of additional information as required under IFRS

Initiate training and testing of changes

Accounting | insight

The impact on IS New data requirements: New accounting disclosures and recognition requirements may result in more detailed information, new types of data, and new fields. Hence, information may need to be calculated on a different basis. Action: Modify the system to capture new or changed data Changes to the chart of accounts: There will almost always be a change to the chart of accounts due to reclassifications and additional reporting criteria. Action: Create new accounts and delete accounts that are no longer required. Reconfiguration of existing systems: Existing systems may have built-in capabilities for specific IFRS changes, particularly the larger enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and high-end general ledger packages. Action: Reconfigure existing software to enable accounting under IFRS. Modification to existing systems: New reports and calculations are required to accommodate IFRS. Spreadsheets and models used by management as an integral part of the financial reporting process should be included when considering the required systems modifications. Action: Make amendments such as new or changed calculations, new or changed reports, and new models. New systems interface and mapping changes: As

It should be able to support parallel reporting, top side adjustments, rules-based environment, disclosures and commentary, and a flexible and powerful reporting and XBRL publishing. Second, if you are evaluating a new financial consolidation application, the evaluation criteria should stress upon software vendors that provide pre-configured IFRS complaint content in order to accelerate your IFRS implementation. The third and most important consideration is to improve source systems. Integration of the financial consolidation system as the underlying transactional general ledger (GL) systems will provide reliability, flexibility and ability to fast adapt to changes. “If it is not realistically possible to use a single-instance enterprise-

previous financial reporting standards did not require the use of a system for IFRS reporting, certain new software will be required. The interfaces may be affected by modifications to existing systems, the need to collect new data, the timing and frequency of data transfer requirements. Action: Evaluate and carry out the new software implementation. Consolidation of entities: Under IFRS, there will be potential changes to the number and types of entities that need to be included under the head ‘consolidated financial statements.’ Also, the application of the concept of ‘control’ may be different under IFRS. Action: Update consolidation systems/models to account for changes in consolidated entities. Reporting packages: Reporting packages may need to be modified to gather additional disclosures in the information from branches or subsidiaries operating on a standard general ledger package or to collect information from subsidiaries that use different financial accounting packages. Action: Modify reporting packages and the accounting systems used by subsidiaries and branches to provide financial information. Financial reporting tools: Reporting tools can be used to perform the consolidation and the financial statements based on data transferred from the general ledger or prepare only the financial statements based on receipt of consolidated information from the general ledger. Action: Modify reporting tools used by subsidiaries and branches to provide financial information. Source: KPMG (IFRS for technology companies: Closing the GAAP?)

wide ERP or GL system, your IFRS implementation strategy should consider avoiding flat files and manual data entry as much as possible. This way your IFRS transition will progress more smoothly,” suggests Simon Dale, Senior Vice President, SAP Asia-Pacific. “Therefore, in order to cover the wide array of issues involved in adopting IFRS, companies will need an interdisciplinary team. The broad nature of the project requires the support and participation of management at the highest level,” Dale points out. “The major issue comes when organisations fail to do the impact analysis well ahead of the actual implementation date,” says Gaurav Kohli, IT consultant, Xebia Architects India. According to him, it is advisable for the IT manager and the organisation to assess and evaluate

if the existing technology or ERP systems are capable enough to support the new changes. “An IT manager should gear up to address issues like additional quantitative and qualitative disclosures required under IFRS. He will also need to keep multiple sets of books during the transition period to resolve complexities better,” advises Zoeb Adenwala, CIO, Essel Propack. The implementation team should include, at a minimum, management accountants, tax accountants, external auditors, IT managers and IT staff. Since implementation of IFRS is likely to affect many aspects of the business, several departments outside financial accounting should be involved as well.

How did you like this story? Send your feedback at editor@itnext.in

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insight | Business Analytics

Success flows when the implementation team gazes at business issues and searches for business benefits By De e pa k K u m a r

t’s been quite many years since IT has been seen as a businesssupporting and enabling function. Everybody, from research firms to vendors to media, has noted that IT needs to be aligned to business objectives in the organisation. The slowdown that’s passing by did make the chorus even louder. However, most of the IT areas are expected to support business objectives by ways such as lowering of IT costs, converting capex into opex and ensuring quicker RoI. Some areas fare still better, by employing more direct ways to make IT dynamic and responsive to business needs. Some of these areas are virtualisation, sales force automation and enterprise mobility. None of these, however, give IT the chance to have a close participation in determining business goals and

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strategising towards achieving those goals. Do Business Intelligence and Business Analytics help in interlinking the IT and business functions more cohesively? Potentially yes. Some organisations that have successfully done BI implementations haven taken the approach of having a core team in place to work out greater BI and BA benefits for the organisation. Often, these teams have members from both IT and business teams, who work closely towards extracting advantages of BI for the organisation. Krishnakumar Avanoor, Customer Care Associate & Deputy General Manager, Solutions and Technology Team, Shopper’s Stop Ltd, who has been leading the BI implementation at his organisation, says, “There is a core team that works on the more

sophisticated aspects of BI and BA. The team has 75% participation from business side while the remaining members are from IT. We feel that strong business participation is a must for the success of BI.” “It’s been around 18 months since the BI deployment was initiated in the organisation. We have made satisfactory progress and are steadily moving towards a mature BI environment,” he notes.

Growing dependence The business environment has become highly competitive, and more importantly, increasingly complex. Technological excellence is easy to emulate and surpass and as such a product can’t differentiate much—and for long—in terms of features. To be ahead of the competition

Business Analytics | insight

Photo graphy: photos .co m

eye in the one-up game, enterprises are warming up more to BI and BA tools. While BI has already been around for some time as a logical progression from data warehousing and online analytical processing (OLAP), the uptake of BA is also picking up slowly. “In particular, in case of greenfield deployments, organisations are opting for both BI and BA tools,” notes Ashit Panjwani, Executive Director, SalesMarketing & Alliance, SAS India. In case of legacy systems, however, IT managers sometimes take a stepby-step approach. They first deploy BI tools and only when they have satisfactorily monitored the quality of querying and reporting for some time, they move on to the next step. Experts feel this is a good approach, as it de-risks a BI/BA strategy by ensuring that data coming from legacy

systems is in a format and structure that lends itself to new reporting requirements. Any gaps can be noted and corrections can be made accordingly. The step-by-step approach also ensures that those departments in an organisation that are comfortable to migrate to BI reporting tools take the plunge first while others can come on the board later. “It’s a cultural change, where some departments are quicker to move on to new forms of reporting while some others are still comfortable with the traditional reports,” feels Avanoor of Shopper’s Stop. However, initiating BI also promotes and facilitates a cultural shift, as Bhavish Sood, Principal Analyst—BI, Gartner Asia-Pacific, points out, “BI will be a key enabler in

building information-oriented culture within an enterprise and should be an important deployment priority. Indian enterprises should not confuse BI technology selection as the end goal of a BI initiative.” “Many BI initiatives fail to deliver sustainable business value primarily due to lack of business sponsorship leading to weak commitment, lack of business engagement in the process, and finally IS not being involved in supporting benefit realisation,” Sood cautions.

Quality of data It is often said that a BI or BA solution can be only as good as the quality of data. If the quality of data is suspect, it can actually lead to an implementation failure, which can be catastrophic for the organisation.

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insight | Business Analytics

“BI framework is constituted by four key building blocks—data integration, analytics, reporting and business challenge” —Ashit Panjwani, Executive Director, SalesMarketing & Alliance, SAS India

“A core team works on sophisticated aspects of BI. Strong business participation is a must for the success of BI” —Krishnakumar Avanoor, Customer Care Associate & DGM, Solutions and Technology Team, Shopper’s Stop

“Many BI initiatives fail to deliver sustainable business value primarily due to lack of business sponsorship” —Bhavish Sood, Principal Analyst – BI, Gartner Asia-Pacific

“We are being served well by the existing ERP system and it will be only after two to three years that BI will become deployable” —Jacob Livingstone, Manager-IT at Bhilai Engineering Corp

Ensuring data integrity across various systems can sometimes be a nightmare, and this is one area that can be challenging for the IT manager entrusted with the task. Panjwani of SAS feels that this is a very critical area and that vendors have an important role to play in this regard. Can a consultative approach towards implementation take care of

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the issue? He agrees, noting that BI is not something that is best suited off the shelf and a consultative approach is surely the way to go. Not that packaged offerings are not available. “Packaged analytics have been around for some time and they have a time-to-market advantage. Many vendors also have a consulting approach but I think the way the

market will buy is in a hybrid— part pre packaged and supported by some customisation as required,” says Sood of Gartner, looking at the market from an analyst’s viewpoint. Saurabh Verma, who manages BI market research at IDC India observes, “Consulting does play a vital role, but mostly in the large data warehousing type of deployments. Basic dashboard solutions are available off the shelf and easy to deploy too. Consulting and system integration come into play only when there is work required at the back end for data cleaning.” Having said that, those organisations where data integration has attained a level of maturity are not worried. “We have been following best practices to ensure the quality of data in the organisation. The process is quite mature with necessary checks being in place and hardly any exceptions being allowed,” says Avanoor of Shopper’s Stop.

BI framework What constitutes BI? While there can’t be a complete consensus on this, given the different solution perspectives, as per the definition used by market research firm IDC India, BI solutions cover Advanced Analytics/BA and End User Query Reporting and Analysis (EUQRA), which includes dashboards. As per IDC’s estimates, the total India BI market in 2009 stood at US$ 41.3 million, and is expected to grow at a rate of 20% for the next five years. However, both BI and BA can be deployed independently, says Sandeep Sharma, BI analyst at IDC India. “A reason why BA is deployed after BI typically is primarily due to the organisation’s maturity. A mid-size organisation will be more interested in day-to-day operations, but as the organisation grows, it will want to get into statistical modelling, forecasting, and other complex ways of looking at the business, when BA comes into the picture,” he says.

Business Analytics | insight Panjwani of SAS sees the BI framework as constituted by four key building blocks—data integration, analytics, reporting and business issue or business challenge. “Each of these blocks is equally important, but then it is the business challenge for which the other three come into being and as such it is necessary that the first three blocks are linked to the business challenge. This forms the basis of a successful BI implementation,” Panjwani emphasises.

Going mainstream Contrary to the general perception, today BI tools are available to suit the needs of all size and type of businesses. Panjwani strongly agrees with this. But, are there some verticals that have seen more BI implementations by comparison? “Well, there have been more implementations in organisations from BFSI, manufacturing, telecom, government, IT/ITeS and pharmaceutical verticals, but it is equally relevant to all organisations across other verticals as well,” he reemphasises. Verma of IDC also feels that EUQRA kind of solutions can be adopted by an organisation of any size and there are many small ISVs offering such solutions. However, advanced analytics solutions need much greater user maturity as well as structured and clean data at the backend. Though advanced analytics tools are expensive, they are useful for larger organisations as they help manage volumes and need greater user maturity. “The market will continue to have a mix of both large and small ISVs for EUQRA solutions, but the advanced analytics space will continue to be dominated by the larger software vendors,” his colleague Sandeep at IDC comments. Not everybody is on the bandwagon yet. Many organisations still believe, and with sound reasons, that they will be better off delaying BI implementations by another few years. Jacob Stone, Manager-IT at Bhilai Engineering Corporation Ltd, says his

organisation is being served very well by the existing ERP system and it will be only after another two to three years that it will become advantageous to go for a BI implementation. Sure, there will be benefits to be reaped in the long run. “After we have the required preparedness, we can go for a BI implementation. A good database at the backend and BI tools can help us go for long-lead items,” Stone says.

