IT Next September 2011 issue

it next

september 2011 / ` 75 Volume 02 / Issue 08

32

Technology: Desktop virtualisation promises less pain

47

Interview Manoj Chugh of EMC on adopting clouds

Strategy: Negotiation skills that clinch deals

42 BIG Q

The right tools for data protection Pg 55

Private clouds becoming popular Scouting the sky for the perfect cloud Assured scalability, flexibility & reliability

Cloud contracts are not clear

PARTIALLY CLOUDY

Regulatory issues hamper adoption

Evolving risk-return models

Partially

Many options and services on offer

volume 02 | Issue 08

Jawant Gowande, General Manager (Corporate IT) Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd

Cloudy While the forecasts for cloud computing develop, IT managers seek a strategy for the future Pg 16

Editorial

Cloudy Wave Here cloud, there cloud, everywhere cloud and cloud. I think it is industry’s catchphrase today. Industry players vouch that cloud computing is not just a phrase du jour and it has much more to offer. Cloud though, is making rapid inroads in the enterprise space towards becoming real and disruptive. But, before that, it has to stride past the hurdles to justify the cause.

As an IT manager observed, “ True disruption occurs when an innovation in technology or business model unexpectedly displaces an already established model, and cloud computing is not a disruptive technology in and by itself, but a disruptive IT delivery model which leverages key technology ideas to deliver IT in a much more efficient way.”

I see relentless efforts being made by certain industry forces to make cloud a disruptive one. A point to note here is that US Trademarks has witnessed 483 per cent increase in the cloud computing services trademarks registrations by various service provider companies in last two years.

Coming to India, it is all about private cloud, which is gaining ground, while public cloud is still under experimentation. IT Next’s cover story on cloud computing says the landscape is only partially cloudy, and this would surprise most industry groups who are making huge investments into cloud infrastructure.

In my opinion, full cloud scenario will only occur when the key applications move over to the public cloud and IT managers are really free of the hassles of procuring, using and maintaining them.

At this point of time, when the private cloud dominates, maybe even outsourced to a third party, entire applications are run within an organisation’s firewall and IT managers’ challenges are not less than before.

Hence, currently what we are witnessing is more a form of shared services or virtualisation, but not cloud computing in its true sense.

Having said that, yet the users (IT managers) are putting their best foot forward in imbibing a cloud culture within their organisations and working out a blueprint around cloud models for future.

“...full cloud scenario will occur when the key applications move over to the public cloud” Geetha Nandikotkur

Blogs To Watch!

Gartner Survey Finds Cloud Computing Top Priority for CIOs in 2011: http://cloudtimes.org/gartnersurvey-finds-cloud-computingtop-priority-for-cios-in-2011 Future of Cloud Computing Survey Reveals New Drivers for Cloud Adoption http://vmblog.com/ archive/2011/06/22/ future-of-cloud-computingsurvey-reveals-new-drivers-forcloud-adoption.aspx GoGrid Cloud Survey Report – What is Cloud Computing and Do You Use It? http://blog.gogrid. com/2011/04/18/gogrid-cloudsurvey-report-what-is-cloudcomputing-and-do-you-use-it/ Cloud Computing Outlook 2011 http://www.cloud.com/index. php?option=com_k2&view=ite m&layout=item&id=248&Ite mid=407

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Content For the l atest technology u PDATES Go to itnext.in

sept

2011 Volume 02 | Issue 08

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Cloudy Partially

Page

16

Cloud computing roadmap still presents a hazy picture, as IT managers work out the strategy for future

Cover Story

boss talk

interview

Cloud computing has taken wings with SMEs taking the lead, but still it has miles to go before it becomes disruptive 1. Partially Cloudy 2. Case Study: Cloud Drives Disruptive Change 3. Legal Nuances to the Cloud 4. Securing the Cloud

Cloud computing has another enterprise looking up to it: the animation film industry with a data deluge

32 Desktop Virtualisation The second wave of virtualisation is here and IT heads are gung ho about it, for it will lessen their management pains

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06 Crisis and Workforce| Jessie Paul, CEO, Paul Writer Strategic Services, on people management in bad times

08 Taking Off| Manoj Chugh, President EMC, gives insights into cloud development and strategies to harness it

c ov er photography: jiten gandhi

38 Weaving 3D Dreams

c ov er des ign/imagi ng: ani l t

insights

itnext.in

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

EDITORIAL

Page

38

Group Editor: R Giridhar Executive Editor: Geetha Nandikotkur Senior Assistant Editor: Manu Sharma Executive Editor (Online): Shashwat DC Managing Editor: sangita Thakur Sub Editor: Radhika Haswani, Mitia Nath

Weaving 3D dreams | At DreamWorks spending millions of dollars on IT, is normal. And with all the data overload , moving to the cloud was but natural

DESIGN

the big Q

opinion 08 RoI Around the Cloud | Karan Singh, Director, ACG

55 Data Protection | Insure

Worldwide talks about the RoI factor in cloud computing

your sensitive and critical data with the right tools. Experts tell you how to choose the best ones

15-Minute manager

60 Out of the Box | The best

cube chat

48 Tips & Tricks| Are you a

leaders did not have a dynastic past. Rather, they rose to great heights by virtue of their vision and their will to see their dreams come true

desktop nerd? Here is some important advice for your health and wellbeing

62 Vision | Cloud computing

47 Negotiation| Learn the art and craft of negotiation, clinch the best deals and be a winner

Sr Creative Director: Jayan K Narayanan Art Directors: Binesh Sreedharan & Anil VK Associate Art Director: PC Anoop Visualiser: Prasanth TR, Anil T Sr Designers: Joffy Jose,NV Baiju, Chander Dange & Sristi Maurya Designers: Suneesh K, Shigil N & Charu Dwivedi Chief Photographer: Subhojit Paul Photographer: Jiten Gandhi

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

off the shelf based Android smartphone

49 IS Fables| Information

security is shrouded in myths.

We decode some of them for your understanding and benefIT

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

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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.

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advertiser index Patel India IFC Digilink 5, 7, 9 ISACA 13 Schneider 15 Cisco 23 Arcadin 25 IBM 24-A, IBC Dell BC

Please recycle this magazine and remove inserts before recycling

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INBoX COVER STORY

IT NEXT

COVER STORY | UNIFIED COMMUNICATION

AUGUST 2011 / ` 75 VOLUME 02 / ISSUE 07

32

STRATEGY: Why B Fear the Future? Just be prudent while using cloud

Put to

litmus test IT managers are testing out UC tools to address their business goals and find out how it works

“I find no compelling reason to take up a huge UC project within the organisation at this point of time”

P H OTO G R AP H Y : S U B H O JI T PAU L

I M AG I N G : B I N ES H S R E E D H AR AN

BY N GEETHA

However, the research analysts and vendors have been bullish about the growth, which is said to be in both units and value. The growth, however, will depend upon the capability of IT groups to persuade or influence business decisionmakers within their organisations to adopt UC and their ability to explain how it helps meet top-level business needs, besides assuring RoI. IT Next embarked on a study to find out how senior IT managers leveraged UC technologies to enhance productivity and increase operational efficiency. The thrust of our research has been on understanding the adoption level of UC by the community, accompanied by a case study; learning about various technological trends

U C DUBEY, Executive Director,IT, Iffco-Tokio General Insurance Co Ltd

A U G U S T 2 0 1 1 | ITNEXT

Cover Story1.indd 15

15

7/29/2011 11:26:45 PM

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and innovations emerging in this space; the market opportunities and the future roadmap.

What UC Means to IT Managers It is critical to understand how the IT manager community perceives UC and why they have considered deploying it despite resistance. Abhimanyu Gupta, Director, Actis Technologies Pvt Ltd, rightly points out that customers and most IT managers consider UC as an integration of voice, instant messaging, presence, video and email. “UC is still in its nascent stages, as the deployment is taking place in a phased manner with only a few essentials being deployed,” says Gupta.

According to Arun Shetty, Head, Avaya Aura Sales & Consulting, India and SAARC, customers perceive UC as an essential collaborative communication tool, involving a close partnership between people and processes, enabling work in an open and engaging environment.

From a customer perspective, Daya Prakash, CIO, LG Electronics, finds UC to be a technology within convergence space creating opportunities to enhance productivity and business growth.

R Rajagopal, GM, IT, Repco Bank, points to the importance of UC in ICT sector as it integrates real-time communication services including

ITNEXT | A U G U S T 2 0 1 1

Cover Story1.indd 16

7/29/2011 11:26:52 PM

IT NEXT values your feedback

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

I head the IT Strategy and Delivery division of Bharti AXA Life Insurance at AXA Asia. Just wanted to let you know I find IT Next magazine a great value adder in the midst of host of other publications. The 15 Minutes Manager is worth reading which outlines the gist in some management practice. The big Q section provides practical cases which we face some day or other. I would love to have articles on ‘Proactive CIO spearheading business transformation’ , ‘Strategizing IT to support business growth’ , ‘Leveraging Social Networking technology’, ‘Digital Marketing Strategy employing SEO’ etc. Please let me know the process of subscribing to the print edition of the IT Next magazine.

36 BOSS TALK

INTERVIEW: DC Outsourcing is real,while cloud being disruptive

Playing a strategic role is vital Pg 06

Put to

Litmus Test IT managers are testing out UC tools to address their business goals and find out how it works Pg 15

VOLUME 02 | ISSUE 07

UC has still not become the mainstream solution and is not being adopted by default. The IT managers and IT heads are required to make a compelling business case for UC and demonstrate its enterprise value to justify the budget and RoI. However, those (IT heads) who have employed a part of UC have seen its business benefits and this has given them the impetus to put forth their demand for deployment of the total solution to the top management. As UC Dubey, Executive Director, IT, Iffco Tokio General Insurance Co Ltd says, “We have deployed UC tools such as instant messaging and email, but on a small scale and as a standalone solution, which is not integrated with our backend system. I find no compelling reason to take up a huge UC project within the organisation at this point of time,” he says.

UNIFIED COMMUNICATION: PUT TO LITMUS TEST

Thanks to recession, a new technology has come into vogue – Unified Communications (UC). The pressure on the CIOs and IT heads from the top management, to do more with less, has led the community to look for tools that can bring in better value and lower the total cost of running business operations. While the UC vendors such as Polycom, Cisco, Avaya, IBM, Juniper, Tandberg and a few others, who are in sync with the research groups, have been trying hard to make the technology ubiquitous, the uptake has been slow.

45

BIG Q : Bridging the information gap using unified communications

may 2011

IT NEXT thanks its Readers for the warm response www.linkedin.com/ groups?gid= 2261770&trk= myg_ugrp_ ovr300members

BLV Rao IT Professional

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

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We would be happy if IT Next takes up features around best licensing policies and how to strike good licensing deals and so on. Besides features around ‘Power of Open Source’ will be a welcome gesture as the IT fraternity is always eager to get insights into these subjects. Certain HR related features, be it managing business relationships, measuring business benefits with team management being the focus area etc., would be help the readers.

Members CIO Forum, Hyderabad

Chaitanya Nadkarni Head – IT Strategy & Delivery, Bharti Axa Life Insurance

Let me introduce myself as BLV Rao, with 27 years of leadership & IT roles globally. I have been long associated with 9dot9 group and its team who are well connected with the CIO fraternity. I have been active delegate for IT and round tables that have been organised by the group on various occasions.

I have always put forth my frank views time to time on which would probably help your leadership team. IT Next a good publication in the print media for technology with its own flavour, features, columns, insights and case studies. I would like to provide my honest feedback on the few areas of the publication, which you may find it useful. a) The web portal is bit slow and sometime gives errors which may be due to technical issues

b) Publishing stories around IT trends across different spectrum every quarter may be well appreciated c) Specific and focused surveys on certain customer pain areas and new technologies is much needed d) Please have section or a column on different technologies, such as what do you think, example on DLP? This could have views from experts analysing fitment, challenges and cascading benefits around the technology e) Features around global customer trends around various technologies and also around specific industry verticals such as BFSI, IT, Retail etc., will be insightful.

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

567678 *Special rates apply

Erratum The cover feature titled ‘The New Men in Black’, security special of the IT Next July 2011 edition has incorrectly mentioned Shirish Dandekar as Head-IT, Tata Teleservices Ltd. The correct designation is Senior Manager- Information Technology, TTL. The company’s revenue turnover if Rs 6 crores.

Error regretted.

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

Boss talk | Jessie Paul

management: people

Crisis and Workforce

I

Transparency Pays It goes without saying that, when uncertainty prevails in an organisation, there is huge interest in, and pressure to know the facts. People in general, and employees in particular, respect employers who display transparency and predictability in such times. I know of companies where employees have worked without a salary for months because the management explained why they could not pay and asked that workers bear with them while they figured out a solution.

“Companies often respond to a critical challenge by organising an offsite. These have little or no lasting value”

Suggestion BOX

Empathy and Trust Empathy and trust are the two critical factors during a crisis. The workforce is mature enough to know that there might be bad news, but if they firmly believe that management is going to handle the situation in a positive way, there is less restlessness. Empathising with the workforce and being straightforward in communicating the reality and its possible solutions, are the best ways to gain their trust. In smaller companies, I’d recommend programmes like ‘brown-bag lunches’ where managers informally join teams for lunch, or town halls with the CEOs.

Lead by Example A crisis is a time to lead by example. CEOs cannot pay themselves massive bonuses while expecting

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employees to take cuts. People work best when they understand the big picture; when they feel they are contributing to something larger than themselves. Companies often respond to a critical challenge by organising an offsite. These have little or no lasting value, and a company would be better off investing in communication tools and in true ownership tools such as ESOPs, Employee Share Option Plans, and profit-sharing. Newer tools like Yammer, Twitter and YouTube can help facilitate this communication

Hire & Fire Not an Option “It is a humorous take on the consulting industry seen through the eyes of a recent MBA. It is very close to reality, and I have actually picked up some good tips”

If the company believes that it is a transactional relationship and that people can be hired and fired at will, then it is wrong to expect loyalty.

Management should facilitate networking and engagement by allowing staff to access social tools within the corporation. I would suggest they evaluate tools such as Yammer, Jive, Salesforce Chatter and IBM Connections. These are social media tools designed for corporates which protect data while encouraging collaboration.

AUTHOR: SID IN VADU KU T P UBLISH ER: PENG UIN BOOKS INDIA PRICE: `199

The author is Jessie Paul, CEO, Paul Writer Strategic Services

Photograph y: Mohd noor

t is human behaviour, in boom times, that employees across organisations are up to taking risks because they entail rewards, recognition and opportunities to grow in their careers. This is not the case when an economic crisis hits an industry, with its cascading negative effect on organisations and their staff. Then, the focus shifts to the lower end of Maslow’s hierarchy, as the workforce is enveloped in worries around retaining their jobs and meeting their basic needs, rather than being motivated to absorb risks and challenges.

