IT Next February 2012 by Manan Mushtaq

FEBRUARY 2012 / ` 100 VOLUME 03 / ISSUE 01

INSIGHT: Challenges and RoI for server virtualisation

BOSS TALK: People leadership tips from NavSemi chief

48 BIG Q

INTERVIEW: Manish Goel on tackling sophisticated threats

Big Data: Problem or Solution?

64%

have a goal to put enterprise strategy into actionable entities

61%

of IT managers expect innovations around enterprise mobility in 2012

55 % aspire to be

61%

associated with business operations besides IT

of IT managers hope to acquire skills in strategic thinking

SOAR TO NEW HEIGHTS Use strategic perspectives to drive the alignment of technology with business goals Pg 14

Editorial

Calling the Shots Every company or sector has an individual or a team who calls the shots. And obvious as it is, these individuals are revered, respected and obliged all the time by the rest of the employees. Well, it is always a tough proposition to decide as to who would be that individual or individuals who are to be entrusted with this absolute power, as it varies with the business that a firm deals with. Coming to the information technology sector, every IT head that I have interacted with as also the general industry trend leans towards the CFO, who, they say, call the shots, especially with regard to IT decisions. In my opinion, it is still an open debate as to who has the right to call the shots in the IT function. Since I am an optimist, I feel the IT manager fraternity stands on an equal footing when it comes to deciding which IT project is critical to the organisation. It is the experience that matters rather than the portfolio of an individual in such critical areas. Recently, I was part of an interesting dialogue between the CFO of a large firm and an audience comprising IT managers. The CFO said, “I am the first to come to office and last one to go because everything is still being done manually.” The IT managers reacted immediately, saying, “We are on the job round-the-clock.” The CFO agreed replying, “I know you are always on your toes to support us.” But then why has the CFO’s perception towards IT managers not changed? I think the IT teams need to assert themselves and influence the finance and other business teams in order to leverage IT. They must play a central function in the organisation. IT Next’s cover story in this edition offers insights from IT managers who have set high professional and personal goals for 2012. They have vowed to bring about the necessary change, take on leadership roles and inspire their teams. And they are set to do that with simplicity and style.

“I feel the IT manager fraternity stands on an equal footing when it comes to deciding which IT project is critical” Geetha Nandikotkur

Blogs To Watch! Million dollar marketing blog http://shibakumarsethy.blogspot. in/2011/12/normal-0-falsefalse-false-en-in-x-none_05. html Top Blogs on “Communication” http://www.indiblogger. in/tagsearch. php?tag=Communication Blogging in India: A Research report http://trak.in/tags/ business/2009/07/11/bloggingin-india-research-report/ Top 25 Technical Writing blogs http://www.invesp.com/blogrank/Technical_Writing

F e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2 | itnext

Content For the l atest technology uPDATES Go to itnext.in

DECember 2011 V o l u m e 0 3 | I s s u e 0 1

Facebook: http://www.facebook. com/home.php#/group. php?gid=195675030582 Twitter: http://t witter.com/itnext Linked In http://www.linkedin.com/ groups?gid=2261770&trk=myg_ ugrp_ovr

Page

Cover Story

boss talk

interview

Insights into the focus areas for IT managers in the year 2012, including enterprise apps, social networking, touch computing, green tech and many more 24 Chief Data Scientist: Gen Y IT Leader 28 The Spending Moods of IT Heads 30 IT Managers in a New Avatar

insights cove r d esi gn: a nil t

38 Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s All about Control of Data

The power of IT this year will be in controlling the data tsunami: its entry, residence, access, storage and archival

36 5 Key Enterprise Development Trends Developersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; focus in 2012 will be on Big Data, agile ALM, web, mobile and cloud computingt

itnext | f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2

06 People Leadership Tips| Babu Jain, Founder-CEO, NavSemi Technologies, on being a successful people leader

48 Manish Goel | Chairman, Online Trust Alliance & CEO, TrustSphere, on tackling the sophisticated online threats

itnext.in

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

EDITORIAL

Page

Group Editor: R Giridhar Executive Editor: Geetha Nandikotkur Consulting Editor: Sanjay Gupta Senior Assistant Editor: Manu Sharma Managing Editor (Desk): sangita Thakur Sub Editor: Radhika Haswani, Mitia Nath

server virtualisation A keen look at the challenges, prerequisites and RoI calculation of virtualisation efforts

15-Minute manager 41 Project Management | Even though CIOs often bear

the brunt of a project’s failure, it’s usually the lack of processes that cause projects to fail

cube chat

DESIGN

58 Simple Solutions |

Sr Creative Director: Jayan K Narayanan Art Director: Anil VK Associate Art Directors: PC Anoop & Atul Deshmukh Visualisers: Prasanth TR, Anil T & Shokeen Saifi Sr Designers: Sristi Maurya & NV Baiju Designers: Suneesh K, Shigil N, Charu Dwivedi Raj Verma, Prince Antony, Binu MP & Peterson Chief Photographer: Subhojit Paul Photographer: Jiten Gandhi

Dinesh Singh, Tech Head, SJM Technologies, on resolving complex issues in simple ways

off the shelf 60 Nikon D4 | The successor

42 Counter Stress with Deep Breathing | Feeling

to D3S is due in stores this month

stressed out? A few steps for you to breathe deeper and feel better

sales & marketing Brand Manager: Siddhant Raizada (09990388390) National Manager-Events & Special Projects: Mahantesh Godi (09880436623) National Manager -Print , Online & Events: Sachin Mhashilkar (09920348755) South: B N Raghavendra (09845381683)) North: Deepak Sharma (09811791110) West: Hafeez Shaikh (09833103611) Assistant Brand Manager: Swati Sharma Ad co-ordination/Scheduling: Kishan Singh

45 CIO & HR | A strong bond

between IT and HR facilitates organisational growths

the big Q 53 Big Data: Problem or Solution? | Points to ponder on

the challenges and opportunities presented by Big Data

RegulArs Editorial _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 01

Production & Logistics

Inbox _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 04

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

Key Performance

Industry Update _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 10

Indicator.

Open Debate_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 65 My Log_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 67

Office Address Nine Dot Nine Mediaworx Pvt Ltd A-262 Defence Colony, New Delhi-110024, India Certain content in this publication is copyright Ziff Davis Enterprise Inc, and has been reprinted under license. eWEEK, Baseline and CIO Insight are registered trademarks of Ziff Davis Enterprise Holdings, Inc.

advertiser index Vodafone IFC ISACA 5 Patel India 7 Arkadin 9 Asia Power 68 Cisco IBC IBM BC

Page

Get certified with

refer to page no. 12A

Exam Date: 9 June 2012 Registration Deadline: 4 April 2012 www.isaca.org/Certification-ITNEXT

ChessCertITnext 28x20.5cm.indd 1

Please recycle this magazine and remove inserts before recycling

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

12/20/11 12:32 PM

f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2 | itnext

INBoX IT NEXT

| COVER STORY

COVER STORY |

JANUARY 2012 / RS 75 VOLUME 02 / ISSUE 12

INSIGHT: Online Frauds that Ride on Mule Networks

BOSS TALK: Leadership: Wearing a CIO’s Cap

66 BIG Q

INTERVIEW: EMC’s Chuck Hollis on How to Make Internal IT Strong

BI: Intelligence for Business Efficiency

100 RISING STARS

100 RISING STARS The technology managers who will make a difference Pg 18

VOLUME 02 | ISSUE 12

THE FUTURE CIOs ARE HERE

SPECIAL

january 2012

This year’s NEXT100 award winners are articulate and smart thinkers who are passionately driven to succeed. They are as knowledgeable about applying technology to business needs as in motivating teams to achieve tough goals

IT NEXT thanks its Readers for the warm response

BY ITNEXT TEAM I L LU ST R AT I O N BY A N I L T P H OTO G R A P H S BY S U B H O J I T PAU L A N D J I T E N GA N D H I

Cover Story-GATEFOLD.indd 16

IT NEXT values your feedback

12/29/2011 7:22:59 PM

Cover Story-GATEFOLD.indd 17

12/29/2011 7:23:10 PM

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

There is no doubt that IT Next is becoming a good and effective magazine for the IT manager community. However, as the magazine progresses, I think the depth of coverage must be increased to provide deeper insights in the selected topics. There are plenty of high-level resources with comments and remarks as also case studies on technology and implementation that can help IT managers add value to their work. I would be interested in finding out how a particularly technology has been implemented and how it has added value to the existing framework and so on. For instance, if the topic is Green IT, then instead of merely presenting data with numbers on savings, etc., and publishing a few statements from IT leaders, if you can present an in-depth account of how it has actually been done.

www.linkedin.com/ groups?gid= 2261770&trk= myg_ugrp_ ovr300members

Pushpalatha N, HAL India

itnext | f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2

Shailesh Mallya, AVP, Marketing & Communications, Lauren Information Technologies Pvt Ltd

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

I have gone through a couple of issues of IT Next. I am impressed with the coverage of a wide range of topics, besides their relevance, quality and depth. I would like to read more on management, strategic insights and best practices in the industry, especially with regard to technology implementation, which will help me in my professional role. JS Sodhi, CIO, Amity Group

Prasad Reddy, Sr Manager, IT, HR, & Administration Preludesys India Pvt Ltd

IT Next’s coverage of the IT market and advancement in technology are very useful to the IT community. However, I would be interested in getting annual technology updates about changes and innovations happening in the area of servers, storage, OS, desktops, thin clients, collaborative software cloud facility, end point security software, Oracle RDBMS, MS SQL, Office products, routers, switches, firewalls, IPS, video conferencing, etc.

IT Next’s work has already been appreciated in the industry. The collation of data, presentation style and the vibrant designs, of the magazine are brilliant, which makes one eagerly await its next edition. I really appreciate the continuous effort of the IT Next team to improve the publication despite its being at the top of the heap in technology magazines. I would like to contribute towards any improvement you may want to make as we go along. Keep up the good work.

ITNEXT<space> <your feedback> and send it to

567678 *Special rates apply

I really appreciate the efforts put in by you and your team in compiling such a mindblowing article about me. Cube Chat is definitely a good initiative of IT Next which is very informative. I am sure it will be a dream for many to get featured in this section and thank you for making this happen. The article is really well written and I have received feedback from many industry friends to this effect. The photograph is very good and adds value. Hope the interaction will be kept active as we go along. Arun Sheth, Head, Software Development, Gati Ltd (Note: Letters have been edited minimally, for brevity and clarity)

Key Performance

Indicator.

Exam Date: 9 June 2012 Registration Deadline: 4 April 2012 www.isaca.org/Certification-ITNEXT

Boss talk | BABU JAIN

L e a d e r s h i p M a n ag e m e n t

P for People Leadership

anagement gurus often refer to the four pillars which contribute to building a strong organisation. These 4Ps include: people, products, processes and partners. While all the Ps are vital to the stability of the organisation, the people part is most critical and differentiates between a successful and an unsuccessful organisation. In my opinion, it is the people who envision a new product, visualise processes and build partnerships that go a long way in building a robust company. These people who define the frameworks at various levels are visionaries or leaders who are then responsible for building sustainable business models.

“They are the leaders who often challenge the status quo and drive thought processes at every level in the company”

Why Need a Leader? All organisations need individuals to lead various functions and teams at every stage and across groups be it sales, production, accounting, HR, engineering or support functions. These individuals are thought leaders who constantly aspire to bring in positive changes in the organisation. They are the leaders who often challenge the status quo and drive thought processes at every level in the company.

Role of Leaders in IT Suggestion BOX

Being a Successful Leader While leadership skills are vital for individuals who occupy important positions in the company, it is equally critical to evolve as successful leaders amidst challenges. The first prerequisite for a good leader is acquiring deeper understanding of the business and the connection between the job function and the business goals of the organisation. The more one understands the value chain, the higher is the likelihood that the decisions s/he takes will produce the desired results.

itnext | f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2

Every business needs leaders and information technology is no exception. IT has ‘flattened the world’, reduced time to market and enhanced efficiencies resulting in improved top and bottom lines of businesses. At the same time, it has made the world very competitive and difficult for inefficient businesses to sustain. IT leadership plays one of the most important roles in keeping businesses competitive and sustainable.

Greener Areas to Grow “The book talks about habits which if adopted will enable you to get more work done while having a more balanced life” title:The 7 Habits of highly effect ive people WRITER: STEVEN COVEY PUBLISHER: EBD B OOK CAFE

Timely and accurate decisions from IT heads combined with agile business decision-making process would provide a competitive edge to an organisation. While knowledge of the internal politics prevailing in the company is important to assess one’s position, a differentiating performance could easily overcome such impediments. Leadership is a personal quality and is evolving in nature, which in turn, gets accepted by the juniors. The author is Founder and CEO of NavSemi Technologies Ltd

Opinion

money wise Vishwanath Sivaswamy, Managing Director, Anthelio Business Technologies

IT: Interference in Healthcare?

he challenges imposed by IT in healthcare have the players shying away from full-scale deployment. Policy initiatives can go a long way in helping healthcare leverage IT. While organisations vouch for the benefits they have accrued with technology deployments, contrary to the industry view, the healthcare sector finds IT more ‘interference’ than support. Hospitals often need to invest in medical technology and equipment and often divert IT allocations to medical technologies. This is not without reason, as the industry is constrained by the steep price of technology that includes huge initial investments, difficulty in measuring RoI, and expenditure towards maintenance and support, given its massive size. In addition, the cost of training and upgrading the clinicians and the support staff on IT systems leaves a huge gap in the overall budget for capital.

Challenges for IT Heads The biggest challenges for the IT heads in the healthcare sector have been around huge initial investments on HIS solutions and its RoI measurement. Budgeting decisions around IT get tough owing to business priorities and also the processes and regulations that the health care industry throws up. Inducting clinical staff into technology is most daunting. Securing the data and information and complying with HIPAA and other regulations is vital. Deploying a comprehensive, simple and value-formoney EMR can be another obstacle, besides handling security & compliance.

itnext | f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2

ferent scenarios with regard to patient changes, reimbursement-rate decreases and new services dictated by emerging technologies. The budgeting team adopts a holistic approach to avoid errors in the budget. The budgeting team opens a discussion with administrative and clinical members from across the organisation. This helps them chime-in with potential top line budget vulnerabilities, avoidable costs and one to three year projections on collections, volumes and managed care. However, the recent evolutions around ARRA/HITECH Act have added a new dimension to budgeting for IT in hospitals.

Technology in the Forefront

“Much of the inefficiencies are caused by non-standard processes which make technology implementations more risky and expensive” The industry struggles with organic growth — thereby leaving the RoI calculations with large variations from projections.

Budgeting Trends In the healthcare sector, generally, the budget is anywhere between two to six per cent of the net patient revenues. As a trend, the finance department adopts an approach where they analyse their benchmark trends, share the results with leadership, and devise a set of future scenarios. They formulate dif-

Applications (especially EMR) deployment and maintenance and infrastructure consume most of the budget dollars. In 2011, Telemedicine — the remote diagnosis, monitoring and treatment of patients via videoconferencing or the internet — was seen as a fast-emerging IT trend in the healthcare sector in India, supported by exponential growth in the country’s information and communications technology (ICT) sector, and plummeting telecom costs. Several major private hospitals have adopted telemedicine services, including those that have developed publicprivate partnerships (PPPs), such as AIIMS. There are approximately 120 telemedicine centres across the country, with the government pledging support for hundreds more in the coming year. The spate of new private hospitals, that account for more than 80 per cent of India’s total healthcare spend, is likely to boost this further, with investment in EMR being seen as a necessity. With the introduction of 3G, the possibilities of remote treatment and diagnosis of patients through mobile phones have been strengthened. Much of the inefficiencies are being caused by non-standard processes which make the technology implementations more risky and expensive.

Experience Unified Communication and Collaboration (UCC) TM

Introducing Cisco Jabber

by Arkadin

UC&C are a set of solutions that provide a consistent unified user experience across multiple devices and media types, regardless whether you're at home, at work, or on the move. With the adoption of UC&C, companies can streamline communications, reap high productivity gain with lowered overall costs. Cisco JabberTM is the first UC offering from Arkadin. Enterprises can benefit from Arkadinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s advanced audio conferencing and bridging technology and leverage on the power of a single user interface for a complete UC&C experience. Find out more about our UC&C solution today.

www.arkadin.co.in

Free Special Report

Download our special report "Perspectives on Next Generation Communications and Collaboration" to examine the various communication challenges and see how effective collaboration with the use of the right tools can bridge the communication divide. www.arkadin.co.in/next100

Arkadin provides professional audio and web conferencing services that enable organizations of all sizes, including Fortune Global 500 companies, to better communicate and collaborate using customizable, cost-efficient, user-friendly solutions. For more information, call +91-120-3074500, email sales.in@arkadin.com or visit www.arkadin.co.in

update

Huawei Starts India Operation; R&D soon

The initiative might open up new opportunities for IT managers where there would be large role for IT to play

TECH TRENDS | Huawei Technologies, the Chinese telecommunica-

tions equipment company, has started manufacturing in India and has disclosed plans to invest $150 mn to establish a research and development (R&D) campus in Bengaluru. Over the last 10 years, Huawei has invested over $400 mn in the country on R&D, operations, marketing, manufacturing units and made it as a sourcing hub along with its corporate social responsibility initiatives. The company has started the production of components of network

t SMAIR LES MOB

Smartphone Satisfaction Rating By Manufacturers The chart shows the rating by mobile manufacturers till December 2011 75

The chart indicates 75 per cent of global customers have shown high satisfaction for Apple iPhone in 2011 Source: ChangeWave Research

itnext | f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2

Samsung

HTC

45 31 23 22

Apple iPhone

Motorola LG Nokia RIM

trends deals products services people

equipment gear at both its facilities in Chennai. “Both the manufacturing facilities in Chennai will cater to the growing demand of telecom network equipment supplied by Huawei India to Indian telecom service providers in the domain of 2G expansion, 3G and LTE (Long Term Evolution) networks,” an agency quoted Huawei as saying. It is beyond doubt that the new initiatives will pave way to absorb IT technologies and open up opportunities for IT managers to prove their capabilities in building an IT framework. Huawei is said to fall back on technology platforms spreading across enterprise business, devices business, 2G expansions, 3G and LTE will fuel growth. The company boasts of a fully owned manufacturing unit at Sriperumbudur in Chennai. It also does contract manufacturing with Flextronics India. These facilities employ 1,800 technical and managerial staff. Tamil Nadu is often called India’s Shenzhen after Maran attracted a host of telecom manufacturing investments to the state from 2005 onwards. Huawei already has an R&D centre in India, which is its biggest outside China, employing 2,000 people. Its India operations have been drawing overall investments of $150 mn per year over the past decade. According to the company, it has a total employee base of 6,000 people of which 95 per cent are Indians, while creating indirect employment for 20,000 more.

i maging : prince antony

Update I n d u s t r y

Sony S & P Tablets launched

Orbotix Sphero launched

Microsoft Lifecam HD 3000

Sony India has announced the tablet S and P that have unique design. While the 16 GB tablet S WiFi model is priced at Rs 29,990, the 4 GB Tablet P is priced at Rs 36,990.