Looking ahead Gartner had talked of “Advanced Analytics” in Top 10 predictions for 2010. How cleanly do BI and BA fit into the concept? We have reached the point in the improvement of performance and costs that we can afford to perform analytics and simulation for each and

Analytics and Performance Management market to be US$

31.1

million, by 2014 at a CAGR of 14.6% Source: Gartner

every action taken in the business, says Sood. Not only will data center systems be able to do this, but mobile devices will have access to data and enough capability to perform analytics themselves, potentially enabling use of optimisation and simulation everywhere and every time, he adds. From BI and BA, the market will next move to the “Advanced Analytics” stage, Gartner had said in its 2010 predictions early this year. Sood explains the concept, “This can be viewed as a third step in supporting operational business decisions. Fixed

rules and prepared policies gave way to more informed decisions powered by the right information delivered at the right time, whether through CRM or ERP or other applications. The new step is to provide simulation, prediction, optimisation and other analytics, not simply information, to empower even more decision flexibility at the time and place of every business process action.” “Another way to view this is as a shift in timing. Business intelligence has mainly provided us historical analysis, increasingly powerful ways of analysing what has already happened. We can increase the scope of the information that is analysed and we can reduce delays between the data creation and its analysis, but at heart this is a look backwards. The new step looks into the future, predicting what can or will happen,” he adds. Advanced analytics also involves new technologies to search unstructured content and other search enhancements. There is a steady progress that organisations are making. Avanoor of Shopper’s Stop says, “While prediction and forecasting is not full blown yet, we do make use of analytics and modelling for specific purposes in certain key areas.” “One of our key BI goals for this year is to provide dashboards for senior management,” he notes. Yet, organisations in India are not among the frontrunners in implementing Advanced Analytics solutions. Verma of IDC India agrees, “The global markets are a lot more advanced as compared to India on account of the maturity of their processes, automation, data capture and management.” “Leverage analytics to compete at the global level” is the message that needs to be there, Panjwani feels. “It’s time to evaluate BI, if not implement.” That’s IT Next’s take. The author is an ICT/Media market researcher and consultant

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insight | open source

free Wares Dotcom’s 25 years have helped open-source tools mature decisively. Here are some useful picks for you By S h as h wat D C

one

two

Operating system

Google applications

While Microsoft has ruled the OS space on the desktop front, the story has been very different on the server side, with Unix and Sun Solaris being some of the powerful options. Ranging from Novell to Red Hat, companies around the world have opted for Linux derivatives to build their offerings. But now, Linux is becoming a stronger alternative on the desktop front as well. For the past few years, Ubuntu, a derivative of Linux, has been making inroads in the desktop space. A package consisting of a free OS and some basic productivity applications, Ubuntu more or less mimics the Windows or rather the Vista environment. It has steadily gained ground as software of choice for companies and professionals that are looking for easy-to-use open source options to Windows. And with the current release of Karmic Koala (Ubuntu version 9.10), the OS’ share is estimated to be anywhere between 40% and 50% of Linux desktops. Yet another compelling alternative to Windows on the desktop is expected to come in the form of Google’s Chrome OS, another big-ticket Linux derivative to be available in the second half of this year. Open source is getting better on the desktop!

Since Larry Page and Eric Schmidt ventured into the online sphere in 1998 with Google; the innocuous search company has grown up to become the world’s largest Internet company. Google is now part of every Internet user’s life, with the name Google becoming a synonym for online search. However, Google is no longer about merely search and offers a host of services for both individuals and the enterprise users, both for free and for a fee. Google Apps continues to be one of the most innovative services from Google. It features several Web applications with similar functionalities to traditional office suites, including: Gmail, Calendar, Talk, Docs and Sites. Most of these services can be linked to a common Gmail login ID. Worth noting among other services is Google Analytics, a service that lets an individual or a company get an in-depth view of the efficacy of an online property. Recently,

Links

ubuntu.com | debian.com | mandriva.com

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open source | insight

This is the Silver Jubilee year of “.com”—the omnipresent top-level Internet domain that came into existence in 1985. A small Massachusetts-based computer maker Symbolics had the honour of registering the first .com. Today, according to an Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) study, there are over 80 million dotcoms registered. These dotcoms lead to economic benefits amounting to US $400 million, a number that is likely to double in the next 10 years, says ITIF. And dotcoms are not the sole domain names, as there are some 270 other so-called top level domain names including .net, .org, .edu, .mil, .gov and the domains for individual countries such as .in for India, .cn for China, and .ru for Russia. Now, with the mobile Web growing, a new breed of domain name, .mobi, has emerged. This spirit of sharing and collaborating that the Internet has fostered has also helped the Open Source Software (OSS) movement spawn and grow into a meaningful existence. The OSS movement more or less relies on the Web not only for its proliferation but also for its sustenance. What better way to mark the 25th anniversary of the domain name system than to list 10 tools found on the Web that are open and that are free!

Google also released Buzz and Wave, online social networking tools and collaborative platforms that can also be used as much for work as for fun.

Links

wave.google.com | buzz.google.com | desktop.google.com docs.google.com | adwords.google.com | google.com/analytics

three

Online storage and backup Backup and storage are among the IT must-haves. While usually NAS, SAN and tapes are used for storage and backup, off-the-Internet options are also available for the purpose. For example, there is Dropbox. io that provides a 2GB free online space for a user and then has graded payment options for people who want more. Box.net is yet another service that allows 1 GB of space free of cost with a file-size limit of 25MB.

Symantec also offers the facility of online backup with its new release of Norton 360 v4.0, where it gives 2GB backup and the rest can be upgraded based on need and requirement. Interestingly, the biggest online storage option is available from the Microsoft stable. Windows Live SkyDrive service from Microsoft currently offers 25 GB of free personal storage, with file size capped at 50 MB. Earlier, Yahoo! too had provided a similar service called Yahoo! Briefcase but now it has been wrapped up. Some reports say that Google

also has plans to offer online storage service named Gdrive.

Links

four ERP Previously known as Tiny ERP, OpenERP is touted as a complete ERP for small and medium businesses. It’s a complete Open Source software with inbuilt modules for CRM and BPM. Other features include management and financial accounting, inventory management, sales, purchase human resource and project management. The software, released under General Public License (GNU), has a very modular character with more than 500 modules available with customisable reports.

Links

openerp.com/downloads.html

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insight | open source

five

seven

Office productivity

Antivirus

One of the reasons why Microsoft has been able to maintain a dominant position in the desktop space is due to the spread and reach of its MS Office suite of applications. People across the world are using Window applications like MS Word and Excel. The company sells a suite of these applications in the market and the pricing is dependent on the type of application desired by an individual. If you want to save on the MS Office licensing cost, an alternative available is OpenOffice.org. Available freely on the Internet, the suite offers applications like Writer (functional equivalent of MS Word), Calc (MS Excel), Impress (MS Powerpoint), and Base (Microsoft Access).

Protecting the company’s assets can be a tough job, especially against viruses and malware. While there are a host of suites and proprietary solutions available to help do the same, there is a good amount of freeware that is equally effective. One of the most popular options is the AVG Free Edition (it is a proprietary software that also has a paid product). It also has versions available for both Microsoft and Linux and has constant updates over the Web. Another option is Clam AV, a GPL antivirus toolkit for Unix platforms. The salient feature of this software is its integration with mail servers (attachment scanning). The package provides a flexible and scalable multithreaded daemon, a command line scanner, and a tool for automatic updating via the Internet.

Links

openoffice.org | softmakeroffice.com

six FTP Often, IT users need to mail huge files in the range of 20MB or above to multiple recipients. This can clog the network and create e-mail server-related issues. A simple way out is to upload the file on the Web and mail the link to recipients and it is in this context that a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) utility becomes useful. FTP can be used to upload files to be accessed by a

Links 30

number of people. While there are several FTP applications that offer similar functionalities, it is hard to beat Filezilla in the game. FireFTP is also equally effective in uploading files to a ‘storage cloud.’ For larger uploads, there is Yousendit, a free service that lets one send attachments up to 1 Gb. And then there are also services like AxiFile that allows one to store and share files of up to 10 Gb.

4shared.com | filezilla-project.org | fireftp.mozdev.org yousendit.com | axifile.com

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Links

avg.com/in-en/homepage antivirus.comodo.com clamav.net/lang/en

eight Data recovery tools One of the biggest headaches for an IT manager is to recover data that has been accidentally lost. Causes of data loss can vary from computer viruses, power failure,

open source | insight

operating system crash, application crash, corrupt or missing system files, accidental formatting of hard disks, hard disk media failure and accidental deletion of files. One of the popular freeware for data recovery is ADRC data recovery software tool, which can undelete files, recover files from damaged disks, copy a raw disk image to another disk, create and write disk image files to/from internal and removable drives,

Links

and import/export the boot sector of a drive. Another tool is Disk Investigator, which can display a driveâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s actual data content by bypassing the operating system and directly reading the raw drive sectors. It can also view and search raw directories, files, clusters, and system sectors and verify the effectiveness of file and disk wiping programs. It can undelete previously deleted files as well.

website. Services like Freeservers, 5gighost and Freebeehosting let one host a website with limited bandwidth and storage space for free. Google too lets people develop their own websites, with its service called Google Sites. Meanwhile, for small businesses wanting a more professional website, Intuit offers a free website builder that lets people build a website in a jiffy. The service is initially free and then charges are applicable based on the level of expertise that is required by the user.

Links

freeservers.com | 5gighost.com freebeehosting.com

adrc.net/data_recovery_software | theabsolute.net/sware/ dskinv.html | cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

ten nine Free website hosting To facilitate hosting of websites, there are scores of hosting service providers that let businesses and individuals host pages for free, in exchange for banner or sponsored adverts that are displayed on the

Protecting the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s assets can be a really tough job, especially when it comes to viruses and malware

The social universe Over the past many years, the real world is being literally overshadowed by the so-called social universe made up of the Facebooks and the Twitters of the world. Not just the individuals, even enterprises are now looking at social networking and micro-blogging tools to reach out to their customers as well as engage their employees. LinkedIn has become one of the most potent professional networking tools, which is increasingly being used by HR professionals during a recruitment process. And services like Yammer help employees within the company to communicate and interact freely.

Links

linkedin.com | yammer.com facebook.com | twitter.com

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insight | Security

Knowing is

A mechanism that can unravel the real persona of an alias is the way to keep cyber crime at bay By D r . A n to n i o N u c c i

photo : Photos.co m

preventing

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Security | insight The Internet has become the central nervous system for our networked life. As a global network of loosely connected IP-based networks, it reaches everywhere and provides a common platform for communication to governments, businesses and consumers. With the Internet, however, a new kind of criminal has emerged—the cyber criminal. The pervasive nature of cyber crime today threatens loss of proprietary corporate information to the loss of life. Various forms of cyber crime have emerged, from predators exchanging child porn and scammers stealing identities to countries attacking countries.

Quantifying cyber crime The US FBI estimates that various types of computer crimes in the U.S. now cost the industry about US $400 billion, while officials in the Department of Trade and Industry in Britain said computer crime rose by 50% in 2006 over 2005. It is estimated that only 5% of cybercriminals are ever arrested or convicted because the anonymity associated with Web activity makes them hard to catch, and the trail of evidence needed to link them to a cyber crime is hard to unravel. The CERT Coordination Center estimates that as much as 80% of all computer security incidents remain unreported.

Combating the threat There are certain steps to be taken before we can successfully combat cyber crime. First, it is important to increase our understanding of the many languages and dialects (protocols, applications and services) being spoken in the cyber world. Network traffic monitoring and measurement is increasingly regarded as an essential function for understanding and improving the performance and security of our cyber infrastructure. With networking technologies and services evolving rapidly, as witnessed by the explosive growth of the Web, accurate network traffic monitoring is required to ensure security in a cyber world. Second, it will be timely to promptly

identify and tag cyber users and communities of cyber users whose activity and content may harm the safety and transparency of the cyber world. Third, it is critical to gain visibility into who is the real person behind an alias or cyber-identifier used to enter the cyber world. A critical problem in this digital world is knowing with whom you are interacting.

The weak links Critical to the success of a network monitoring tool is its ability to accurately— and on a real-time basis—identify and categorise each flow of packets associated with a transaction and connection by application. Identifying network traffic using port numbers was the standard in the recent past. This approach was successful

traffic, including P2P flows. In fact, commercial bandwidth management tools and network security appliances use application signature matching to enhance robustness of classification and deep inspection of packet content even in the case of encapsulated protocols within each other.