Photo graph y: Jayan K Narayanan

opinion

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Opinion

money wise Shrikant Kulkarni, Sr VP & CIO, KPIT Cummins

RoI Around the Cloud

B

efore we begin the discussion on the RoI (return on investment), let us understand the type of cloud model that is under consideration. If it is public cloud (off premise) then we will be paying for usage on pay-as-you- use basis with no or minimal up-front investment costs.

You can scale up or scale down the demand of service as found necessary.

If it is private cloud (on premise), then the solution is internally deployed in the organisation using components such as virtualisation software, servers, network, storage, etc. Here, there is a considerable one-time investment.

For measuring the RoI in a public cloud scenario, we need to consider mainly the investment and the gains derived from either type of cloud deployment. In case of private cloud, we need to consider various cost factors including funding for capex for hardware, software to deploy cloud and disaster recovery, physical infrastructure including office space, network links, air-conditioning, access control, UPS, etc. It must also include the costs of people, power consumption, support from vendor/implementation partner, annual maintenance, etc.

Cost of underutilised or idle resources should also be factored in.

For public cloud, the cost picture is not very complex. While the opex for use of cloud services is the major cost; we also need to look at the costs incurred on connectivity and devices required for using cloud service. We need to objectively evaluate the cost of business/revenue loss due to service

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factors to be considered for both private and public cloud models are SLAs, disaster recovery arrangement, data security, software licenses, application migration, committed bandwidth, support and availability of skilled resources, etc.

Procurement Pattern There are a number of steps in the procurement process. Each one is very critical and one needs to follow them with sufficient time supported by a dedicated team. These steps include solution identification, evaluating business benefits, carrying out proof of concept, referring to case studies and price negotiation in line with the expected RoI. Also, factors like vendor experience and reputation; their commitment to support during and after deployment; coordination between multiple vendors; relationship with the vendor; etc., are equally important factors.

Challenges in Adoption

â&#x20AC;&#x153;For measuring the cloud ROI, we need to consider mainly the investment costs and the gains derived from either type of cloud deploymentâ&#x20AC;? performance, or/and breach of SLAs agreed by the cloud service provider.

There may be other factors like data security, compliance risks, etc, that need to be taken into account.

The gains/benefits from private/ public cloud implementation are now generally known.

Pricing Criteria The first and most important factor for private cloud is sizing of the hardware required for deployment. The common

It is always advisable to anticipate and prepare for the challenges, particularly while deploying new technology. The likely challenges while working on a cloud solution are managementâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s attitude towards investing in new technology and adapting to it, skill available, and knowledge of vendor team, sizing and configuring the solution as per the requirements.

Besides this, coordination of multiple vendors, compatibility of applications that are planned for migration, complexities in licensing of software on cloud, readiness of physical infrastructure, change in the mindset of end users and their acceptance and usage of cloud service too form the challenges.

Success Speaks KPIT Cummins is one of the early adapters of cloud technology. We have successfully deployed private cloud and are reaping its benefits. We now have 700 virtual desktops and another 500 will be operational by October 2011. We have successfully migrated several corporate applications to the cloud.

Photo graph y: Jayan K Narayanan

opinion

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update

Gartner: Five Ways to Migrate to the Cloud Tech Trends| Organisations seeking to move applications into the

cloud have five options: rehost on infrastructure as a service (IaaS), refactor for platform as a service (PaaS), revise for IaaS or PaaS, rebuild on PaaS, or replace with software as a service (SaaS), according to Gartner, Inc. “When the CIO issues the simple directive: Move some applications to the cloud, architects face bewildering choices about how to do this, and their decision must consider an organisation’s requirements, evaluation criteria, and architecture principles,”

cloudg utin p m o c

Do you think the cloud will really take off by 2014?

Six in 10 CIOs think that it will become the most significant method of IT delivery by 2014 (Numbers in %) PERCENT %

The cloud market for ERP is expected to be approx Rs 600 crore and will grow to Rs 900 crore in 5 years

11 By 2012 28 By 2013 21 By 2014 18 By 2016 11 Beyond 2016 06 Never 05 Don’t know

Source:NEXT CONNECT

10

Organisations wanting to move applications to the cloud have five ways of doing it; but none is perfect

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trends deals products services people

said Richard Watson, Research Director at Gartner. “However, no alternative offers a silver bullet: all require architects to understand application migration from multiple perspectives and criteria, such as IT staff skills, the value of existing investments, and application architecture.” The alternative migration strategies Gartner suggests IT organisations consider are: Rehost, i.e. redeploy applications to a different hardware environment and change the application’s infrastructure configuration.

Refactor, i.e. run applications on a cloud provider’s infrastructure.

Revise, i.e. modify or extend the existing code base to support legacy modernisation requirements, then use rehost or refactor options to deploy to cloud. This option allows organisations to optimise the application to leverage the cloud.

Rebuild, i.e. rebuild the solution on PaaS, discard code for an existing application and re-architect the application.

Although rebuilding requires losing the familiarity of existing code and frameworks, the advantage of rebuilding an application is access to innovative features in the provider’s platform.

Replace, i.e. discard an existing application (or set of applications) and use commercial software delivered as a service. “Choosing the optimal applicationmigration option is a decision that cannot be made in isolation,” said Watson.

I llustration: sh igil n

Update I n d u s t r y

Nikon Coolpix P7100 hands-on

Sony A77 hands-on

HTC Evo Design 4G

Competing for the crown in high-end compacts is the Nikon Coolpix P7100, which replaces 2010’s Coolpix P7000.

It is up against Canon PowerShot G12, hoping to appeal to those who want full control

Sony has announced a quintet of cameras, including a pair of new NEX shooters, after Alpha 77 and Alpha 65, both SLTs and both with whopping 24.3-megapixel EXMOR APS HD CMOS

HTC is expected to announce some new toys on September 1 and every day more leaks seem to emerge. The latest round of details comes from disclosed build.prop file which gives a nice spec breakdown for the HTC

IBM Offerings to Boost Software Development TECH TIDINGS| IBM has

announced new software that helps organisations collaborate more efficiently throughout the entire software and systems development process At the INNOVATE 2011 Bangalore conference, IBM has announced new software that helps organisations collaborate more efficiently throughout the entire software and systems development process. The new software allows developer teams to quickly access resources and work across global boundaries through an open, collaborative development environment.

Software to help organisations collaborate efficiently

According to the IBM CEO Study, a survey of more than 1,500 Chief Executive Officers from 60 countries and 33 industries worldwide, twothirds of global organisations

Around The World

manage software development teams working in multiple locations. The new software helps organisations align their software investments with business process and operations across an entire organisation, creating stronger linkages between planning and execution.

It is now possible to tap into talent wherever it is located.

The new software offerings are built on Jazz, IBM’s open software development platform that supports sharing and interactions among software and systems design and development teams.

Collaborative Design Management: Enables teams to integrate designs seamlessly with other development tasks and information.

quick byte

I llustration: sh igil n

New Evidence Suggests Google+ Slowing Down Just as the initial euphoria surrounding Google+ shows signs of staving-off, it has become pretty clear that the site is losing its steam. The site which has already hit 25 mn users is struggling to keep up with the growth rate witnessed by it previously.

Chitika in its research found out that Google+ experienced a 34 per cent erosion of its traffic from July 20 to 31. These results are in stark contrast to Insights study which indicated a 300 per cent increase in interest for Google+.

Francisco D’Souza, president and CEO of Cognizant says:

“Since our inception, we have built a new business model for consulting, IT and business process outsourcing services to deliver a distinctly superior experience to our clients”

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update

Microland Inks $55 mn IMS Deal with Serco TECH TRENDS | Microland will deliver end-to-end IT infrastructure management services (IMS) from both onshore and offshore locations IT infrastructure services company, Microland recently announced the signing of a strategic five-year contract worth USD 55 mn with Serco, a leading international service company headquartered in UK. Bangalore-based Microland has been providing remote IT infrastructure management services to Serco since 2005.

Under the new contract, Microland will continue to provide end-to-end infrastructure services for a range of devices through their team located in Birmingham, UK, and Bangalore, India.

“Over the last few years, Microland has been building its leadership and global presence

Interview RANGARAJ MS Chief Innovation Officer, Microland

Wipro builds Private Cloud for OnStream the largest investor-owned utility in United Kingdom. Wipro which has a successfully built a private cloud for matured set of cloud offerings initiated OnStream Utility Metering Services Limited. Wipro Technologies, the global the private cloud project for OnStream IT, consulting and outsourcing business in October 2010.

Wipro’s Infrastructure cloud of Wipro Limited has successfully built offerings include an in-depth a private cloud for OnStream Cloud analysis of workloads through Utility Metering Services will be Cloud Inventory Analysis Limited. OnStream provides Tool, design and build of gas and electricity metering private cloud use cases like solutions in United Kingdom.

Development/Test as a service; OnStream is part of National of all IT Disaster Recovery and Backup Grid Group, which is one of spending by 2013 as a service; Virtual and the largest energy delivery Source: IDC Hosted Desktop as a service. businesses in the world and

NEXT CONNECT| Wipro Limited has

% 10

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RANGARAJ: Being the pioneers in IT, Microland our offerings include services across infrastructure management, infrastructure modernisation, process maturity services, assurance and compliance, technical support, virtualisation, collaboration, mobility and also cloud computing. The reason that Gartner considers Microland as ‘Cloud Broker’ is that we help customers migrate into the cloud platform.

What applications are on cloud?

We find customers moving in some of their easy to move applications on the cloud that are not impacting and are hoping to move all their applications on the public cloud shortly.

What are the security concerns?

Earlier, customers looked at the perimeter security only, which has resulted in certain failures. As cloud is still evolving, there is no definite technology so far to address full security.

What is you take on the SLAs? The SLAs for an enterprise moving to the cloud are too general and the support is too basic but the SLAs for cloud customers will continue to improve. With the third party coming in it will bridge the gap on the way you measure the metrics and so new SLAs will be worked out.

By Manu Sharma

Photo graphy: photo s.c om

in the rapidly growing IMS space. This strategic contract ushers in a new era for Microland wherein we would now be able to provide an integrated onshoreoffshore solution to our global customers,” says Pradeep Kar, Chairman and Managing Director, Microland.

The company pioneered networking in India in 1989.

Photo graphy: Jayan K Narayanan

Microland will deliver end-to-end IT infrastructure management services (IMS) from both onshore and offshore locations

IT NEXT: Why do you coin yourselves as cloud brokers?

Demonstrate your value without saying a word.

Résumés/CVs may list your experience and knowledge, but an ISACA® certification designation after your name proves it.

www.isaca.org/certification-ITnext

December Exam Date: 10 December 2011 Registration Deadline: 5 October 2011

update

Apple Achieves Victory Over Samsung on the Issue of IP Samsung debarred from selling its flagship Galaxy tablet in 26 EU countries

TECH TRENDS| A district court in Dus-

seldorf, Germany has temporarily barred Samsung from selling its flagship Galaxy tablet in 26 countries that belong to the European Union, except the Netherlands. Certain laws in the Netherlands differ from those in the other nations, but Apple has filed a separate lawsuit in courts there.

According to analysts, while the decision cab be reversed, the ban on sales of the Galaxy Tab could last more than a year.

The ban imposed by the German court is in regard to only the Samsung tablet with a 10.1-inch touchscreen.

blog

Sony’s Online Network Hacked Again Sony is consumer electronic manufacturing company that is in the news from few months. Sony caught in the hacking arena which has really tensed the whole situation. It is not the first time we are discussing the online network hack but the third time.

Before this Sony has assured many times that it will secure its network but now limit has been crossed. It is the third time of security lapse and data of about one million people customers got exposed. It has been reported that the hacker group named as LulzSec, hacked the online server of Sony, this group also claims for hacking the networks of PBS television and Fox.com.

The LulzSec group has published details of all the customers who have participated in contest organized by Sony. Sony Inc said that the hackers could have also stealth the credit cards details.

Hacking group said: “From a single injection, we accessed EVERYTHING. Why do you put such faith in a company that allows itself to become open to these simple attacks?”

Source: www.telecomnewspk.com

Worldwide ad spending on the upswing online drives growth at a rate of 17.2%

eMarketer predicts advertisers around the world will spend nearly $500 bn in 2011 — a growth rate of 4.5 per cent. Online ad expenditures of $80.2 bn are growing at a rate of 17.2 per cent and fuelling total media ad spending growth. The global advertising industry has rebounded more quickly from the worldwide recession than eMarketer and other analysts had anticipated.

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Illustratio n: s higi l n

News @

The various 7-inch versions can continue to sell in the EU countries.

However, the Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, has in the past been contemptuous of 7-inch tablets, calling them ‘tweeners.’

He said, “We think the 10-inch screen size is the minimum screen size required to make great tablet apps.”

It was in April this year that Apple had filed a lawsuit against Samsung in a California court. In the lawsuit Apple had alleged that the South Korean manufacturer infringed on its patents and slavishly copied its designs. Since then the two major tech companies have been engaged in legal battles.

Tech trends

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technology | cover story

Cloudy Partially

Cloud computing roadmap still presents a hazy picture, as IT managers work out the strategy for future

By M a n u S h a r ma i m aging by anil t

E

ven though analysts termed 2010 as the Year of the cloud, in reality only some organisations began to use cloud computing in earnest. This year, however, cloud has taken wings with SMEs taking the lead in cloud computing, specifically public cloud. The larger enterprises, though, are still scouting the sky for the perfect cloud: public, private or hybrid.

IT heads have accepted that cloud computing is one of the fastest growing technology trends today and will reach unprecedented heights in the next few years. In March 2009, Gartner had predicted that sales of cloud computing services would almost triple over next five years, from $56 bn in revenues in 2009 to $150 bn in 2013. Recent reports

indicate that the forecast is coming true.

IT Next embarked on a study of the ‘cloud service model’ to understand if cloud was real and disruptive in the true sense, and the direction in which it was headed. The resultant cover story, gives insights into CIO experiences around the cloud. We have captured the various nuances of the cloud phenomenon – legal implications, costing, security issues – and the industry response to it as also their experience around it.

Almost every CIO or IT head we spoke to, was gung ho about the cloud, and intends to utilise it in the best possible way. But the major activity is around private cloud at this point of time, with the majority of customers opting for it. Sid Deshpande, Senior Research Analyst from Gartner,

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Case Study: Mahindra Satyam

Cloud Drives

Disruptive Changes Innovative and groundbreaking as a delivery model, cloud will change the way we manage technology

All the Way to the Cloud But IT heads vouch for the cloud. As Jawant Gowande, General Manager (Corporate IT), Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd, says, “Cloud is a very important part of our IT strategy. We are going for private cloud, to reap advantages of its ecosystem – cost optimisation, improved business efficiency, enhanced productivity, increased customer satisfaction and acquisition.”