This robotic ball from CES looks like a fun thing to do. Sphero comes with a power charger and has five apps to navigate it on both iOS and Android. Price Rs 6,700

You can buy the Microsoft Lifecam HD 3000 webcamera for Rs 1,700 on flipkart.com. It lets you shoot sharp 720p HD video at 16.9 widescreen cinematic aspect ratio.

HP Signs Pact with GoK, IIIT-B on IPv6 Transfer TECH TRENDS | HP has

announced the signing of a partnership agreement with the Government of Karnataka (GoK) and International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore (IIIT-B) to conduct a pilot project that will help organisations in Karnataka through a smooth transition to Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6). The current version of IP addressing, IPv4, is reaching its theoretical maximum of about four billion internet addresses. IPv6 is the new internet addressing protocal with the capacity to support 340 trillion addresses. This allows

HP partners with Government of Karnataka and IIIT-B to educate professionals

for the dramatic expansion of connected devices from computers and smartphones, to household electronics, industrial appliances, sensors, vehicles and commercial systems. IPv6 also

Around The World

provides for improved quality and new applications like IP TV, telephony and e-commerce. “Expanding communication networks, limited availability of IPv4address space, coupled with growing demand for new IP addresses globally, has necessitated the need to shift to IPv6 by March 2012,” said MN Vidyashankar, Principal Secretary to Government, Department of IT, BT, S&T and eGovernance, Government of Karnataka. As a part of the announcement, HP Network University also unveiled the Unified Communication & Collaboration (UC&C) Innovation Centre at IIIT-B. The HP Network University aims at providing advanced knowledge, including IPv6 to professionals.

quick byte

Niel Shakes Up French Mobile Market Hailed as the French Steve Jobs, entrepreneur Xavier Niel is shaking up the country’s mobile phone market with a maverick style far removed from France’s traditionally conservative business practices. A rare business heavyweight not to emerge from the country’s elite universities, Niel started his career in the 1980s, operating adult chat services on a French forerunner to the internet called Minitel.

APJ Abdul Kalam, former President

“I suggest we invite Infosys Prize winners to spend a year at an Indian university. It will enhance the intellectual and research environment”

f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2 | itnext

update

IT services firm CSC expands in India TECH TRENDS | On the back of two

healthcare technology solutions and strategic acquisitions, the $16.2 bn Applabs, a software-testing outfit. technology services firm CSC has Both have a strong India software now announced the opening of its development presence. 18th delivery centre in India, addMultinationals such as CSC face a ing seating capacity of 300 people tightrope walk expanding in India. to its headcount. The firm’s Indian While business compulsions demand unit already has 23,000 people, its that they scale up their delivery second largest globally. centres here, an election year in CSC’s new unit will be in the United States and a weakening Indore, a small town in Madhya global economy may only strengthen Pradesh, where it already has hawkish anti-outsourcing lobbies in 700 people employed and part of the west. For its part, CSC appears a network that includes in unbowed. Noida, Hyderabad, Chennai, Like its larger peers, IBM, Mumbai, Bangalore and HP and Accenture, all of Vadodara. In the past 12 which have over 100,000 months, CSC, a company people in India, CSC too is headquartered in Falls keen to leverage India’s cost delivery Church, Virginia, has and quality advantage with centre in inorganically grown with its latest expansion. India deals for iSoft, focussed on

CSC’s

18th

25.84 mn Subscribers Opted for MNP in 2011 (25.8 million) mobile phone subscribers have opted for mobile number portability (MNP) with Gujarat receiving the maximum number of 2.49 million requests till the end of November 2011, according to official data. MNP allows users to switch operators while retaining their mobile numbers. Gujarat was followed by Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh where 2.29 million and 2.27 million customers, respectively, requested for the service. MNP was implemented across the country in January last year while the pilot launch

IT NEXT: What is machine-to-machine or M2M and what are the trends? GULATI: It is referred to as a technology that enables both wireless and wired systems to communicate with a host of devices and applications, thereby making sense of the information relayed. This is accomplished through the use of telemetry — the language machines use to communicate with each other. In India with about 850 million cellphone users, new areas are opening up in the Indian telecom sector. What is the M2M market size in India? The annual global market alone is set to grow from less than $16 bn in 2008 to over $57 bn in 2014. I feel the market is presently at $150 mn in India and we can sell 10 million units over the next 10 years. What is the market for Telit Communications in India?

Gujarat received the maximum number of 2.49 million requests till the end of November 2011 followed by Karnataka & AP

of the service took place in Haryana on November 25, 2010. To opt for MNP, a customer has to pay a maximum of Rs 19 to the new operator for ‘porting’ the number.

Telit made its foray recently in the country. The company is betting on the Indian M2M market and will market M2M modules. Apart from telecom, M2M is expected to impact various verticals like automotive telematics, healthcare, transportation and logistics, manufacturing, point of sale, retail and others. How does Telit market its products? Telit sells through VARs and SIs in more than 60 countries and in India through its distributors Arrow Electronics and Nest Connectivity Solutions and plans to increase its distributors to five. By Manu Sharma

itnext | f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2

Photo graphy: Jayan K Narayanan

I llustratio n: prince Antony

TECH TRENDS | About 258 lakh

Interview Ashish Gulati Country Manager, India Operations, Telit Communications

update

Aakash 2 Booking Status Via Email! Now, you can check the status of your pre-booked Ubislate 7+ aka Aakash 2 tablet via email support service

Tech Tidings

ADP Acquires Randstad’s Ma Foi Randstad’s Indian payroll business is handled by its subsidiary Ma Foi Consulting Solutions. US company Automatic Data Processing (ADP) has acquired the Netherland-based Randstad Holding’s Indian payroll business for an undisclosed sum to access the high-growth human resources business process outsourcing markets. Randstad’s Indian payroll business is handled by its subsidiary Ma Foi Consulting Solutions and has a team of around 200 associates.

imaging; Prince Antony

TECH TRENDS | The hottest newsmaker

in the town is back again. DataWind, maker of Aakash tablet, will now respond through email support service to the customers for all their queries related to the status of their orders. Although, there are thousands waiting in anticipation to receive or catch a glimpse of their pre-booked Aakash 2 device, all they are getting in return is news and more news surrounding the tablet. The upgraded version of Aakash aka UbiSlate 7+ went up for pre-order last month, but the delivery of the ordered devices are still pending. Finally, DataWind has initiated an email support service for the

News @ blog

customers to quench their nervous queries regarding the status of their orders. While Aakash is already sold out at DataWind official website, the UbiSlate 7+ is out of stock till February. If you have pre-ordered UbiSlate 7+ before, you can now email to know about the delivery status of your device. This comes along with the tollfree number and fill-in query forms. Compared to its predecessor Aakash tablet, the Ubislate 7+ aka Aakash 2 will come with slightly better specs that include Cortex A8 - 700 Mhz processor, Android 2.3, WiFi and GPRS (SIM and Phone functionality) and an improved 3200 mAh battery power.

“This acquisition supports ADP’s broader strategy to expand its global footprint in human resources business process outsourcing (HR BPO) across large and developing markets,” ADP, a provider of human resource outsourcing, payroll, tax and compliance services, said in a statement. Ma Foi Consulting Solutions offers managed payroll services and social benefits administration to clients across India through a fully customised payroll engine. The company uses this platform to serve approximately 350 multinational and domestic clients.

GREAT PHONES UNVEILED AT CES 2012 The story centres around iOS and Android — two smartphone platforms

In 2012 the lineup of goodies includes a heavy focus on next-generation 4G LTE data networks — including from Sprint, in a marked shift away from 4G WiMAX — plus plenty of Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich)-powered phones, NFC chips, dual-core processors, and even 12 and 16-megapixel camera sensors all vying for the spotlight. f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2 | itnext

itnext | f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2

perspectives | cover story

r a o S

to New Heigh

Use strategic perspectives to drive the alignment of technology with business goals BY N G e e t h a & M a n u S h a rma

f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2 | itnext

illustrati on: Ani l t

he will to change and being the agent of that change is what IT managers are aspiring for now. The result of IT Next online survey of the fraternity has conclusively proved that change is the new mantra of success for the IT managers across a broad spectrum of the industry. The bottom line is that they hope to innovate and have new professional, personal and functional goals. The survey was an attempt to seek qualitative insights from the community on changing market trends and expectations, new strategies for 2012, insights into changing business expectations and so on. Since the analyses are qualitative, the statistical data ratio cannot be rounded off to a perfect 100 per cent, as the IT managers were allowed to tick multiple choices to the queries posed in the survey questionnaire. However, in the final analysis, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the IT fraternity is bang on target in 2012.

cover story | perspectives Technology at Best IT managers have made smart moves to absorb technologies that made sense in the past year and the 2012 will find them going for the cloud-based models in a big way, with the demand for mobility applications and solutions being at an all time high. The majority of IT managers have listed cloud solutions as the top notch technology slated to make tremendous impact this year, with a substantial part of IT budget invested

that IT managers are an evolving lot. They are not only clear about the technologies that make business sense, but also possess remarkable market intelligence. They are making all the right moves, with full awareness of the changing market trends and know what to expect in 2012. For instance, our survey found that IT managers are well aware of the boom in tablet PCs and the trending predictions of the majority was that tablets will cannibalise laptop sales. However, most agreed that there would

“My professional goal is to take over the role of a CIO in two years, to achieve which I am trying to get involved in the operational and strategic business functions — the first step towards it” Ashish Khanna Corporate Manager, IT Infrastructure, The Oberoi Group

in working out a unique cloud structure tailormade for the eneterprise’s needs. The 10 technologies that would make an impact in 2012 as listed by our readers are: cloud solutions, IT security, mobility, virtualisations and datacentre solutions, BI and analytics, ERP, green IT, DLP, storage, MIS reporting systems and so on. For Bhavita Saxena, DGM, ISBS, RFCL Ltd, IT security, virtualisation and data centre solutions along with ERP, forms the core, which will have an influence this year.

Market Pulse It can be observed from the IT landscape

itnext | f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2

be an increased adoption of the cloud service models across industry verticals and at various levels of IT activities, be it at infrastructure, software applications or platform level. These respondents, who are hands on with technology, see increased use of Flash memory with the BYOD (bring your own device) evolving as a standard workplace practice.

Realistic Goals There is a strong desire to move up the value chain among the IT managers. It was clear from the survey that they have listed out certain realistic goals and

have charted out their career course. For most IT managers, the top goal is to translate enterprise mission and vision into actionable strategic entities. Another interesting goal is to derive the bottom-line result from the entire current and future IT spending — a view with which most survey respondents agreed. The other aspects they intend to look into as part of their professional initiative include one of the most important tasks they have outlined for themselves — to clearly define roles internally with regard to the usage of

“My priority for 2012 would be to make decisions around IT investment and budgeting, translate business strategies into IT action to produce right results” Kamal Matta Head, IT & Telecom, Sonic Biochem

IT to achieve business results, produce right action and bottom-line and use budgets, projects and performance management to bring about the change. Improving vendor management skills is also on the cards, as is managing IT as a set of resources and process portfolio. Ashish Khanna, Corporate Manager, IT Infrastructure, The Oberoi Group says, “My professional goal is to take over the role of a CIO in two years, to achieve which I am trying to get involved in the operational and strategic business functions — the first step towards it.” The IT managers do understand that just setting the goals will not serve the

perspectives | cover story purpose, and it is critical to jot down the priorities for the year — stepping stones to the final goal. Besides, they are clued into the changing market trends and are making appropriate moves in listing their priorities. For instance, Kamal Matta, Head, IT & Telecom, Sonic Biochem Ext Ltd, says that acquiring technology skills is important. “My priority for 2012 would be to make decisions around IT investment and budgeting, translate

strategies into IT action, develop an RoI yardstick for every project and so on.

Clarity of Thought The IT managers are striving to be in sync with the business, as they strongly believe that it is the way to escalate themselves. They are thinking out-ofthe-box, analysing business moves, and empathising with business challenges where IT can be of support. Khanna observes, “Since application infrastructure is an intricate part of the business, I and my team make an effort

acquiring new skills to fill the gaps. The most important overall target that they have set for themselves is to prove their worth and make IT’s presence felt everywhere in the business and enterprise. The role of the IT manager is not just restricted to getting involved with other functions in his/her expert capacity, but is also to gain proficiency in whatever

“IT Security, virtualisation and data centre solutions along with ERP form the core, which will have an influence this year” Bhavita Saxena DGM, ISBS, RFCL Ltd

business strategies into IT action to produce right results,” says Matta. Oberoi’s Khanna intends to acquire project management skills from Gartner which is rolling out the training programme. Besides this he aspires to acquire a management degree from IIM Kolkata. Other areas of focus for the IT manager fraternity this year as per our survey include: build team management skills; take up courses in leadership; implement IT change management strategy, improve IT standards and governance, take up problem-solving tasks, handle cultural change, redeploy experience to support needed policies, translate business

to design the solution as per the CXO and CFO’s requirements.” The thinking is clearer now with IT managers taking cognisance of the business challenges in their way, be it managing supply chain risks, aspects of consumerisation of IT, ensuring competitive edge, regulatory changes, and profit and loss ratios and the like.

Enrichment Interestingly, IT managers agree to the fact that they need to fortify their environment — be it personal knowledge, domain expertise, exposure to different roles and functions or

they are associated with. The year 2012 will see the IT managers emerge in a new avatar as they take up the cudgels to fight for IT’s rightful place. Many of the respondents averred that they would get into consulting or advisory roles, marketing, customer services, finance and accounting areas, R&D and so on. Besides, they are also keen to acquire new skills around communication, strategic thinking, planning, pricing operations, negotiation etc. Kamal Matta says, “I want to learn business and pricing operations and track industry trends, and also acquire qualification in finance management.”

f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2 | itnext

cover story | perspectives

What’s in & what’s out

in 2012?

IT Next discusses the top technologies that will have an impact on IT managers in 2012. Enterprise apps, green IT, mobile and cloud computing dominate this year’s technologies along with others. Why do IT managers vouch for these?

CLOUD COMPUTING

Cloud Magic Takes Hold Driven by cost and convenience, this technology has gained a strong foothold among enterprises

loud computing technology in India will dramatically change the way we compute. In the 2011 IT Next survey, cloud computing was ranked No. 4. This year, not so surprisingly, all the IT heads surveyed rated it at the top of the technology heap. Cloud is not new to the industry with Google, Amazon, Facebook and several other vendors being its early proponents. However, what’s new are the enabling APIs and technology solutions (SaaS, PaaS and IaaS) now available to business enterprises. However, does cloud stop here? Answer is definitely no. The Indian cloud computing market opportunity is expected to reach $16 bn by 2020,

itnext | f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2

as per a study. Therefore, there is much excitement on the cards with IT Managers going all out to leverage the cloud. The global cloud computing market was projected to grow at 33 per cent compounded annual growth rate and reach $680 bn by 2020 while the domestic market opportunity might touch $16 bn in the same period. IT managers have been influenced by cloud computing’s dynamically scalable, virtualised information services delivered on-demand over the network in a pay-per-use model. According to our survey about 64.4 per cent of respondents (senior

IT managers and managers) list cloud computing as the top technology to make an impact. Nasscom President Som Mittal endorses the cloud moves by IT heads and says it is reshaping the Indian IT market by generating new opportunities for IT providers and driving changes in traditional IT offerings. Mobile cloud computing is on the upswing and there are two primary reasons as to why it will become a billion dollar industry. The first is quite intuitive that the number of users the technology can touch is massive. The second reason is related to how applications are distributed today.