Newer threats Yet, recently several threats appeared to use this technique to hide their presence and break through firewalls and other security devices. The progress in hardware acceleration has allowed packet content inspection techniques to run at speeds as high as 40 Gbps and have made them the most commonly used approach to gain visibility into any Internet stream. Nevertheless, packet-inspection

Packet-inspection techniques only identify traffic for which signatures are available and work if full packets are available as inputs because many traditional applications used port numbers assigned by or registered with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). The accuracy of this approach, however, has been questioned because of the evolution of applications that do not communicate on standard ports. Many current-generation P2P applications use ephemeral ports, and in some cases, use ports of well-known services such as Web and FTP to make them indistinguishable to a port-based classifier. Techniques that rely on inspection of packet contents have been proposed to address the diminished effectiveness of port-based classification. These approaches attempt to determine whether or not a flow contains a characteristic signature of a known application. Studies show that such approaches work very well for today’s Internet

approaches face two severe limitations. First, these techniques only identify traffic for which signatures are available. Maintaining an up-to-date list of signatures is a daunting task. Information is rarely fully updated and complete. Furthermore, the traditional ad-hoc growth of IP networks, the continuing rapid proliferation of applications of different kinds, and the relative ease with which almost any user can design and infiltrate a new application to the traffic mix in the network with no centralised registration, contribute to this gap. Second, packet inspection techniques only work if full packets (header and payload) are available as inputs and are completely harmless whenever coarser information is provided. Unfortunately, only a few service providers today have equipped their networks with packet

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insight | Security

ACAS: Novel concept but doesn’t go far Exploring the feasibility of bringing together the benefits of the two families – packet inspection and flow-based analysis -- has not attracted much attention in the research community. The only framework available is called ACAS, aimed at automatically extracting application-specific signatures by processing the first 200 bytes of the first few packets. Although this work is novel from a pure conceptual perspective, the practicality of such a framework is still questionable in many aspects. First, it has been tested on only a very few well-known applications such as FTP, POP3, IMAP, HTTPS, HTTP, SMTP and SSH. Thus, it is not clear how well it will perform in a more application-enriched environment. Second, its underlying algorithms require offline training on the set of applications that one is interested in detecting. Thus, it is not capable of recognising ‘zero-day’ applications but it is still based on the network operator’s knowledge of which applications are on the wire. Most importantly, it is required to go over a manual and tedious process of generating traffic with the set of applications he is interested in to properly train ACAS. The ultimate training of ACAS on these “never seen” applications must be executed in a controlled and clean lab environment. ACAS may suffer high false-positive rates for these new applications due to the discrepancy in environments, (for example, a clean and controlled lab for offline training and an enriched and more complicated real network for online application classification).

inspection appliances, while a majority of them have access only to traffic flows extracted directly from the routers, either sampled or un-sampled. To overcome these two fundamental problems of packet content inspection appliances, research has focused on a new family of techniques called ‘flow-featuresbased analysis.’ The common goal of these techniques is to identify which application class a traffic flow belongs to when using traffic flow information only.

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The shortcomings These techniques achieve the flow-application class mapping by extracting and analysing hidden properties of the flow, either in terms of ‘social interaction’ of hosts engaged in such a flow or the spatial-temporal behavior of several flow features. These features range from flow duration and number and size of packets per flow to inter-packet arrival time. A variety of more sophisticated data mining algorithms have been proposed on top of

such framework, such as supervised and un-supervised machine learning, clustering and graph-theoretical approaches. These help increase the detection rate while decreasing the false-positive rate. However, these techniques lack a fundamental attribute that make them impractical from an operational perspective—a precision identification of the application responsible for the observed flow in contrast to packet content inspection techniques. This is a fundamental question to answer, as today’s network operators must know the nature—legitimate or malicious—of any single bit of information flowing through their pipes. Furthermore, as the application classification process might still be prone to classification errors, these techniques are not reliable for content billing or for robust application security. The ideal solution should leverage the merits of the packet content inspection techniques by guaranteeing high accuracy in classifying applicationspecific traffic, while providing the robustness of the flow-based behavioral analysis techniques.

Know your cyber world While governments have increasingly expressed their concerns about the cyber threat to public safety and national security, we still have not done enough to shed light on the cyber world and its users. The cyber infrastructure must not be thought of as just the physical infrastructure made of optical fibers, servers and routers. Rather, it is about protocols, applications and services being used to enable communications among any number of end points (users). We must discover who is behind a nickname, Mac or IP address, or VoIP number—perhaps by using biometric techniques to profile users’ communication as they access the cyber world. Reconstructing today’s missing links between the cyber ID and the real person will make the cyber world a safer place to visit.

The author is CTO at Narus Inc and has vast experience in Internet protocols, optical (WDM) networking, mobile and wireless space

Edu Tech December 2009

case study | Meru Cabs

First IT lanes,

highway now

Meru vroomed past early challenges with in-house IT engines and was quick to use fullblown ERP when volumes swelled By Shashwat D C

n 2007, when Meru Cabs first started its cab operations in Mumbai, there was skepticism on the roads; it was not the first time that such a service was being introduced in Mumbai. Yet, all earlier attempts had fizzled out mainly due the non-viability of the operations from an economic viewpoint. The urban spread of the city, the presence of numerous small-time cab operators, and the sheer dominance of the black-yellow taxiwallahs presented a huge challenge for the radio taxi operator. Meru’s strengths came from it being a professionally managed company with capital infusion from a private equity fund. The management at Meru decided

The technology Hardware: Sun T6340 blade servers with UST2+ processors OS: Solaris 10 Consolidation: Solaris 10 virtual containers or logical domains (LDOMs) made it possible to consolidate 18 server instances on six physical blades High Availability: Active/Passive cluster was used for databases and applications with Solaris Cluster Suite 3.2. Siebel’s internal load balancing capability was used to load balance requests on Siebel web server Storage: EMC fiber channel storage area network was used with multi-pathing for redundancy on connectivity with the hosts Backup: Symantec Netbackup was used with Sun’s Tape Library for backing up all the servers

The team Sourav Das (Sr Manager, Infrastructure) Merene Gomez (Manager, Application Support)

Key learning

n There is a saying ‘failing to plan is planning to fail’. Meticulous planning during the initial stage is critical for a large scale ERP deployment, something that helped Meru a great deal during the project

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NILESH SANGOI, CTO, Meru Cabs

photo: jiten gand hi

n Since configuration of applications like Siebel and Oracle EBS on a cluster environment is a specialised skill, take external help for implementation

Meru Cabs | case study to tackle the business issues with the help of using technology innovatively. So they launched a whole fleet of GPS/ GPRS luxury sedans that could be hired by calling a single multi-line number. The bet on technology paid off quickly. After starting with some 46 cabs in Mumbai, today the company runs close to 5,000 cabs in four cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad. But the exponential growth also brought along with it the issues of scale. Almost suddenly the call volumes breached the roof. This posed operational problems, as until about a year ago most of the systems of the company, developed in house, were working in silos.

“Standardising processes and using a single, integrated system will help us increaseproductivity and improve service levels” — Rajesh Puri, CEO, Meru Cabs

Merene Gomez Manager, Application Support

Sourav Das Sr Manager, Infrastructure

After much deliberation, the management in consultation with the technology leader at Meru, CTO Nilesh Sangoi, decided to implement a complete suite of ERP with various business applications that could be customised for specific needs. The decision to implement an ERP was certainly not as easy as it sounds, because much of the transactions carried out were in cash. The decision was taken some time in June 2009.

The solution PwC was appointed to document processes and convert them into a comprehensive RFP to be circulated to various ERP vendors. Ultimately after much deliberation the team selected Oracle’s E-Business Suite ERP solution for its Financial, HR and Fleet Management needs, Siebel for Subscriber Management and Ad-sales, Oracle Business Intelligence for Analytics and Oracle SOA suite for integration between these applications. Once Meru decided on implementing the solution, the first thing done was to identify a consultant, which was when Accenture was brought into the project. The team worked hard on defining what was to be achieved and how, as part of the project scope document. Next the scope and requirements were defined, the technical team analysed and evaluated different solutions that were available. The infrastructure team was assigned the responsibility of setting up a highperformance, high-availability hardware infrastructure for this project. The biggest challenge faced by the team was the sheer scale and the novelty, as the entire infrastructure in terms of hardware, a high-availability load balancing OS cluster, installation and configuration of the application suite, was relatively new to Meru’s environment. An ERP core team was created consisting of people from various departments and Accenture to arrive at the proposed transaction volume and load in the foreseeable future. Based on this, a high availability and load balancing OS cluster for various applications was designed in

conjunction with Sun. It took a good amount of time, with some help from external solution architects, to finally arrive at the right size and design for the architecture, keeping in mind future performance, stability and high availability of the system. Similar challenges were faced during the implementation phase and after a month-long effort the infrastructure was made ready for production use. Multiple instances of applications like Production, Pre-prod, UAT and development were created. The toughest challenge was to complete the entire ERP project within a very short timeline of nine months. This meant that only two months were available for setting up the complete infrastructure.

The rewards The system is now fully up and running. The single biggest benefit of the integrated ERP system is to help Meru in consolidating applications and bringing much better operational efficiencies in the business. The systems have been sized to handle the business scale up for next four to five years. The company is now looking at raising the ante, by looking at analytics. Not only the technical team, even the CEO Rajesh Puri seems to be enthused by the implementation. “I am excited about strengthening and combining all systems together into a single, integrated software program that runs off a single back-end system, so that the various departments can more easily share information and communicate with each other,” he says. “Standardising those processes and using a single, integrated system will help us increase productivity and improve service levels,” he adds. “Meru Cabs has always been an innovator in the radio cab service space, and we are proud to be the only cab service company in the world to implement ERP systems in our organisation. Implementing ERP systems shall have tremendous payback for Meru Cabs and will help us to grow even faster,” Puri states with a touch of pride.

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interview | Selina Lo

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Selina Lo | interview

“it’s time to switch over to 802.11n”

Photo graph y: ji te n ga ndhi

In India, Ruckus Wireless has been most noted as the technology provider behind wireless broadband player Tikona Digital Networks. Selina Lo, CEO, Ruckus Wireless, was in Delhi recently to give fillip to the company’s growth plans in the country. She spoke to Shubhendu Parth at length on how Ruckus technology betters standard Wi-Fi and how that makes IT managers’ work simpler. Excerpts:

With the Wi-Fi Alliance ratifying the standards for 802.11n in September 2009, do you expect enterprises to make a major shift towards the wireless environment? Why? Absolutely! And this is already underway. With the explosion of wireless-enabled devices hitting the market, there is a pent up demand for better and faster wireless connectivity. With the popularity of mobile Internet applications growing by the day, enterprise environments are becoming much more dynamic and mobile in nature. This is driving interest in new technologies such as 802.11n. However, three primary roadblocks—price, performance and standardisation—inhibited the mass adoption of 802.11n. But, with 802.11n now ratified as an

IEEE standard, we have eliminated both the price and performance barriers. Ruckus Wireless has recently introduced a new line of enterprise access points that, for the first time, has brought the price of 802.11n to under US $500 with performance that can clearly beat higher-end products. In the last quarter, worldwide revenue shipments of 802.11n products surpassed 802.11g products and continue to rise quickly.

How does the dual-band and QoS tagging support that 802.11n provides make a difference? Will that make an IT manager’s job any easier? Because dual-band 802.11n provides support in both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, IT managers are better able to support a wider range of applications from wireless meshing to high capacity

environments. The 5GHz radios can be used to establish wireless mesh connections to build a wireless backbone. This eliminates having to cable every access point to an Ethernet connection—making deployment much simpler. IT managers need only find a power source, plug the AP in and walk away. At the same time, the 2.4GHz radio can be used to service client traffic. When combining the attributes of dual-band 802.11n with advanced quality of service techniques, smart antenna arrays and tagging, IT managers can now begin to support latencysensitive applications much better such as streaming IP-based video, voice and other multimedia applications.

While a group of experts have been suggesting that 802.11n can truly replace

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interview | Selina Lo an enterprise’s Ethernet, most of the others have been advocating for a mixed network. What is your take on this? 802.11 will never fully replace a wired network. While it might eliminate pulling Ethernet cable to every cube or office, wired connections will still be required. However 802.11n, when combined with enhancements such as dynamic beamforming that dramatically increases the reliability of the medium, will become the primary access method for the enterprise over time. Because of Wi-Fi’s instability, it has always been viewed as a backup or secondary means of connectivity. But with more mobile devices that don’t have Ethernet jack and more robust implementations of Wi-Fi, such as from Ruckus Wireless that increases both the range and reliability of Wi-Fi connections, 802.11n will undoubtedly become the primary means of connecting to a network with Ethernet cabling now becoming the backup. Ruckus has the patent for multicast-to-unicast conversion of video on wireless LANs. How can the enterprises benefit from it? Within the enterprise, delivering streaming video and other broadcast applications are often best served through multicast transmissions. It’s projected that over the next two years, video will become the dominant application over enterprise networks. Multicast-to-unicast conversion is essential for delivering streaming video content over Wi-Fi. The 802.11 protocol inherently treats multicast traffic as best effort traffic only, giving it no priority or preference. By automatically converting this traffic to unicast, IT manager can now be confident that streaming video over Wi-Fi

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will actually work properly without a lot of configuration, optimisation and tuning of the network.