Dinesh Agarwal, Founder and CEO, IndiaMART.com, says, “Recently, more than 4,000 of our employees, located across 75 offices across the country, started using Google Apps, as their primary messaging and collaboration suite. The cloud offers improved infrastructure and management than what is ordinarily possible with on-premise solutions,” he says.

Cloud Consultant, PK Mishra, says, “Industries that use a lot of distributed processing involving large volumes of data, are more likely to consider a cloud-based solution. Almost all industry verticals appear cautiously optimistic about the potential of the cloud, especially the private model.”

Kapil Mehrotra, IT Head Applications, iYogi, says, “We are on the cloud to ensure rapid deployment of IT infrastructure and applications.

Two factors propelled us towards the cloud: faster response and better

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Most industry players find cloud to be a disruptive technology and feel that it is going to change the way of doing business. However, Srinivas Kishan Anapu, former vice president, Enterprise Information Systems & Consultant, Mahindra Satyam, gives a different flavour to it. He says, “True disruption occurs when an innovation technology or business model unexpectedly displaces an already established model. Against this backdrop, cloud computing is not a disruptive technology in itself, but a disruptive IT delivery model that leverages key technology ideas to deliver technology in a much more efficient way.”

Anapu believes that the rise of cloud computing would radically change the way companies manage their technology assets and computing needs.

Compelling despite challenges Anapu agrees with his peers when he maintains that moving to the cloud would drive significant

utilisation of assets, and reduced costs.”

As reports indicate, SMBs (small and medium business) have taken to the public cloud in a big way, while large enterprises continue to watch this space and evaluate their options.

For larger enterprises, the path to the cloud is not clear with regard to the model that works best for them –public, private or hybrid. Before we look at the actual study details, let us look at the direction that the cloud is taking in 2011.

Private or Public?

Public cloud, also referred to as ‘external’ cloud, incorporates the conventional meaning of cloud computing: scalable,

dynamically provisioned, often virtualised resources available over the internet from an offsite third-party provider, which divides up resources and bills its customers on a ‘utility’ basis.

Despite being a hit with the SMEs, reports say that many enterprises feel public clouds are too restrictive with rigid infrastructures, incapable of being

Photo graph y: sures h

observes, “Currently, it is the private cloud that has taken off, as the priority of CIOs is to drive efficient utilisation of IT infrastructure through virtualisation. Since there are still some issues around the public cloud, it will be at least three years before it becomes widely accepted.”

technology | cover story competitive advantage, measurable in outcomes like higher customer attraction, retention and satisfaction; increased revenues; and improved shareholder value.

“The pay-as-you-go model will actually help all kinds of enterprises concentrate on their products and services without worrying too much about the capex,” says Anapu. What attracts him to the cloud is the fact that it is designed to accommodate immediate delivery of large-scale computing resources.

The murkier side of the cloud, which could have an adverse effect on the minds of the customers, is that there are almost no SLAs (service level agreements) provided by the cloud providers today. “The pertinent question that comes to mind here is: How can enterprises sign up cloud computing contracts without clearly defined SLAs?” asks Anapu.

There is uncertainty around how the compliance and IT governance is knitted into the cloud framework. “Backup is a big challenge and I have burnt my fingers, as there is a defined framework in my company,” admits Anapu.

What is on the cloud?

Mahindra Satyam did not want to lag behind in the race for cloud solutions. The team decided to opt for a private cloud and move its non-critical and non-financial applications to it. Anapu says, “Owing to the legalities around cloud, we are still in the wait and watch mode when it comes to moving critical applications.”

The company has opted for infrastructure as a service (IaaS) model of private cloud on Microsoft Azure platform. “We are still experimenting with PaaS (platform as a service); since SaaS (software as a service) involves a large exercise, where many of our internal applications will need modifications to fit into it.

Anapu and his 20-member cloud team decided to move knowledge management and quality applications to the cloud. “Before this, we tried to virtualise about 70 servers, of the total 180, to move them to the cloud,” he says.

“Private cloud can provide some of the elastic benefits of public cloud computing — without some of the inherent risks of the latter — by leveraging virtualisation and commodity hardware”

The cloud services were offered to the company’s 20,000 users, who subsequently saw a huge difference in operations.

According to Anapu, the factors that influenced the team to opt for the cloud were its ability to easily and cost-effectively expand and reduce computing resources to meet fluctuating demands.

Inherent checks Anapu and team took the cue to check with the providers if they have relevant industry accreditations such as ISO27001-2005, security plans, encryption, etc., before acting on the cloud model. “In my experience, security is cited as the main impediment by businesses in their move towards cloud computing where the data is exposed to risks of unauthorised disclosure due to security breaches, particularly where the data is unencrypted,” Atanu cautions.

Cost reduction: The key criterion Anapu says, 40 per cent of the landscape comprising nonfinancial and non-critical applications, is ported on to the private cloud. “Our objective is to display our cloud competencies to the external world (our customers) rather than anything else. Hence, RoI and SLA are not a concern at this point of time. However, the biggest advantage the team has is the ease of operations,” says Anapu.

“It becomes complicated when we extend this to service providers who provide end-to-end IT services — from functional analysis through development, production and support,” admits Anapu.

Points of importance “I want to clarify an important point here. True disruption occurs when an innovation in technology or business model unexpectedly displaces an already established model,” says Anapu.

“I learnt my lessons when I moved our applications on to a private cloud without a proper backup strategy,” admits Anapu.

According to him, applications cannot be backed up the way we used to do on a physical server; especially in a heterogeneous environment where we have SAP and ERP applications.

Another key factor under cloud model is employing different vendors. “It is very important to spread it out among different service providers. “If all the applications, from mail to calendar to word processing to web analytics, are with a single vendor, any lockout will bring down your entire business,” warns Anapu.

—Srinivas Kishan Anapu, former VP, EIS, Mahindra Satyam

customised to meet their particular needs. And this brings private cloud technologies to the centre stage which, they feel, should be the preferred option.

Daya Prakash, Head IT, LG Electronics India Ltd, agrees. He says that as a

company policy, they have decided not to go for the public cloud model and have hosted some mission-critical applications such as supplier portal, service portal and sell out management system on the private cloud.

Anand Ramakrishnan, General Manager, Cloud Computing Services, Wipro Infotech, however, is of a

different opinion. He says that the most popular cloud model is the one that is linked to the specific business.

For example, in the core banking system, the ‘per-account-per-month’ is the preferred cloud business model, since this provides the organisation tremendous clarity on the IT spend per account of business they have.

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Gathering Weight In a recent study, IDC (International Data Corporation) forecast that IT public cloud spending would reach $72.9 bn in four years, up from $21.5 bn in 2010.

That works out to 27.6 per cent compound annual growth rate, which the analyst firm applied to five categories: applications, application development and deployment, systems infrastructure software, and basic storage and servers. These will account for nearly 50 per cent in new net growth on IT spending, not just cloud computing, says the report.

SaaS will account for about three quarters of IT public cloud spending.

$150 billion revenues from cloud by 2013 – Gartner

A study by Ernst & Young revealed that SaaS appeared to be the popular choice with over 25 per cent of the respondents indicating that their organisation was already using it; 49 per cent indicated that they would evaluate infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) in the coming year; and 34 per cent plus of the respondents said that they intended to evaluate platform-asa-service (PaaS). The advisory firm also said that these two cloud streams were in their infancy and, unlike SaaS, Indian enterprises were just warming up to them. Dharanibalan Gurunathan, Vice President, Cloud Offerings, IBM, says there has been a growth momentum amongst the customers in the past six months, with IT heads evaluating the vulnerabilities around various cloud models.

Keep it In-house Private cloud (also referred to as ‘corporate’ or ‘internal’

cloud) is a term used to denote a proprietary computing architecture providing hosted services on private networks.

This type of cloud computing is generally used by large companies, and allows their corporate network and data centre administrators to effectively become in-house ‘service providers’ catering to ‘customers’ within the corporation.

Some vendors, including Amazon with its virtual private cloud offering, and Microsoft are pushing private clouds as the more likely option in the enterprise market. Santanu Ghose, Country Head, Converged Infrastructure Solutions, HP India, says that the customers have not accepted cloud as a technology, but there is a whole concept of cloud starting with ‘shared services’ for infrastructure. “There is a common resource pool created to provide services, aimed at increasing the utilisation of infrastructure with the ability to consolidate, which is again a private cloud,” says Ghose.

Mehrotra of iYogi, says, “We have not yet moved to the cloud, but will start soon with less business-critical applications and after seeing the results, we may plan to move our critical applications in a phased manner.”

Enterprises moving critical applications to the private cloud, would be doing it within their own firewall. Agreeing to this, Pradeep Kar, Founder and CMD of Microland, says,

“We are going for private cloud adoption in our enterprise, to reap advantages of its ecosystem and enhance productivity” Jawant Gowande General Manager (Corporate IT) Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd.

Photo graphy: jiten gandhi

cover story | technology

technology | cover story give advantage of scalability and cost-effectiveness that a public cloud computing environment offers without exposing mission-critical applications and data to third-party vulnerabilities.

Mixing and matching private and public clouds can also be helpful for information control, scalability, burst demand, and fail-over needs.”

M&M supports the hybrid model. “It provides the opportunity to enjoy best of both worlds,” says Gowande of M&M. “This also gives us an opportunity to test waters of the public cloud in terms of security and SLAs adherence by service providers,” he adds.

Demystifying Platforms

“Two key factors propelled me towards looking at the cloud, which are: faster response and better utilisation of assets, and reduced costs”

Photo graphy: s ubhoji t paul

Kapil Mehrotra IT Head Applications, iYogi

“Enterprises are hosting some critical applications on to a private cloud deployed within their own firewall, usually from on-site data centres.”

Srinivas Kishan Anapu, former VP, Enterprise Information Systems, Mahindra Satyam, says, “About 40 per cent of the landscape comprising nonfinancial and non-critical applications only, are ported to the private cloud.”

Another study by Zinnov Management Consulting found the total cloud market in India to be around $400 mn, employing 10,000 people. It forecasts a market of $4.5 bn by 2015, with 100,000 new jobs. Out of this, over 70 per cent is around private cloud. The findings are based on a survey of more than 100 CIOs and IT decision-makers across industry verticals in India.

Hybrid Model: Fresh & Promising Amidst the dilemma around private and public cloud models, the fresh hybrid cloud model is burgeoning.

Experts indicate that it is the way the ‘future of the cloud’ is directed.

A hybrid cloud is a composition of at least one private cloud and one public cloud. It is typically offered in one of the two ways: A vendor has a private cloud and forms a partnership with a public cloud provider, or a public cloud provider forms a partnership with a vendor who provides private cloud platforms. Many enterprises are already bucking on this trend.

Karan Singh, VP, IT, Reliance Energy (BSES) Ltd, says, “Ideally, for a company like BSES, the hybrid approach would

Although the term cloud computing is widely used, it is important to note that all cloud models are not the same. Cloud models can be segmented into software as a service (Saas), platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and can be explained as follows: SaaS: This particular model is focussed on managing access to applications, e.g., policy controls may dictate that a sales person can only download particular information from sales CRM applications.

PaaS: The primary focus of this model is on protecting data. It is especially important in the case of storage as a service. An important element to consider within PaaS is the ability to plan against the possibility of an outage from a cloud provider.

IaaS: This is delivery of the computing infrastructure as a fully outsourced service. Some of the companies that provide infrastructure services are: Google, IBM, Amazon. com, etc. Managed hosting and development environments are included in IaaS. SaaS has been in vogue for sometine now and IT heads are also looking at IaaS, which is the first phase of cloud model. Sanjay Deshmukh, Area VP India, Citrix Systems, explains that under IaaS, virtual server instances with unique IP addresses and blocks of storage on demand are provided.

Customers use the provider’s

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cover story | technology application program interface (API) to start, stop, access and configure their virtual servers and storage.

Anapu of Mahindra Satyam, says, “IaaS is in the private cloud. We are still experimenting Paas. SaaS is a bigger exercise, as many of our internal applications need to be modified to fit it, and we are not ready as of now.”

Mehrotra of iYogi, says that they would go for both SaaS and IaaS, the reason being that they carried out an internal exercise and optmised a few applications and infrastructure, and found interesting results.

The new term TaaS (testing as a service) is making its way, as a service in its individual capacity.

Why Partial?

The reason for IT heads and managers to only partially moving applications to the cloud is scepticism.

Arun Gupta, Group CIO at Shoppers Stop Ltd, says, “Cloud computing has been (mis)used by the IT industry such that the definition has expanded to include anything that is not owned; can be installed in a virtual environment; can be offered as an operating expense with no capital expense; is available as a service; is hosted outside of the customer premises; can be (hopefully) scaled up or down depending on demand and presumably offers lower TCO.” Fear factors too prevail regarding actual outcomes.

Suresh Sambandam, Founder and CEO of OrangeScape, a provider of PaaS says, “Cloud computing is a broad term that encompasses many things.”

$72.9 billion spend on IT public cloud by 2014 – IDC

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Bright Spots ndustries with huge data that use I a lot of distributed processing are considering cloud loud is a hit SMEs, Enterprises fee C public cloud is restrictive with rigid infrastructures.

Private cloud would mean critical applications to be within the organisation’s firewall ndian Cloud market stands at I $400 mn- says Zinnov Management Consulting survey ndian Cloud market estimated I to be at $4.5 bn by 2015- Zinnov Management Consulting Study

Kamesh Ramamoorthy, spokesperson of Ramco Systems says that a single instance of software is used by multiple customers over the internet, and payment is made on subscription basis. The advantage is that consumers can easily use data intensive applications at a fraction of the cost with minimal deployment complexity.

Ruling out certain misconceptions, IT heads do find certain imperative reasons for opting for the cloud. Daya Prakash of LG Electronics says: “Payper-use model, ease of implementation, virtual and on demand, agility and elasticity, no hassle of employee attrition, etc., are some of the reasons for moving to the cloud.

Charan Padmaraju, Co-Founder and CTO, Redbus, expects the reasons such as no upfront investment, lower operating cost, dynamic provisioning and scaling up, faster time to market, no procurement issues, etc., to be the drawing factors for IT heads.

What’s on the Cloud?

Going by volumes, peripheral applications are seeing the cloud, with a few large ones experimenting with mov-

Mix and match of private and public clouds can help in information control, scalability, burst demand, and fail-over needs.

Tier 1 and 2 critical applications are yet to move to the Cloud There is a price attached to each unit of resource you may actually use classified into: CPU, memory, storage, program and network.

Each unit is metered accurately and contributes to the cost. ariable cost is based on measV ured QOS and SLA by the service providers

ing business-critical applications on it to find if the business challenges are met.

Shreekanth Joshi, Associate VP, Practice Head for SaaS and Cloud, Persistent Systems, observes, “Almost all categories of applications are based in the cloud. Most of the traction is with SaaS-based applications like CRM and HCM. Typically, tier 3 and 4 long-tail applications that are not under risk are put on the cloud.