“I can see cloud solutions, virtualisation and data centre solutions along with mobility drving the need in 2012” —Dinesh Pote, Manager, Corporate IT, M&M Ltd

perspectives | cover story Virtualisation

Information Security

Cloud Security on Its Way

Driving Down Capex & Opex Top Priority

Single solution to combat multiple challenges is most sought after

The most sought after technology, virtualisation will unlock unutilised capacity

ecurity threats are on the rise, and unified threat management (UTM)/IT security is being considered as the most favoured solution for protection and tackling attacks. In fact, 2011 was one of the landmark years for high-profile cyber attacks. The trend of sophisticated and targeted attacks will continue in 2012, targeted at IT users across all segments. UTM was ranked No. 7 in 2011 survey of IT Next. The number of data thefts has tripled in the past five years and the graph rises with each passing year. Right from the government to corporate sectors, data centres and SMEs, all have been targets of these attacks. Consumerisation of IT has given rise to issues such as managing and supporting consumer devices and securing data from criminals, malware and other threats. Mobility in enterprise sector brings new challenges for managing data as well as the wide range of devices in the network. Unauthorised access coupled with data pilferage is generally termed as hacking and organisations treat these cases quite seriously. Even though CIOs and IT Managers are aware of the benefits of cloud-based solutions, lack of security around it is holding them back from adopting it full scale. According to a survey by Trend Micro, the majority of Indian enterprises are wary of implementing a cloud-based solution. The survey indicated that 55 per cent enterprise IT decision-makers in India reported a security lapse or a concern about their cloud provider in the last 12 months. In fact, there is significant trepidation over security, governance and risk management issues associated with every flavour of the cloud — public, private and hybrid. “Security and other risk concerns are the largest inhibitors to cloud computing,” says Jay Heiser, Vice President, Gartner. Information security has been one of the top technologies where huge investments would be made in 2012. IT Next’s survey on top technologies that would make an impact in 2012 revealed that 59.6 per cent of IT managers identify IT security to be their topmost priority.

irtualisation will be the highest-impact trend changing infrastructure and operations through 2012, as per a report. It will transform how IT is managed, what is bought, how it is deployed, how companies plan and how they are charged. As a result, virtualisation is creating a new wave of competition among infrastructure vendors that will result in considerable market disruption and consolidation over the next few years. At the No. 6 spot in IT Next Survey in 2011, this year, virtualisation has climbed to the third spot.

“I find cloud solutions, IT security and BI & analytics among others as the top technologies that will make an impact over the next 12 months” —Ajit Mishra Manager IT, Sistema Shyam Teleservices (MTS) The benefits of virtualisation are becoming obvious: be it server, storage or desktop virtualisation. Going by industry observation, server virtualisation adoption has been scaling up with visible RoI. In fact, virtualisation and the server consolidation that it delivers will be the top priority for CIOs in 2012, according to IDC. Virtualisation is hardly a new concept: storage had already been virtualised — albeit primarily within the scope of individual vendor architectures — and networking was also virtualised. However, as both server and PC virtualisation becomes more pervasive, traditional IT infrastructure orthodoxy is being challenged and is changing the way business works with IT. Gartner says, leading this change is server virtualisation, which promises to unlock much of the underutilised capacity of existing server architectures. Gartner believes that it reduced the x86 server market by four per cent a few years ago. Although application virtualisation is also gaining ground, anlaysts say it is machine virtualisation that will have a long-term impact.

f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2 | itnext

cover story | perspectives Mobile Applications

Mobile Apps on the Move Spurred by the growth of smartphones and tablets, enterprises are incorporating mobile platforms

According to TRAI, India mobile penetration was 884 ith the emergence of smartphones and smart million subscribers (73% of population) in November 2011, up devices, app economy is increasing steadily 154 million from November 2010. Also, 66 per cent of mobile with more and more companies mobilising subscribers are urban dwellers. In the wake of explosive their workforce. IT industry expects business mobile phone penetration, mobile commerce and near field intelligence tools, cloud-based applications and security communication will see a surge in 2012, and serve as pivots management for the mobile sector to dominate in the coming for an intelligent ecosystem geared towards customer delight. years. According to analysts, enterprises will need to invest Tightening security on this platform will ensure that user capital to improve network capacity and reliability. They concerns are allayed, thereby making it much more popular will also need to improve wireless governance to improve than web-based banking in the near future. manageability and service levels. Mobile computing was The $100 mobiles powered with Android have already ranked No. 3 in IT Next survey, with 55.8 per cent of the made it possible for Indians to browse respondents (IT managers) claiming that the internet quite cheaply. Are we going virtualisation figures in their investment plan. to witness brands now focussing more Mobile-centric applications and interfaces on mobile apps rather than web apps? that enable touch, gesture and voice recognition New e-commerce sites are popping up all over will be dominant in the upcoming years. of Indian mobile in India. Some assert that it is a bubble but for Applications like ‘Siri’, which has perfect now, there is money in it. A gradual evolution subscribers are voice recognition and response will become of e-commerce to social commerce seems like a urban dwellers everyone’s favourite and will evolve to make logical next step. —TRAI life much easier.

66%

GREEN IT

Still Going Strong Green technologies are still high on the wish list of IT heads, despite ambiguities

reen IT and sustainability have long remained mere buzzwords. Yet, green technologies are figured high on the wish list of IT managers, despite its ambiguities. Green IT ranked No. 2 in last year’s survey. This year, almost 37.5 per cent of IT managers have backed green IT as the technology driving their priorities in 2012, reveals IT Next 2012 survey. By 2015, India’s spending on green IT and sustainability initiatives is expected to double from $35 bn in 2010 to $70 bn in 2015, according to Gartner. Gartner’s report said green

itnext | f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2

IT and sustainability have found their way into the IT organisations of many industries in India. “India’s information and communication technology (ICT) industry will be an early adopter of green IT and sustainability solutions as India is one of the fastest-growing markets in terms of IT hardware and communications infrastructure consumption,” said Ganesh Ramamoorthy, Research Director, Gartner. Apart from the

ICT industry, banking and financial services, hospitality, manufacturing (such as automobiles), pharmaceuticals, and other industries that have significant exposure to the export markets, will also join the green IT and sustainability trend early in India. In other industries, addressing energy, carbon, resource efficiency and sustainable economic development is currently still in the early stages. However, the unique challenges faced by India, will also provide businesses with the opportunity to innovate and test new cost-effective approaches and green technology solutions. “These solutions may then be adapted elsewhere — in other developing, or even developed nations,” said Ramamoorthy.

“I feel IT security, BI & analytics, mobility and KMS are the top technologies for this year” —Sanjay Kumar Srivastava, HoD IT, Andritz Hydro Private Ltd

perspectives | cover story STORAGE

Managing Storage Part of the Agenda Business Intelligence & Analytics

New Kid on the Investment Block BI coupled with analytics has transformed into a strategic tool for both business growth and productivity gains

Photo graphy: Sh ami k Bane rjee

he market for business intelligence (BI) software in India is forecast to reach revenue of $81.5 mn in 2012, a 15.6 per cent increase over 2011 according to Gartner. Analysts at the research firm predict that the market for BI platform will remain one of the fastest growing software markets despite expectations of an economic slowdown. Little wonder that CIOs & IT managers are openly welcoming BI & analytics as the technology for the future. “The BI market has remained strong because the dominant vendors continue to put BI & analytics and performance management at the centre of their messaging, while enduser organisations largely continue their BI projects, hoping that resulting transparency and insight will enable them to cut costs and improve productivity and agility down the line,“ said Bhavish Sood, Research Director, Gartner. Decision-making in India has historically been based on either gut feeling or on the business experience of managers. BI promotes revenue growth and faster innovation through shorter product and service life cycles and the ability to find where value is being created in the business. “The demand side of the BI platform market in early 2011 was defined by an intensified struggle between business users’ need for ease of use and flexibility on the one hand, and IT’s need for standards and control on the other,” said Sood. The demand drivers for BI are consumerisation of BI: support for extreme data performance; BI as a decision platform; and need for speed of BI.

Storage management tools are on the IT managers’ priority list to address the data deluge

n 2012 the ‘world of storage’ is in some sense a continuation of the bigger, faster, cheaper mantra of high-tech. As we move forward, the storage industry will see significant growth. Data growth is the biggest data centre hardware infrastructure challenge for large enterprises, according to a new survey by research firm Gartner Inc. According to Gartner, 47 per cent of the respondents to a survey conducted by them ranked data growth among their top three challenges. With spending returning to more normal

“Cloud solutions and mobility will take charge in 2012” —Binu Lakshman Manager, IT, Honda Siel Cars India Ltd levels after a couple of low years because of the economy, 62 per cent said they plan to expand hardware capacity at existing data centres by the end of 2011; 30 per cent plan to build entirely new data centres. Naveen Mishra, Principal Research Analyst, Gartner, said many data centre managers were forced to defer infrastructure upgrades and extend technology refresh cycles. As a result, those same managers are now hampered with an aging infrastructure or, in some cases, product obsolescence. While not many are going in deploying storage boxes, storage management tools have been the need of the hour to handle the data deluge. IT managers have been looking at tools that could help them in tiering, provisioning, and disaster recovery and so on. For instance, Ajit Awasare, Head (Operations) IT Infrastructure, Corporate IT, Larsen & Toubro increasingly finds DR, backup and recovery, RTO and RPO demands to be increasingly challenging. Data growth is IT heads’ top challenge as per the survey. The second and third most common concerns for strategic change are data containment initiatives (37%) and maintaining or improving user service levels and satisfaction (36%) of those surveyed.

f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2 | itnext

cover story | perspectives ERP

In a New Avatar EPR has transitioned into e-commerce, enabling IT heads to draw a blueprint to leverage applications for e-selling

Surprisingly, the IAMAI report on online commerce usiness expansion associated with increasing indicates that almost 80 per cent market share of current competition and quest for enhanced market share online commerce industry is dominated by travel business has led organisations to re-look at processes and and remaining 20 per cent is constituted of non-travel put in place enablers and solutions for more businesses such as eTailing (electronic retailing), digital efficient and effective operations. Many Indian industries download, paid content subscription, financial services, have realised the need for ERP solutions, and the industryonline classifieds, etc. related market growth should match the expansion of the The online travel industry has grown big time and sector as a whole. currently, domestic air travel segment constitutes 63 per cent IT managers across enterprises are leveraging ERP to of online travel industry, followed by 28 per cent share from streamline and automate functions such as accounts payable, online railway tickets. accounts receivable, activity management, Another segment that could witness benefits administration, billing, invoicing and humungous growth opportunity is online cost tracking (for project-based businesses), financial services including netbanking, utility payroll, and sales and marketing. While ERP can bills payment, insurance and other services, improve cash management, for manufacturing where ERP is the sought-after solutions firms it can help in more effective capacity of the travel facilitatating the processes. But despite the planning and cost containment. industry In fact, e-commerce is expected to catch-up depends on ERP boom, reports indicate that over 52 per cent of ERP implementations fail. Added to it is the fact with growth in overall trade market, and ERP for its online that ERP implementation is expensive. solutions are expanding to e-commerce as well. transaction

63%

Data loss prevention

Dlp: The Next Wave IT managers seek DLP cover to counter malicious threats from wreaking havoc

here’s confusion when it comes to what constitutes a data loss prevention solution. The potential for data loss, reputation loss and fraud are boundless and unacceptable to any organisation. To prevent hackers, as well as minimise the damage that can be done by malicious insiders or that can occur due to loss/theft of information-critical devices, many financial institutions are now rallying around strategies and solutions of Data Loss Prevention (DLP). DLP did not figure in last year’s list of

itnext | f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2

top technologies in the IT Next Survey. This year, the survey found most IT heads opting for DLP for security. It is not just hackers, but rapidly evolving malware too pose a constant challenge to financial institutions and customers, driving the need for DLP. Adding to these is the impact of organisational change. Consolidation and acquisitions is increasing the need for effective security tools.

As a nascent field in information security, DLP is undergoing constant evolution in features and maturity. Hence, it can be quite challenging to keep track of the constant changes in data loss prevention. In a recent survey by Symantec on Data Loss of 100 Indian enterprises of various verticals, about 54 per cent of respondents indicated that DLP is an effective safeguard. However, one out of three enterprises has not implemented DLP due to lack of sufficient funds. The prime reason is lack of an allocated budget for this new technology. However, lately, CIOs are adopting a holistic approach to DLP for the entire IT infrastructure which delivers a cohesive security roadmap.

“Cloud services, virtualisation & data centre solutions and ERP will rule the technology domain in 2012” —Kamal Matta, Head IT & Telecom, Sonic Biochem Ltd

perspectives | cover story MIS & Reporting

facilitate cost-effective and missioncritical services to the community, efficient MIS is necessary. It helps in maintenance of the necessary service level for response to user and system issues is essential. Gartner Predicts 2012 special report addresses the continuing trend toward the reduction in control that IT has over the forces that affect it. As users take more control of the devices they will use, business managers are taking more products sell best. And a music store control of the budgets. IT managers could use a database to sell CDs over have watched this shift over the past the internet. few years. However, there are several specific Moving forward, IT fields in which MIS departments will find has become invaluable that they must coordinate like strategy support, activities in a much wider data processing and area than they controlled management by objectives. earlier. HR and IT are MIS can deliver a of the working closely now and great many benefits to respondents putting MIS tools into enterprises in every (IT managers) perfect use. While some industry. of IT Nextâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s To ensure proper and survey find MIS challenges continue to plague, MIS provides efficient utilisation of tools to be on technology, in order to their priority list some key benefits.

Extracting More Value from Systems Management Information Systems (MIS) can benefit all three resources â&#x20AC;&#x201D; people, technology and information

anagement Information Systems (MIS) is the study of people, technology, and organisations. Enterprises are streamlining their set-up by implementing several online tools and IT managers are responsible for developing the software. MIS did not figure among the top technologies last year. Everyone who works in business, from someone who pays the bills to the person who hires and fires, uses information systems. For example, a supermarket could use a computer database to keep track of which

14%

cover story | perspectives

Chief Data Scientist: Gen Y IT Leader Dr Adwaita Govind Menon, Associate Director & Head, New Products, IDC India, finds a few sectors growing significantly and IT managers being involved in business roles Q: What are the top technologies that will make an impact on customers in the next six to 12 months? Why? A: From an enterprise side, management of big data would be the focus in 2012. Building razor sharp insights on the existing data would be the focus, besides leveraging IT for mainstream business decision-making. Secondly, consumption of security services will grow rapidly. Thirdly, I can see greater traction on the cloud, with public cloud receiving major momentum. Innovations in cloud-based service delivery models will be the logical outcome. I would expect nearly 30 per cent of the budget in cloud investment in 2012. Overall, the market seems to be growing at seven per cent and in any sector top five players are doing well. Where do you see major technological innovations happening in 2012? The PC market is expected to show some incremental innovation, with All In One (AIO) units eating into desktop space and there is a lot of buzz around the new ultra books. Tablets as a category have been growing in their

itnext | f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2

own right and not replacing PCs or mobile phones.

talk about it, explore possibilities but play a wait and watch game in 2012.

Top market trends that will affect IT? It is currently a very interesting market place. The market is showing growth — slow growth — not the big growth that we have seen over the years. Given the economic scenario, another slowdown is likely to hit and there would be cautiousness in spending. This means not anything in IT that does not have a direct business, cost or revenue impact will get top management’s nod. Having said that, I would not deny that a good amount is being spent on e-governance. I see large projects coming from BFSI sectors.

Do you see any priority list from the customers this year? Based on our survey of IT heads, we find them confronted with macro-economic challenges with regard to rising cost of both raw materials as well as employee. Demand side and domain specific skills and are being acquired. The middle management groups are acquiring certifications from a functional perspective in this year. The new generation IT leader will be the chief data scientist — a trusted advisor to the CEO who solves all his data related problem. IT just happens to be a means.

What according to you would be their top business challenges in 2012? The top challenges for IT managers would be to integrate IT with business and drive growth. IT managers could see traction around BA, BI and network and social media which can be leveraged to streamline the business. Interestingly cloud does not feature in the top three — we expect people to

7. Do you find IT heads associating themselves with business functions? Very strongly. Business function related IT implementations would get a go ahead after the BU heads understand the tangible benefits. Communication, negotiation, leadership, strategic thinking and planning, operations etc., are on cards too.

perspectives | cover story

Innovating to change IT managers are becoming strategyoriented to move up the value chain in 2012

Next survey indicated that there are several focussed areas for IT managers in 2012 that would help them in their growth. It came to light that the community is all set to leverage major technological innovations taking place in 2012 to their advantage. Concerted effort will be made by the IT manager fraternity to explore newer skills and business functions which can help them move up the value chain. They have worked out their priorities and elaborated the functions that they want to be associated with, besides acquiring necessary certifications or qualifications, which will address their professional goals. IT Next has tried to provide insights into the focus areas through graphs, and since this is a qualitative analyses, the percentage will not zero in on 100 per cent.

45.6% % 48.5 61.2%

28.2% 23.3% 22.3%

30.1% 31.1%

23.3%

Where do you see major

innovations happening in 2012? Touch Computing Social Networking NFC and Mobile Payment IPTV Voice and Data Enterprise Applications\Mobile Apps Green IT Big Data In-memory Computing

f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2 | itnext

cover story | perspectives What kind of technological\market

trends do you expect in 2012? 82.7

3.1

14.3 Boom in Tablet PCs

38.2

33.7

72.8

28.1 6.5

56.7

20.7

7.8

31.6

36.7

16.5

47.1

53.2 23.5

Tablets cannibalising laptop sales Increased adoption to cloud based service models Increased use of Flash memory for consumer devices BYOD evolving as a standardised practice

29.4 Others

YES

qualification\ Degree?