Can you elaborate on how exactly does the Smart Wi-Fi technology works? Smart Wi-Fi works by leveraging advancements in Wi-Fi technology such as miniaturised intelligent antenna arrays and RF signal control software to increase the range and reliability of wireless communications. Smart Wi-Fi works by focusing and directing Wi-Fi transmissions over the best performing signal path for each client and constantly “steering” or “switching” these transmissions when interference or obstacles that impede performance as experienced. By focus-

“By combining attributes of 802.11n with smart antenna arrays, IT managers can support latencysensitive applications better” ing Wi-Fi “beams” and steering them around interference, enterprises realise much better performance at longer distances. It also dramatically reduces packet loss and brings in the ability to confidently support latency-sensitive applications over Wi-Fi such as IP-based voice and streaming video. Consequently, enterprises can deploy fewer access points that yield more stable and consistent performance for a given area. This reduces both capital

Selina Lo | interview

“We are able to extend carrier-class technology into enterprise class products at a much lower cost” controlled bursts of packets and measuring both packet loss and inter-arrival times. The primary results reported are number of packets lost, total packets received and detailed throughput statistics. Because Zap provides a measure of both throughput and consistency over time and distance, it has particular importance to streaming video, voice and other latency-sensitive applications.

and operational expenses. Additionally, the Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi technology supports advanced meshing techniques that effectively eliminate the need to run an Ethernet cable to every Wi-Fi access point. This further reduces operational cost and complexity and cuts deployment time up to half.

You recently released Zap as an open source tool for analysis of video traffic over the wireless LAN. How will it help the ecosystem? Ruckus has a philosophy of sharing useful tools and applications that help customers optimise their wireless networks. Zap is the first proof of point of this philosophy—and there will be more. Zap helps the larger wireless ecosystem by providing a useful, free tool for anyone interested in characterising the behaviour of their wireless infrastructure. It was developed specifically for wireless networks. While IxChariot and NetPerf are good tools for determining average (50%) throughput, they are expensive and don’t do the best job in sampling to the 99.5 percentile. It works by sending

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

The company claims to have breached the US $1 per Mbps price over performance barrier in the 802.11n space. Has the product been launched in India? What is the cost? With ZoneFlex 7300 series, Ruckus Wireless has made enterprise class Wi-Fi more affordable for its customers in India and globally. This is the first sub-US $500 enterprise-class 802.11n access point, comprising both single-band (7343) and dual band (7363) products. The products are priced at US $499 and $599 respectively. With maximum 802.11n capacity of 300Mbps (single band) or 600Mbps (dual band), the ZoneFlex 7300 has been measured to deliver unpar-

alleled throughput of 210Mbps at short ranges (10 to 20 feet) and over 120 Mbps at longer ranges (60 to 100 feet) within a typical, walled office environment— making it the industry’s lowest cost, highest performing line of 802.11n access points. Unlike any other 802.11n access points, Ruckus ZoneFlex access points integrate BeamFlex, a patented software-controlled multi-antenna array that forms and directs Wi-Fi signals over the best performing signal paths in real time, on a per packet basis. As RF environments change, Ruckus ZoneFlex APs are able to automatically select better signal paths to increase performance and minimise packet loss, thereby ensuring good, consistent user experience. In contrast, access points with omni-directional antennas have difficulty coping with obstacles and interference and must resort to dropping their data rate. This degrades performance for all users sharing an access point.

So, how do you compare Ruckus solutions to those from the likes of Cisco, D-Link, Aruba, Proxim and others who have been there in the Indian market for a long time? Compared to other wireless vendors, Ruckus offers unique advantages that remain unmatched in the marketplace. Our wireless LAN system is typically half the cost of comparable systems from Aruba, Cisco, Proximate and others—delivering two to three times the range, twice the performance at half of the cost. We are the only wireless supplier that integrates a patented smart antenna array and supports dynamic beamforming to enable unprecedented performance at longer distances. This unique value proposition has allowed us to win some of the largest deals in India.

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Tech for telecom

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tech for telecom

Outsourcing for

value

Putting the right mix of non-core IT functions in the vendorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s basket can drive benefits for both the parties BY Jat i n d e r S i n g h

Photo graph y: photo s.c om

ith over 600 million cellular subscribers, Indian telecom industry is today also considered to be one of the most competitive, globally. The mobile-led telecom revolution has given the country No. 2 position in terms of number of subscriptions, but the remarkable growth is also accompanied with its own set of challenges for operators, when it comes to maintaining profitability. With over a dozen operators in the fray, the competitive landscape has become tough, leading to ever falling tariff rates and diminishing ARPUs (average revenue per user). In order to remain more competitive, operators are finding it important to stay focused on their core business. So they are more open to outsource operations like network management and customer service to players like Ericsson, Nokia-Siemens, Alcatel-

8.27

India has an addressable US$

managed services opportunity by 2013, basis a CAGR of 19% Source: Forrester Research

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Tech for telecom

Getting it right sourced Service Level Agreements: With security and efficiency of their network operation at stake, telecom companies should look for vendors that understand their business and provide clear and competitive pricing, easy-to-understand contracts, and guarantees mapped to realistic performance expectations. Flexibility: Contracts should be flexible enough to upgrade to different classes of service or service-level agreements (SLAs) as needed. Also, services that span a range of national or international connectivity options and are scalable for the long term, allowing easy, low-cost upgrades to support evolving application needs should be considered. Total cost of service: It is imperative for companies to analyse the total cost of the service over the course of the SLA. Charges for service changes or work done outside normal business hours, in addition to initial up-front expenses, can add up to the overall cost. Details: An SLA should communicate shared expectations regarding service levels, including installations and changes. What exactly will the provider control and where? Will the equipment reside on the provider’s premises or enterprise’s? What reports and information will be available to the company and how often? How will the provider respond to problems and how quickly? How does the provider measure network failures and what compensation is available when they occur? All these details should be properly discussed. By Vikram Sharma, VP (SP), Cisco India & SAARC

Lucent, IBM, Wipro, and TCS. According to industry experts, many Indian operators are unable to match the global experience and skill set required for managing IT and network operations internally. More so because in the wake of a rapidly growing telecom market, it is extremely difficult to stay updated on new technologies and frequently changing IT applications, while focusing on new revenue opportunities. Looking back, it was the $750 million Bharti-IBM revenue sharing deal, where the idea of IT outsourcing took seed for the Indian telecom fraternity. The 10-year deal has recently crossed the US $2.5 billion mark and has been hugely success and beneficial for both Bharti and IBM. Later on, Bharti also outsourced some of its other critical operations to Ericsson and Siemens. Very soon, other Indian operators also took the outsourcing route, sometimes even before launching their services.

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Experts feel that what turned out to be a fruitful preposition for Bharti and a few others may not necessarily be rewarding for all other operators. Amit Goel, Consultant at Infosys feels “It’s not just about outsourcing but how much strategic value is left after outsourcing that one should watch for. Bharti has huge experience of managing the business so they became successful.” Says Amit Ravankar, head—Pre-sales and Operations, VAS, SDP and mobility solutions at Tata Consultancy Services, “When it comes to outsourcing, the cost advantage will come only if they know what to outsource, how to outsource, whom to outsource and at what costs. If they get the answers to these, they have got the best deal. Telcos will have to maintain team of people who will be overlooking the activities of the outsourcing partner.” “This team will have to be at least as important as their core activity operations team, as they will be the ones who will be controlling costs and yet deriving values. Not many players have understood this whole dynamics yet. Whoever has is deriving profits from the outsourcing,” Ravankar added.

No rigid rules

“Telcos should look for vendors who understand their business and provide clear and competitive pricing” —Vikram Sharma, VP (SP), Cisco India & SAARC

Much alike any other business, telecom companies are also expected to take a holistic view before outsourcing their IT infrastructure. Though it may appear to be an easy way of keeping operational costs low, it is important to see that anything strategic is not outsourced, say billing, for example. For any telecom company, composing bills and presenting those to customers is an important way of direct interaction between the company and the end-user and hence, the decision of outsourcing the function should not be taken in a hurry. On the other hand, application management and systems are mostly touted as non-strategic and can be considered as perfect candidates for outsourcing. “There are no clear answers under current scenario where entire telecom industry is struggling to retain margins

tech for telecom and sustain in the market. A few telecos took this route and created rules and other just followed them,” says Ravinder Dagar, Manager, Prepaid Operations at Aircel. Notably, it was to bring down operational costs that telcos started outsourcing. “We want to have quality vendors but after hiring them we squeeze them year on year under a cost-cutting agenda. This leads to poor quality, bad relation between the company and the vendor, and bad quality of service for the subscriber,” says Dagar. “However, not all the processes can be outsourced,” adds Dagar. Operators have realised the importance of having tasks such as provisioning, implementation, configuration, support and ongoing operations managed by an outside party that specialises in these functions, while concentrating on their core area. According to a recent Forrester Research report, India promises a US $8.27 billion managed services opportunity by 2013, with a CAGR of 19%. However, as per Richard Curtis, ICT consultant for Beyond Solutions, outsourcing a complete IT function has historically been a failure for telcos and many have bought the function back in house and in some cases cycled through the outsourcinginsourcing process again.

Newer challenges In the next wave of growth, is the mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) model expected to change things? “Outsourcing has been so successful that Bharti is thinking of elevating the business to the level of focusing only on the business... being very close to MVNO-type model,” says Sathya Narayanan, Solution Architect at Ericsson. “Such daring and innovative strategies are needed to fight a fair battle in the already competitive market, culminating in the long run into a market that is favourable to the enduser,” Narayanan added. Also, the emergence of new

“With operators looking for more info on consumer behaviour, we can see a rise in the use of business analytics tools”

“Operational cost versus RoI is the most critical factor that determines the need to outsource”

—Kamlesh Bhatia, Principal Research Analyst, Gartner

—EVS Chakravarthy, CEO, You Broadband & Cable India

technologies like 3G and WiMAX will compel operators to look for better alternatives for technology alignments. “3G and/or WiMaX will be enabling new types of applications. In the wake of dwindling ARPUs, operators will want more information related to consumer behaviour and hence we can see business analytics tools being demanded,” says Kamlesh Bhatia, Research Analyst at Gartner. In addition, for greenfield operators like Datacom, Uninor and Loop Telecom, the success in the market is largely driven by lower cost structure, competitive service bundling and fast adaptability to changing requirements. Many of these new entrants would not even want themselves getting into the detailed analysis of technology as they would see themselves more as retailers of services. In fact, they may not even want to own a network and

have little interest in running giant IT systems either. Such companies therefore need to outsource key functions because they simply may not have the in-house expertise. “Operational cost versus RoI is the most critical factor that determines the need to outsource a function or activity. At You Broadband, we measured the return from running the call centre function using in-house resources and decided to outsource it,” says EVS Chakravarthy, CEO at You Broadband & Cable India. Experts also note that there are so many modes of ‘outsourcing’ today that some are becoming less popular while others are gaining ground. “There are also regional trends. The US, for example, traditionally always outsourced more BSS/OSS than Europe as we tended to prefer COTS. You are seeing BTO models in Africa and

m a y 2 0 1 0 | it next

Tech for telecom

Major deals

According to a research by ValueNotes, outsourcing of services in this sector is expected to reach US $620 million by 2012

Date

Telecom operator

Vendor

Deal Description

Nov 2009

Uninor

Genpact

Genpact to set-up customer service solution centre for operator in North India using its centre in Jaipur

Apr 2008

BSNL

Convergys

Convergys to support BSNL’s 18 million wireline subscribers. BSNL will replace its legacy billing systems with the Convergys’ Infinys rating and billing solution

Jan 2008

Aircel

Wipro

Wipro to support IT infrastructure for Aircel in India. The nine-year deal is estimated at $450 to $600 million.