Public services providers are gearing up to manage the key business critical applications. Girish Hadkar, Senior Manager, IT, M&M, says that on April 1, 2010, the company went live on single SAP ECC 6.0 instance on a single server for over 60 Mahindra Group companies with harmonised processes in Finance and Accounts, HR, Indirect Procurement and IT, on private cloud.”

Ramakrishnan, General Manager, Cloud Computing Services, Wipro Infotech, observes a strong momentum towards open standards-based infrastructure for both private and public service provider clouds. Wipro hosts ERP for manufacturing and services organisations: Core Banking Software for microfinance institutions and cooperative banks; Dealer Management System for auto OEMs

cover story | technology that want to automate their dealers; and Campus Management System for educational institutions.

LG’s Dayaprakash admits, “We have a policy of not hosting applications on public cloud. Our mission-critical applications such as, supplier and customer service portal and sell-out management are on private cloud.”

BSES’s Singh says that the company has hosted customer-related applications on the private cloud. “Internally also, we have services hosted on private cloud.

The data in power sector is critical in terms billing and payments, hence data security issues are making the movement to the public cloud a concern,” he maintains.

Disruptive, Really?

Over the past decade, numerous shifts in business have been described and hyped as ‘disruptive’.

LG’s Dayaprakash says that large corporates have been able to reap benefits of a collaborative workplace due to the adoption of cloud-based solutions

by SMBs. Integration with partner ecosystem, makes the cloud disruptive.

But Anapu doesn’t find cloud to be disruptive yet, as true disruption occurs only when an innovation in technology or business model unexpectedly displaces an already established one.

Cloud is not ready, he says.

Savings in the Cloud Cost savings are essentially based on opex (operational expense) model. The

“As a company policy, we decided not to go for public cloud and hosted some mission-critical applications such as Supplier Portal and Sell Out Management System on private cloud” Daya Prakash Head, IT, LG Electronics India Ltd

shift away from capex (capital expense) model, where the application service had to provision for expensive IT and networking infrastructure, is a welcome change. “This reduces the entry barrier for owners of applications and allows them to go live faster by leasing infrastructure from cloud service providers

Cloud Facts Year 2010 termed as the year of the cloud Private, Public and Hybrid are the different types of clouds available Public clouds can be too restrictive with rigid infrastructure and are incapable of being customised to particular needs

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Private clouds are more popular with large companies as they allow greater flexibility ybrid clouds, a combination of priH vate and public cloud are being seen as the future of cloud The three cloud platforms available are Saas, IaaS and PaaS

(CSP) and benefit from the elastic model of pay-per-use,” says Mishra.

In fact, on the cloud, there is a price attached to each unit of resource you may actually use. Typically, resources are classified into five categories such as CPU, memory, storage, program and network. Each one of these is metered accurately and contributes to the cost.

There may also be a variable cost that service providers will charge based on measured quality-of-service (QOS) and service-level-agreement (SLA).

“Customers tend to like the more granular billing structure that is based on metered usage at a pre-agreed price.

Pricing by Amazon is perhaps based on a more mature model, as they have pioneered a part of this type of billing,” admits Mishra.

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cover story | technology Joshi of Persistent Systems remarks, “Typical cost structures are based on per resource pricing (compute, network bandwidth or quantum of storage).

Billing is on per-hour boundary. For SaaS-based applications, the billing model varies between per-seat or perlogin or per-quantum of transaction.”

Jaideep Billa, Advisor to ChiefArchitect and CEO, Polaris Software Labs, says they offer a risk-return model for pricing and have different models.

The model that we have publicly disclosed is core banking services at Rs 1 per-week-per-account.”

Arun Gupta agrees with Mishra that the cost-benefit analysis does not justify moving an existing corporate application to the cloud unless it has a large number of users who access it concurrently, are located outside the firewall, and require access via the internet. “In this case, for us, since the case-inpoint was our B2C foray for customers, the cloud made sense,” remarks Gupta.

Karan Singh opined that for SMEs the movement to public cloud may look be attractive in terms of ROI, TCO and other cost benefits. However, for large organisations, the challenges associated with public cloud in terms of security and relationship need to be evaluated in a long-term perspective.

As a vendor, Wipro’s Ramakrishnan says that the billing structure is predominantly a pay-as-you-go model, which is a quarterly or monthly charge with minimal or nil initial cost.

Kamesh of Ramco, another vendor, says that their cloud solutions are made available on the internet on a subscription model, and require no additional licences. This ensures that there is no capex required to purchase the solution. “Our cloud model follows a monthly billing cycle where the customers pay only for what they use,” informs Kamesh.

Ramco has three forms of subscription: pay-peruser, pay-as-per-usage of application, and pay-per-

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“The cost does not justify moving an existing corporate application to the cloud unless it has large number of users, who access it concurrently residing outside the firewall,” Arun Gupta Group CIO, Shoppers Stop Ltd. transaction. Of these, the pay-per-user on a monthly basis is the most popular, as it is easier to manage both, for the vendor and the customer.

Another global cloud vendor, IBM for enterprise-class features, offers SmartCloud Enterprise, an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud solution that offers: Rapid access to

$400 million cloud market in India –Zinnov Management Consulting

configurable server environments to speed time to market; Self-service Web portal for enterprise account management; pay-as-you-go pricing; security-rich environment designed to protect your systems, and data and access to a rich catalogue of software images for improved flexibility.

Deshmukh of Citrix says by moving to the cloud, organisations would be consuming compute IaaS in the form of instances or virtual machines which can be classified into various configurations – small, medium or large. Organisations may buy these instances from the IaaS provider for a certain period, say 6-12 months, and pay for the usage of instance for those many months.

technology | cover story This way, enterprises move from the capex model to an opex model, where rather than investing in the hardware and OS licenses, they can just hire the compute instances with OS from the IaaS providers for a certain period.

Are SLAs Key to the Cloud?

As some organisations have already moved to the cloud in some way or the other, while others who are contemplating whether or not to deliver their IT from the cloud, service level agreements (SLAs) are creating a fair amount of anxiety.

What’s known is that SLAs in the enterprise go by the name of quality of service (QoS) in the cloud world. The QoS determines the percentage of IT infrastructure that an organisation would be comfortable moving to the cloud.

Diljeet Titus, legal expert, points out that even though cloud computing is still in the nascent stages, there are incidents when there has been a default on the SLA agreement in India. (Refer to box: Legal Nuances) However, almost all the vendors promise that an enterprise-class cloud is service-rich and supports fully managed operations for both cloud-ready and non-cloud-ready applications. They assure that cloud comes with a holistic SLA that covers the complete environment — from performance level for each component to 24x7x365 support, security, production processes, problem resolution and required staff certifications, along with ITIL, ISO9001 and governance procedures.

Future Trends The cloud computing industry has yet to fully take off, but already experts have unveiled its potential for going forward.

Technology experts and stakeholders say they will ‘live mostly in the cloud’ by 2020, and not on the desktop, working through cyberspace-based applications accessed through networked devices.

This will substantially advance mobile connectivity through smartphones and other internet appliances.

Legal

Nuances to the

Cloud

Legal expertise is being seriously sought for data protection in cloud services

E

nterprises are becoming more open to the idea of buying IT as a service, rather than owning infrastructure. The enticing prospect of releasing the enterprise from the shackles of buying, maintaining hardware and software, licensing and support, has fuelled interest in cloud computing. However, certain risks involved, which get associated with the legal aspect, cannot be ruled out.

Pertinent questions around security, SLA breaches, default, etc., from IT heads have been highlighted from time to time and are proving to be a deterrent to the adoption the cloud. Two well-known legal experts, Diljeet Titus, Managing Partner, Titus and Co, and Ritambhara Agrawal, Founder and Managing Partner at Intelligere, discuss the potential risks that could emerge on the cloud, key components of Service Level Agreements (SLAs), its legal implications and the Act evolving around the cloud computing.

SLA Insights According to Titus, the basic benefit of cloud computing is shared resources, which is supported by the underlying nature of a shared infrastructure environment. Thus, service providers offer SLAs as a service-based agreements rather than a customer-based agreement.

“Measuring, monitoring and reporting on cloud performance are based on end-user experience or the end user’s ability to consume resources,” he adds. However, the downside of cloud computing, relative to SLAs, is the difficultly in determining the root cause of service interruptions due to the complex nature of the cloud computing process.

Ritambhara Agrawal opines that SLAs as a standard are one-sided agreements provided by the service provider, where there is very less scope for negotiation from the data owner’s side. It contains few, if any, terms to protect customers from potential legal risks and liabilities. SLAs are usually available only through non-negotiable click-wrap contracts.”

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cover story | technology Agrawal goes on to add that there is a need for more customised SLAs to be in place, so that owner’s concerns and requirements can be met and taken care of. Security requirements are the primary concern area for most of the owners, which is missing in the SLAs provided by the service providers.

Key SLA Component The duo agrees that data is the key component of the SLA in the cloud computing environment. Agrawal observes that data owners are always sceptical regarding measures provided by the service provider and to this end SLAs should include a clause on the role of a neutral thirdparty organisation for monitoring and measuring the critical service parameters. “Role of a neutral third-party involvement would eliminate the conflicts of interests between both the parties on the SLA emanating from outages,” she remarks.

Titus argues that as more and more consumers delegate their tasks to cloud providers, SLAs between consumers and providers will emerge as a key aspect. Due to the dynamic

483%

increase in cloud computing trademark filings in 1 year : US Trademark nature of the cloud, continuous monitoring on quality of service provisions will be necessary to enforce SLAs. For Agrawal, interoperability or access to the data and data recovery in case of termination of agreement, or if the data owner wants to change the service provider, is a very important aspect to be considered. SLAs should define and guarantee the availability and uptime percentage provided by the service provider.

SLA Breach & Law

“India does not have a policy framework regulating cloud computing services and CII is submitting a draft paper shortly to ensure more secure services from providers” Diljeet Titus Managing Partner, Titus & Co (a legal firm)

Photography: subho jit paul

Agrawal points out that in the event of default on the SLA, owner’s data and privacy remains at stake. Therefore, heavy penalty and financial liability should be imposed on the service provider for downtime, beyond the agreed level and slow system performance, as also for breach of SLA. If a privacy breach occurs due to a fault of cloud vendor, is there any liability coverage policy taken up by the vendor? What happens in case the data centre is hacked? What happens in case of discontinuation of relationship between the vendor and the owner of the data, or in case of technical, financial or other difficulties? These contingencies can be covered by way of contracts and the risk can be mitigated.

Titus says that in case of material breach, the aggrieved party will be entitled to terminate the SLA and claim damages

technology | cover story for losses suffered because of the breach. In certain cases, liquidated damages can be agreed to in the SLA. In cases wherein the breach can be cured, the aggrieved party can approach the competent court seeking specific performance of the terms of the SLA. Specific performance grants the aggrieved party what he actually bargained for in the contract rather than damages (pecuniary compensation for loss or injury incurred through the unlawful conduct of another) for not receiving it. “The aggrieved party can also approach the competent court seeking damages and can also apply for and obtain interim injunction orders against the breaching party to secure the subject matter of its claim,” adds Titus.

Cloud Policy According to Titus, the country doesn’t have a policy framework regulating cloud computing services at present, while Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) proposes to submit a draft paper to the government shortly around the regulatory framework around the services in ensuring data privacy.

Agrawal points out that the long awaited privacy policy for the country have finally been put in place under the IT Rules, 2011.

The law that came into effect from 11th of April 2011, clearly defines what can be termed as personally identifiable information or PII and what measures organisations need to take in order to protect information from being compromised.

Securing The Cloud E

IT managers are laying thrust on securing the cloud environment

conomic benefits, it is true, are the main drivers behind cloud adoption, as it promises reduction in capital expenditure (capex) and operational expenditure (opex).

Given the common refrain about lack of security surrounding the cloud, which is proving to be the greatest hurdle in the cloud movement; security vendors and service providers are trying their best to resolve the issues, while assuring risk free cloud-based delivery. IT managers, taking a cue from the security vendors, are laying the thrust on securing the cloud environment.

Customer Security Daya Prakash, Head, IT, LG Electronics, India, says,

issues around the cloud are a constraint, as it can compromise data security and give rise to compliance issues and legal issues. Girish Hadkar, Corporate IT, M&M Ltd, says, “We have not considered migrating any critical applications on to the public cloud. But, we have moved some applications to the private cloud, as security issues can be addressed easily in this.”

Similarly, Reliance Energy (BSES) Ltd, another cloud customer, says, “The biggest challenge is data governance.

Data and information security is of prime importance. BSES VP, IT, Karan Singh, admits, “We have hosted customer cloud users opted for DR & related applications on the private cloud.

Backup for security: Aberdeen Internally also, we have Group services hosted on private cloud, but not on public “Leakage of information due to technology, policies and procedures of the service provider, or even mischief by its human resources and the accessibility of data to others in such cases, can lead to a bankruptcy like situation.”

For Mahindra & Mahindra, the manufacturing company, security

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cover story | technology cloud. The data in power sector is critical in terms of billing and payments. Data security issues surrounding public clouds are a concern.”

Srinivas Kishan Anapu, Executive Vice President, Enterprise Information Systems, Mahindra Satyam, admits that no secure standards are in place for the data on the cloud. Till such standards come into vogue, enterprises will need to seek assurance from service providers that they have implemented safeguards and maintain adequate security practices to mitigate risks to customers.

Anapu says that before moving to the cloud, it is critical to ensure that the service provider has relevant industry accreditations such as ISO 27001-2005, security plans, encryption, etc.

Some of the customers are finding ways to tackle the situation. For instance, Kapil Mehrotra, Head, Applications at iYogi, advocates adapting to a multi-

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users opined cloud computing was less secure than on-premise approach – Osterman Research tenancy capable delivery system that addresses security concerns: “I am sure that all the cloud service providers are following data security guidelines given by the Cloud Security Alliance.”.

Arun Gupta, Group CIO at Shoppers Stop, and a business and IT leader, says, “Depending on the need and the industry vertical, various certifications exist that can provide the framework for security which would work.”

Best practices like ISO 27000 help to ensure that what is secure largely stays secure. For example, in retail, PCI-DSS and PA-DSS are standards that provide security guidelines, informs Gupta.

Vendors Want Security The cloud environment and the market sentiments have put all the vendors on their toes to work out robust security frameworks, to enable the cloud to take off.

Ramco Systems, which offers BI (business intelligence) and analytics solutions on the cloud, finds it imperative to have

a secure policy. Kamesh Ramamoorthy, COO, Ramco Systems, has evolved a three-pronged security strategy built around physical security, application security and data security.

“To protect data, we have put in place a comprehensive information security management system, as mandated by ISO 27001 standards.