2.9% no

What other functions will you be involved in 2012 other than IT? 45.6%

Consulting

55.3%

Business Operations Finance and Accounting areas

24.3%

Administration Engineering

25.2% 18.4%

Management and Production Marketing and Sales

27.2% 25.2%

—Nasscom

Would you be acquiring any other

—V Srinivas CIO, Nagarjuna Fertilisers & Chemicals Ltd

10.7%

market opportunity for cloud computing in India by 2020

MAY BE

“Managing supply chain risks amidst rising commodity cost will be the top business challenge for the IT managers this year”

19.4%

$16bn

itnext | f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2

Customer Service R&D

52.4% MBA 4.9% LAW 39.8% Finance

Management

perspectives | cover story What would be your

What skills would you be

top business challenges in 2012?

keen to acquire in 2012? Communication Skills

24.5% 60.2%

Strategic thinking and planning

23.5%

Understand business and pricing operations

36.7%

Understand business and industry trends

23.5%

Negotiation skills Thorough knowledge of technology domains and proficiency

42.9% 41.8%

Leadership skills

What are the new certifications that you intend to acquire in 2012? 11.8% 3.9% 18.4%

CompTIA

Managing supply chain risks and rising commodity cost

58.3%

Handling growing security concerns and ensuring privacy of information across groups

24.3% Managing new regulatory changes

72.8%

No Networking

42.1% 15.8%

24.3%

Enterprise Applications related. Open Source Related

50.0%

Security Certifications

Improve business performance to enhance and ensure competitive edge

51.5%

Streamlining business processes

Which of the following will fit into

your professional goals in 2012? 63.1% 45.6%

Translate enterprise mission and strategy into actionable strategic entities Get the bottom-line result from the entire current and future IT spending

43.7%

Clearly define the roles with regard to the usage of IT to achieve business results

42.7%

Manage IT as a set of resources and process portfolio

44.7% 22.3%

Produce the right action and bottom-line results and use budgets, projects and performance management to bring the change Improve vendor management skills

55%

of enterprise IT decisionmakers in India reported a security lapse in the cloud model f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2 | itnext

cover story | perspectives

IT Heads are in a

spending mood Certain priority IT projects compel organisations to do the necessary spending

artner’s forecast confirms a positive IT spending trend though not at a significant level. IT Next 2012 survey of the senior IT managers and managers too, has indicated a favourable spending pattern in the year 2012. The research firm says that business is increasingly looking to IT to help support the challenges of rapid growth. According to Gartner, enterprise IT spending in India across all markets to surpass $39 bn in 2012, a 10.3 per cent increase from 2011 spending of $36 bn.

The growth of IT in India is expected to continue, with an annual increase to exceed this level through 2015.

Where is the Money? The year 2012 is both a challenge and an opportunity for most IT heads. Over 45 per cent of the respondents in the IT Next survey say there’s increased spending this year, with the majority of them expecting a five to 10 per cent increase in IT spend and approximately 20 per cent of the respondents expecting a 10 to 15 per cent increase in it in 2012. Amit Phadke, Head, Systems

Do you see an increase in your IT Spend in 2012? To increase above 20%

To increase between 15 to 20%

5.8%

8.7%

To increase between 10 to 15%

17.5%

To increase between 5 to 10%

24.3%

itnext | f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2

45.6% YES

13.6% NO

To increase between 0 to 5%

4.9%

& Technology, Kale Consultants, acknowledges the fact that there is increase in IT budgets. “While the business is expected to grow around 15 per cent overall, the IT budget is likely to increase around 10 per cent as we have initiated certain projects and the demand from the business is going up,” says Phadke. He and his team have rolled out virtualisation projects along with database consolidation this year, which is an effort to drive down costs. However, these projects would also demand certain budgets,” confirms Phadke. While the cost constraints cannot be ruled out, Manish Shah, GM, IT, Indusfila, finds a 10 per cent increase in his IT budget owing to planned projects. “It would be a technological consolidation initiative for us, as I am looking at implementing virtualisation, cloud, certain application modules in the ERP space, and also deployment of mobility applications which are smartphone-ready,” says Shah. Besides, Indusfila intends to go in for a product refresh as some of them are about four-year-old deployments. Desktop virtualisation is also on top of Shah’s mind in 2012. IT heads see themselves opting for varied technologies this year, which would include ERP and its associates such as BI, business analytics, CRM etc., as 53 per cent of the IT fraternity has opted for this.

perspectives | cover story About 47 per cent observe virtualisation to be the project this year and over 50 per cent of them are going for security tools. Other projects which most of them are looking at are storage, networking and product or application development. Where is the Money?

Reasons Galore Gartner vouches for the compelling needs that are behind organisation decision to increase IT budgets, despite the recessionary trends. Gartner’s Finkeldey admits that business is increasingly looking to IT to help support the challenges of rapid growth for customer support, supply chain management, optimising business processes or helping drive innovation. These demands are coming up while the IT infrastructure within many enterprises is not entirely in place. IT is also in transition from being viewed as a back-office support function earlier, to becoming a frontline business-focussed function today.

In which of the areas do you intend to initiate a project or a deployment in 2012? 52.4% Enterprise Application...(ERP\BI\BA\CRM)

31.1% Hardware\Networking

46.6% Virtualisation

35% Storage

49.5% Security

29.1% Product Development

On the sectoral front, Gartner finds retail making a big wave and it expects the sector to achieve the strongest growth in percentage terms in the year 2012. The IT spending in the retail sector is forecast to grow 11.8 per cent.

Growth Everywhere The best growth opportunities in terms of actual dollars will remain

“While the business is expected to grow around 15 per cent overall, the IT budget is likely to increase around 10 per cent” —Amit Phadke Head, Systems & Technology, Kale Consultants

within the large manufacturing, government and state-owned enterprises, communications and financial services sectors. As a corollary, IT spending in these sectors is also slated to rise. Interestingly, Ajit Mishra, Manager, MTS, intends to initiate a project around VoIP, storage and virtualisation as he sees a 15 per cent increase in the budget this year. Ajit Awasare, Head (Operations) IT Infrastructure, Corporate IT, Larsen & Toubro finds the year 2012 gaining stability. Awasare expects an increase in two kinds of budget — capex and opex. “We are going in for a private cloud model and revamping entire backup infrastructure and putting up a DR plan in place,” says Awasare. Besides, Awasare is looking at SaaS and IaaS-based delivery models to reduce cost. The spending would revolve around building data centre infrastructure this year. Gartners sees a steady 10 to 13 per cent growth in the CAGR till 2015, across verticals. The key verticals include banking and securities, media services, education, government, healthcare, insurance, manufacturing and natural resources.

f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2 | itnext

cover story | perspectives

IT Managers in a

New Avatar IT managers are compelled to wear a new business focussed cap, thinking out-of-the-box with CXO and CFO expectations soaring high

of the expectations that the business has from them and are coming out of their cocoons to explore newer areas of growth and collaboration casting their networks wider as they go along. The first step to meet their professional and career goals is to understand and empathise with the business group expectations from IT. In this context, IT Next felt it was important to understand the new expectations that the CEOs and CFOs have from IT managers in 2012; and deep dived into their minds to get insights into the kind of strategy they intended adopting to deliver desired results. The economic landscape is in a flux and business expectations have become challenging. Besides, enterprises have to contend with the macroeconomic

“Organisational expansion is one of the greatest challenges for me which demands usage of multiple technology platforms to streamline operational efficiency” —Manish Shah GM, IT, Indusfila

concerns that the industries are reeling under. Amidst such concerns, IT managers have pinned their hopes on rolling out new projects and are working out strategies. The online survey attempted to capture the business challenges that IT managers face through an online survey.

Business Challenges It would not be an exaggeration to say that the business challenge is not just restricted to doing more with less. It is getting much more refined and focussed to meet the organisation’s growth goals and processes. G Subramanian, Deputy Manager, IT, Orchid Pharma, finds handling growing security concerns and ensuring privacy of information across groups, besides managing the new regulatory changes, as his top business challenge in 2012. Besides IT, the business challenges invading the IT managers’s terrain would be around supply chain risks management, rising commodity cost, improving business performance to enhance and ensure that the organisation has a competitive edge. For Amit Phadke, Head, Systems & Technology, Kale Consultants, the challenge lies in meeting customer demand and putting a process in place. “Organisational expansion

Photography: Jiten Gandhi

ll along the senior IT manager community has been confined to their respective technology focussed roles. However, the year 2012 seems to be quite different for them with new goals, business and technology challenges, and above all large expectations from CEOs and CFOs. It is fascinating to discover that the managers are aware

perspectives | cover story is one of the greatest challenge for me which demands usage of multiple technology platforms to streamline operational efficiency given that we are an EoU firm,” says Manish Shah, GM, IT, Indusfila. Kamal Matta, Head, IT & Telecom, Sonic Biochem Ltd, finds managing supply chain risks and rising commodity cost as the top business challenge. According to IT Next survey about 72.8 per cent of the respondents perceive improving business performance to enhance and ensure a competitive edge, as the top business challenge.

What according to you would be the expectations of CXOs and CFOs from IT managers? 57.3% Drive innovations and growth while managing cost

58.3% Prove the strategic value of IT

47.6% Run IT efficiently and effectively

26.2% Turn cost and impact estimation into core competencies and handle risk

Preempting Needs It is not new for the IT team to have business groups set certain expectations by them. But what is different now is the fact that IT managers are cued in and are preempting them. The business expectations are varied — from driving innovations and growth while managing costs proving the strategic value of IT to business, or running IT effectively and efficiently, and the like. Interestingly, IT Next survey indicated that 58.3 per cent of the respondents expect CXOs and CFOs to ask them to use technology for increasing profits and thereby prove IT’s strategic value.

58.3% Use technology to increase profits

50.5% Think outside of the IT box Santanu Ghosh, Senior Project Manager, Syntel Ltd, finds his business heads expecting IT to drive innovation and growth while managing cost and also think up innovative solutions. Ajit Awasare, Head (Operations) IT Infrastructure, Corporate IT, Larsen & Toubro says, “My business heads expect me to find a strategy to reduce IT footprint and devise simple and effective strategy for growth.”

How many projects do you expect to roll out during the year 2012? 11% Above 12 7% 10 to 12 43% 0 to 5

17% 8 to 10 22% 5 to 8

Needless to say, IT managers are gearing up to address business needs and taking on a new leadership role. They are into strategic planning and are acquiring new skills.

On a Learning Curve As a primary step, IT managers are hopeful of rolling out new projects in 2012 which would help them meet business expectations. On an average, as per IT Next survey, majority of the respondents expect at least five projects to be rolled out in 2012, which have already got the go ahead. As part of the plan, L&T’s Awasare is trying to acquire new skills around finance and strategy which will help him in the budgeting process and add to his personal growth. Indusfila’s Shah intends to acquire new certification in project management and ITIL field, besides acquiring soft skills which will help him bring strategic value to business aspects. G Subramanian, Deputy Manager, IT Orchid Pharma, intends to do an MBA and PMP credentials. Kale’s Phadke plans to acquire CGIT certification to get deeper sights into technology and business alignment. IT managers are arming themselves for their new avatar.

f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2 | itnext

RoI Factor ADDs a Positive Flavour to virtualisation 32

itnext | j a n u a r y 2 0 1 2

Server Virtualisation | insight

IT Managers are taking to Server Virtualisation convinced of the benefits and RoI it offers By Manu Sha rm a

he technology buzzword in the IT industry in the past two to three years has been around virtualisation. Most enterprises seem to have gone in for server virtualisation and gone beyond test and development stage and implemented it. The market growth has been positively inclined towards it, even though scepticism around return on investment and tangible benefits that it provides abound. Analysts and virtualisation technology providers have been overstating its benefits and returns on investments. Acoording to IDC, server virtualisation and consolidation trends top the CIOs’ priority list in 2012. Against this backdrop, IT Next embarked upon a study to provide deeper insights into how the RoI (return on investments) around server virtualisation is calculated, prerequisites for it, the challenges that trigger the need for virtualisation, where to draw the line between server consolidation and virtualisation, tangible and intangible benefits of the technology and so on.

Consolidation vis-a-vis Virtualisation in Servers The primary step taken by IT managers as part of the cost saving initiative is to consolidate servers. However, the objective behind this is to migrate multiple server workloads to fewer servers. Server virtualisation is initiated with the idea of running multiple applications on a single server depending upon the application spread of the customer.

According to Vijay Sethi, Vice President and CIO, Hero MotoCorp Ltd, “Virtualisation is one of the steps in consolidation of servers which provides immense benefits.” Server virtualisation helps achieve the objective of server consolidation. In majority of the situations a typical x86-based server is utilised only to the extent of 10-20 per cent of its capacity. By consolidating multiple server workloads to fewer physical machines one tends to improve RoI significantly due to savings on energy, space and technical manpower. “Hence, it will be safe to say server consolidation is a business need of the data centre, whereas virtualisation is a technology enabler to achieve this,” says PK Mishra, Independent Consultant for virtualisation and cloud.

Hiccups in Server Virtualisation Absorption Despite recent moves in server virtualisation, companies have not shifted enough of their server workloads, says a Gartner report.

80% reduction in physical servers possible with server virtualisation

For most IT heads justifying the RoI was an impediment in the adoption of virtualisation as the server rooms were very disorganised and it was a major task to bring in virtualisation technology. However, the IT heads went ahead and transformed the server rooms into virtualised environment and walked that extra mile to get things organised. Rahul Mahajan, Associate VP (IT), K Raheja Corp says, the server room was cluttered, hosting more than 40 servers which had been underutilised. Majority of these were of obsolete technology. It was extremely difficult to maintain these servers as support had been withdrawn by the principal companies. To experiment with new technologies and applications was also becoming a challenge owing to the limited data centre space, power and cooling capacity.

Put the House in Order There are certain steps that IT managers need to take before adopting server virtualisation. TG Dandapani, CIO, TVS Motor Company, lists the various activities that they need to perform to get server virtualisation environment ready and thereby justify its RoI. “Make an inventory of complete hardware and applications being used; check the application compatibility on virtual platforms; plan and buy the servers with powerful hardware so that the ratio of physical to virtual should be at least 1:15. This will reduce the AMC cost of old servers to fetch better cost benefit for the virtual software investment, and go in for a storage (SAN or iSCSI),” he says. The other tasks, adds Dandapani, includes, “moving applications running on physical servers to VM and disposing the old physical server. This will reduce power and cooling cost, space cost and hardware AMC cost.” Sethi remarks that depending on the configuration of servers required each year, the investment would vary but broadly speaking, the total investment

j a n u a r y 2 0 1 2 | itnext

insight | Server Virtualisation would be roughly equal to the cost of those servers and an incremental increase in the recurring energy costs for the organisation. Space will not add to the cost in most cases when the organisation has its own data centre, but in other cases, it might add to the recurring/hosting expenses. In addition, there will be the cost of managing additional servers. “So, the cost of server is not just the cost of server, but also cost of electricity, cooling, space, manageability, etc,” adds Sethi.

procedure for the migration of applications from physical to virtual using inbuilt tools in HPUX 11.31, HPVM migration tool, VMware Vcenter converter tool, Hyper-V physical to virtual migration tool, etc. b) After the migration, performance needs to be checked. Backup in virtual machines is one of the key challenges in virtual environment.

Ideal Scenarios

Calculating RoI

Sethi feels prima facie any company which has a reasonably large IT landscape is a candidate for s e r ve r v i r t u a l i s at i o n . In addition, a company should go for virtualisation in the server space when any of the below factors is true for you: There is a space crunch in the data centre and/or the energy bill is going through the roof. Such a scenario provides a huge opportunity for cost saving if virtualisation is adopted. The business is demanding more agility from IT — business expects very low lead times in terms of application deployments, which in many cases would be less than even server procurement and deployment time by even your most efficient IT procurement group. You can provision instantly on virtual server. When most of your server resources are heavily underutilised (RAM or CPU utilization say 30 per cent or even less in many cases). When the server infrastructure is due for refresh When you need to buy a number of servers for existing or new applications

Steps to Virtualisation Most industry experts recommended certain steps to be followed in the virtualisation process: a) Application compatibility on virtual platform should be checked: if it is compatible, finding appropriate tools required for migration is essential. For examples, HPUX 11.31 has a standard

itnext | j a n u a r y 2 0 1 2

Hero MotoCorp’s computing RoI Investments Cost of servers ost of virtualisation software C (free in some cases) ost of deployment C (training of team, implementation costs in case external party is required, etc)

Returns (or savings) Saving in electricity cost Saving in cooling cost

Saving in AC infrastructure cost By using virtualisation, Savings in manageability the number of physical Savings in AMC servers can come down very conservatively by about 80 per cent. This immediately Intangible Savings accounts to 80 per cent Faster provisioning saving in power, space, Increased high availability manpower and even server Steps towards a greener planet licences, says Mishra. Also leads to a more efficient IT as While capex could be still perceived by users an issue as one may need to buy few larger machines, junk out older machines, buy additional virtualisation management software etc., while opex * Application licences applicability in gets a definite boost. Comparison of virtualisation environment capex with opex is dependent on other * Application support matrix in site details and cannot be generalised. virtual environment. “However, experience indicates that “Having an inventory of legacy favourable improvements happen to servers, given the complex data centre RoI, capex and opex if one plans well infrastructure, call for virtualisation before deploying virtualisation,” adds was taken in a phased manner,” says Mishra. Anil Shewale, Sr Manager, Centre of From a cost perspective, Dandapani Technology Excellence, Mahindra and opines that cost of the shared storage Mahindra Ltd. and servers: cost of the virtualisation At Mahindra, servers with high software and applications can be utilisation, requiring more resources migrated from physical machine to were identified for virtualisation and virtual machine using in-house IT team. prioritised accordingly. “Application To elaborate on a real-time scenario, licences requirement and support Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd considered available from the application vendor in the following for their virtualisation a virtual environment was identified,” project: says Shewale. * Legacy servers and existing data “Our transition to the virtualised centre infrastructure environment was a conscious decision * Level of hardware utilisation for as we had to replace our old servers different applications which had reached the end of life. * Performance expectation of various Hence investment in new hardware applications was done keeping virtualisation in

Server Virtualisation | insight mind,” adds Shewale. For Hero MotorCorp, server virtualisation goes a big way in saving cost and easing the manageability of servers. They did the RoI computation. For instance, in one case, they put four big servers in the organisation and made some 35-40 virtual servers in that. “The cost that we saved in energy and space (otherwise we would have had to expand our data centre) and manageability (otherwise requiring additional manpower) paid off in almost 10-12 months giving us a RoI in less than a year. Besides, it made our server room clutter free,” remarks Sethi. How can one work out a cost and RoI in an environment that needs to virtualise 50 servers? There can be no straight answer to this, as the server cost depends on configuration and the price of an Intel x86 server could be as low as Rs 1.5 lakh or even less or more than Rs 10 lakh. Sethi says similarly cost of virtualisation software and implementation would vary depending on various factors. However, the RoI in most cases should be less than two years.