Sep 2007

BSNL

TCS

TCS to develop a billing system for BSNL The deal covers the North and West of India, includes deploying operational support systems and business support systems components such as CRM, billing, mediation and directory enquiry. The nine-year deal is valued at $140 million.

July 2007

Vodafone

IBM

IBM to manage all of Vodafone Essar’s IT operations with the exception of network service platforms. It also includes maintaining billing, data centers and financial systems. The tenure of the contract is five-years and is estimated value of the deal is $600 to $800 million

Mar 2007

Idea Cellular

IBM

IBM to integrate Idea’s business processes, IT and IT infrastructure. About 70-75% of the Idea’s total headcount will be moved to IBM. The vendor will also provide technology to handle billing and credit collection, manage frauds and customer relationships. This 10-year deal is estimated to be valued at $600 to $800 million.

April 2004

Bharti Airtel

IBM

Airtel outsourced its operations to IBM which started at $750 million and now reached $2.5 billion

Source: ValueNotes/IT Next Research

Middle East where a company runs your solution for you on an interim basis and transfers skills over time so you can run it yourself,” says Teresa Cottam, Director of Research and Publications at Babworth. “You may also fully outsource to such a company because it makes sense as the skills required are so specialised,” Cottam adds. “Outsourcing like roaming data exchange through a clearinghouse is pretty standard for a lot of operators.

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Then there are those disciplines where there are skills shortages and outsourcing to an expert company might be your only option,” Cottam further commented. To ensure quality of service (QoS) at all times one has to regularly verify systems and tools used, analyse various reports on network uptime, and ensure that SLA norms are being met. It is also important to determine that resources are deployed adequately and best practices are being followed across systems.

There is no formula for outsourcing. The decision has to be based on the local market conditions, business model, and customer expectations. As an example, one may decide to support customers based on ARPU, with lowARPU customers being redirected to self-service or outsourced call centres while high-ARPU customers are given premium customer service. Find similar stories online on the website www.itnext.in/vertical

15minute manager

training Education workplace compensation workforce trends skills development personal development

I maging: santos h kus hwaha

Asanas For back pain

Page 48

Leadership Have a team, not a hero this page Manage IT Getting your data card right page 49 Unwind 5 steps to a great vacation Page 50

By Thej e n d r a B S

f you have the habit of reading business magazines, management books or articles you will definitely encounter countless references about super performers or hyper efficient employees that exist in various organisations, departments and teams. Of course, the definition of a super performer is a subjective term that can vary from manager to manager or from company to company, and can be quite varied based on their personal experiences. And that picture can range from someone who is super fast at everything, a noisy person, a flamboyant person, someone who has all the answers, the managementâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s blue eyed boy, a jargon emitting person, a go-to person, or even someone who always comes to office very early and leaves very late, and so on. Yet, going by the job advertisements of organisations today, a super performer is someone who meets (or claims to meet) the fancy criteria like below (based on real sentences picked from some newspaper advertisements). lâ&#x20AC;&#x201A; We are looking for high value employees dedicated to delivering innovation to assist our clients in high performance delivery. The employee must be a class of his own and raise his or her sights above the horizon. We are looking for super efficient leaders who have

Leadership

Have ateam, not a hero Promoting super performers in an unbalanced way can do more harm than good for the team work and morale m a y 2 0 1 0 | it next

15-MINUTE MANAGER

it next | M a y 2 0 1 0

Office Yoga

By Dr Naveen Arya | aryansclinic@gmail.com

Asanas for BACK PAIN Functions of the low back, or lumbar area, include structural support, movement, and protection of certain body tissues. Symptoms in the low back can relate to the bony lumbar spine, discs between the vertebrae, ligaments around the spine and discs, spinal cord and nerves, muscles of the low back, internal organs of the pelvis and abdomen, and the skin covering the lumbar area. Treatment of low back pain is optimally directed toward a diagnosed or suspected specific cause.

80 Over

people experience back pain at some point in their lives, and slightly more men suffer from it than women

In the previous issue, we listed a couple of simple aasanas that can help relieve or prevent back pain. Here are a few more. Each pose should be held from five to ten seconds, depending upon your level of comfort, and should be done on a mat or other soft, supportive surface. Do remember that it’s best to do these exercises under the supervision of a certified yoga instructor. If you encounter any problems in between, you should consult an expert. WIND-RELEASING POSE: Lie flat on your back as in the corpse pose explained in the earlier issue. As you inhale, bend your knee, place your hands right below the knee, and draw your leg towards your chest. Your left leg should remain flat on the floor. Exhale and bring your forehead up to touch your knee. Inhale, and then as you exhale, return to your original position. Repeat the same, with the other leg. SAGE TWIST: Sit on the floor with both legs stretched out in front of you. Bend your right knee, lift your right leg over your left, and place your right foot on the floor next to your left knee. Sitting with spine straight, place your left elbow on the right side of your right knee. Bend your left arm so that your left fingertips are touching your right hip. At the same time, twist gently to look over your right shoulder; hold for a few seconds, release, and repeat on the opposite side. Caution: Take care not to twist too far or you risk aggravating any existing back pain. The author is a Ayurveda and Yoga expert and Director of www.ayurvedayogashram.com

Photo graphy: photo s.c om

The lumbar facts

Photo graphy: Jayan K Narayanan

the challenge to outdo themselves, and be a winner all the way. l We are looking for a person to lead, motivate and create a high performance team capable of continuous innovation and excellence in working for a global leader. l We are looking for candidates who are bubbling, energetic and invigorating to join a sales team of a global winner who can swim in an ocean of opportunities. Every manager will unquestionably agree that having a gang of such super performers in their teams would be a great thing. However, while having some performers may seem great, you will be surprised to know that they can gradually become your worst nightmare. Over time, and often unknown to you, they can do more harm than good and can slowly curdle or ruin an entire team consisting of normal to good performers. What I am saying may sound ridiculous, but wait till you have read through this: While being super efficient is not 1 a crime, a hyper performer can often make other team members (who work quietly without fanfare) look bad and inefficient, either intentionally or unintentionally. To understand this, just go back to your school and college days. Remember in school where a couple of smart kids would quickly shout answers before the other kids could even understand the teacher’s question. They were the class’s “knows it all.” And slowly those speed kids would become the teacher’s pets while the rest of the students would constantly be compared with them, leading to an icy jealousy. Similarly, super performers in a team can corrode the manager’s opinion of others as they will invariably be compared against the heros. But people hate being compared with others as it will make them look inferior and dull. This in turn kills teamwork, collaboration and can lead to internal politics. Many will argue that having a 2 super performer in a team can be great source of inspiration for other team members. But the reality is far from this assumption. Just like the omnipresent sibling rivalry among

15-MINUTE MANAGER kids, a super performer in a team of coworkers will soon be viewed as someone who is hogging all the limelight and the manager’s attention or affection, while others are automatically viewed as morons being unable to do work as efficiently as the super performer. Constant success of this type is a guaranteed way to gain unpopularity. Apart from the usual feelings of envy it can also lead to fear among co-workers. So team members will start viewing the super performer as a danger to their survival rather than an inspirational soul. Managers will intentionally (or 3 unintentionally) start diverting all the juicy jobs to the super performers and the routine or mundane work to others, thereby depriving them to get ahead or get involved. Team members will start feeling they are getting unequal amount of the manager’s attention and responses. Appreciation can be intoxicating 4 and addictive. Once high performers get continuous attention and appreciation the natural tendency is to seek activities and tasks that can earn them more and more limelight or

rewards. So they will start invading into other team members’ territories and even start finding fault in the way others work. They could also start showing off how they could handle the same job better, and start giving unwanted suggestions, thereby making other team members look stupid. And in many cases, super performers in their desire to remain at the top will start grabbing ideas and pieces of work (or even entire work) from others, thus depriving others of their rightful share of the workload, or maybe even make them lose their job. Like a child that gets bored of 5 every toy within hours or days and expects its parents to buy a new toy, super performers by nature are restless individuals constantly seeking new activities that will excite them. But a manager or an organization cannot find or invent exciting work perpetually to keep their super performers happy. And because of the halo surrounding them and the holy throne on which they sit, they will be unwilling to do ordinary, mundane and routine work that is essential in any department. Hence

Manage IT

Getting your data card right As the pre-3G era continues to drag on, CDMA still edges out GSM when it comes to USB-based wireless Internet By Shash wat D C

super performers will refuse, avoid or quietly offload such activities to their co-workers as they start believing such menial activities are to be done only by the lesser mortals. This can lead to various workload conflicts. As you can see from the above, you have as much to fear about super performers as you have to fear about inefficient and troublesome workers. And such things could be happening right under your nose and just waiting to explode at the most inconvenient time. However, if you can recognise the smoke signals early and apply the necessary balances periodically then you can ensure that everyone in the team can contribute to their potential without stepping on others’ toes. Finally, at the end of the day one should understand that super performers can shine and bloom only because bad, normal and good performers exist around them. And we can conclude this article with a quote that says, “Either super competence or super incompetence may be offensive to an establishment.” The author is IT Manager at ANZ OTSS

etting a new broadband connection is much like procuring a new mobile connection. No matter how much discretion or research is put in, in the end organisations don’t necessarily get what they expect. The story is not much different when it comes to buying a USB-based wireless Internet connection, the plug-andplay broadband solution that is quite common these days. While all service providers, including Reliance, Tata, Airtel, Vodafone MTS, claim to provide the best service at the most affordable rates, one needs to take the claims with a pinch of salt. Essentially, there are four broad parameters on which one will evaluate a wireless broadband connection namely,

m a y 2 0 1 0 | it next

15-MINUTE MANAGER unwind

5 Steps to a great vacation

Vacationing to a destination that suits your choice and budget can be a great way of de-stressing and bringing back memories to be cherished for a lifetime. Putting a little bit of planning into it will make the experience all the more enjoyable and rewarding. Decide your vacation: Discuss with your family or group and decide what vacation you want to enjoy. Do you just want to get away from everything, or do you want to have a relaxed tour of a new and exciting place? Or, as many are discovering these days, do you want to dive deep and experience oneness with the nature?

Choose your destination: Do some research on locations that offer what you seek. In an age where every travel website features all prices, and every destination website features site photographs, the most effective research remains word-of-mouth. Talk to your friends and friends of friends, and it is likely you will chance upon a hidden gem. Talking to travel agents will also be useful.

Fix your budget: Account for things you can’t do without – like the travel and food, as well as the must-do experiences – like a day tour or an amusement park, or even essential shopping. What remains is your accommodation budget. Research and locate a place that fits your budget and offers clean rooms and decent service.

Experience the destination: Vacation for the well read traveller of today is more about actively enjoying the best experiences a destination has to offer and bringing back lasting memories. Research shows that the best way to de-stress is to immerse the mind and body into an enjoyable activity such as an active vacation. So it helps to dive into the local cuisine, and walk or cycle around. Photo graphy: Pradee p Murthy

Relax: Remember you are on vacation. Budget enough lazy time to put your feet up and relax, and for quiet conversation with your family and friends. Refuse to fret over the small things, adopt an island lifestyle and let things go at their pace. If you follow the previous tips, you will return with life-long memories.

By Pradeep Murthy, Co-founder MuddyBoots (www.muddyboots.in)

it next | M a y 2 0 1 0

speed, coverage, cost and service. But before we get into an actual comparison, let’s enumerate which are the products that actually fall in the category of wireless broadband. Like the mobile services, there are two variants of the wireless USB Internet—CDMA and GSM. While, Reliance Net Connect and Tata Photon are the most popular and preferred ones, they aren’t the only ones in the market. Airtel too has a similar GSMbased USB modem, Vodafone has a 3GConnect USB Stick, Idea has the Net Setter, Virgin has the V-Link (which rides on the Tata backbone), MTS has launched Mblaze and BSNL too has BSNL EVDO. Thus, there are plenty of options to choose from, though the common choices are Reliance, Tata, MTS and BSNL. By comparison, the speeds in case of Tata Indicomm and Reliance are better than Airtel, Vodafone and Idea cellular, largely because CDMA technology allows several users to share a bandwidth of different frequencies. Through multiplexing, CDMA employs spread-spectrum technology and a special coding scheme to allow multiple users over the same physical channel. GSM services, while good for calls, are not that great for data, especially for pre-3G networks. With 3G, however, things are expected to change. 3G allows simultaneous use of voice and data services and higher data rates, up to 14.0 Mbit/s on the downlink and 5.8 Mbit/s on the uplink with HSPA+. So for the moment we will only talk about the limited products and not all of them.