Information security management system (ISMS) is a comprehensive set of policies and procedures designed and implemented to ensure very high levels of data and information security,” says Ramamoorthy. Under the physical layer, Ramco ensured that entry is controlled through automatic access control systems linked to security alarms.

As part of the application security layer, a two dimensional access control measure is worked out. First, only authentic users can login. Second, they can login only to the relevant transaction screens for which they have permissions. Such access policies are administered through the deployment

“To protect data, we have put in place a comprehensive information security management system, as mandated by ISO 27001 standards” Kamesh Ramamoorthy COO, Ramco Systems

Photo graphy: jite n gand hi

technology | cover story module of Ramco VirtualWorks™ platform. This mechanism prevents any unauthorised access to both transactions and data.

In the third data protection layer, the data transmission is protected through encryptions and transported over secure sockets layer. This prevents theft.

Encryption renders data meaningless thus making the theft harmless.

“Data security strategy must be clearly communicated to clients ensuring an adequate level of trust between the cloud provider and the organisation adopting cloud computing, maintains Ramamoorthy.

Sanjay Deshmukh, Area VP, Citrix Systems agrees: “Enterprises moving to the cloud need to evaluate the provider’s data protection, access and identity management; application security and vulnerability management practices to ensure they meet security, compliance and regulatory needs.”

However, not everyone agrees that there is lack of security on the cloud. PK Mishra, an independent consultant, says, “The existing solutions from major vendors are adequately secure. By deploying additional software for compliance and verifiable security responses, the cloud options can be effectively harnessed for most types of applications hosted in public and hybrid clouds. In any case, private cloud is almost as secure as any other existing system and is acceptable.”

RSA, the Security Division of EMC, in a RSA commissioned report titled, As Hyper-extended Enterprises Grow, So Do Security Risks, found two-thirds of the respondents who are running applications or business processes in the cloud admitted that they haven’t developed a security strategy for cloud computing. A majority of respondents weren’t sure how prospective cloud computing vendors would safeguard data or how corporate security teams would meet compliance requirements upon moving data on to the cloud.

Kartik Shahani, Country Manager, RSA, points out that as organisations begin to migrate to the cloud en masse, there’s still considerable confusion

“We have not considered migrating any critical applications on to the public cloud for security reasons” Girish Hadkar Sr manager, Corporate IT M&M Ltd

about how best to handle information security in the cloud. The issue of protecting data becomes murkier when companies start moving critical information and processes to the cloud.

Customers’ top concerns, as the RSA survey reveals, are the lack of transparency in vendor security processes, and immature technology, followed by the concern around protecting data integrity, lack of security standards, risk of noncompliance, etc.

However, some of the vendors are optimistic that they have the security solutions for the cloud in place. Jaideep Billa, Adviser to Chief-Architect and CEO, Polaris Software Labs, says, “Polaris has a number of banks on its client list, for whom we have provided adequate security coverage.

Our differentiating factor is the US Department of Defense grade identity

authentication and encryption that we use for protecting data.”

Santanu Ghosh, Country Manager, HP India, says that Converge Infrastructure Solutions have witnessed major growth in private cloud. “There is control over the technology aspect and security also depends on the style of operation an organisation adopts.

It has been observed that various vendors manage security in the cloud environment,” says Ghosh.

Wipro Ltd has made its data centres secure along with the cloud management centres, which are also ISO 27001 certified.

Anand Ramakrishnan, GM, Cloud Computing Services, Wipro Infotech, says, “This ensures adherence to certain key aspects of information security. In addition, Wipro also follows various other security measures for network security; data security; physical security and human resources security.”

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insight | desktop virtualisation

Way to Go Desktop virtualisation:

IT heads around the country are keeping a keen eye on the developments in the VDI space, given its ability to lessen their desktop management pains

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By N g e e t h a

desktop virtualisation | insight

“We are doing the groundwork viz., assess the impact on our network and the effort involved (if any) in porting the branch applications to VDI environment” CVG Prasad, CIO, INGVysya

i llustratio n: pc anoo p

T

he IT managers are always under pressure to do more with less, given the escalating cost of maintaining remote PCs and laptops.

Besides, IT teams also have to address the demand for user flexibility and mobility, with proliferation of personal devices in the workplace. To address the surging costs, the first wave of virtualisation was capitalised by enterprises to consolidate servers into virtual hosts, and this gave significant savings on physical server deployments. The second wave, which is ready to invade the industry, is that of desktop virtualisation, which will go a long way to alleviate these issues.

However, it has been a slow take off for desktop virtualisation, though

analysts have been bullish about its growth in the coming years.

The desktop virtualisation market is in the pilot stage. It is only now that IT heads are finding reasons to adopt this technology. The reason for the slow take off, they say, is the fact that a lot of groundwork still needs to be carried out before jumping on to the bandwagon.

IT Next embarked on a study to find out the growth opportunities that desktop virtualisation opens up for customers; the business benefits that drive down cost of operations and the innovations in the space which are catching customer attention.

Why Virtualise Desktops?

Desktop virtualisation is not yet a ‘must have’ phenomenon, and is still in the

74 million

users on hosted virtual desktops by 2014 -Gartner

development stage. Though IT heads are cautious in biting the bullet and taking the risk of implementation, there are reasons for considering desktop virtualisation or virtual desktops.

Majority of the customers and vendors say that the need for simplified management and security is driving the demand for desktop virtualisation solutions. The key considerations that would compel V Srinivas, CIO, Nagarjuna Fertilisers and Chemicals Ltd, towards desktop virtualisation would be: increased security threats in the current desktop environment, centralised hardware management capabilities with respect to maintenance, centralised application upgrades and patches installation, hardware resource pooling along with application sharing, and higher bandwidth availability in the LAN network owing to the availability of high-end switching infrastructure, at an affordable cost.

But, Rakesh Mishra, Head, IT&C, Jindal Steel and Power Ltd, can see the benefits of going in for desktop virtualisation solutions given the challenge of maintaining 1300 desktops and 300 laptops on his corporate network while providing user satisfaction. “Since it is not possible to have a dedicated in-house system engineer at every location, going in for VDI tops our agenda,” he says.

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insight | desktop virtualisation A good reason to go in for VDI technology, says CVG Prasad, CIO, ING Vysya Bank, is the standardisation of desktop that helps ensure a secure environment; easy change management; mobility of users across locations; and centralised data.

As a desktop virtualisation solutions provider, Rajat Mehta, Country Manager, Emerging Business Unit, PSG India, Hewlett-Packard India Sales Pvt Ltd, observes that increased need for green computing solutions; high end improved security; and consolidation of infrastructure for better manageability, are the strongest reasons for customers to look at these solutions.

Seema Ambastha, Director, Technology, VMware India, says reduction in the total cost of ownership (TCO) of a desktop infrastructure is the primary reason for implementing desktop virtualisation.

“With virtual desktops, provisioning, managing, maintaining and de-provisioning desktops gets centralised to the server hosting these virtual desktops,” she says. The currently available virtualisation solutions allow users to access desktops using VPN and SSL encryption, besides enabling centralised anti-virus protection, supporting authentication with smart cards and others, drawing customers’

“There are huge savings on capex, besides increased productivity with users accessing high-end computing and multiple OS on the same devices” Rajat Mehta, Country Manager, PSG India, Hewlett-Packard India Sales Pvt Ltd attention towards them.

Jyothi Satyanathan, Vice President, ibm.com, Inside Sales Organisation, IBM India /South Asia, says that evolution of next generation offerings such as virtual bridges, which removes several barriers in businesses, has driven customers to look into virtualisation seriously.

According to Satyananthan, the newer offerings address desktop flexibility, providing simple and costeffective solutions in an integrated software appliance model.

According to Manish Sharma, Vice

President, APAC, NComputing, a virtualisation solutions provider, the key reasons for looking at desktop virtualisation are price, performance and access. CIOs who have plans to move to cloud and web-based computing, and who are looking for better manageability of PC proliferation and cost reductions, are also considering virtualisation solutions.

Apparently, there are enough reasons for IT heads to look at desktop virtualisation solutions, and analysts too are bullish about the growth in desktop virtualisation technology.

Assured Growth

Desktop Virtualisation Innovations Simple, seamless deployment and integration with multi-platform support Supports multiple platforms from Windows MultiPoint Server (WMS), Windows Server 2008 R2 and LINUX is important VDI solutions are removing resource and complexity issues VDI’s integrated backup and recov-

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ery components help protect against unplanned outages Provides integrated offline access ith ThinApp, applications are W packaged into single executables that run completely isolated from each other and the operating system for conflict-free execution on end-point devices esktop experience as pixels and D not actual data on the virtual desktops and thus provides a secure gateway connection that lets users access their desktop without using VPN

Vendors, such as HP, are leveraging the growth potential in the VDI space.

Mehta goes by the 25 per cent growth that IDC has projected in VDI, and expects it to be a big market, especially with over 500 companies in the process of evaluating these tools.

Quoting Gartner’s projections about the market, NComputing’s Sharma says that hosted virtual desktops will reach 74 mn users by 2014, which represents 15 per cent of the total business desktop market. “This is just the tip of the iceberg as it does not fully reflect the potential of business deployments. It only considers deployments for user groups of 250 or more as economically viable for virtualised desktops,” says Sharma.

Vendors like VMware have worked

desktop virtualisation | insight out their market approach based on the study by Frost & Sullivan. The study says the desktop virtualisation market, including hardware, software, licensing and management tools, is estimated to have been approx $79.24 mn in 2008.

This is expected to grow at a CAGR of 33.1 per cent by 2015.

While the vendors are bullish, IT heads are taking a pragmatic look at the technology. They say desktop management is a pain for all CIOs, and soon it will be the mandatory for IT infrastructure to go virtual. Most opine that the desktop virtualisation could be about 5 per cent of the total PC market at this point of time.

Adoption Criteria From adoption standpoint, HP’s Mehta finds a clear blueprint being worked out around desktop virtualisation by the IT\ITeS, education and retail sectors; who are adopting the sequential pattern of deployment.

IBM’s Satyanathan finds virtual desktop providing cost-effective solutions for financial services, manufacturing, healthcare, retail, education, IT/ITeS and government sectors across the functionalities.

Providing insights into the prevailing scenario, Surajit Sen, Director, Channels & Marketing Alliance, Netapp India says, the predominant desktop virtualisation solution used is VDI,

Facts to Consider Adopt the technology slowly, starting with sophisticated POCs, and gradually deploy the architecture into production hen feasible, hire services organiW sations that can help to plan, architect, and deploy a CVD environment irst deploy the technology to users F and use cases that can be considered “low-hanging fruits.” This will ensure that ROI will be maximised and will provide valuable expertise in working with the technology

which is nothing but an extension of the ‘thin client’ idea. In this case, however, apart from using one server to service the processing needs of individual users; each user has an operating system instance on the server, running as a virtual machine. VDI is often what people mean when they use the term desktop virtualisation, in a general way.

From a user’s standpoint, IT heads are in the pilot mode and testing out solutions. CVG Prasad, CIO of ING Vysya Bank, is currently working out a business case to justify the cost and effort versus benefits.

“Since it is not possible to have a dedicated in-house system engineer at every location, going in for VDI tops our agenda” Rakesh Mishra, Head, IT&C, Jindal Steel and Power Ltd

Understand user data and workloads Understand access patterns and I/O requirements Ensure you have the right network and storage infrastructure in place Pilot small and make sure you can scale properly and make sure the end-user computing team is well-represented in the assessment process Plan for operational readiness—e.g. how to manage and maintain, how to manage patches etc

He maintains, “We are currently doing the required groundwork viz, assess the impact on our network and the effort involved (if any) in porting the branch applications to VDI environment.”

Nagarjuna’s Srinivas has already deployed desktop virtualisation as a pilot starting with its implementation in the IT Department. “We deployed VDI with about 60 nodes in our R&D division way back in 200708, to address the issues of security, centralised data management, data protection, etc,” says Srinivas.

Rakesh Mishra, Head, IT&C, Jindal Steel and Power Limited, is waiting for the right time to deploy taking into account the constraints of local area network connectivity, which at present is on the wireless. However, IT heads warn about the key considerations that need to be adhered to before jumping into deploying VDI. They are: analyse scope of the project; user base; performance parameters; and implement desktop virtualisation first in the areas like R&D, application development and testing.

It is recommended that VDI initiatives are driven by senior level IT associates in the organisation, when being implemented for non-critical divisions.

VDI implementation requires some

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insight | desktop virtualisation

“Virtualisation implementation should not be done as one ‘big bang’ exercise, rather it should be carried out in a phased manner”

level of change management apart from dispelling unwarranted fears at the end user level on data privacy. This can be done only if senior managers are also involved in the implementation process.

Srinivas warns that VDI implementation exercise should not be done as one ‘big bang’ exercise, rather it should be carried out in a phased manner with some level of end user buy-in. Besides, it will also require application compatibility in a heterogeneous IT operating environment, complete support from the vendor and scalability factoring.

Srinivas, CIO, Nagarjuna Fertilizers and Chemicals Ltd

Business Benefits Mehta vouches for major business benefits, given the huge amount spent on product refresh cycles. “There is a huge saving on capex, besides users provided access to high-end computing and multiple OS on the same devices, leading to increased productivity.”

VMware’s Ambastha sees straight cuts in desktop infrastructure management costs. With all virtual desktop images centralised on the server, updates and patches to applications and operating systems can be done centrally, reducing manpower cost and the time involved in going across to each desktop and maintaining it manually. “With security managed at the server, the need to deploy additional IT security measures and the associated costs are reduced drastically,” she says.

According to Sen, the aim should be to achieve the right balance between flexibility and control around specific needs, such as security and availability, or constraints around remote access or high performance, to gain maximum benefits.

IBM’s Satyanathan too finds the integrated virtual desktop taking many sourcing, resource and complexity issues out of the equation. Thus, customers can get more business value from their IT dollars faster. It can reduce upfront costs and total cost of ownership (TCO), eliminate large capital costs with provision to use Linux desktops, and avoid licensing cost on proprietary systems.

Ovum’s analyst Roy Illsely maintains

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that desktop virtualisation is at best a cost neutral solution: the biggest benefits are that it removes the need for remote desk side support staff, helps impose standardised solutions, and supports business agility by not hardwiring the person to a device.

ING Vysya bank’s Prasad expects reduction in cost of workplace support, better availability, higher RoI, lower TCO and lesser time to market.

Jindal’s Mishra foresees a troublefree environment in managing 10,000 desktops in two places rather than 100 desktops across 50 places. Deploying resources to manage the number of places adds to the cost.

“It is best to have the VDI as it helps us reduce cost and complexity of managing the desktop environment; aids migration to new software; enhances security, protects data, increases user productivity; and lowers

15%

of the business desktop market to be virtual by 2014 -Gartner

the energy bills and hardware cost – that can be brought down by 40-50 per cent with VDI,” says Mishra.