“Cost that we saved in energy and space and manageability paid off in almost 10-12 months” Vijay Sethi, Vice President & CIO, Hero MotoCorp Ltd

Virtualisation Benefits The benefits of desktop virtualisation are becoming more and more obvious. BS Nagarajan, Country SE Manager, VMware India, says, “With VMware virtualisation, you can see immediate, quantifiable cost savings, while ensuring true business agility, the ability to rapidly respond to the changing market environment. It also results in reduce capex through consolidation; improved opex through automation and minimised lost revenue due to downtime.” He adds, “Our server virtualisation also results in increased utilisation rates from 5-15 per cent to up to 80 per cent; deferred data centre construction costs by $1000/sq ft; attainment of 50-70 per cent higher VM density per host than possible with commodity offerings and achievement of 20-30 per cent lower cost-per-application.” Arunkumar Sheth, Head, Software

“Virtualisation technologies do have the potential to be considered as cost-saving technologies of today” Jaywant Gawande, GM, Corporate IT, M&M Ltd.

Development, Gati Limited, says, “Some of the intangible benefits include saving tremendous amount of server administration time from managing servers. This time can be used for innovation and business critical activities besides the savings on energy/ power and lowered maintenance costs.” Within K Raheja, server consolidation of 30 odd servers, hosting semi critical and critical applications, was done to three physical servers in virtualised environment. “With the completion of this project, all the above mentioned limitations have been eliminated in addition to getting other advantages like load balancing, easy management in case of disaster, centralised backup, very high availability and scalability,” says Mahajan. Besides, agility in IT set-up to meet business agility has been greatly achieved after the implementation of this project at Raheja. M&M Ltd has also seen positive trends. Jaywant Gawande, GM, Corporate IT, M&M Ltd, observes that if virtualisation technologies are considered as a combination of server, storage, network and desktop, then it does have the potential to be considered as the cost-saving technology of today. “It will take a while for the technology to stabilise for deployment and handle the high capital costs,” says Gawande. Server virtualisation has been maturing over time and new features such as the ease of management for administrators and application performance do not degrade on a virtual machine. In addition, there is a focus on improving information security in a virtual environment.

Future Roadmap The server virtualisation technology is bringing many benefits for the consumers. “Server virtualisation in future will offer features that will enhance functionality and security. Vendors are also changing their licensing policies in view of the increased proliferation of virtualisation,” concludes Sethi.

j a n u a r y 2 0 1 2 | itnext

insight | Xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Key Enterprise Development trends Developers focus to be on Big Data, agile ALM, web, mobile and cloud development in 2012 By Dar ry l K Taf t

itnext | f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2

s we head into 2012, enterprise developers will need to focus on some major themes, including the emergence of HTML5, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;big dataâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; and analytics, and Agile Application Lifecycle Management (ALM). They should also continue to concentrate on web, mobile and cloud development, and take advantage of advances in languages and integrated development environments (IDEs). HTML5 is going like gangbusters. Microsoft has adopted HTML5 for Windows 8, Internet Explorer 9 and upcoming versions of the browser and other products. And there are indications that Microsoft may shelve future development

Enterprise trends | insight of Silverlight, a development framework for building web and mobile applications, after Silverlight 5 or a subsequent point release. The onset of HTML5 also drove Adobe to halt its development of its Flash technology for mobile browsers. “HTML5 is coming on strong as a standard, accelerated by the speed of change of hardware devices,” said Al Hilwa, an analyst with IDC. “By 2013, we will reach a point where 90 per cent of smartphones and tablets will sport HTML5-capable browsers.” However, Hilwa notes that it is important to remember that the need for a Flash browser plug-in continues on the desktop. We don’t expect 90 per cent of desktop browsers to be capable of HTML5 until 2015,” he said. “So the differentiation that Flash provides in high-end graphics and video protection continues and Adobe will continue to invest in it,” Hilwa added. We b - b a s e d development environments, such as the Eclipse Orion, Cloud9 IDE, eXo Cloud IDE and others, are becoming more and more popular. “Web-based tools will become more important as development moves into the cloud,” said Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director of the Eclipse Foundation. “However, we should expect a new way of thinking about web-based IDEs. Trying to fit something like Eclipse into a web browser just won’t scale. The nice thing about Orion is, it attempts to make the browser your IDE.” The big data and analytics craze will continue to grow due to the explosion of data coming from intelligent devices, social media and other sources. According to IDC, the market for intelligent systems will grow substantially in the next few years, from 800 million units today to more than 2.3 billion by 2015. Shipments of embedded devices already exceed those of cell phones and PCs, and IDC predicts the market for intelligent systems will soon represent a $250 bn industry. “Data has become the new currency,” said Kevin Dallas, Microsoft’s Windows

90 per cent of smartphones and tablets will sport HTML5-capable browsers by 2015 — IDC

2.3

billion market for market intelligence by 2015 Embedded General Manager. As proof of how hot big data has become, venture capital firm Accel Partners launched a $100 mn big data fund at the recent Hadoop World 2011 conference. Meanwhile, “One of the most important trends in 2012 will be the maturation of Java PaaS (platformas-a-service),” said Mik Kersten, CEO of Tasktop Technologies. “While the transition will be a long one, Oracle’s Java Cloud culminates key announcements around PaaS offerings

Developers’ Technology themes Big Data and Analytics HTML5 Agile Application Lifecycle Management Web Mobile Cloud Development 012 will see Java PaaS 2 (Platform-as-a-Service) getting matured

in 2011, and sends a signal that Java developers should start considering PaaS solutions as the deployment destination of new applications.” The Eclipse Foundation’s Milinkovich said he believes the concept of Agile Application Lifecycle Management is becoming a reality. Developers are integrating new tools chains to support Agile development and a faster release process, he said. “On the ALM side, a key trend to watch (in) 2012 is the open-source powered tidal wave changing how developers work and collaborate,” Tasktop’s Kersten added. As per research group Gartner’s observation, there are five market trends which impact the IT enterprise software industry. Content management, social software, BI, collaboration and supply chain management will be the major applications focus. The delivery of these applications will be driven through SaaS model. The five trend include, globalisation resulting in market consolidation and the technology convergence, modernisation with open source software and SOA for cost effective maintenance, implementation of mobile and PaaS, socialisation with social media and networking and verticalisation of software packages. Upgrading of build-run-manage technologies to improve agility, establishing cloud-computing infrastructure services and resultsreporting transparency is another focus area in the industry. Even this year revenues from enterprise software is predicted to rise by 7.5 per cent from US$ 235.9 billion to US$ 253.7 billion this year, with continued growth until at least 2015, as per Gartner’s report. For enterprises, investment in software is driven by the need to attract new and retain old customers as well as provide enhanced business processes and better collaboration through the use of social networking, managing content and performance reporting. Senior Writer, eWeek

f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2 | itnext

insight | Storage Management

How data enters a system, where it resides, how it is processed, who can access and manage it, and who can store and archive it — that’s where the power of IT will be this year, in controlling the data tsunami By c h r i s p r e i m es be r g e r

f yesterday is an archive and today is a real time view, then tomorrow is an idea that encompasses both history and present-day experience.

Overriding Theme for 2012: Control of Data

How data enters a system, where it resides, how it is processed, and who can access and manage it, as well as who can store and archive data. That’s where the real power is. Those who know how to control both the archival and current views are most often the ones who come up with significant new ideas and promote business progress.

itnext | f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2

IT is progressive which is well established and will gain even more ground in 2012. These critically important technology trends include cloud services and systems; data centres that use less electricity; the larger-than-life workloads and storage capacities we call ‘big data’, the increasing use of automation in systems of all kinds; the integration of business intelligence into just about everything; and the ever-growing volume of stored data in all its formats.

IT Trends in 2012 Important developments that we will see — and that eWEEK will examine in 2012 enterprise IT include:

Storage Management | insight

It’s All about

Control

of Data

Full automation of major IT systems Availability of more cloud-based software and services than one can imagine The rapid ascendance of hybrid cloud systems Exabyte-scale storage systems (thousands of petabytes!) Data centre systems that use less electricity, yet churn out larger workloads Vastly increased usage of data analytics deployments — and not just inside large enterprises New and improved unified data centre controls that include monitoring of dataflow and storage, as well as all the physical facilities.

The real power lies with those who know how to control both the archival and current views and the ones who come up with significant new ideas and promote business progress

TIPS ON TURNING BIG DATA INTO AN ORGANISATION’S MOST IMPORTANT ASSET: 1. Determine the ‘right’ information and coalesce it into one place

Photography: photos. com

1 2

2. Find a scalable solution capable of spanning information silos 3. Think real-time. Think visible

4. Track return on investment per channel 5. Get used to a new role

One of the most interesting developments around enterprise applications is a new cloud-based security control layer for browsers that will enable airtight utilisation of any personal connected device for secure business use. Equipped with start up Authentic8’s cloud service, any browser can be secured by enterprise policies ahead of time based on the needs of the business and the employee. So any connected device can be used at anytime to do the work. This has broad implications for a whole range of used cases. Since the vast majority of crimeware, root kits, spyware, viruses and other Webtransported malware enter a device via the browser; this effectively cuts the head of all those problems. eWEEK will be covering Authentic8 as it comes out of semi-stealth mode and brings its service to marketing, early 2012. This new development may cause some consternation in the virtual desktop world, a sector that has succeeded in some markets but has been spinning its wheels in others for more than a decade. It has yet to

f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2 | itnext

insight | Storage Management

itnext | f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2

where are we in five years?

2016

internet forum

blogs 5 yrs growth

650%

forum

Every enterprise certainly strives to get as much out of its IT investment as possible. This has never been truer than in the first decade of this century, in which a global financial crisis has shaken the economic stability of many nations, let alone companies and individuals. These days, larger data centres loaded with servers, storage arrays and networking boxes are being controlled by fewer people because new-generation systems management software is automating tasks once done manually. Apple, for example, just opened a huge newdata centre (costing about $1 bn) in Maiden, NC, that one would expect to require a staff of several hundred technicians. In reality, only 50 new full-time workers will be hired. The facility practically runs itself from a few stations, and some of those can be remote if necessary. Good for Apple, certainly; not good for the local economy. Furthermore, the menu and dragand-drop user interfaces have become so familiar and easy to use that coding and scripting front-facing applications and cloud-service deployments have basically become a thing of the past. Now 20 and 30 something business people that have grown up with Windows and Mac OS systems know how to use these interfaces, and they are installing and running these new software instances. They’re even creating new virtual machines to handle the workloads. That used to be the domain of the computer science major. Now, marketing and businesspeople are fulfilling those IT functions on a daily basis. Another data centre innovation we’ll see in 2012 is that heat from servers/ storage/networking in data centres will be channelled for other purposes, such as heating other buildings. Just as some frigid geographic locations bring in cold air to cool their data centres and reduce their electrical draw, heat generated from all

structured and unstructured data 650%

blogs

Doing More With Less

Enterprise Data: 2011-2016

where are we today?

gain the widespread adoption that its proponents had expected.

2011 structured

cagr compound annual growth rate

21.8% cagr

unstructured

2016 5 yrs growth

61.7% cagr

800%

structured unstructured

80%

75-100M 10-20M

2011

blogs internet discussion board and forums

60%

annual growth in enterprise data storage. —IDC

20% of the IT capital in enterprises comprise data storage —IDC

2011

44x

structural data transactional data warehouse unstructured data free from email, video, audio, chats, web pages

that hardware will be used to provide warmth where needed. That would be a welcome green IT initiative.

So Many Devices, So Little Time Another trend that won’t go away anytime soon is the proliferation of personal devices that will connect to data centres via the cloud indeed. Not only are these devices designed to last for only a few years so that you’ll need to upgrade them regularly, some analysts report that the average consumer in the Americas, EMEA and the Far East will own seven connected devices by 2013 — if they don’t already. Some industry watchers feel that’s a conservative estimate. An informal eWEEK poll of about 100 savvy users (mostly journalists) revealed that they all own 10 to 20 connected devices. When one considers smartphones, laptops, tablet PCs, desktop PCs (yes, people still buy them), connected cars, GPS systems, web-connected security systems, music players and other technologies, there is certainly no shortage of choices out there. In summary, if you haven’t already done so, you should take control of your personal IT in 2012 — especially if it overlaps with your professional life because it’s getting more and more difficult to separate the two.

2021

IDC predicts that between 2009 and 2020 digital data will grow 44 times to 35ZB, basically a growth of .8ZB in 2009 to 35ZB in 2020 for a CAGR of 44.99 Source: IDC’s Top 10 Enterprise Server Predictions for 2011 (IDC # 226698) webcast, January 25, 2011

Chris Preimesberger, eWEEK Editor-in- Chief, Features and Analysis

15minute manager

training Education workplace compensation workforce trends skills development personal development

REDUCE STRESS BY DEEP BREATHING Page 42

Strategy: Blame it on the CIO this page Review: Amazon Kindle Touch page 44 Trends: Marriage with No Divorce page 45 Training Calendar: IT/Telecom Global Event page 46

BY Kapi l M e h r ot r a

he debate around the topic as why certain projects succeed and certain fail is never ending. The blame game goes on relentlessly. However, whatever may be the reason and whoever may be responsible for the outcome, the key person held responsible is the CIO. In my opinion, it is not so much about a person, but more so about the lack of a process which affects a project and its outcomes. Owing to this fact, any setback or untoward incident happening will directly impede the project progress and its momentum.

CIO in the Ring Project Management

Blame it on the CIO Project failures may be due to many reasons. But generally, it is the CIO who has to bear the brunt . Counter it

f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2 | itnext

i llustratio n: photo s. com

It is an interesting discovery that CIOs change jobs frequently. And this, has a cascading effect on the the projects being handled by them. Of the several reasons for their job switch, the most commonly cited one is lack of skills of pertaining to the project in question, programme management, governance, etc. Thus, they feel compelled to leave the projects incomplete. Another concern is that some CIOs have failed to change with the times. The internet has accelerated the pace of change in most industries and brought fundamental shifts in the way

15-MINUTE MANAGER companies do business. The global economy is forcing global mergers, which means IT systems must cut across boundaries and cultures. The CIO’s responsibilities have increased, given the entire service industry — BFSI, healthcare, insurance, manufacturing and other sectors — are growing and throwing up newer challenges while demanding newer skills and ways to keep pace with the ever changing market dynamics. Projects now have to do with new products, continuous improvement in customer experience and customer reach with self-help capabilities. Besides, all back office-servicing functions like operations, HR, facilities administration and finance need to align to sales function requirements and need technology support to deliver the changes faster. All of these pose a big question to the CIO and his team demanding faster throughput of the project, process and delivery in different directions, more so in a captive IT unit. It is natural that any project failure is attributed to the CIO who initiated it. Generally, companies have very strong backup but if somehow, the project initiated by the CIO turns out to be facing certain hiccups or is slow in momentum, the reason for the delay or failure of the project could be that the CIO just rushed or wrongly budgeted or that there was a gap in the required functionality and many more such errors of judgement.

No Shortcuts

HEALTHY HABITS

REDUCE STRESS BY DEEP BREATHING Breathe... deeply and often Fringe Benefits: Calmer disposition Fewer headaches Clearer thinking Heightened libido More energy Less need for stimulants like coffee, tea Brighter complexion Faster cell rejuvenation Spiritual cleansing Physical cleansing

Most often, there is certain element of resistance displayed when it comes to levying a process, as it is often seen as an impediment to quicker delivery! So, does that mean that the IT function needs to focus only on delivery and not processes? The answer is definitely, No! I strongly believe that there should be no shortcuts, which can have adverse impact on the larger project itself, which happens in most cases.

PM’s Mandatory Remedies The ideal way to address this is to bring

itnext | f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2

Take a deep breath, literally, to beat stress. Practice deep breathing daily.

Deep breathing can be an important coping skill to learn. It may sound silly, but many people do not breathe properly. Here are steps for correct deep breathing technique. Step 1: Find a comfortable position either

lying on your back or sitting. If you are sitting down, make sure that you keep your back straight and release the tension in your shoulders. Let them drop. Step 2: Close your eyes. Breathe in through your nose. The hand on your stomach should rise. The hand on your chest should move very little. Step 3: Place one hand on your stomach and the other on your chest. Exhale through your mouth, pushing out as much air as you can while contracting your abdominal muscles. The hand on your stomach should move in as you exhale. Step 4: Take a few breaths as you normally would. Does your belly rise and fall with every inbreath and outbreath? If you can answer “yes,” that is good. This is the natural way of breathing. If your belly stays still but your chest rises and falls with every breath, practice breathing by only allowing your belly to rise and fall when you breathe in and out. Step 5: Continue to breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. Try to inhale enough so that your lower abdomen rises and falls. Count slowly as you exhale. Step 6: Continue as long as you would like! Tips: It can take some time to re-learn to

breathe. With practice, it becomes easier.

15-MINUTE MANAGER

“Key project issues include not strategically aligning IT with corporate goals, lack of planning and skill gaps” Berjes Eric Shroff, Senior Manager, IT, Tata Services Ltd

“Requirements are often inadequately understood, defined or documented” Sandeep Walia Assistant GM, IT, HT Media Ltd

synergy between processes and delivery by creating and implementing best practices in project management that are repeatable and become second nature to the Project Manager (PM). The IT heads need to be able to visualise potential issues (e.g., a Failure Mode and Effect Analysis [FMEA]); document

them; and come up with multiple scenarios and solution sets, as appropriate. FMEA is a team driven approach that helps in identifying potential cause of failures in a project or product either by design or manufacturing or process deficiencies. It also identifies critical or significant design or process

The reason for the delay or failure in a project could be that the CIO just rushed or wrongly budgeted or due to a gap in a required functionality

key to PM Develop the skills and business savvy to make your voice count at the seniormost level in your organisation. Learn the intricacies of your organisation’s business operations. Start delegating pure technology decisions to IT staff. Don’t forget the basics — build credibility by ensuring that your projects are successful What IT organisations want most is more engagement and support from business leaders and colleagues Irony of failure. According to the research, IT professionals believe business leaders priorities include increasing efficiency to reduce costs, improving innovation, and fostering higher customer satisfaction, agility, and quality More support from top executives Better input from end users Establishment of a ‘centre of excellence’ with broad support from business and IT

characteristics that require special controls to prevent or detect failure modes. It is a tool used to prevent problems from occurring. In addition, not doing this as part of the project planning exercise leads to longer delays, patched up delivery that is neither on time nor effective.