Speed claims When it comes to speed, both Reliance and Tata promise you heavenly delights; upload speed of 1.8 Mbps and download speed of 3.1 Mbps. Thus, technically, if you were downloading a 1 GB film (from a registered site, of course), it should take you round about 6 minutes, right? Wrong. Because what’s advertised is not necessarily delivered. The 3.1 Mbps and 1.8 Mbps are hypothetical limits, much

15-MINUTE MANAGER

By comparison, the speeds in case of Tata Indicomm and Reliance are better than Airtel, Vodafone and Idea cellular

Photo graphy: photo s. co m

As far as coverage is concerned, BSNL seems to be a better choice considering the robust network it has across India like the 150 km mark in the Maruti Cars. The car will not achieve that speed, as there are numerous factors in play. Similarly, your wireless broadband experience depends on where you are, and the time of day, which together determine how many users are there on the network. There are a few good online tools that allow you to test the actual speed of the modem, like http://www.speedtest. net/ or http://www.pingtest.net/. If you are able to touch a download speed of 1 Mbps too, consider yourself extremely lucky. So how do the providers compare, well last year one of the networking

news portals had done a nationwide comparison of Tata Photon and Reliance NetConnect (http://www.connectindia. in/posts/list/articles-reliance-datacard-vs-tata-photon-check-out-thenationwide-982142.htm), wherein they tested both the modems simultaneously in different cities. Reliance was the winner in the test. Going by the responses collated from different users, while Reliance NetConnect scores higher when it comes to speed, Tata Photon has not really lived up to its promise in this regard, it so appears.

Reach and coverage Ask any frequent traveller holed up in

distant hotel in Varanasi, what his or her most important criterion is, and he or she will surely quip: connectivity. Even to this day, when we go gaga on arrival of India on the global scene, net connectivity beyond the 4-5 major metros is pathetic to say the least. While all service providers put up valiant claims in terms of coverage, the reality is very different. As far as coverage is concerned, BSNL seems to be a better choice considering the robust network it has across India. Among the private operators, Tata claims coverage in 70 cities, while Reliance in around 40 cities and MTS Blaze in approximately 18 cities. Overall, among private operators, Reliance NetConnect scores better in terms of coverage provided in various cities, thanks to the dour fibre network that stretches across the length and breadth of the country.

After-sales service More often than not, one factor that is clinching when it comes to making

m a y 2 0 1 0 | it next

15-MINUTE MANAGER

training calendar Career booster courses for you

Program

Venue

Dates

Finance for Non Finance

NITIE Mumbai

May 03 – 07, 2010

IIM Ahmedabad

May 06 – 08, 2010

IMT Ghaziabad

May 06 – 07, 2010

Effective Leadership & Teamwork

IIT Kharagpur

May 10 – 12, 2010

Business Integration through ERP

IMT Ghaziabad

May 13 – 14, 2010

Financial Modelling and Risk

IIT Kharagpur

May 24 – 27, 2010

IMT Ghaziabad

May 25 – 26, 2010

Developing International Business IMT Ghaziabad

May 27 – 28, 2010

Executives Customer Based Business Strategy Customer Relationship Management

Management Marketing Strategies for SMEs Strategies International Executive

INSEAD

Programme Asian International Executive

May 31 – June 18, 2010

INSEAD

Programme

May 31 – June 11, 2010

Negotiating Your Way to Success

IIM Kolkatta

June 01 – 05, 2010

Advanced Selling and Salesforce

IIM Lucknow

June 04 – 06, 2010

IIM Kozhokode

June 07 – 09, 2010

High Impact Leadership

IIM Bangalore

June 21 –23, 2010

Advanced Management

INSEAD

July 5 – 30, 2010

Management Balanced Scorecard in practice - Process, Methodology & Techniques

Programme

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a purchase decision is the after-sales service. How well does the company resolve your problem and more importantly, what is the response time. In this regard as well, Reliance seems to have an edge. Not only are their call centers more proactive but they actually tend to resolve the issue over the phone. Tata’s case is a wee bit less assuring, as till recently there was only a national tollfree on which one could reach its representatives. Again, the state-owned operator BSNL is also fairly okay, though it can at times be slow. Not much can be said about MTS, as it a much newer player and hasn’t yet covered the cities well enough.

The cost factor Beyond the acquisition cost, what really matters is the actual cost of using the service. Different players have various data plans to cater to user needs. As of now, both Tata and Reliance don’t have an unlimited plan in place. For instance, a Reliance user can get a maximum of 15 GB at the price of Rs 1,750 per month but if that is exceeded then users have to pay at the rate of Rs 2 per MB for additional usage. Similarly, a Tata Photon + user can get a maximum of 20 GB at the price of Rs 2,000 per month beyond which users have to pay at the rate of Rs 0.50 per MB. MTS provides flexible data plans which starts from Rs 198 per month. Also user can get full value Internet usage on recharge of Rs 299, Rs 699 and Rs 999. However, the state operator BSNL offers unlimited web surfing and download for post paid subscriptions while for pre paid subscriptions, 5 paisa per 100 KB plan is available. So overall, Reliance seems to be fare better on speed and service aspects, BSNL is a winner on the coverage and cost fronts. However, much like the mobile services, USB-based wireless Internet is also a very dynamic segment where quick changes are frequent. Therefore, it’s important to check the latest buzz in the market and the latest plans as well before buying.

Mobility

the big

How to live with a lost Blackberry? EXPERT PANEL

Satish Mahajan head IT - inf rastru ctur e, ray monds

The Situation...

Cut it from he re

Photo graph y: s ubhojit paul

“The movie was awesome,” said Rahul through the final munches of popcorn to his father, Ramesh Vasudeva as the credits to the three-hour epic rolled up. Vasudeva was treating his teenage son to a movie and dinner as part of the baby sitting exercise since his wife was on a business tour. While he was tired after a long day at his workplace, ConsCom, a leading consumer durable player, he had been looking forward to the movie break for a week now to get his mind off the challenges that awaited him at work in the days ahead. Vasudeva was in-charge of new products and was in the middle of applying the final touches to the design of a personal video player, the company’s first foray in the consumer electronics space. The product would be a big break for Vasudeva as he had driven the project from the very start. Post movie, the father-son duo sauntered to the pizza outlet to end their day on a high calorie note. Ready to leave after a hearty meal, Vasudeva 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.

Vishwajeet SINGH national Manager IT, fcm Travel solutions

tr madan mohan pr esident/managing partner, Br owne & mohan

lunged to his pocket so that he could ask his driver to get the car but he found the pocket empty. Panic gripped him, his Blackberry was missing. “Rahul, my phone is gone, look around,” he said and dashed to the pizza counter. His request if the pizza store boys had seen a Blackberry drew a negative. Rahul was asking the sales staff at the other counters that they had been to. The last time Vasudeva remembered seeing his phone was when he had bought the tickets. He had turned on the silent mode to enjoy the movie in peace. That was over four hours ago. “What have I done, all the product drawings and marketing plans are on the device.” The thought brought beads of sweat on his forehead. “Can I please use your phone,” requested Vasudeva to the theatre guy. He quickly dialled his number and heard the inevitable - “The number you are trying to reach is currently switched off. Please try again later.” “This can’t be happening to me, what if the phone reaches the wrong hands, what if…,” Vasudeva’s head was a whirlwind of doomsday scenarios.

m a y 2 0 1 0 | it next

the big q

the big questions... Is there a way to ensure that nobody is able to access the data on

? ?

Vasudeva’s lost Blackberry?

What should the company do to ensure safety of the huge company data and information on all its mobile devices?

Here are the answers... ‘HAVE REMOTE DATA ACCESS POLICY’ FIRST ANSWER

Satish Mahajan Head IT— Infrastructure, Raymonds About me: Tech leader with over two decades of experience, have worked with companies like Hinduja Group and ICICI Ltd, before joining Raymond

it next | m a y 2 0 1 0

The problem faced by Vasudeva is big but is also fairly common. In today’s hyper-connected world, security of the data in the mobile device is a critical requirement. Yet, even in these trying times, protecting the data is not that hard if you follow some ground rules. If an organisation is running Blackberry server one can put different restrictions on the device depending on the need and requirement. Coming to the issue faced by Vasudeva, I would make the following suggestions to him: n Stop the mobile services so that the mobile will not be accessible. n Provide the unique Mac ID of the Blackberry to the service provider so that if anybody tries to access the device the service provider can block the device and it becomes unusable. n If the Blackberry is controlled through the local server of the organisation then control becomes easier and activation can be completely disabled. n The Blackberry information can be completely erased if there were third party solutions ported on the device. n These are some of the methods practiced in the industry to prevent data access of the users though Blackberry.

second ANSWER Increase of storage capacity of the mobile devices has threatened the security of the data in the organisation. We are not really able to categorise the data as per its importance and create backup of the same. Encryption of the data is one of the easiest ways to handle this issue. But there are not many reliable ways available today to retrieve the data. So, it’s risky to encrypt the data if we are not able to restore back to normal form. One can have remote data access policy through Blackberry servers, where we can prevent deleting, copying or transferring of data in case of a loss of the mobile device. This is possible if and only if one know s the unique pin number of the device. Discourage user to store data on mobile devices like Blackberry and Windows mobiles so that minimum business data is available on mobile devices. This will help maintain the privacy of the data. . Some of the other standard practices are, frequently synchronize the data of the mobile devices with local laptops or desktops. This can be as frequent as daily, depending on the criticality of the data stored in mobile device. Also, important data should be backed to the local hard disk so that it can be made available in case of a loss. Many organisations follow a method of storing critical data at a central location with right access control and proper documentation so that data can be retrieved quickly in case of loss due to any reason..

the big q ‘ENCRYPT MOBILE DEVICE DATA’ FIRST ANSWER Unfortunately, as businesses’ reliance on technology continues to grow, risk factors are growing in tandem. I personally keep my important details on my phone but at the same time I always make sure that I religiously take care of the following precautionary measures to protect it. I would suggest the same to Vasudeva: 1. Protect the phone with a strong password, both for the device and the storage card. 2. Always encrypt your storage card, it is a MUST. 3. Don’t forget to synchronise your device on regular intervals with any primary or secondary device, it will at least make you feel relaxed even after losing your device. 4. If your data is very critical then use any third-party service to track and delete your data remotely. 5. If possible, try to physically mark your handset with personal information. This will greatly reduce the second-hand value of the mobile if it is stolen. 6. Record your IMEI: Every mobile phone has a unique 15-digit electronic serial number. Inform your operator and the police as soon as you lose it. 7. Don’t leave your device open to access (e.g. leaving Bluetooth or WiFi on). 8. Remove old SMS or emails on your handset that you don’t need any more.

Vishwajeet Singh National Manager – IT, FCm Travel Solutions About me: Tech professional with a management bent, have been associated with companies like Indiamart Intermesh Ltd. and Innoserv Systems prior to joining FCm

SECOND ANSWER As the number of such loses have increased, the options for handling such incidents have also grown. To minimize their potential privacy liability, companies need to: 1. Train employees and contractors to understand their responsibility in the protection of data assets. 2. Ensure that mobile devices are encrypted and that employees understand the organisation’s policies on downloading sensitive information and working remotely. 3. Make employees aware of the precautions that should be taken when travelling with laptops, PDAs and other data bearing devices. 4. Devices like laptop can be protected through different layers of authentication like, security chip, smart cards and USB tokens.

egy Strat

Securing mobile workforce e P o l i cy Orc h est rato r C e nte ra liz e d ma n ag e me n t Compr e h e nsive re po rtin g a n d au diting Irr ef uta ble pro o f o f protectio n

Host DLP Endpoint E nc ryption Pow erful full-disk, f ile, and folder encryption Strong access control Syn chronized password ch anges

Encrypted USB Standa rd, secure USB f l ash stroage

Contr ol ov er inter nal data tr ansfer

Driv erless zero footprint technology

Comprehensive device manag em ent

T wo-factor au thentication

Comprehensive device and data m anag ement

Secure token services

Multil ayered pr otection

G ranul ar controls

Source: Mcafee

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the big q

‘DO A REMOTE DATA SWIPE’ FIRST ANSWER Users with Blackberry Enterprise Solution have two options. They could ask their IT admin to remotely change the password. In case Vasudeva discovers the hadheld at home/in a car, he could just reset the Blackberry and he is up and running again. On the other hand, if the handheld is not traced and Vasudeva wants to ensure that data should not be accessed by anyone who found it, he should ask his IT department to do a remote data swipe.