Road Ahead Like others, Mehta too says that cloud will be the big enabler for desktop virtualisation solutions, as common standards evolve. According to him, various application solutions providers will evolve a subscription model which will lower the capex.

Sen believes that opportunity wise, there are around 1.2 billion desktops in the world, and according to Gartner, around 60 mn desktops will be virtualised over the next few years.

As a progression, Nagarjuna’s Srinivas sees integration of mobile applications with the VDI space and reiterates that the latter will be a success only if vendors are able to provide endto-end desktop virtualisation solutions.

Mishra predicts VDI rapidly becoming the main way to empower the next generation workforce by delivering end-to-end desktop virtualisation solutions and services.

“OS virtualisation is the next step in the market and it offers three times more virtual images or desktops on the same infrastructure, making it an extremely cost-effective proposition.

The combined solution accelerates the performance of all applications accessed through VDI.”

Weaving Dreams 3D DreamWorks:

By C h r i s P r e i m es b e r g e r

Films are a major driver for data storage. DreamWorks has taken a leap to the cloud to accomodate its data overload

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Cloud Computing | insight from start to finish, so the studio gets its return on investment (RoI).

Opportunities for new profits in this sector are substantial, to say the least. A report published last month

by Coughlin, projects that the media storage market would virtually double in the next five years — from $3.8 bn to $6.4 bn in revenue and from 11 exabytes to 62 exabytes in capacity. That is right, exabytes: a million trillion bytes. “Digital storage requirements are exploding due to use of higher resolution and stereoscopic content in the media and entertainment industry,” lead researcher Tom Coughlin wrote in the report.

Cashing on 3D Films

I

magine a company spending millions of dollars to buy workstations, software, servers, networking and storage equipment for everyone working on one large project. Then imagine recycling those systems and buying everything again for the next project.

This may seem like IT overkill, but it’s a way of life at Glendale, Californiabased DreamWorks Animation, creator of such highly successful movies as the Shrek and Madagascar series, Monsters and Aliens and the Kung Fu Panda series.

Films are a major driver for data storage in the entertainment sector; one of the hottest sub-sectors within the burgeoning international data storage market. In fact, this sector has its own professional conference to justify its importance. This market category includes all professional creative media, including feature films, documentaries, corporate videos, television shows and music videos.

The escalating use of high quality video such as high definition and super high

definition, which take up more than double the space of regular video, is a major cause for this jump.

At DreamWorks, a new movie automatically means fresh HewlettPackard z800 workstations, new software, additional storage and other equipment for about 500 highly trained artists and supervisors. An animated movie — whether it’s 3D or not — takes four to five years to produce, and the equipment stays with the production

$332 million Kung Fu Panda 2 amassed in worldwide box office receipts in the first 17days

DreamWorks’ 2011 movie, the 3D enhanced Kung Fu Panda 2, opened on May 26 and amassed $332 mn in worldwide box-office receipts in the first 17 days. Since the movie cost about $150 million to make (not counting marketing and distribution costs), the producers are already in the black.

Because video quality has improved so greatly in the last decade, 3D feature films tend to be more successful at the box office than standard films and have been ramping up in sheer numbers. “Once you’ve seen good 3D, you get spoilt and it’s hard to go back,” DreamWorks CTO, Ed Leonard, told eWEEK: “The expectations go up with each new release. I’ve been in this business for longer than I care to admit, and, in that time, I’ve observed that every film tries to outdo the last film.

The roots are still in great characters and in great storytelling, of course.

But we want to bring that to life in a way that you’re mesmerised ... You’re watching something that is taking you to a different place, and you’re forgetting about all the worries of life for two hours.”

DreamWorks churns out about three films during a two-year span, so an ambitious schedule is always in the works. Each movie has its own animation staff and HP workstations, which are constantly being updated as new, faster Intel processors become available.

“Because every movie is new, we change

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insight | Cloud Computing the tools and technology (based on) what we’re trying to achieve,” Leonard said. “Literally, everything is constantly reinvented. For Kung Fu Panda 2, this is the first time we’re going to see this world in (true) 3D. All the things that we’ve learnt in our past few 3D movies (such as 2010’s How to Train Your Dragon and other films) have led us to enhance the tool set and our creative skill set. You see this come to life in a really big way in Kung Fu Panda 2.”

DreamWorks obtains all new workstations every six months as new movies get started, Leonard said, with the hardware and software improving incrementally with each new purchase. The IT shop spends time on performance optimising the software.

A typical four-year DreamWorks movie project coincides with current improvement cycles in IT, Senior Technologist Skottie Miller told eWEEK. “About every four years, there’s a quantum leap in computing power and I/O speed,” he said. “We find that it’s best to buy new hardware because it will pay for itself in about one year.”

“That’s what’s nice about working at a place like DreamWorks — you get to use all the new stuff,” Leonard said.

“During the time of this production, we went from 4-core Westmeres

100 Terabyte

of storage capacity was required by a 90-minute 3D film in 2011

Technology Powered Art DreamWorks is the first movie studio to use multicore-powered workstations. Most of its CG stations have 12-core machines capable of 24-thread computing. Where it once took eight hours to render a single frame of a 3D movie, it now takes only several minutes. That is huge in terms of time and cost savings.

When CG artists put together all the attributes that constitute a character, several iterations must be developed. It starts with modelling and moves to rigging, hair and fur, clothing and surfacing. This involves very detailed — and often tedious — CG work.

Artists can take 12 to 18 months to do the original drawings for a character.

Once the drawings are completed, CG modelling comes next. From here on out, DreamWorks uses Adobe Creative Studio for everything that goes on screen.

That is where mathematics, science, HPC (high-performance computing), artistry and the professionalism of the artists all come together. Hundreds of factors and variables involved here, and they all have to be orchestrated perfectly to show the audience ‘reality’.

Surfacing is extremely important, especially in 3D presentations. Lighting, shadows, perspective and other visual factors come into play, and no detail is left untouched.

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(Intel processors) to six-cores. Every workstation has 12 cores working, so there is a tremendous amount of power (for each artist). In addition, each of those cores has gotten a lot faster. “It’s kind of Moore’s Law on steroids. That’s what we’re chasing,” he added.

Advanced Tech, Better Quality All this new equipment equates to one major thing: the power and efficiency of ever-improving hardware and software platforms that enable animation artists to do more in less time, so that more iterations of scenes and characters can be created. This results in more choices of art for the directors and producers.

“On a broad scale, visual richness and interesting literal depth of what you see in the film is what we’re going for,” Leonard explained. “At the end of the movie, there’s a climactic epic battle scene that takes place in the canals and harbours in the city, with lots of incredible water, fighting and other action. These things are really hard to do in CG (computergenerated imagery), but you see them happening here without restraint. It’s pretty magnificent.”

Leonard said the most important change in the production software for Kung Fu Panda 2 was probably in the character tool set, “which gave us the opportunity to rejig our characters (based on the original Kung Fu Panda of 2008) and redefine some of the algorithms that create the motion and key performance enacting,” he said.

“For this new film, we stored over 100TB of data and used over 55 mn render hours. That level of detail has a tremendous impact on the quality of the animation. Look at the amount of richness, detail and expressiveness and all the things that go into making you suspend disbelief that Po (the panda) is emoting real character. That is a big part of what technology does for the creation (of this movie),” Leonard explained.

Cloud Takes Centre Stage Ninety-minute-long 3D films made in 2011 require north of 100TB of storage capacity in the studio’s data centre

Cloud Computing | insight farm, Leonard said. Because of these new requirements for Kung Fu Panda 2, DreamWorks added a cloud services centre to the mix for added storage and more agile operations.

“We did a lot of cloud rendering on this movie,” Leonard said. He added: “We were very aggressive in moving a large amount of compute that we need to finish these films. It used to be that we had to have all this stuff within our walls and under our control, but with this movie; we pushed a lot of it out to the cloud. I would say that more than 10 mn render hours were rendered in the cloud, which is about 20 per cent or more of the film — and that is a pretty big deal.”

During the next year, Leonard said, the company will be moving more of its rendering to its cloud storage system (run by both DreamWorks and HP).

Eventually, most of the tedious rendering duties will be done outside its walls.

“This gives us the opportunity to lower our production costs, but, more importantly, it gives us the ability to ‘flex up’ when we need it,” Leonard pointed out. “We can add or subtract some things quickly from a screening, or add a little more of something else, and we don’t have to worry about buying more servers or building out our data centre. We just make the call and we have more compute.”

DreamWorks uses HP’s data centre in Las Vegas and Cerelink’s in Corrales, NM. “If we build a data centre and render there, it’s not really the cloud,” Leonard said. “We prefer our partners on that.”

Leonard said that despite all the additional work and technology that goes into a high-quality, two-camera, 3D rendition movie like Kung Fu Panda 2, the overall costs for these movies are actually going down at DreamWorks.

“That’s because the process is so much faster and more efficient, (which enables) our artists like Angelina Jolie, who voices Tigress in DreamWorks’ Kung Fu Panda 2, to collaborate more often and get things done faster,” he said.

Leonard said: “If you can give artists 10 iterations instead of five, they can try 10 things instead of five things, and, in time, you’re going to get a better

Kung Fu Panda 2 –

Top Dog in Animation DreamWorks Animation Visual Effects Supervisor Alex Parkinson had a huge job on Kung Fu Panda 2: He was charged with coordinating the modelling and surfacing of the on-screen assets (characters, objects, scenery); the lighting, crowds, character effects and map painting; and final details on everything.

“Every shot is one big effect” Parkinson told eWEEK “This is where animation meets computer animation. I work closely with the director and designer, and we get all these crazy ideas from the director and the writers, and all this artwork and the visual development team. It’s my job to take all that on screen as we possibly can” The new hardware and software tools had a great impact on this movie. It enabled the team to “achieve much more of the director’s appetite than we could before,” according to Parkinson.

“When you have a lot more computing power, you can get a lot more into the shots,” he explained.

Parkinson said: “The

entire ending is a battle based on water. The CG simulation of water and lighting in that situation is very difficult to do. If we didn’t have the new rendering software and the new powerful workstations, we wouldn’t have considered doing it that way”

Most people who see DreamWorks movie have no idea how many people it takes to create it.

“ For every frame you see, about 50 to 60 people worked on it,” Parkinson said.

Now we know why the credits are nine-and-a-half minutes long! eWEEK Senior Writer Chris Preimesberger can be reached at cpreimesberger@eweek.com

film. That’s what we’ve been doing with tools that allow us to deal with massive amounts of data and ever increasing complexity, but do it in a way that makes the experience better.”

DreamWorks, which uses mostly NetApp and HP for its data storage needs, may have actually lost count of how much storage it owns. When asked how often he needs to purchase new storage, Miller said, “Storage isn’t

a buying decision — it’s a way of life.”

“We have to store an awful lot of video,” he explained. “For example, there are 129,600 video frames in one 90-minute movie. Most scenes are five minutes or less. But there’s so much more (artwork) created that goes into the process before it’s finally cut down and melded together into a cohesive movie. We’re just doing file-based supercomputing every day at work.”

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Manoj Chugh | interview

Private cloud is ready to take off

Photo graph y: Ji gnesh Mistry

Manoj Chugh, President, EMC India & SAARC and Director, Global Accounts, Asia Pacific & Japan, in conversation with N Geetha, elaborates on EMC’s journey to the cloud and the strategy around virtualisation — the first step towards cloud adoption

When did EMC begin its journey to the cloud?

EMC started its journey (globally) to the cloud years ago, long before the term cloud became popular, laying the foundation for more focussed efforts that began in 2004.

In the year, EMC faced challenges familiar to most IT organisations: unrelenting growth of applications, servers, and storage arrays in the data centre that strained the capacity of existing resources.

When the company’s global IT function decided to leverage the power of private cloud, one of its key objectives was to deliver IT-asa-service. The company aimed to optimise both, IT delivery and business consumption of services, and be the service provider of choice. EMC aimed to enable endto-end, on-demand, self-service provisioning of IT services to its business units.

Our journey to the private cloud between 2004 and 2009 alone resulted in benefits such as: Reduced backup volumes. By an average of 95 per cent using

Avamar in concert with Data Domain systems. The amount of data protected increased by well over 40 per cent.

Desktop/laptop protection.

Data reduction averaged 96 per cent per backup, providing consistently faster backups than the previous online service with negligible performance and network impact. Overall data backup volumes have been reduced by 50 per cent, decreasing backup time by 75 per cent. The number of physical tape libraries was reduced by 60 per cent, and the number of virtual tape libraries was reduced by 53 per cent. EMC now supports backup of over 2,000 virtual machine clients. Its IT administrators are taking advantage of key tools such as Data Protection Advisor and Lonix for IT operations intelligence to monitor, manage, and automate data protection processes.

Measurable cost savings.

Moving from an all-tape backup strategy to a mix of disk and tape

has reduced the cost of tape media, and in the long term, more cost savings will be realised with the elimination of tape infrastructure and media vaulting.

Is cloud real and disruptive?

Cloud computing is well and truly disruptive. In simple terms, while information is growing at over 60 per cent, IT budgets are growing at single digits only, posing significant constraints for the CIOs and IT managers. This has prompted them to find better ways to manage infrastructure, where cloud plays a major role.

Where does storage stand in the cloud model?

For cloud computing to be successful as a model, the ability to store, secure and access information in real time will be critical, which is where we play a vital role.

What is the cloud adoption scenario?

It is beyond doubt that private cloud is on the upswing, as 75 per

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interview | Manoj Chugh cent of the cloud deployment has happened around private cloud.

The EMC-Zinnov study estimates that while the total cloud computing market in India will grow from US$ 400 mn currently to US$ 4.5 bn by 2015; the market will be dominated by private cloud adoption, which will account for US$ 3.5 bn in revenues.

There will be an increased preference for private cloud over public cloud in the next five years in India, as it is more reliable, and the network uptime and security are under the IT head’s (user’s) control. Public cloud adoption on the other hand will be hindered by issues related to data security and latency; possibility of data centres being located in areas threatened by natural disasters; corporate governance and auditing issues; and vendor lock-in.

We anticipate hybrid clouds to become the eventual goal of customers, once they have advanced on their journey to the private cloud to a point where they can choose the resources they want to manage in-house and allow others to be managed externally.

With data growing at 60 per cent resulting in a deluge; managing it is going to be a Herculean task, given the fact that the IT market is growing at 20 per cent. To ensure that IT investments are protected and to reduce capex, customers will have to look at public cloud.

What are the deterrents in moving to the cloud?

It is largely to do with either scepticism, as organisations wait for someone else to make the move first, or upfront capital investment restrictions. The other reason could also be around the hype that cloud computing is very complex to implement and manage, when it is not. IT teams are not completely familiar with the

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entire benefits of cloud computing, and hence, are resistant to its full-blown adoption.

How can senior IT managers justify cloud adoption?