Managing Risk Risk management is another tool in the success of project management, which requires creating capabilities and a toolkit for the project manager so that they are able to analyse what could possibly go wrong. A smart project manager starts by thinking exhaustively on the kind of impact his deliverables would have on the potential users. Once, the stakeholders are on board, it is easier to distinguish facts from assumptions and visualise the dependencies. The moment one completes this activity, an outline of the plan is ready. Speaking to stakeholders and subject matter experts (SME) helps to understand the systems and the required synergies

f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2 | itnext

15-MINUTE MANAGER REVIEWS

Amazon Kindle Touch — E-ink reader

The Kindle Touch is Amazon’s first touchscreen E-Ink reader. Sure, they’re the last to the party with the popular Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch, Kobo Touch and a slew of Sony Readers including the latest Sony PRS-T1 preceding it. The Kindle Touch looks much like its $20 cheaper sibling, the Kindle (or Kindle 4 if you find the simple name Kindle too simple). The design is basic without the slim and stylish look of the Kindle with Keyboard, but for $99 with offers (ads on the home screen and at the bottom of your book listing page) and $139 without ads, how much style can you get?

imaging: pri nce a ntony

The screen is as sharp and clear as its non-touch companions in the current Kindle E-Ink lineup, and touch is responsive. This is a 6” e-Book reader with the usual 800 x 600 resolution and 16 shades of gray. The user interface hasn’t changed much from the non-touch Kindle. You see a text-based listing of books and periodicals, and use the menu button to access standard Kindle style menu of a additional functions. The e-Reader has speakers, headphone jack and a basic MP3 player that can also handle Audible books. There’s the usual text-to-speech feature (if allowed by the publisher), the new X-Ray feature (though not many books yet support this feature) and WhisperSync over WiFi. If you purchase the 3G model you can download and sync content over AT&T’s 3G network as well (at no additional charge, but the 3G model is more expensive).The 3G version costs $149 with ads and $189 without ads. 3G is provided by AT&T and AT&T also includes free use of the WiFi Hotspots that are available across the US. PDFs are a bit awkward since the Kindle Touch oddly lacks landscape mode.

Conclusion If you’re an Amazon person and don’t take copious notes, the Kindle Touch is a no-brainer. It’s much easier to navigate the device using a touchscreen rather than the old joystick method, and even the on-screen keyboard is easy to use as a stand-in for the hardware keyboard. You get Amazon’s huge book selection, great customer service and added features over the more basic Kindle 4 for only $20 more. These features include speakers and a heaphone jack with MP3 and Audible playback. The Kindle Touch lasts several weeks on a charge. Source: mobiletechreview.com/

itnext | f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2

between them is always advisable. In addition, whenever a plan is based on assumptions — the assumptions should be treated as risks and used as a basis for solutions to avoid these risks (Risk Management and Mitigation). As long as a project manager continuously reviews these identified risks to his satisfaction and is communicating effectively with all identified stakeholders (Project Tracking and Status Reporting), surprises can be minimised and chances of a successful delivery are dramatically improved. To avoid any discrepancies in the project or risks, there has to be an efficient and adequate team, besides project/ program management and governance being in place, besides the required acceptance from the client/business.

Best Practices An effective project head automatically creates positive synergy between processes and successful delivery. One has to be pre-emptive in measuring issues of a project as to where it can go awry and what one can do to avert crises and not take unnecessary risks. Assessing and managing risks is the best and time-tested method to avoid project catastrophes. By evaluating your plan for potential problems and developing strategies to address them, you will improve its chances of a success. There are few things that the project leader can consider doing: a) Defining the scope and objectives b) Defining the deliverables c) Project planning d) Command able communication e) Tracking and status reporting on the progress of the project f)Adhering to change management g)Understanding risk management To conclude, it is not the CIO or the project head quitting or someone’s capablity that determines a project’s outcome, but rather it is the logical, pragmatic and methodical approach taken which ensures its success.

Head, Applications, iYogi Technical Services

15-MINUTE MANAGER

CIO & HR

A strong bond between IT and HR facilitates organisational growth By H arj e e t S i n g h K h a n d u ja

have always been curious to get into a CIO’s mind to find out how s/he perceives the HR department. The best way to transit into a CIO’s mind was to have some of my CIO friends come over for dinner and then try and read their minds in a more informal environment. Since it was an informal discussion, I refrained from posing formal questions. To my surprise, the CIOs too did not reiterate the oft heard formal statement, “HR has become a strategic function and key to the success of an organisation”, to my question about how they perceive HR.

Reality Bites General perception in CIO circles is that HR is merely a provider of resources, while it not being successful in sourcing appropriate sources at the right time and at the right cost. To make the discussion more absorbing, I asked my CIO guests as what is that which the HR does well. One of the CIO friends in a lighter vein stated that HR, at times, does a good job in firing people.

Where does HR figure? I had done some research before the get-together to find out the priorities of CIOs for 2012, and found that HR is

nowhere near their top five priorities. I consciously put forth the point and to my understanding found that CIOs, priorities still revolved around bringing in business agility, aligning with business, reducing costs and harnessing big data and new mobility devices with an objective of improving return on investment on information technology. Interestingly, a common theme between HR and IT is that calculating return on investment (RoI) is not easy and perception plays a big role. It is the people who take the centre stage in both the departments. HR and IT work behind the scenes most of the time and any glitches in these get highlighted faster than the goodies. I was not at all surprised over the comments of my CIO friends who viewed HR more as a service provider and less as their customer. It took me some time to mould the discussion

f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2 | itnext

illustrati on: photo s.c om

Marriage with no divorce

15-MINUTE MANAGER

event calendar Top IT/Telecom Global

to a point and provoke their thought around what can be done to enable and leverage HR which may impact RoI of an organisation, be it IT or HR.

Event Calendar for FEBRUARY 2012

event

Venue

Dates

IT Expo East

Miami Beach Convention Centre, Miami, Florida, USA

February 1-3, 2012

National Security Technology Expo

San Diego Convention Centre, San Diego, California, USA

February 6-8, 2012

ET Asia ITEX

Pragati Maidan, New Delhi, Delhi, India

February 13-14, 2012

Cloud Connect

Santa Clara Convention Centre, Santa Clara, Calif, USA

February 13-16, 2012

FUTURE NOW

Bombay Exhibition Centre(BEC), Mumbai, India

February 15-17, 2012

Malaysia Technology Expo

Putra World Trade Centre February 16-18, (PWTC), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 2012

International Wireless Communication Expo

Las Vegas Convention Centre, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA

February 22-23, 2012

ID India Expo

Pragati Maidan, New Delhi, Delhi, India

February 22-24, 2012

e-Sec Expo

Pragati Maidan, New Delhi, Delhi, India

February 22-24, 2012

Cards Expo

Pragati Maidan, New Delhi, India February 22-24, 2012

How Can HR & IT Gel? I believe that the core objective of HR is to improve return on human resources investment. The investment is not just in hiring. It also includes investment in development and engagement of people. HR is a bit different to deal with with a distinct set of qualities, capabilities, and needs. Human resources, unlike other resources, have a multiplier effect which has a wide range from minus three to plus three. Technology is not only an enabler for HR department for transactions or analytics but has also become an enabler for various innovations that the it carries out to develop and engage people. Collaboration and communication are critical pieces of the puzzle which require technology backbone as well as progressive thinking.

Being Progressive

itnext | f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2

HR is going through a metamorphosis and imbibing corporate culture within the system. For instance, the department which hitherto was conservative in terms of enabling chatting tools now realises the importance of collaboration tools and strongly recommends instant messaging or chatting to facilitate better communication. If an organisation fails to set expectation with people and people are not inducted properly, it is very difficult for CIO to justify return on investment on such tools. What people do not accept is the user interfaces of the internal systems if they are not at par with user interfaces available outside the office environment. Consider a person using an excellent interface of social media network on mobile phone on one hand, and dull and boring screens of internal applications like intranet and employee self-service for day-to-day usage. In the current scenario, working on a computer, laptop or checking mails on phone are no more considered privileges which organisations provide to employees.

15-MINUTE MANAGER All the productivity enhancement tools like laptops and email-enabled mobile phones have become much cheaper. Even social media networks are available on basic mobile handsets. External environment has become more dynamic and is progressing very fast. It has become extremely important for CIOs and HR department to improve quality of internal IT environment by upgrading user interfaces and to enhance internal technology infrastructure for communication.

“I was not at all surprised over the comments of my CIO friends who viewed HR more as a service provider and less as their customer”

What’s More?

Harjeet Singh Khanduja Global HR Head, Anthelio Business Tech

The job of CIO and HR do not stop at just improving interfaces. Availability of information and speed of change of environment changes the behaviour and sets new expectations. Change in external environment is guided by organised investment. There are organisations which are competing with each other and treating common man as a customer. Web has moved out of computer, it has spread to mobile phones with satellite and IP television, and it is further going to strengthen its reach and raise expectations of society. You must be thinking why the HR department has to participate in the process. If it is about changing interfaces, technology people are smart enough to fulfil the requirement. The essence is in changing the mindset and looking at various processes in a fundamentally different manner. Hence involvement of CIO as well as the HR is very important. If you bring the HR and the CIO together and ask them their plans about development of people, they will talk about online performance management system and e-Learning solutions. Frankly speaking, the kind of e-Learning solutions which exist now do not resonate well with the current demographics. It is not only technology; its structure and mindset as well. In most organisations, learning has always been centralised and driven by individuals in training department, knowing the fact that 70 per cent learning is on–the-job learning. The two very prominent tools for knowledge

management in existence for more than five years and continuously improving are Google and YouTube. Comprehensive view is that 80 per cent of the organisations failed to create Google magic due to lack of rigour and absence of knowledge management culture. YouTube never took off as an e-Learning platform or knowledge management hub due to lack of infrastructure within organisations, conservative mindset and centralised controlled method of

What’s common between HR & CIO? * Discussion around online performance management system and e-Learning solutions * Outsourcing options around training * Automation of HR activities with systematic investment in social media * Change management in HR, possible through IT * HR initiating prevalence of collaboration tools and strongly recommending instant messaging or chatting to facilitate better communication

learning and many more. Most of these failures are not technology failures; they are change management failures.

Change Management is Critical Change Management is one area where HR and CIO collaborate very well as the latter fully understand that success of technology investments is very much dependent on the adoption of it by internal users. As HR function matures, most of the counselling jobs including performance management will be passed on to the managers. Developments and enhancements in employee self-service and manager self-service will further reduce the administrative workload of HR. Activities like recruitment; training, coaching, and compensation are already available as outsourcing options. It is said that social media sites are attempting psychometric analysis of people and helping them as well as organisations that want to have a peek into it. This is a combination of userfriendly technology and progressive mindset. Also it makes perfect business sense. Based on the trend, I expect that more and more core HR jobs will get automated with systematic investment in social media. Moving forward, HR is likely to become a single person department with Chief People Officer (CPO) deciding the strategic direction and finalising enabling contracts.

f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2 | itnext

interview | Manish Goel

itnext | f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2

Manish Goel | interview

SOPHISTICATED THREATS BURGEONING Manish Goel, Chairman, Online Trust Alliance and CEO, TrustSphere, expresses the need to educate markets on emerging sophisticated security threats and ways to protect data and IP against attacks. Goel discusses the strategy to align business with security in a conversation with N Geetha What are the top security trends in 2012 that might impact IT heads across industries? While every country has its own idiosyncrasies, with different cultural, legislative and market requirements, the threats are getting more sophisticated. Cyber crime and spearphishing are the common targeted attempts at government websites. Spear-phishing refers to attacks on specific individuals in an organisation designed to steal valuable data. Recent high profile breaches in several listed corporations and government departments are causing growing concerns about the use of fraudulent email as a part of targeted attacks. The objectives of these attacks vary. In general, they aim to achieve high value outcomes such as the disclosure of commercially sensitive information, manipulation of stock prices, corporate or

national espionage, or gaining access to secured systems. In most cases, the aim is to access IP to track financial reports where the payback is huge. Spear-phishing is where an attacker carefully studies an individual victim — usually an executive in a large organisation or government department — and crafts an email message specific to that victim using social engineering techniques. The spear -phishing email typically appears to be from someone known to the victim and on a topic that the person and the victim are likely to communicate about. It targets individuals with customised emails, making detection even harder with existing technology. Access to IP is the trend that the cyber criminals aim at which is causing a huge financial loss. In light of the growing cyber security crises in India and the world, there is a greater urgency for improved email security.

Our organisation Online Trust Alliance’ Board of Directors have taken up the task of evangelising the critical need for cyber security infrastructure in India and throwing light on the present dangers that come with cyber security lapses.

What are the best practices that IT managers need to follow to counter these? There is no single technology that will help in countering these. Broader security tools are required to meet the growing menace. Prevalence of SEIM tools are said to be gaining momentum to gauge the threat. Most organisations are now consciously building layers of intelligence across each data counters. Building security operating centres (SoC) across is very important which brings in the security standards. Smart network planning is necessary to protect data privacy. It is important for the security forums

f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2 | itnext

interview | Manish Goel to educate the market about data privacy. If trust is lost in the online infrastructure, consumers will be at loss. Organisations like ours are making efforts to enable security practitioners with a ‘How to secure’ guide which elaborately deals with security issues and guidelines to addressing them.

How will the Alliance ensure that the best practices are followed by the CISOs? Online Alliance Trust (OTA), a global security conglomeration of security experts, work to develop and advocate best practices, training and public policy which mitigate emerging privacy, identity and security threats to online services, brands, government, organisations and consumers. OTA’s goal is to increase consumer protection, transparency and control of their data, online activities and transactions, thereby enhancing online trust and confidence and the long-term vitality and innovation of internet-based services. As a non-profit, membership is open to all businesses, industry, law enforcement and government agencies committed to collaboration and enhancing online trust and confidence. Going by the security priorities across countries and organisations, we have formed working committees around each security function. These include: Anti-Malvertising: To develop and promote best practices, data sharing and solutions to help protect consumers and sites from malicious advertising. Email Authentication: To address deceptive email and spear-phishing the committee works to promote adoption for email authentication standards and best practices for interactive marketers, ISPs, enterprise and government agencies.

itnext | f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2

Infrastructure: To help protect critical infrastructure from exploits and vulnerabilities and increase resiliency, supporting identity, authentication, brand protection, anti-fraud and trust mechanisms. International: To stimulate the online trust by creating partnerships and cooperating with stakeholders worldwide. Online trust is an international issue that transcends individual interests, technology and geographical boundaries. Programming & Education: To develop educational priorities, strategies and curriculum including the OTA Academy, to provide actionable and prescriptive advice to help protect online brands, intellectual property and consumers.

“security attack S aim to achieve high value outcomes such as the disclosure of commercially sensitive information” Public Policy: As a ‘voice of reason’ the committee works across the ecosystem with industry, business, government, and consumer groups to promote the adoption of balanced legislation, self-regulation and best practices. We will be starting the India chapter soon, involving the CIOs from across verticals.

Can you elaborate on any security practices catering specific industry verticals? We often suggest best practices

Manish Goel | interview different. In mature markets, the GRC budgets gets carved out and separate from the IT budget and security falls under the GRC framework. OTA’s study last year revealed that about 400 data breaches occurred in the US resulting in $5.3 bn business loss for the country. Every CISO is working out budgets anticipating the threats. Gartner projects 15 per cent of the total budget is going towards IT security.

How important is the GRC aspect in an organisation and how much is it followed? Let’s speak on what compliance is all about. It is compliance around regulation and legislation; and CISOs get involved in evolving compliance standards. Governance is about ensuring good practices to be followed by employees and insider threats are mitigated. Creating a risk framework where the CISO’s top priority is securing company’s IP to avoid financial risks is another priority area. It is the value proposition that the CISO brings around risk and compliance, which is critical in GRC. Risks from the social media are more a perception and a social problem and a cultural issue. The threats arising out of social media can be countered with stringent security policies and insider threats can be anticipated. Strict guidelines towards handling data needs to be put in place with an effective ISMS framework.

specific to each sector. For instance, financial sector is more a regulations-driven industry where the security issues are complicated. Healthcare is more about data privacy with high velocity. We recommend best practices around email authentication as spearphishing is more prevalent in the government sector and advise that intelligence be built-in the communication gateway.

Has security fallen under the main IT spending criteria within organisations? How? In the global markets such as the US, the security budgets are often sophisticated and compelling and associated with the GRC budgets, while the corporate budgets are

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

As per your observations how much is the business group aligned with security in any organisation? Most organisations now have security specialists who monitor each group’s activities carefully. They are taking a balanced view of the total corporate

environment; given the industry buzz around ‘big data’ that is catching on and might lead to further threats and risks.