SECOND ANSWER

TR Madan Mohan President/Managing Partner, Browne & Mohan About me: Consultant and academician, have been associated with Frost & Sullivan, Carleton University, IIM Bangalore

As with desktops, companies should adopt the same rules for mobile data protection like prevention and control. Formal risk analysis helps in risky incidents and mitigation strategies. Companies should go for device and memory card encryption, which does not require much user intervention. They should adopt stringent password protection and content protection procedures and insist that first-time users of a device set the password before devices are activated. Also, it should be ensured that passwords are changed frequently. Another important way of protecting the mobile device is by deploying anti-theft software, something that most companies must follow. From a control perspective, a clear password change and data swipe process needs to be defined. Finally, the users need to be made aware on the importance and criticality of such measures, and hence training to users on security aspects should be provided before handing down the device. Security is seldom a single solution or methodology, instead it is multi-pronged approach.

Notes NOTEs

More Resources

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Wireless data security: http://bit.ly/HRZqw Security behind Blackberry: http://bit.ly/bVXd52 How to access corporate data with BlackBerry: http://bit.ly/94bBWy

Edu Tech December 2009

cube chat | Binu Lakshman

Disciplined

doer

“I believe in creating opportunities from every situation of life,” says Binu Lakshman, Manager IT, Honda Siel Cars, India By Jatinder S i n g h

ost of us dream of creating a roadmap, which could be followed by others. Binu Lakshman, Manager IT, Honda Siel Cars has a slightly different

My sucess

mantra Put in your best foot forward and rest assured. Do not, however, forget that destiny does play a role as well.

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philosophy. “I walk my talk, both personally and professionally. I believe in creating opportunities from every situation of life” he says. Hailing from Kerala, Lakshman believes that he is an action-oriented person and loves taking up new challenges. For him, it is the long-term vision that differentiates the ratio of successes and failures. Elaborating on the qualities that an IT manager should have for a longer-term success, he says, “One should be able to see the big picture and align himself to organisational goals. Like

any other manager, he or she should be able to delegate, check and allow people to participate.” “IT managers should know what’s happening around. They should be up-to-date on trends in IT and should be able to communicate and sell their ideas to the board room,” he further adds. At present, he is involved with a supply chain optimisation project–Honda Dealer Order Management System–to help company meet the demand-supply gap by optimising the inventory. “It is integrated end-to-end with our upstream and downstream systems,” he explains. “The other projects I am currently involved with are outsourcing of facility management services and the managed print services, which will provide lot of added value to the organisation in terms of cost savings, and improved service levels,” he adds.

cube chat

Fact File Name Binu L akshman Current designatio n M anager IT, Honda S iel Cars, I ndia Current rol e M anaging the applic ation spac e, contri buting to strategic outsour cing, business proc ess reengineering and automation, and managing and leadi n g the team to achieve long-term goals of the organisation

Photo graph y: S hamik Bane rjee

“A good it manager should have strong team building abilities. He should encourage team members to think out of the box and innovate” Coming from a highly disciplined family culture, no wonder, he gets annoyed if something is not organised. “Any one and anything that is not organised irritates me the most. I get irritated by the infrastructure mess in our country and I get very irritated when I see people misusing and abusing nature and public property,” he says. IT apart, Lakshman loves long drives and playing cricket whenever he gets time. “I had played many tournaments, but I miss all that now. I also enjoy driving. Long drives with family are very relaxing, provided there is no traffic” he says. When asked about his role models, he smilingly says, “All my role models are from Bollywood: Amitabh Bachchan for

his never-say-die spirit and composure, which earns him the respect from the entire fraternity; Shah Rukh Khan for his hard work, dedication, determination and making all of us believe that nothing is impossible if you dream and Aamir Khan for the perfectionist he is.” So is he taking some inspiration to get into the next big thing—the CIO? “I believe in contributing to my profession and the IT community in the best possible manner and to the best of my ability, and want to see myself advancing in my career goals by taking new responsibilities” he says. “Yes, if the opportunity comes, I will accept it with open heart and mind,” Lakshman adds.

Ex pertise Su pply c hain, CRM , projec t managemen t Work experienc e 2003 – present Manager IT, Honda S iel Cars India 1998 -2003 Programmer Analyst, Visesh I nfosystems , Bangalore Edu c ation 2006 - 08 M C A, MD Universit y 2005 - 07 M.Sc ., MD U niversit y 1995 - 98 GNIIT from NIIT, Bangalore 1992- 94 BSc . (M aths), Kumaon U niversit y, Nainital Certifi cations Certified PM P Certified Qua lit y Professiona l

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update

off the shelf

A sneak preview of enterprise products, solutions and services

Fujitsu unveils cloud extension server The product replaces individual server nodes in case of a system failure and enables one replace faulty components offline

A-DATA releases USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive A-DATA Technology, a global DRAM memory and Flash application provider, has announced the shipment of NH01, a 2.5-inch portable hard drive for the India market. According to the company the product is equipped with the latest USB 3.0 interface, and is designed to deliver data transfer rates up to 88 Mbps in read and write that means three times faster than the conventional hard drives with USB 2.0 interface based on real-world test results.

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Other than its superior transfer speed, USB 3.0 also provides improved interaction between device and host computer to deliver enhanced energy efficiency.

Product Specifications Interface: USB 3.0 Storage Capacity: Up to 640 GB Warranty: 3 years Data Transfer Rates: 88 MB/s in read and 81 MB/s in write overall

Photo graph y: Jayan K Narayanan

Fujitsu has introduced the new cloud key features * Cool-central architecture extension server- Primergy CX1000 to * Helps reduce environmental meet the scalability requirements of datafootprints centers. According to the company, the * Internal chimney results in 40% product is ideal for cloud environments cost savings and help enterprises save 20% in power * Simple design concept and cooling costs when compared to a standard rack server assembly. The system uses the Intel Xeon processor 5600 series, to deliver high-speed processing power and also to have a cool-central architecture that saves space by removing the need for the datacenter “hot aisle” – the space behind racks where hot air is blown out of the back of running servers. The product features an internal chimney that funnels hot air through the top of the standard-size rack thereby allowing rows of Primergy CX1000 racks to be placed back-to-back, resulting in floor-space savings alone of up to 40%. The company claims that the product has a simple design and provides flexibility when it comes to replacing individual server nodes in case of a system failure. It also helps one replace faulty components offline.

The transfer speed has become increasingly critical for external storage devices in order to cope with the nowadays richer and larger-sized multimedia content. The company further informed that it takes only 4.6 minutes as opposed to 14.6 minutes via a conventional USB 2.0 interface, to transfer a typical 24 GB Blue-ray movie.

update

Hitachi launches external storage solutions Key Advantages Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi * Simple and high-speed USB GST) has unveiled its new range of external 2.0 interface storage solutions. The range includes portable * Preloaded backup software USB drive-SimpleTOUGH, which is water and * Up to 2TB capacity to store or shock-resistant, and the Hitachi X Series that backup includes the XL Desktop Drive and Mobile Drive. According to the company, the solutions are best suited for people on the move and SOHO users and provide easy add-on storage, effortless backup and restore capabilities making it easier for users to manage and protect data. The products have simple and high-speed USB 2.0 interface and are preloaded with the backup software, to enable users protect files and folders stored on their systems with a single click or automatically. The Hitachi XL Desktop Drive has up to 2TB capacity and a plug-and-play design. It gives both Mac and PC users enough capacity to store or backup 660,000 photos, 500,000 MP3 files or 153 hours of digital video. The Hitachi X Mobile Drive is cost-optimised and comes in the capacities of 500GB and 320GB.

Blue Coat Intros Carrier Caching Appliance Blue Coat Systems has launched a carrier appliance solution CacheFlow 5000 for large-scale bandwidth savings. This product specifically addresses escalating international and mobile backhaul bandwidth consumption and is targeted at regions where bandwidth is expensive and limited. This cloud-based service provides rules and instructions designed to fine-tune CacheFlow 5000 appliances to better address the changing Web and deliver consistent bandwidth savings. Using advanced caching technology, this new appliance helps scale service delivery to meet the burgeoning subscriber demand for online video, large file downloads and other Web 2.0 rich media content while improving subscriber experience. Â Â

Symantec intros enterprise protection suites Symantec has introduced its new protection suites, which will unify information security management across endpoints, gateways and servers; and deliver targeted protection for enterprises. As per the company, these new solutions are aimed to alleviate challenges of security administrators by bringing in simplicity and protection across the enterprise infrastructure in a seamless manner. The foundation of each of the new protection suites will be Symantec Protection Center, a single sign-on Web console that provides administrators full access to configuration management, report generation and dashboard views of the multiple Symantec protection technologies relevant to each suite. It will also provide consolidated access to threat, security and operational dashboards.

Key Advantages * Detachable antenna * Pure AP mode with full WDS * 802.11n technology * Six-level output power control capability * 64/128-bit WEP

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update

indulge

The hottest, the coolest and the funkiest next generation gadgets and devices for you

Presenting an eclectic mix of tech gadgetry to enliven your life, while you connected in the hyper universe. So, checkout the latest Sony Satio and play games on the Dell M11X. Go enjoy

CorbyPRO B5310 Dell Alienware M11x for Gamers

QWERTY key pad, 2.8 inch touchscreen, 3.15 MP camera, 16M colours, up to 16GB MicroSD, 3.5G connectivity

1.6-inch ultra portable, 4GB RAM, dual 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280M GPUs

Price: R s 13,900

Price: US $799

NEW Sony Ericsson Satio

HOT Samsung 3D TV Capability to convert 2 D pictures into 3D, impressive BD C6900 3D blue ray player, SSG 2100RB Active glasses

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Price: Up to Rs 4.35 l akh

ARM Cortex-A8 600 MHz chip, Symbian s60 OS, Wi-Fi enabled, Dual flash camera, live zooming options Price: Rs 36,950

Like something? Want to share your objects of desire? Send us your wish-list or feedback to editor@itnext.in

update

open Debate

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

How secure is the cloud?

Berjes Eric Shroff Manager – IT, Tata Services Ltd As the security models and standards are still emerging, security of cloud computing depends a lot on the offerings by the vendor. Each element of “CIA triad” of security needs to be addressed. Is there a secure or encrypted connection between the host and the client? Does the vendor offer data-atrest encryption? Are the country’s regulations being addressed? To sum up the situation, unless the vendor is offering the same security levels (or higher) than what one would have at their own remote data centre, it would not be advisable to store private and confidential data in the cloud arena, just as yet.

Rajiv Desai Manager – IT, Maharashtra Pollution Control Board Any organisation that wants to go with the cloud has to rely on the service provider for security. There is a great danger of the data being compromised. The question, which one needs to ask, is–can my company’s crucial data reside in the cloud? Looking at the present situation there very few “standards” that are followed by the cloud providers. There is however a default cloud security standard SAS 70 that needs to be followed, but nothing seems to be mandatory at the momentt. Till all the companies come together and resolve this piece, security will always be an issue.

Mario Fishery Manager – IT, American School of Business Data security is indeed a big issue for an enterprise when it comes to cloud computing. But with the right SLAs in place one can definitely secure the assets and move forward with cloud computing. Besides network security the thing that alarms me most is physical security. How well protected is your server farm from the threat of a terrorist attack? Is your server farm holding a mirror image in another country? How much time will it take to do a switch over? These are very important checks you need to make while selecting which service you will be using for cloud computing.