An IDC-EMC study expects exponential growth of digital information, from 2009 to 2020. In such a scenario, CIOs and IT managers must derive greater efficiency from their IT purchases without heavy capital investments, and yet manage the enormity of digital information growth. Only a transformational change in IT environment can help address this gigantic challenge: and that can be by adopting the cloud.

The key considerations for IT managers to push for a cloud model would include:

“We anticipate hybrid clouds to become the eventual goal of customers, once they have advanced on their journey” 1. Evaluating existing IT infrastructure portfolio against organisational requirements of today and the future and mapping service level needs.

2. Evaluating future IT requirement against budget outlay, vendor services and maturity levels available, to determine which IT services need to be moved to the cloud.

3. Identifying an end-to-end vendor solutions provider who brings a cohesive ecosystem to simplify cloud environment and avoid vendor lock-in.

Manoj Chugh | interview tiered storage and at 25 per cent TCO advantages, the economic benefits are compelling.

De-duplication: of data is another means for significant data reductions, especially in backup operations.

Apply: software and process automation for further benefits.

Evaluate: cost of setting up private cloud vis-à-vis partnering with an external cloud service vendor to identify suitable model.

Is there a sequential pattern that CIOs need to follow in moving to the cloud?

EMC recommends a phased migration approach for customers. It all starts with virtualisation of servers and storage: Consolidation: storage, networks, applications and data centres.

Storage consolidation alone can result in 2:1 savings.

Virtualisation: a means for server consolidation – regularly accomplishes 10:1 or better ratios of virtual to physical instances.

Build: in security through identity assurance and access control; encryption and key management; compliance and security information management; and fraud protection.

Tier it: EMC has long advocated

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

How many of your customers have (%) moved to the cloud model? Which of these are increasingly used – Iaas, Saas or PaaS? We are seeing a large number of our customers virtualising their existing infrastructure, which means they are already on the journey to the cloud. Last year, when we held the EMC Forum in India, a 100 per cent of 197 people who were polled around virtualisation said, they were virtualising their existing infrastructure. And, about 75 per cent of people said they had virtualised around 35 per cent of their infrastructure already.

We have received an overwhelming response to Vblock in the industry. Currently, we have six deployments in the country and a very healthy pipeline of prospects. In addition to some of the IT giants in India, our customers include EXL Service and KPIT Cummins.

According to the EMC-Zinnov study, we see that SaaS and IaaS are the most commonly used purposes for cloud computing.

Please give insights into the cost-benefit analysis of cloud.

The recent EMC-Zinnov study found that private cloud deployments can result in potential savings of up to 50 per cent on IT investments across the following key areas: Telecom & networking: The increase in data services cost is

offset by reduction in networking hardware due to consolidation.

Facilities & fabric: Data centre size and power consumption is reduced as the hardware is consolidated.

Hardware: Reduction in 50x86 servers and storage costs as a result of consolidation.

Software: Reduction in software costs as better multi-tenant applications replace enterprise applications.

Internal labour: Steep reduction in internal labour costs, as the management of data centre is consolidated and automated.

Lesser maintenance of data centre required.

External IT services: Reduction in IT services due to right-sizing of data centre and configurations.

How do you handle security aspect of the cloud?

Many of the physical assets in an organisation’s existing data centre can be applied to the cloud infrastructure. Firewalls and data leakage prevention (DLP) appliances can be applied in a virtual environment to monitor and maintain the same level of security. The threat landscape remains the same. Organisations must remember that the standard defence-in-depth approach is essential.

What is the IT spending on cloud services in India?

According to our study, there is a good spending pattern expected on cloud services in the next few years. For instance, the IT\ITeS segment will spend around $76 mn; telecom $71 mn; BFSI $60 mn; manufacturing, government, energy\power and utility sectors around $56 mn, $48 mn and $28 mn respectively; and healthcare, retail and others have allocated $24 mn, $5 mn and $33 mn respectively, towards cloud services.

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15minute manager

training Education workplace compensation workforce trends skills development personal development

Healthy tips for the desktop nerd Page 48

Strategy: Negotiate to Win THIS page Training Calendar: National DR Training page 52 Review: Reasons to choose iPad3G for Wifi page 50 Technology: Decoding IS Myths Page 51

BY Rak es h M i s h r a

N

imagi ng: shig il n

egotiation promises higher value creation by matching customers’ individual specific needs with manufacturers’ capabilities. However, difficulties in terms of information asymmetry and stickiness along with conflicting incentives prevent customers from effectively tapping into the value of negotiation in procurement. This research conceptualises procurement of customised products as a transaction problem with an embedded design issue.

Effective negotiation has been a competitive strategy in this fragmented and volatile market place, particularly in the new manufacturing landscape where multiple manufacturers customise products for customers’ patronage. For example, Cisco, Huawei, and Alcatel-Lucent are competing in the customised network servers space; Dell, Lenovo, and HP compete to provide customised computers; and both Nike and Adidas offer custommade sneakers.

Terming Negotiation A negotiation-based procurement mechanism can be generally described as a process of ‘sequential search’, in which the buyer contacts prospective

strategy

negotiate to win A good leader must be a skilled negotiator. It not only helps in clinching the right deals but also earns respect s e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 1 | itnext

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15-MINUTE MANAGER

Call in IT Being a critical component of IT, negotiations help deliver IT projects on time, within budget and to the specification.

Besides, good decision-making often translates into tremendous profits and market opportunities. IT department is required to quantify the risks inherent in the negotiation process.

Forms of Negotiations that Envelope IT: a) Negotiation with vendors is based on technical competency, past individual experience and service support b) Negotiation with end-users is based on feasibility analysis to convince the customer to buy appropriate tools c) Negotiation with subordinates is critical to induce individual productivity gains to drive cooperation and teamwork d) Negotiation with management requires demanding additional

Tips & Tricks

Healthy tips for the desktop nerd

Sitting Posture About 200,000 keystrokes each day.

Frequent computer use that involves awkward postures, repetition, and forceful exertions may be related to nerve, muscle, tendon, and ligament damage.If you use a computer extensively, experts recommend that you consider proper workstation layout and posture techniques to minimise the risk of developing injuries.

Do you check your mail compulsively every few minutes? Does your life circle around your laptop? Hours of gaming or writing source code have you glued to the desk? If yes, here are the tips to stay fit.

Give it a break: Understand that you are not a superman (or a superwoman). Stroll around your office corridor once in a while and meet your friends. Don’t go all out and start partying bang in the middle of a work, but walk up to any colleagues you need to chat with, get your own bottle of water, and give yourself a break from the desk at regular intervals.

Ditch the lift and take the stairs: Believe us when we say this – the taller your office building, the better this game gets! Watch your stamina improve while you race your coworker to the floor you need to get to. Even if it entails pausing a bit to get your breath back before walking into the meeting, think about all those calories you’ll burn in the process.

Resist eating in between meal times: Kick the temptation to binge on oily foods in between meals. Opt for healthier snacks like fresh fruits, cereals, or almonds. Health experts suggest the trick lies in dealing with the peak of your cravings, which lasts for only ten to fifteen minutes. Go for other options – talk to a co-worker or make that phone call.

Take Care: Long hours spent at your computer can give a number of painful ailments

Respect your limits: Hey, laptop athlete, like a runner or swimmer you have your limits too.

So, when you feel tired, try and respect it!

Rest. Walk during your lunch break.

Source: healthmeup

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Ph oto graph y: photo s.c om

sellers one at a time until a mutually satisfactory solution is identified.

The bilateral interaction during negotiation is essentially a process of joint decision-making with partial information exchange.

However, there is a possibility that negotiators may fail to reach an agreement, even though mutually beneficial solutions are available. The root cause of such inefficiency lies in the lack of incentives for telling the truth in a negotiation. On the contrary, negotiators are motivated to strategically withhold or misrepresent private information, which results in laborious iterations as well as unpredictable outcomes.

Achieving win-win solutions is crucial for enduring success, as well as to directly address aspects of IT and business alignment challenges. There is a difference between negotiation and barter: negotiation is trying to arrive at a win-win situation where both parties believe that they are getting value for money, whereas barter ends up being perceived by both the parties, as a losing proposition. It results in discontentment and soured relationships.

A good negotiator has the ability to influence his thoughts in a logical and emotional fashion without any offence.

15-MINUTE MANAGER

“Employees with better negotiation skills contribute to the bottom line, evolving effective strategies and techniques” SK Anapu, Former VP, Mahindra Satyam

“Art of negotiation ends in a win-win situation for both parties and helps establish a long term relationship which is intangible” — Ratnakar Nemani, CIO, Himatsingka Seida

manpower resources and infrastructure level resources for betterment of the existing system

Rule of Thumb There is a thumb rule to the art of negotiation. The key skill is to listen and absorb useful information. This will

help us plan ahead and put forth our approach and appeals. The verbal and non-verbal signals should reflect a positive attitude.

Do not argue and avoid rude and loud behaviour. Be assertive, firm and polite. We should use hard arguments with soft words, not soft arguments

“Do not argue and avoid rude and loud behaviour. Be assertive, firm and polite. We should use hard arguments with soft words”

Dos and Don’ts in Negotiation Do not take it personally. Getting our emotions involved will cloud our ability to make sound arguments and judgments. Be professional in your approach Be prepared to walk away. Being able to say ‘no’ means that you are confident and serious about it. Prior to going into negotiations and before emotions and the heat of the moment become part of the mix – set the walk-away point Do not force it. Dragging negotiations lead to wastage of time and frustration.

By pressurising our opponents to make a concession, we are creating bad feelings and a wary working relationship Do your research. Good negotiators should come prepared. They find out what their opponents need and want and what their competitors can offer Practice. Getting good at negotiating requires a lot of practice Ask for it. Many people dislike negotiating because they feel embarrassed or scared to ask for things they want

with hard words. The most essential aspect is to maintain eye contact with the opposite party, which shows our confidence.

You must stay focussed on the topic and ask questions without being interrogative and avoid the blame game.

Another interesting aspect is that rules govern negotiation communication. For instance, in informal negotiations, many of the rules are generated through the negotiation interaction. In formal negotiations, rules and procedures structure communication.

Certain Positive Insights There has been significant cost reduction owing to effective negotiation in our projects. In a campus networking project at JSPL in Angul, the initial phase was categorised into two parts — supply

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15-MINUTE MANAGER Review

Reasons to choose iPad 3G instead of Wifi

As Apple releases the 3G version of the iPad, consumers are in a dilemma whether to go for a WiFi-only version of the tablet or the iPad 3G. Admittedly, it’s a difficult decision. For potential iPad owners who can’t quite decide which version to pick up: it’s the iPad 3G. As nice as the WiFi-only version of the iPad is, it will look like the hobbled cousin of the 3G version.

It’s 3G: Let’s just get the obvious point out of the way: The iPad 3G allows users to connect to a high-speed Web connection wherever 3G networking. That’s important. Currently, owners of the WiFi-only iPad can only connect to the Web whenever they’re within range of a wireless hot spot. That means no checking email in the car or surfing the Web at a park.

Look towards the future: Although Apple will support both versions of the iPad, the 3G model future-proofs consumers. What Apple and developers have planned for the iPad is unknown. They could offer new features or interesting new applications that would accommodate owners of both versions of the tablet. But there’s a stronger possibility that as time goes on, Apple will only offer improvements to 3G owners.

imaging: shigil n

Productivity: If a consumer plans to use the iPad as more than just a Web-surfing tool, the 3G version is the best choice. As Apple has said time and again, it wants to make the iPad an alternative to current mobile computers, like netbooks or lightweight laptops. Users can type up documents, create spreadsheets and perform several other tasks. But having the option of connecting to the Web wherever a 3G connection is available will increase the user’s productivity. Sure, a WiFi-only model would be similar to using a desktop or a standard laptop, but 3G increases productivity beyond that.

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You’re an enterprise customer: Although the iPad looks like a consumer-focussed device, it has some uses for company employees. The device is readily mobile, its virtual keyboard works well enough to get work done and, thanks to 3G, employees can be online at any point in the day. For an enterprise customer the 3G version is the only option.

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and services. Firstly, we decided upon popular brands say Product A for supply and Product B for service and the enquiry was floated.

We soon received offers from popular brands and experts – vendor X, Y and Z, who are authorised partners for Product A and Product B. The initial offer value was around Rs 5.16 crore.

After several negotiations with vendors X, Y and Z, the Level 1 project cost dropped approximately to Rs 0.04 crore. The key here is that there are several vendors with the same product.

Therefore, to break the monopoly of the OEM, we started talking with other manufactures – Product C for supply and Product D for service.

Since the competition was for manufacturer products, so again after negotiating, the price came down to approx Rs 3 crore for Product A and Product B. We discussed with other group of companies and started negotiating with the country managers of Product A and Product B. Keeping its impact on our future relationship in sight, we got a very good discount on supply part – 76 per cent and service part – 68 per cent.

It was a win-win negotiation.

Negotiation Closure There comes a point in every negotiation when we have achieved effective results with expectations reasonably met. If we do not recognise when to draw a balance, we run the risk of the company thinking that it has made a mistake in offering us the job in the first place. The negotiation should close on win-win situation.

Do not run out of time or allow the vendor to threaten you with arbitrary deadlines. Sign the deal only when it is ready to be signed and not by imposed deadlines or project schedules. Verbal deals have no meaning or value. The deal is done only when it has been appropriately reviewed, approved and signed.

Author is Rakesh Mishra, Head, IT & C, Jindal Steel and Power Ltd

15-MINUTE MANAGER

Information Security

Decoding IS Myths Security chiefs must defy fiction and adhere to facts to prevent risks

By Upasn a Sa lu ja

il lustration: shig il n

A

s any other technology or science, information security (IS) is enveloped in several myths and surprisingly, security professionals yield to these most of the time. However, it is critical for IS professionals to separate myths from reality in order to take their organisations to the next level of assurance.

It is of vital importance for them to identify these myths to be able to use their limited resources in an optimal manner without wasting their resources. Here are some of the most prevalent myths, that IT managers must know and incorporate.

Key Fables a) Tech Secure, Are You? The belief that technology could get you security is just an illusion. Information security is not achieved merely by installing a Firewall or deploying an anti-virus. It involves much more than mere technology controls – it needs processes and people.

Besides, information security deals with not only computer systems, networks and data centres, but also other forms of data – paper files, text messages, etc. Confidential or private information left at the printer by mistake, could pose a serious threat to the organisation. It’s prudent to plug all such security loopholes.

b) Password Protected Many organisations mandate complex passwords. The endeavour is to make the password difficult to guess manually, and break through using ‘brute force’, that is, automated password guessing attacks.

Mandating complex passwords does not imply strong security. A password policy that allows reasonable, easily remembered passwords with lockouts on wrong attempts enforced, should work for most organisations.

A practice I find very useful and often advocate in order to beat this logic, is to have passwords derived from easily remembered sentences or phrases or even lyrics of one’s favourite songs.