What are the innovations happening around security products and certifications which the CISO needs to leverage? While the evolution of new products and solutions is a continuous effort, the OTA principles are broken into core requirements and recommended practices which can secure consumer data and businesses are encouraged. The principles based on industry innovation include three categories. a) Infrastructure (including protection of servers, websites, desktop and mobile devices). To help protect against internal systems, data compromises and access breaches, acquire EV SSL certificates (Extended Validation Secure Socket Layer) Certifications. Establish a domain name system (DNS) management programme. Conduct audits of third party code, links to external sites, plug-ins and site scripts prior to installation or integration on a company site and revalidate semi-annually. b) DLP (Data Loss Prevention): Create and implement data safeguards detecting the likelihood of potential data loss. c) User Choice, Control and Data Privacy: Provide consumers comprehensible policies including email, termsof-service (ToS), privacy and data sharing with third parties and affiliates. Site’s privacy policy is clearly discoverable on the home page and all points where a user first interacts with the site. Companies to provide prominent notice of material changes to all privacy, ToS and data collection policies.

f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2 | itnext

the big

Big data

Problem or solution? EXPERT PANEL

SP Arya, Sr V ice President, Cor porate(IT) Amtek

The Situation...

Cut it from he re

Can Vinod Kannan find a suitable solution to address the growing big data menace? New IT buzzwords invade the market from time to time and the industry has by now become used to it. Big data is the latest concept that has gone beyond being a mere buzzword and is impacting various sectors, changing the IT landscape. Big data is a monumental challenge for IT managers, as data grows at geometrical progression and is nearing a data tsunami. Today huge data comes from across the world: through social media sites, digital pictures and videos posted online, transaction records of online purchases, and from cell phone GPS signals, to name a few. This data runs into hundreds of terabytes of databases. Vinod Kannan, senior IT manager of a large global travel firm is completely depressed and demoralised. The reason â&#x20AC;&#x201D; his company gathers an amazing amount of customer insight daily, including thousands of comments from web 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.

Dr B Muthukumaran, CTO and Chief Consultant, Gemini Communications Ltd

Srinivas Kishan Anapu , Former V ice President & He ad of IT, Mahindra Sat yam

surveys, emails and text messages. Besides, since his companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s website is aligned with tourism departments, a huge amount of images are stored. Kannan wants to leverage this insight at both the strategic and the local levels to drive operational efficiency. His intentions are clear â&#x20AC;&#x201D; to help employees understand customers better and build stronger customer relationships. Kannan says big data is more than a challenge: it is an opportunity to find insights into new and emerging types of data; to make your business more agile; and to answer questions that, in the past, were beyond reach. Until now, there was no practical way to harvest this opportunity. However, the challenge for Kannan is to control this onslaught. The critical factor for him is to keep a tab on how data enters a system, where it resides, how it is processed, who can access and manage it, and how it can be stored and archived. Kannan has to find right solutions and tools to control both the archival and current views, and the significant new marketing ideas to enable business growth, while keeping a check on the cost.

f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2 | itnext

the big q

the big questions... Do you agree that big data is more than a challenge: it is also an

opportunity? What kind of technology( applications, storage solutions, etc.) would be ideal for Kannan in keeping a check on big data?

What kind of expertise does Kannan need to handle the big data growth and what kind of RoI or benefits does he need to look at?

Here are the answers... BIG DATA HELPS IN BUSINESS GROWTH FIRST ANSWER

SP Arya Sr Vice President, Corporate(IT) Amtek About me: IT professional with rich and practical experience in technology deployment of more than 25 years. Specialisation in thinking outside the box and implementing appropriate strategies which suit the organisation

Big Data is the most talked about complex subject, which one can debate endlessly. Yet something critical could be missed out. Yes, I fully agree that big data is a challenge, but simultaneously it is more of an opportunity. It is evident from the past experience that data gathering, mining and analysis, even for traditional transactional data, has given enormous business advantages to organisations. Big data offers even greater opportunities to push businesses and researchers to scale new heights. Big data will need right combination of solutions, lest it spirals beyond control. These solutions would include, NoSQL database, right ETL (Extract- Transform-Load) skills, open source software languages, BI and analytical tools and many more. Hadoop solution stack from Apache is most popular to address the management of big data. * For data, NoSQL Databases (key/value databases, big table databases, documents databases and Graphics databases) can be used * For programming aspects Java, Linux, Apache, Perl/Python/PHP, Chef is ideal * For Hadoop stack (e.g., MapReduce, Sqoop, Pig, Hive, Hbase, Flume) is good * ETL (Extract-Transform-Load) tools can go in for Informatica, Â Talend, Pentaho) * BI tools and reporting software (e.g., Microstrategy, Cognos, Pentaho) * Analytical tools, languages, or libraries (e.g., SAS, SPSS, R, Mahout) can be tried out * Distributed RDBMS (Teradata, Netezza, Greenplum, Aster Data, Vertica) * Cloud computing infrastructure (e.g., Amazon Web Services EC2, Elastic MapReduce)

second Answer I would strongly recommend that Kannan partner with a consulting firm to assess his big data and understand the potential benefits which would help in business expansion and increased profitability. Impetus, EMC, Solace Systems, TCloud Computing, Sure Product Consulting, and IBM are a few names he can think about. To zero in on right technologies Kannan needs to understand his own data correctly. As far as RoI is concerned it has already been proved beyond doubt. Big data is now an important factor of not only production, customer services, retailing, medical and web business but also mobile applications. It increases performance, productivity and profits and research activities. The use of big data will underpin new waves of productivity growth and consumer surplus resulting in jump in revenue/footprint of up to 40 per cent. While the use of big data is found across sectors, some sectors such as retail, travel and tourism, and healthcare are poised for greater gains. However, it will take at least two years to realise this as business booster.

itnext | f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2

the big q

EARLY & RISKY TO tackle BIG DATA FIRST ANSWER Big data is a larger term used to describe petabyte and zetabytes of data churned from transactions of different kinds. McKinsey has declared that big data will enable companies to have a competitive edge and contribute to business growth. From a strategic perspective, all companies should consider big data seriously as it will be the differentiator with potential value. Big data churns actionable data through the application of business intelligence and data analytics technology, which will be one of the driving forces for IT spending through 2020. It is addressed by the new generation NoSQL, databases like Bigtable, MongoDB, CouchDB, HadoopDB, Cassandra, eXtremeDB, etc., based on requirements and type of data sets. Analytics is the single most important reason to venture into big data. It is clear that big table operates on GFS, Hadoop operates on HDFS, eXtremeDB is an in-memory database to address storage and speedup result sets apart from players like Dell, IBM etc. With Kannan, it is evident that the organisation is picking up some structured and unstructured data from comments from surveys, email and text data for analysis. Kannan should be eyeing solutions that go with his organisational data and analytics requirement.

Dr B Muthu kumaran CTO and Chief Consultant, Gemini Communications LtdÂ About me: In the capacity of a chief consultant and technology head, have been instrumental in rolling out effective IT and business strategies, with a wide experience in business functions

Second Answer From a technology and business standpoint, product vendors ensure early time to market and capitalise on early entrant cash flow. Hence, it is too early for Kannan to address big data solutions and take a business risk. It is essential to understand his travel agencyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s global customer base and volume of data to migrate to big data. It is imperative to evaluate the status of in-house customer analytics requirement, and the current solutionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s analytics bottleneck to look into big data. Sizing and redundancy planning requires an in-depth understanding of the capability of solutions. The best RoI is always from open source stack leading to in-house customisations. It is equally important to understand the learning curve and the lack of domain expertise to handle big data traffic, as it operates on distributed systems with a master and multinode replication. Kannan can attempt an experimental big data open source stack to explore the capabilities of big data solutions if there is a budget for it.

ge Stora

Data Wastage

Traditional unstructured data seems to be the highest in 2011 as against structured and replicated data 25.0

20.0

15.0

10.0

Replicated data 5.0

Unstructured data Traditional structured data

0.0

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011 s ource: idc

f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2 | itnext

the big q

BIG DATA IS MORE THAN A CHALLENGE FIRST ANSWER

Srinivas Kishan Anapu Former VP & Head, IT, Mahindra Satyam About me: Senior IT Executive and an experienced business leader with major experience across a broad spectrum of IT leadership functions

Companies capture trillions of bytes of information about customers, suppliers and operations. In one of the recent sessions on Smart Planet by IBM that I have attended, it was said that 2.5 quintillion bytes of data is generated per day. With most data being unstructured, information grows at 15 times the rate of structured information. Big data is more than a challenge. It is an opportunity to find insights into new and emerging types of data, to make your business more agile. Until now, there was no practical way to harvest this opportunity. Traditional warehouses are mostly ideal for analysing structured data from various systems and producing insights with known and relatively stable measurements. Big data spans across three dimensions: variety, velocity and volume.

Second Answer Choose the vendors that have big data platform. The easier a platform is to use, the better the RoI is going to be. While there are few vendors working on the big data, IBM has invested heavily into this and one should try this out. Most vendors have analytical tools that work on the voluminous data and with different varieties of data. As the amount of data available to the enterprise increases, the percentage of data processed, understood and analysed declines. The growing data cannot be stored in traditional systems. Kannan needs to prioritise the tasks in hand; process the data in motion in real time and not when the data is in rest. BI will enable reaching strategic goals faster and more efficiently by making data easily available, processed and understood.

Notes NOTEs

More Resources 56

itnext | f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2

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

cube chat | DINESH SINGH

Simple Solutions are the Key “I believe in resolving complex issues and finding easier solutions with simple techniques,” says Dinesh Singh, Technology Head, SJM Technologies Ltd By MANU SHA R M A

W My sucess

mantra “Make it simple and do not complicate”

itnext | f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2

hile most seek easier and faster routes to achieving success professionally, Bangalore-based Dinesh Singh, Technology Head, SJM Technologies Ltd, is a person who believes in unfolding the complex issues using simple solutions that may help him reach professional goals. This has been his success mantra. The logic behind getting into an IT career has been in line with these thoughts. “I chose to work in IT because I found it new and exciting, in which I could use my mantra of simplicity in solving complex issues,” he says. Singh opted for computer science stream when electronics, electrical and mechanical engineering were the most sought after branches. After completing his engineering from REC Allahabad, Singh joined GEC of India

at Naini as Officer, Systems. He developed a smart application for providing incentives to workers and worked towards simplifying the processes, which helped hundreds of them. Singh’s real skills surfaced during his tenure at ACC Ltd in Mumbai as Deputy Manager, Systems. With the buzz around mainframe, Singh drove several projects like process control automation, supply chain management (SCM), ERP development, etc., and worked on the migration process. “I was responsible for moving them from mainframe to the client server to simplify the sourcing process. In fact, I led the team in designing and creating a simple interface for opitmising SCM that resulted in huge savings for the company. “It was necessary to create the interface as the earlier system was very complex, resulting in errors,” he says. Another cherished moment for Singh was

cube chat

Fact File NAME DINESH SINGH DESIGN ATI ON TECHNOLOG Y HEAD CU RRENT ROLE HEAD OF PROFIT CENTRE EXPERTISE PROJEC T & DELIVERY M ANAGEMEN T ACHIEVEMENTS (AWARDS) NEXT100 CI O, 2011 WORK EXPErieNCE 22 YEARS SJM TECHNOLOGIES LTD, Bangalore, TECHNO LOGY HEAD (Feb 2010 – till date) DI ASPARK INC, ODC, I ndore, SR MANAGE R TECHNOLOG Y (J ul 2007 – Jan 2010)

Photo gra ph y: S radha krishna

“I would like to be known as an IT solution architect, who uses effective, economical and simple solution for quality output” the automation of the existing plant with the implementation of the digital control system that simplified the production of quality cement. Singh as a project manager at 3i Infotech, a division of ICICI Infotech, simplified the interfaces for online trading of shares and for easier billing of demat accounts. He had a longer stint as Consultant Project Manager with Emirates Airlines (IT), Dubai, where the billing process was very complex. “I designed a workflow to automate the business process and approval flow implementing the revenue accounting package that resulted in simplifying the procedure and led to significant savings,” adds Singh. “Today, the airline billing system is being used by over 40 airlines companies globally,” he avers.

The passion to simplify processes has not ended. In his current position, Singh is responsible for the development of simple projects using easy applications such as GPS tracking, document management systems and project management for the SME market. Stress does not bother the workaholic Singh, for he has been practising yoga regularly. The pats he gets from customers also keep his spirits up. Singh wants to be known as an IT solution architect who uses effective, economical and simple solutions for quality output. Anna Hazare, Arvind Kejriwal and Narayana Murthy are some of the popular figures he admires.These men, with their single-minded focus on their goals, have been a source of inspiration for him. He says, “I believe in simple living and high thinking.”

EMI RATES AIRLINES I T, DUBAI, CONSULTAN T PROJEC T M ANAGE R ( Aug 2004 – Jul 2007) DESS TECHNOLOGIES Ltd, SEEPZ, MUMBAI, PROJEC T MANAGER (Apr 2004 - Aug 2004) ICICI INFOTECH(3 i INFOTECH) , MUMBAI, PROJEC T MANAGER (Aug 2000, Mar 2004) ACC Ltd, MUMBAI, S R ENGINEER/ DY MANAGER SYSTEMS (Apr 1993 – Aug 2000) GEC OF INDIA LT D, NAINI, ALL AHABAD, OFFICER SYSTEMS (Jul 1989 – Apr 1993) TRAiNING SAP, ORACLE, JAVA, .NET, VB, FILENET, UNIX,CMMI, KIZEN FAVOURI TE BOOK HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOP L E BY DALE CARNEGIE

f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2 | itnext

update

off the shelf

A sneak preview of enterprise products, solutions and services

Nikon D4 Unveiled at a Price Tag of $ 6,000 It succeeds the versatile flagship Nikon D3S and is due in stores by Feb end

Acer’s Thinnest Laptop Aspire S5 Acer has unveiled the world’s thinnest laptop computer as an array of ‘ultrabook’ rivals debuted at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The Taiwan-based computer titan will begin shipping Acer Aspire 5 models in the second quarter of this year, with prices to be disclosed in coming weeks. The Aspire S5 has a 34-cm (13.3-inch) screen and is 15 mm at its thickest point. The ultrabook weighs slightly less than 1.35 kg (three pounds). Ultrabooks powered by Windows 8 will be released by Acer after Microsoft releases the new version of its computer operating system later this year. Analyst estimated that ultrabooks would make up at least 35 per cent of the Acer product line by the end of this year.

Clicks | Nikon has announced the suc-

key features

cessor to the versatile flagship Nikon D3S, 16.2 megapixel sensor with the new D4 due in stores by late Expeed 3 image processor February at a suggested price of $ 5,999.95. Improved AF and metering Featuring a 16.2 MP FX-format CMOS senmodules sor, the Nikon D4 will apparently deliver Refined ergonomics a “formidable fusion of swift performance, Video capture battle-tested technologies and innovative new features to create high calibre photo and multimedia content”. The new flagship’s FX-format CMOS (36x23.9 mm) sensor is coupled with a new EXPEED 3 image processing engine, and has a broad native ISO range from 100 to 12,800 ISO (even during video), expandable from 50 (Lo-1) to an incredible yet usable 204,800 (Hi-4). The sensor’s large 7.3µ pixel size absorbs the maximum amount of light, and its construction features a gapless micro-lens structure and anti-reflective coating. Ready to shoot in about 0.012 seconds, the Nikon D4 can also capture full resolution JPEG or RAW files at up to 10 fps with full AF/AE, or up to 11 fps with AF/AE locked.

itnext | f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2

Since Aspire S5 is Windows-based it is not likely to be a direct challenge to MacBook Air laptops, which have been winning converts to the sleek machines powered by Apple software. Acer also announced plans to launch a free service that will let users of its computers store video, photos, music, and documents in the internet ‘cloud’ and access files from any Windows 8 or Android software powered gadgets. Product Features 34 cm (13.3-inch) screen 15 mm at its thickest point Powered by Windows 8 Access to computer store

update

Toshiba Excite X10 Slimmest 10-inch Tablet Features New Android tablet Lightest and thinnest 10-inch tablet Magnesium alloy back panel Ports include microSD, microUSB, micro HDMI

SLIM TABLET | Toshiba has unveiled a new Android tablet, the Toshiba Excite X10, which like the Lenovo IdeaTab S2, is vying for the title of the lightest and thinnest 10-inch tablet in the market, with a weight of 545 gms, and thickness of just 7.62 mm. Definitely a stunner, the Toshiba Excite X10 comes with a burnished magnesium alloy back panel, and a Gorilla Glass display. Surprisingly, with the Excite X10’s super-slim profile, Toshiba has managed to fit a bevy of ports onboard, with microSD, microUSB, micro HDMI, and a 3.5 mm audio jack, all built-in. Other features of the Toshiba Excite X10 include an HD display at 1280x800 pixels, a 1.2 GHz dual-core processor on the TI OMAP 4430 chipset, 1 GB of RAM, a 5 MP rear camera, and a 2 MP front-facing camera. According to the Japanese major, which so far has had awful luck in the tablet market with the Thrive and the Folio 100, the Excite X10 will run on a stock Android operating system, though it has not decided between Honeycomb or Ice Cream Sandwich. Regardless, the device will feature a Google logo, to denote the vanilla flavouring. With no customised interface, Toshiba will still deliver its own specialised-apps for media and file management.

Details of Nokia Lumia 710 Revealed Mobility | Lumia range of

Nokia devices has a new entrant and that is Nokia Lumia 710. This is a Windows operating system (OS) based device that is looked upon as one with potential to regain the smartphone market share of Nokia that the company has lost to Apple, BlackBerry and a range of manufacturers employing Google’s Android OS. Nokia Lumia 710 has upgraded processor of 1 GHz CPU (coupled with 512 MB RAM), plus its sturdy design and brilliantly bright display. Nokia Lumia 710 touch-

Samsung Wave Y S5380 in India It looks like the Samsung Wave Y S5380 has arrived in India, after being announced globally back in August last year. While Samsung has not officially announced the device in India, it is available at online retail for Rs 7,199. The Samsung Wave Y S5380 will come with the latest Bada 2.0 OS onboard, as well as such features as Samsung’s TouchWiz for Bada, Samsung ChatOn messenger, and Social Hub 2.0. The device is quite lightweight, i.e., about a 100g and a TFT capacitive touchscreen that has a resolution of about 320x480 pixels that makes about 3.2 inches in total size. A very stylish handset that has been integrated with an amazing set of features and certainly does not disappoint its users. The pixels that make up about 320x480 plus 3.2 inches touchscreen and a sensor for UI will make you a fan of this interesting device in no time at all.