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

Dough will not die The Ascent of Money is as entertaining as it is informative Publisher : Penguin Books Price : Rs 200

Niall Ferguson had the guts to hammer out at Nobel laureate Paul Krugman in a public debate on macro-economics last year. And like in most arguments, there was no clear winner. Not losing was victory, said his supporters. Well, nobody ever disputes that Ferguson is one of the finest living financial historians in the world. The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World proves just that, yet again. His stellar work traces the rise of money and credit from ancient Mesopotamia to modern times. It delves into the growth of bond markets from the 13th century, role of some of the biggest market manipulators such as Nathan Rothschild. The rest of the book focuses on the emergence of stock markets, growth of sectors such as insurance, real estate and international finance. Starting off by taking a dig at the Marxian forecast that “money will disappear”, it concludes by saying that if financial markets are the mirror of mankind, “it is not the fault of the mirror if it reflects our blemishes as clearly as our beauty”. It is timely, and as readable because in writing history as entertainment, Ferguson is a master. IT NEXT Verdict This book is a fascinating account of how the current monetary system has evolved and is not only a must read for anyone interested to know about the financial system but also about history in general. Star Value:

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my log

Osama Manzar Founder-Director, Digital Empowerment Foundation

: an o

op pc

For the people

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3 Essential

Reads

INSIgHT | OpEn sOurcE

OpEn sOurcE | INSIgHT

FRee WAReS Dotcom’s 25 years have helped open-source tools mature decisively. Here are some useful picks for you

this is the Silver Jubilee year of “.com”—the omnipresent top-level internet domain that came into existence in 1985. A small Massachusetts-based computer maker Symbolics had the honour of registering the first .com. Today, according to an Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) study, there are over 80 million dotcoms registered. These dotcoms lead to economic benefits amounting to US $400 million, a number that is likely to double in the next 10 years, says ITIF. and dotcoms are not the sole domain names, as there are some 270 other so-called top level domain names including .net, .org, .edu, .mil, .gov and the domains for individual countries such as .in for India, .cn for China, and .ru for Russia. Now, with the mobile Web growing, a new breed of domain name, .mobi, has emerged. This spirit of sharing and collaborating that the Internet has fostered has also helped the Open Source Software (OSS) movement spawn and grow into a meaningful existence. The OSS movement more or less relies on the Web not only for its proliferation but also for its sustenance.

BY SHASHWAT DC

What better way to mark the 25th anniversary of the domain name system than to list 10 tools found on the Web that are open and that are free!

ONE

TWO

Operating system

Google applications

While microsoft has ruled the OS space on the desktop front, the story has been very different on the server side, with Unix and Sun Solaris being some of the powerful options. Ranging from Novell to Red Hat, companies around the world have opted for Linux derivatives to build their offerings. But now, Linux is becoming a stronger alternative on the desktop front as well. For the past few years, Ubuntu, a derivative of Linux, has been making inroads in the desktop space. A package consisting of a free OS and some basic productivity applications, Ubuntu more or less mimics the Windows or rather the Vista environment. It has steadily gained ground as software of choice for companies and professionals that are looking for easy-to-use open source options to Windows. And with the current release of Karmic Koala (Ubuntu version 9.10), the OS’ share is estimated to be anywhere between 40% and 50% of Linux desktops. Yet another compelling alternative to Windows on the desktop is expected to come in the form of Google’s Chrome OS, another big-ticket Linux derivative to be available in the second half of this year. Open source is getting better on the desktop!

Since larry Page and Eric Schmidt ventured into the online sphere in 1998 with Google; the innocuous search company has grown up to become the world’s largest Internet company. Google is now part of every Internet user’s life, with the name Google becoming a synonym for online search. However, Google is no longer about merely search and offers a host of services for both individuals and the enterprise users, both for free and for a fee. Google Apps continues to be one of the most innovative services from Google. It features several Web applications with similar functionalities to traditional office suites, including: Gmail, Calendar, Talk, Docs and Sites. Most of these services can be linked to a common Gmail login ID. Worth noting among other services is Google Analytics, a service that lets an individual or a company get an in-depth view of the efficacy of an online property. Recently,

LINKS

ubuntu.com | debian.com | mandriva.com

Google also released Buzz and Wave, online social networking tools and collaborative platforms that can also be used as much for work as for fun.

LINKS

also has plans to offer online storage service named Gdrive.

wave.google.com | buzz.google.com | desktop.google.com docs.google.com | adwords.google.com | google.com/analytics

THREE

LINKS

FOUR eRP Previously known as Tiny ERP, OpenERP is touted as a complete ERP for small and medium businesses. It’s a complete Open Source software with inbuilt modules for CRM and BPM. Other features include management and financial accounting, inventory management, sales, purchase human resource and project management. The software, released under General Public License (GNU), has a very modular character with more than 500 modules available with customisable reports.

LINKS

openerp.com/downloads.html

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10 Freewares ranging from online storage to Free OS for the IT managers to chose from Pg 28 INSIgHT | sEcurItY

sEcurItY | INSIgHT

KNOWING IS

A mechanism that can unravel the real persona of an alias is the way to keep cyber crime at bay BY DR. ANTONIO NUCCI

PREVENTINg

The Internet has become the central nervous system for our networked life. As a global network of loosely connected IP-based networks, it reaches everywhere and provides a common platform for communication to governments, businesses and consumers. With the Internet, however, a new kind of criminal has emerged—the cyber criminal. The pervasive nature of cyber crime today threatens loss of proprietary corporate information to the loss of life. Various forms of cyber crime have emerged, from predators exchanging child porn and scammers stealing identities to countries attacking countries.

the weak links Critical to the success of a network monitoring tool is its ability to accurately— and on a real-time basis—identify and categorise each flow of packets associated with a transaction and connection by application. Identifying network traffic using port numbers was the standard in the recent past. This approach was successful

newer threats Yet, recently several threats appeared to use this technique to hide their presence and break through firewalls and other security devices. The progress in hardware acceleration has allowed packet content inspection techniques to run at speeds as high as 40 Gbps and have made them the most commonly used approach to gain visibility into any Internet stream. Nevertheless, packet-inspection

PACKET-INSPECTION TECHNIQUES ONLY IDENTIFY TRAFFIC FOR WHICH SIGNATURES ARE AVAILABLE AND WORK IF FULL PACKETS ARE AVAILABLE AS INPUTS because many traditional applications used port numbers assigned by or registered with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). The accuracy of this approach, however, has been questioned because of the evolution of applications that do not communicate on standard ports. Many current-generation P2P applications use ephemeral ports, and in some cases, use ports of well-known services such as Web and FTP to make them indistinguishable to a port-based classifier. Techniques that rely on inspection of packet contents have been proposed to address the diminished effectiveness of port-based classification. These approaches attempt to determine whether or not a flow contains a characteristic signature of a known application. Studies show that such approaches work very well for today’s Internet

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Knowing is preventing A dossier on how to secure your organisation against cybercrime. Pg 32 CASE STUDy | mEru caBs

First it lanes,

HIGHWaY nOW

Meru vroomed past early challenges with in-house IT engines and was quick to use fullblown ERP when volumes swelled BY SHASHWAT DC

mEru caBs | CASE STUDy

to tackle the business issues with the help of using technology innovatively. So they launched a whole fleet of GPS/ GPRS luxury sedans that could be hired by calling a single multi-line number. The bet on technology paid off quickly. After starting with some 46 cabs in Mumbai, today the company runs close to 5,000 cabs in four cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad. But the exponential growth also brought along with it the issues of scale. Almost suddenly the call volumes breached the roof. This posed operational problems, as until about a year ago most of the systems of the company, developed in house, were working in silos.

tHe teCHnOLOGY Hardware: sun t6340 blade servers with ust2+ processors Os: solaris 10 consolidation: solaris 10 virtual containers or logical domains (lDOms) made it possible to consolidate 18 server instances on six physical blades High availability: active/passive cluster was used for databases and applications with solaris cluster suite 3.2. siebel’s internal load balancing capability was used to load balance requests on siebel web server

“STANDARDISING PROCESSES AND USING A SINGLE, INTEGRATED SYSTEM WILL HELP US INCREASEPRODUCTIVITY AND IMPROVE SERVICE LEVELS”

storage: Emc fiber channel storage area network was used with multi-pathing for redundancy on connectivity with the hosts Backup: symantec netbackup was used with sun’s tape library for backing up all the servers

tHe teAM

— Rajesh Puri, CEO, meru Cabs

sourav Das (sr manager, Infrastructure) merene Gomez (manager, application support)

KeY LeARninG  since configuration of applications like siebel and Oracle EBs on a cluster environment is a specialised skill, take external help for implementation  there is a saying ‘failing to plan is planning to fail’. meticulous planning during the initial stage is critical for a large scale Erp deployment, something that helped meru a great deal during the project

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nIlEsH sanGOI, ctO, meru cabs

pH OtO : JI tE n Ga nD H I

only medium that can be used to achieve the objective effectively. While the ministries and departments are furnishing information on their Websites, the same trend is not followed by Sarpanches, MLAs and MPs who are elected by people to represent their problems, issues and needs. For example, how are they spending the MPLAD fund? What questions and queries are they presenting in the assemblies and the Parliament, and are those questions relevant for the constituency under consideration? Intentionally or unintentionally, the entire e-government focus has been more on administrative governance and not on elective or public representative governance. The representatives elected by people are hardly accountable for their promises and responsibilities. Transparency and accountability towards the people can only be possible if the elected representatives use media like the Web. Can we somehow mandate that all Panchayats and MLA/MP constituencies have websites of their own and are maintained on a regular basis, linked with the corresponding Panchayat or MPLAD funds? India will then also be richer by 350,000 in terms of digital content creation of a true e-Governance genre.

pHOtO : pH OtO s .cO m

We have 346,000 Panchayats in India, but barring a few in Kerala, there is no Panchayat website to be found. The Panchayati Raj Ministry has created navigation for each Panchayat on its ministry website, but in the last many years, I could not find content for any of those. We have 4,011 Members of Legislative Assembly (MLA) constituencies across all the 35 states of the country, but there is not a single official website of any of the MLA constituencies. We have 542 Member of Parliamentary (MP) constituencies in India, and again, there is not a single official MP Constituency website. There are many such examples, but I am highlighting these because they are people elected representatives and as such they owe transparency and accountability to their citizens. But why should we emphasise so much on the Web presence? Well, simply because if you look at all media, no other media than the Internet or the Web is as permanent, where people can access and post content anytime anywhere. In a time when Right to Information (RTI) is an Act and all public represented offices and officers have to make all information open and available, Web is the

If e-Governance is to be transparent and meaningful, websites at all elective levels are a must

Merene Gomez manager, application support

Sourav Das sr manager, Infrastructure

tHe SOLUtiOn PwC was appointed to document processes and convert them into a comprehensive RFP to be circulated to various ERP vendors. Ultimately after much deliberation the team selected Oracle’s E-Business Suite ERP solution for its Financial, HR and Fleet Management needs, Siebel for Subscriber Management and Ad-sales, Oracle Business Intelligence for Analytics and Oracle SOA suite for integration between these applications. Once Meru decided on implementing the solution, the first thing done was to identify a consultant, which was when Accenture was brought into the project. The team worked hard on defining what was to be achieved and how, as part of the project scope document. Next the scope and requirements were defined, the technical team analysed and evaluated different solutions that were available. The infrastructure team was assigned the responsibility of setting up a highperformance, high-availability hardware infrastructure for this project. The biggest challenge faced by the team was the sheer scale and the novelty, as the entire infrastructure in terms of hardware, a high-availability load balancing OS cluster, installation and configuration of the application suite, was relatively new to Meru’s environment. An ERP core team was created consisting of people from various departments and Accenture to arrive at the proposed transaction volume and load in the foreseeable future. Based on this, a high availability and load balancing OS cluster for various applications was designed in

tHe ReWARDS The system is now fully up and running. The single biggest benefit of the integrated ERP system is to help Meru in consolidating applications and bringing much better operational efficiencies in the business. The systems have been sized to handle the business scale up for next four to five years. The company is now looking at raising the ante, by looking at analytics. Not only the technical team, even the CEO Rajesh Puri seems to be enthused by the implementation. “I am excited about strengthening and combining all systems together into a single, integrated software program that runs off a single back-end system, so that the various departments can more easily share information and communicate with each other,” he says. “Standardising those processes and using a single, integrated system will help us increase productivity and improve service levels,” he adds. “Meru Cabs has always been an innovator in the radio cab service space, and we are proud to be the only cab service company in the world to implement ERP systems in our organisation. Implementing ERP systems shall have tremendous payback for Meru Cabs and will help us to grow even faster,” Puri states with a touch of pride.

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Meru Cabs have raced ahead of the league with ERP deployment. Pg 36