Key Advantages icrosoft Windows Phone 7.5 Mango M 1.4 GHz processor Qualcomm MSM8255 chipset 3D Graphics HW Accelerator

screen smartphone instantly attracts as it is offered in beautiful design and colours which is simple but elegant. Nokia 710 has a solid feel and is also very durable. The price of Nokia Lumia 710 can be checked at a Nokia store or online as it has been officially announced. Nokia Lumia 710 is coming to Asia and Russia first and will then be expanding in 2012. The mobile will be officially available in India in 2012.

f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2 | itnext

the web f r o m

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

REMEMBRANCE

17 tech pioneers who died in 2011

HOT NEWS

Gartner Lowers 2012 IT Spending Forecast Gartner pared down its global IT spending growth forecast from 4.6 per cent to 3.7 per cent. Worldwide IT spending is forecast to total $3.8 tn in 2012, a 3.7 per cent increase from 2011, according to Gartner, Inc. In 2011, worldwide IT spending totalled $3.7 tn, up 6.9 per cent from 2010 levels. All four major technology sectors — computing hardware, enterprise software, IT services and telecommunications equipment and services — are expected to experience slower spending growth in 2012. http://www.itnext.in/ content/gartner-lowers2012-it-spending-forecast.html THREATING NEWS

Threat Predictions Trend Micro’s 2012 Threat Predictions report gives 12 predictions spanning four primary areas: Big IT trends, mobile landscape, threat landscape, and data leaks and breaches. http://www.itnext.in/ content/12-threat-predictions-year-2012.html

itnext | f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2

Along with Steve Jobs and Dennis Ritchie, 2011 marked the death of many computer visionaries and technology pioneers. The computing industry came of age in the 1950s and many of the individuals who laid the groundwork for modern computing, smart electronics and the internet are now in their 80s. Many of these leaders were founders and chief executives who transformed their companies to take advantage of emerging technology. Several worked on the theoretical foundations. Many knew each other as fellow members of the hobbyists group the Homebrew Computer Club. http://www.itnext.in/content/17-techpioneers-who-died-2011.html

OPINION

Green is a Habit Green is more about habit than technology: the habit of optimally ‘consuming’ things and not throwing them away or refusing to get them repaired and extend their life, says Sanjay Gupta, Consulting Editor, IT Next & CTO Forum. http://www.itnext.in/content/green-habit. html

ENTREPRENEUR NEWS

IITian Launches Tablet for Classrooms Rohit Pande, CEO, Classteacher Learning Systems and an alumnus of Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, has come back to his alma mater to launch his latest innovation, Classpad. Touted as a revolution in the education sector, the tablet is claimed to make education accessible to each student according to their own merit and intellect. Classpad facilitates personalised and interactive learning. Teachers can transfer class work to students’ tablets, share content and conduct tests. Students can also do their assignments and take tests on this device. They can, therefore, give undivided attention to class lessons. Classpad has a touchscreen with a seven hour battery life, 1.3 Ghz processing speed and a built-in memory of 4GB expandable upto 8GB.

http://www.itnext.in/ content/another-indiantablet-now-ex-iit-guy. html

from the web ACQUISiTION NEWS

FEATURE READ

Open Source: Not All that Open Increased dependency on open source tools is not always the best bet, as there are serious bottlenecks, says Dhananjay Rokde, Global Head, Information Security, Cox & Kings Group. Most organisations are affected by the recent wave: use open source to reduce cost. But there are a few pointers that need to be looked into before taking the leap into open source. While open source does appear to be a fantastic alternative, it comes with a price. Since the price that one pays towards acquiring open source tools is often indirect, it takes a while for the organisation to realise this. There are pros and cons to open source as there are in proprietary software, but by no means do they take away from the utility of open source.

Arkadin Acquires ConferencePlus Collaboration solutions provider Arkadin has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire ConferencePlus, a subsidiary of Westell Technologies, Inc. The acquisition is believed to help Arkadin significantly increase its market share and make it

http://www.itnext.in/content/open-source-not-all-open.html

LIGHTER NEWS OF IT MANAGERS

NEXT100 2011 winner Somasekhar Gonuguntla did exactly that by reigniting his passion for badminton at Tesco, says Manu Sharma. “Not everyone who plays badminton would emerge like Pullela Gopichand or Prakash Padukone, India’s former badminton champions,” says Somasekhar Gonuguntla (Somu), Project Manager at Tesco HSC (Hindustan Service Centre) in Bangalore. “I have enjoyed watching these champions play but I play badminton only as sport, for fitness and relaxation” he says. http://www.itnext.in/ content/stressed-revivesporting-passion.html?utm_ source=newslettercore&utm_medium=email&utm_ campaign=20120117

SECURITY NEWS

Hackers breach security at Stratfor Anonymous, the group that became famous for its pro-WikiLeaks gestures, is alleged to have claimed responsibility. US security thinktank Strategic Forecasting Inc (Stratfor) said its website had been hacked and that some of the names of corporate subscribers had been made public. It is believed to be the same group that became famous after attacking websites of companies opposing WikiLeaks.

the third largest independent collaboration service provider in North America. It’s already got the No. 2 position in Europe and Asia. The transaction is expected to close by the end of the year. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed in a release issued by Arkadin. For Arkadin, ConferencePlus brings to the table a complementary set of services and an expanded presence in North America and Europe.

http://www.itnext.in/content/ hackers-breach-security-usthink-tank-stratfor.html

http://www. itnext.in/content/ arkadin-acquiresconferenceplus.html

photos by: photos .c om

Stressed? Revive a Sporting Passion

RESEARCH NEWS

15 top industry vertical predictions for IT Gartner predicts industries to face intensified consumerisation and technology disruption in 2012 They herald changes in control for IT organisations as budgets, tech and costs become fluid. Features 15 strategic planning assumptions that CIOs should factor in.

http://www.itnext.in/content/15-top-industry-vertical-predictions-it.html

f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2 | itnext

update

open Debate

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

IT Budget under CMO Control. Your Take?

Soma Gonuguntla PMP, IT Project Manager, Group Scheduler, Tesco For CIOs, it is more to do with IT initiatives that drive business benefits. This is possible with right budgets. IT budget cuts is an easy option for most firms. But it is the CIO who plays a key role in ensuring that IT initiatives drive greater benefits for the stakeholders and thereby negotiates the budget requirement for IT. CMO’s do have the right to negotiate and get the budget allocated but the final call is taken by the IT head who understands the benefits of technology. He knows his needs best.

SDPL Narayana, Asst General Manager, IT, Neuland Laboratories Ltd I do not accept that IT budgets are moving towards CMO. Many technologies like business intelligence, data warehousing, business analytics, online meetings, virtual conferences etc., are the enablers for the CMO and his team and allow them to conduct business, without moving away from their offices/ place of work. Gone are the days, when IT was looked upon as a cost centre. Now, IT is a business enabler and a profit centre. In the absence of these technologies, how will the CMO be expected to bring in business for the organisation?

Sharat M Airani, Chief, IT Systems & Security, Forbes Marshall Both the functions should be on the leading edge of strategy, rather than the receiving end. Organisationally, this is a source of dilution which few organisations can afford. Yet it is unlikely to change unless these two functions can demonstrate a clear contribution to the CEO’s agenda. In this regard, the CMO and the CIO may be more effective working together than in isolation. Logical association would be to recognise the need for CMOs to justify or otherwise rationalise their functional spending and the dependence on IT systems. CMO alone cannot control IT budget, They need to co-exist.

Bounce

TITLE: BOUNCE AUTHOR: MATTHEW SYED PUBLISHER: HARPERCOLLINS PAGES: 296 PRICE: Rs 299 REVIEWED BY: SANJAY GUPTA

After you read this book, you’ll think a thousand times before making statements like “How talented that guy is; excellence is in his genes.” Or, “Oh, she’s such a gifted child — no wonder she won the figure skating championship.” Matthew Syed (a Commonwealth Table Tennis Champion) bursts several myths and lays down the principles associated with extraordinary achievement: the popular but ill-conceived idea of talent as a mystic and elusive thing; the myth of the child prodigy (Mozart, Tiger Woods, Shakuntala Devi); the workings of a motivational spark; and the most important of them all — relentless practice. Unlike the schmaltzy self-help books, Bounce reveals in beautiful precision the inspiring examples of world-class performers and players. What’s more, the author relates how ‘purposeful practice’ followed by champion sportsmen can be applied to business or society — and what a lot of good it can achieve. This book can indeed change the way we look not only at the wunderkinds of sport but also at the defining principles of education and success. IT NEXT VERDICT The author has done a superb job of distilling the success wisdom from several other writers, researchers and champion players in this highly readable book.

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

Star Value:

f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2 | itnext

update

indulge

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

Now make your home your playground. Here is a preview of tech gadgets to help you make up your mind before you go splurging on one.

HOT

SOUL by Ludacris

Behringer iNuke It is an iPod dock â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 4 ft in height and 8 ft wide. It delivers 10,000W and is compatible with an iPad as well when playing

Sporting a chrome finish, these come with two detachable 3.5 mm audio cables and feature a remote control and microphone to answer calls Price: ` 20,000

Price: 15,60,000

NEW Harman Kardon SoundSticks II Crafted out of clear plastics, SoundSticks offers an uninterrupted view of whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s going on inside them when you play Price: NA

Hellcat X132 It is a mean machine comparable to Harley Davidson in performance and riding. The chassis is made of aircraft grade aluminum. Available from March Price: ` 23,40,000

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

itnext | f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2

Sanjay Gupta,

my log

Consulting Editor, IT Next (Online) & CTO Forum

Don’t Tech it Easy! ti

:p r

inc

e antony

It's hard to imagine what we would do without technology — harder still to live with tech that gets on our nerves us

ill

you see the message fly away from your outbox. Ultimately, you end up getting an SMS from the party you are trying to reach: “Stop spamming me, you fool!” The internet offers its own share of irritating tricks to unsuspecting users. “Internet Explorer has encountered a problem and will shut down,” screams the message bang in the middle of the screen — just when you thought you found what you were Googling. No matter what you do, sir, IE will shut down. Automatic page refresh is another trick that can make you go bonkers while you are in the middle of reading something on a web page. I do not doubt the good intentions of the developers who wanted an automatic mechanism to update the page so the surfer gets current information. But imagine the spark of fulmination an automatic refresh causes when you are suddenly taken to the top of the page from wherever you were in your reading. You have to inch your way back to that place like Spiderman crawling up a wall. I could go on about umpteen other netty things that get my dander up — and probably yours too. But at the moment, in another window open on my desktop, I’m just trying to figure out the stupid blurry characters in a patch that I must copy into the registration field of a website to prove that I’m not a bot. Darn!

3 Essential

Reads

INTERVIEW | ManISH GOEl

ManISH GOEl | INTERVIEW

SOPHiStiCAteD tHReAtS BURGeOninG manish goel, Chairman, Online trust alliance and CEO, trustSphere, expresses the need to educate markets on emerging sophisticated security threats and ways to protect data and Ip against attacks. Goel discusses the strategy to align business with security in a conversation with N geetha What are the top security trends in 2012 that might impact it heads across industries? While every country has its own idiosyncrasies, with different cultural, legislative and market requirements, the threats are getting more sophisticated. Cyber crime and spearphishing are the common targeted attempts at government websites. Spear-phishing refers to attacks on specific individuals in an organisation designed to steal valuable data. Recent high profile breaches in several listed corporations and government departments are causing growing concerns about the use of fraudulent email as a part of targeted attacks. The objectives of these attacks vary. In general, they aim to achieve high value outcomes such as the disclosure of commercially sensitive information, manipulation of stock prices, corporate or

What are the best practices that it managers need to follow to counter these? There is no single technology that will help in countering these. Broader security tools are required to meet the growing menace. Prevalence of SEIM tools are said to be gaining momentum to gauge the threat. Most organisations are now consciously building layers of intelligence across each data counters. Building security operating centres (SoC) across is very important which brings in the security standards. Smart network planning is necessary to protect data privacy. It is important for the security forums

f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2 | itnext

itnext | f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2

Manish Goel, Chairman, Online Trust Alliance on alignment of business and security Pg 67 SErVEr VIrtualISatIOn | INSIgHT

IT Managers are taking to Server Virtualisation convinced of the benefits and RoI it offers BY M A N U S H A R M A

RoI FACToR ADDS A PoSITIVE FlAVoUR To

VIRTUAlISATIoN 32

Hiccups in Server Virtualisation Absorption Despite recent moves in server virtualisation, companies have not shifted enough of their server workloads, says a Gartner report.

80% reduction in physical servers possible with server virtualisation

itnext | J a N u a r y 2 0 1 2

J a N u a r y 2 0 1 2 | itnext

Positive RoI and benefits of server virtualisation have won over IT managers Pg 32 CUBE CHAT | DInESH SInGH

CUBE CHAT

FAC T F I l E naME D I n ES H S I n G H D ES I G n at I O n t EC H n O lO G y H E a D CurrEnt rOlE HEaD OF prOFIt CEntrE

Simple Solutions are the Key

EX p E rt I S E p r O j EC t & D E l I V E ry M a n aG E M E n t aC H I E V E M E n tS ( aWa r D S ) n EX t 1 0 0 C I O, 2 0 1 1 WO r K EX p E r I E n C E 22 yEarS S j M t EC H n O lO G I ES lt D, Ba n Ga lO r E , t EC H n O lO G y H E a D ( F E B 2 0 1 0 – t I l l Dat E ) D I aS pa r K I n C , O D C , I n D O r E , S r M a n aG E r t EC H n O lO G y ( j u l 2 0 0 7 – ja n 2 0 1 0 )

“i believe in resolving complex issues and finding easier solutions with simple techniques,” says Dinesh Singh, Technology Head, SJM Technologies Ltd

“I would like to be known as an IT solution architect, who uses effective, economical and simple solution for quality output”

BY MANU SHARMA

MY SUCESS

MANTRA “Make it simple and do not complicate”

itnext | f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2

pHOtOG rapHy: S raD Ha KrI S Hna

We’ve all read with sympathetic fervour about the system-bashing tendencies that a hung computer induces in the most non-violent of workers. There was even a short video clip, in which a man literally pounds on his machine and throws it off his desk. Poor chap. Over time, I’ve compiled my own hate list of instances when technology, instead of increasing our productivity, increases our brain temperature by unwelcome degrees. Let me begin the ordeal with the good old telephone. With most companies now using IVR (interactive voice response or irritating voice re-routing, take your pick), it seems easier to get access to Barack Obama than the customer representative. Some IVRs are especially configured to avoid giving you any option to talk to somebody — or the option is hidden deep down several press-this-key-and-pressthat-key loops. At times, when you finally get down to hearing the human 'hello' you are so tired of punching buttons that you just ask the person to hang up. Those who are used to exercising their fingers on mobiles for SMSes would also have encountered this next item on my list. It’s called 'Message not sent this time' — an error you get after your attempt to send an SMS fails. So you try another time, and another, and yet another time — until

the automation of the existing plant with the implementation of the digital control system that simplified the production of quality cement. Singh as a project manager at 3i Infotech, a division of ICICI Infotech, simplified the interfaces for online trading of shares and for easier billing of demat accounts. He had a longer stint as Consultant Project Manager with Emirates Airlines (IT), Dubai, where the billing process was very complex. “I designed a workflow to automate the business process and approval flow implementing the revenue accounting package that resulted in simplifying the procedure and led to significant savings,” adds Singh. “Today, the airline billing system is being used by over 40 airlines companies globally,” he avers.

E M I r at ES a I r l I n ES I t, D u Ba I , C O n S u lta n t p r O j EC t M a n aG E r ( au G 2 0 0 4 – j u l 2 0 0 7 ) D ES S t EC H n O lO G I ES lt D, S E E pZ , M u M Ba I , p r O j EC t M a n aG E r ( a p r 2 0 0 4 - au G 2 0 0 4 ) I C I C I I n FOt EC H ( 3 I I n FOt EC H ) , M u M Ba I , p r O j EC t M a n aG E r ( au G 2 0 0 0 , M a r 2 0 0 4 ) aC C lt D, M u M Ba I , Sr EnGInEEr/ Dy M a n aG E r SySt E M S ( a p r 1 9 9 3 – au G 2 0 0 0 ) G EC O F I n D I a lt D, n a I n I , a l l a H a Ba D, O F F I C E r SySt E M S ( j u l 1989 – apr 1993) traInInG Sa p, O r aC l E , jaVa , . n E t, V B, F I l E n E t, unIX,CMMI,KIZEn FaVO u r I t E B O O K H OW TO W I N F R I E N D S A N D I N F LU E N C E P EO P L E By Da l E C a r n EG I E

f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2 | itnext

Dinesh Singh, Technology Head, SJM Technologies Ltd, believes in simplicity Pg 48

f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2 | itnext

join the

In a connected and ever-changing world where technology-led business innovations are gaining momentum, companies that choose Cisco choose success. An organizationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s IT network is becoming more critical than ever before to accelerate business growth and reduce operational costs while dealing with an increase in demand by the workforce for video communication and use of any device, anywhere. At Cisco, we leverage on our unique Intelligent Network platform to deliver the most advanced and innovative Borderless Network Solutions for mobility, pervasive video communication and energy saving. Here is where everything works. Seamlessly, Intuitively and Securely with architectural scalability, bringing business benefits like superior stakeholder experience, greater productivity, investment protection and lower operating costs. It is the platform built to keep your business on the edge of innovation, now and into the future. And it is transforming how organizations of every industry and every size are doing business. Want to know how the Intelligent Network can enable you to overcome your business challenges? Visit ciscointelligentnetwork.in/it to set up a meeting with a Cisco expert.