For e.g. Ngcml4y! is a difficult to guess eight character complex password having both upper case and lower case letters derived from my favourite song Nothing’s Gonna Change my Love 4 you.

In the back-end, security administrators need to ensure that passwords are adequately protected through encryption, both while at rest and when in transit. In each operating system, there are default locations where the passwords are stored. As a good practice, the password files must

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training calendar Orientation courses on disaster management

not be stored at their default locations and named differently from the default naming convention. The problem is that besides compromising access control, it also compromises accountability.

When the access is misused or there is an incident that merits investigation, it will be extremely difficult to establish the identity of the person logged, from a log of credentials.

c) No Security Against Hackers

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Programme

Venue

Dates

Urban Risk Management

NIDM

Sept 5- Sept 9, 2011

Earthquake Risk Mitigation and Management

GBPIHED-Sikkim

Sept 5- Sept 9, 2011

Drought Mitigation & Management

SKIPA-Jharkhand Sept 5- Sept 9, 2011

Integrated Drought Risk Mitigation Management

NIDM

Sept 12- Sept 16, 2011

Applications of Geo Informatics NIDM in Disaster Management

Sept 12-Sept 16, 2011

Coastal Risk Management

GIDM

Sept 12- Sept 16, 2011

IRS: Information & Media

NIDM

Sept 19-Sept 20, 2011

IRS: Safety

NIDM

Sept 21- Sept 22, 2011

Disaster Safety in Schools

NIDM

Sept 19- Sept 23, 2011

Formulation of DDMP

DMI, Manipur

Sept 19- Sept 23, 2011

Flood Risk Mitigation & Management

ATI, WB

Sept 19-Sept 23, 2011

IRS:

NIDM

Sept 23-Sept 24, 2011

Role of Police in DM

NIDM

Sept 26-Sept 30, 2011

Gender & Disaster Management

NIDM

Sept 26-Sept 30, 2011

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Some professionals tend to feel that the effort to secure information is pointless because of the progressive hacking techniques being used in successful hacks. No doubt, hackers are coming up with more and more advanced hacking techniques; but in fact, this does not undermine the importance of conventional security.

Advanced Persistent Threats: Every other day the newspapers are carrying some or the other news of some high profile hacking cases. Most recently, high profile attacks in the news have been against Google in China, Sony, FBI, the Lulzsec group, and the extremely powerful and lethal Stuxnet attacks. These successful attacks are underscoring the fact no one can sit tight, smugly thinking that they are immune to cyberattacks.

The Verizon Data Breach Report, 2011, makes some key recommendations based on analyses of a large number of investigations of data security breaches over the year. The overarching theme of their analyses and recommendations, points towards ensuring that the basic security controls are deployed well, before employing advanced technologies or complex controls.

Having systems and applications tested before deployment, running regular vulnerability assessments, and following rigorous patch and anti-virus signature update processes are some basic measures that organisations mandatorily need to have in place.

Applications are the new perimeter, making it extremely important that applications are developed securely following secure coding guidelines and secure SDLC processes, including

15-MINUTE MANAGER regular testing. Regularly conducting independent penetration tests to check for effectiveness of controls is also an extremely useful assurance mechanism.

Despite everything that an organisation does, with advanced persistent threats — a long-term pattern of targeted sophisticated hacking attacks aimed at governments, companies and political activists — there is always a possibility that hackers may eventually get through. The recent report released by Security for Business Innovation Council (http://www.rsa. com/innovation/docs/SBIC_RPT_0711. pdf), urges organisations to adopt a new security mindset.

d) Biometrics is the Key Why do people feel that biometric solutions are the panacea to all access control problems? Biometrics are easy to use and more convenient since the organisation does not need to distribute and manage tokens or passwords and users do not need to grapple with lost, stolen or damaged tokens or forgotten passwords. Since biometrics relies on physical characteristics, it is considered more secure and is frequently deployed for authentication, often as singlefactor authentication. This is a major issue, since even biometric devices can be compromised by replay attacks and

Information security is not achieved merely by installing a Firewall or deploying an anti-virus.

It involves much more than mere technology controls – it needs processes and people forgeries. Once compromised, in a single factor scheme, it would result in a complete compromise of identity.

Unless biometrics is deployed in a two-factor authentication scheme, where a PIN or password is needed, they do not provide for better security.

e) Beware of Internet Threats Some professionals believe that the internet poses the biggest threat to security. You cannot blame them, considering the importance media gives to defaced websites and internet frauds.

Whereas if you go by statistics, it shows that a large percentage of incidents, which resulted in significant financial losses, were from inside the organisation. Insider threat is a major contributor to data breaches. Insiders know the systems, procedures, and weaknesses,

Seven Defensive Measures Against Escalating APT Threats Up-level intelligence gathering and analysis. Make intelligence the cornerstone of your strategy.

Activate smart monitoring. Know what to look for and set up your security and network monitoring to look for it.

Reclaim access control. Rein-in privileged user access.

Get serious about effective user training. Train your user population to recognise social engineering and compel them to take individual responsibility for organisational security.

Manage expectations of executive leadership. Ensure that the C-level realises that the nature of combating APTs is like fighting a digital arms race.

Re-architect IT. Move from flat to segregated networks so it’s harder for attackers to roam the network and find the crown jewels.

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and can do much more damage than outsiders. In today’s world, increased use of contractors, consultants, and outsourced vendors also adds risk to an organisation’s security.

f) Transit Encryption is Enough As long as my data channel is encrypted with technologies such as SSL, SSH, PGP, and VPNs my data should be protected. This is far from the truth since industry experience shows that loss of data from databases is a bigger culprit than loss of data in transit through eavesdropping. To protect sensitive data, both data at rest and data in transit need to be encrypted. It also needs to be backed up with a comprehensive security policy and governance through regular audits.

g) An Audited Organisation Means Secure Environment Just because an auditor certifies an entity, it does not imply that the certified entity is secure. Just because an organisation has the certification, does not mean that it has helped them address all risks. It does not preclude the need for due diligence of security.

Security chiefs need to segregate fact from fiction and work towards more realistic methods to counter risks.

Participating in intelligence exchange and leveraging knowledge from other organisations by sharing threat intelligence is critical to addressing risks.

By Upasna Saluja, Operational Resiliency Manager Product & Infrastructure Risk Management, Thomson Reuters

Data Protection

the big

INSURE DATA WITH RIGHT TOOL EXPERT PANEL

GSR avi Kumar , Chief Information Officer , Gati L imited

The Situation...

Cut it from he re

“Can Praveen find the right data security solution to handle all complexities?”

Amit Goel, Senior IT Manager of a manufacturing company, while taking stock of the entire IT infrastructure, particularly to check if the organisation’s s sensitive data was secure and protected, noticed several loopholes. The challenge grew multi-fold given the company’s expansion and business growth. Goel then received a call from his top bosses for a business review meeting. His priority at that moment was to work out a data centre investment plan and provide economic justification for investment in a data protection program with an efficient backup.

The obvious question during the review meeting was with regard to his strategy for this. Besides consolidation, Goel’s challenge was to ensure intelligent backup, recovery, business continuity and disaster recovery plan, which could result in reduction in complexity, besides controlled costs.

As the data centre added more servers, increased 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.

Pertish Mankotia, Head, IT, Sheelafoam Pv t Ltd

Sanjeev Kumar , G roup Pr esident & CIO, Adhunik G roup of Industries

number of network devices, more applications with business critical functionality, the management of the information storage became more complex. It also resulted in unmanageable security threats.

The primary task for Goel is to find ways to simplify data storage, make it secure, manageable, increase user accessibility, and address changing business needs. Goel has to find the right solutions to address these challenges. His task is to do more with less, improve RTO\RPO for data business assets, ensure tamper-proof access to critical data, handle data deluge and protect against data losses and disasters. Besides, complexity around deployment, backup and restore policies are a challenge.

Goel intends looking at data backup protection tools. However, the challenges do not end here. He also has to choose appropriate backup tools, which revolved around tape automation solutions and drivers, disk backup, disk media, etc.

The big question for Goel is to spot the right storage solutions, which do not disrupt the existing framework, but ease data management and can absorb future data growth.

NEXT

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the big q

the big questions...

Can Goel find a data storage backup and recovery solution which is

?

cost-effective, consolidated and Will increase efficiency? What kind of functionalities does he need to address his requirements?

?

What kind of business benefits can Goel expect by deploying data storage protection tools? What would be the RoI and cost reductions? What budget does he need to allocate For investment?

Here are the answers... â&#x20AC;&#x153;Solution will depend on Needâ&#x20AC;?

FIRST ANSWER Goel has a wide choice, as there are enough data storage backup and recovery solutions and technologies available from across offerings.

However, the first criterion for choosing the right backup tool, is to do some amount of groundwork. They are as follows: 1. List the various Data/Applications in the company 2. Classify data in terms of criticality (as a tiered approach) 3. Specify the RTO/RPO against each of the stored data 4. Size of the data has to be identified both, current data and future data, expected to grow in the next three years 5. List the different storages and technologies currently being used 6. Retention and archival policy for each data

G S Ravi Kumar CIO, Gati Ltd. About me: I implemented various technological innovations within the company in the logistics space. Recipient of several awards in the CIO space for pioneering technological deployments, which triggered the business growth

This kind of planning will provide insights into the type of functionality that is required in the backup and recovery solution. For instance, you can ffind out that if a multi-location, high-availability solution is required, or snapshots are required, then at what frequency, or whether tape is sufficient for it. In most cases, it will be a mixture of different solutions, based on the criticality and sensitivity of different data/applications. In such cases, it is best to identify a product/solution, which can cater to different requirements across multiple platforms. Goel can also consider functionality like data de-duplication, compression, encryption, fully automated and single window administration. However, the time required for rolling out a full-fledged backup and recovery solution will directly depend on the number of applications/data available, the complexity, the size of data and the platforms that exist.

Second Answer Using data protection tools will definitely fetch several business benefits to Goel and his team. They include: a) Business Continuity b) Information Availability (based on the SLAs) c) Compliance with various regulations and standards d) Storage space reductions (de-duplication) The amount you need to invest is much like working out your life insurance needs. It depends on the perceived value of life and your premium-paying capacity. Similarly, the higher the need for data availability and business continuity, the more the investment.

The RoI is directly related to the data availability and business continuity requirement.

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the big q

“Retrieving data in real time” FIRST ANSWER Before zeroing in on any data protection tool, Goel needs to evaluate tools, which can store data as a DR and has load balancing capabilities, besides other functionalities. The criteria would be to see if the solution has the capability to retrieve data in real time.

Besides, he should have archival plan in place, which could be around virtual backup, given the fact that it is a manufacturing company. Tape library could be one of the solutions, but tape is expensive. Around two terabyte of tape library would cost approx Rs 8,000. SAN Boxes and online data storage are recommended.

A well-worked-out tiered approach is necessary to segregate the data and classify it based on its importance. Most companies still use tape libraries or digital libraries, besides the online and virtual backups as all three are important.

Pertisth Mankotia

Second Answer For Goel, to reap the benefits of investments that he makes into data protection tools, a robust security roadmap is critical. This would determine if the data is secure, while a well-worked-out DR plan will ensure that at no point data is at risk. The team needs to taken into account the applications that are not needed and rarely accessed, and those that are to be stored in disks. The RoI in this case is not around what kind of tools one has deployed, but what kind of credibility the IT team has built in securing data.

Some tangible benefits would be visible once the data is well protected online and balances the load properly. It is like an insurance policy and the intangible benefits are umpteen. On te negative side, not having an appropriate backup or recovery tool would result in huge financial losses, which would take years for the organisation to come out of. Since the manufacturing company will be dealing with customer and dealer data, they should tier it accordingly and see the benefits of providing information in real time.

Head, IT, Sheelafoam Pvt Ltd About me: Developed and implemented home grown ERP ‘Great Plus’. Responsible for the digitisation of the enterprise. Been with the Group (Sleepwell) since 1995

NEXT

ge Stora

Solid State Drives Distribution by Form Factor Unit-growth forecast of enterprise-class Solid State Drives from 281,000 units in 2008 to 5.3mn units in 2013 208K

Enterprise SSD Units

5.3M

100% 80%

39%

55%

58%

54%

50%

45%

2.5’’ SSD 3.5’’ SSD

60%

PCle Card

40%

DIMM

20%

Other 0% 2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013 S ourc e: Gart ne r

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the big q

â&#x20AC;&#x153;BCP is the key to data storage â&#x20AC;?

FIRST ANSWER

Sanjeev Kumar Group CIO & President , Business Excellence, Adhunik Group of Industries About me: IT strategist, innovator, evangelist; contributor to companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s growth

The data backup and recovery manifest many aspects of the architecture that one has to build. There are several types of data protection, which include tape backup, disk-to-disk backup, online, virtual backup, DR site to store critical data and so on. The trend has been around storing the data around tape and disk-to-disk, which are considered to be costeffective and safe.

The primary task for Goel is to classify the data and opt for different tools, with primary factor being the time to recover the data. A thorough DR planning needs to be done before deciding on the data protection tools. The second important element in the exercise of data storage and protection is around business-critical planning (BCP) which is key to the whole business. In the failure of servers and network, the users should be able to transact and transfer data to online storage using software and to the main production site. SAN and NAS boxes too are used for storage and protection of data around block and file saving respectively. I would say that tape is a convenient backup device and is automated; and the trend is around diskto-disk, besides DR, which is important for BCP.

Second Answer The most tangible benefit that Goel and his team can witness is the prevention of data leakage, when stored on tape, DR or disks. Depending on the size of data and its relevance to business, the ratio of storage is determined. This tiering will drive RoI as right architecture is evolved. For sectors like manufacturing, it is easy to decode data criticality.

cube chat | Mahesh Chandra Srivastava

Think Out of the Box

“I wish to become the CTO of a government organisation, implement cutting-edge technology and provide good services to employees,” says MC Srivastava, Sr IT Manager (Systems), IFFCO Ltd

By MANU SHA R M A

A My sucess

mantra Success is not always measured by what one accomplishes, but by the opposition and the struggle encountered.

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n ardent follower of Captain GR Gopinath and Ratan Tata, Mahesh Chandra Srivastava, Senior Manager (Systems) at Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Limited (IFFCO), admires the outside-thebox ideas that these two business luminaries have made a reality.

Srivastava says not many Indian business people qualify for the title of great dreamers.

Most are dynastic successors. “But these two, are different. They have not only come up with new visions but also driven them to reality,” he says.

“I feel Ratan Tata was tough and adamant despite his fellow managers feeling the Nano project may not take off,” Srivastava says. Likewise, Capt Gopinath was able to make travelling by air affordable for the lower middle class. These two have also motivated me to think outside the box.”

With about 15 years in IT, Srivastava says he now has enough experience to drive projects on his own. “I come from a village in Uttar Pradesh and have seen and experienced the poor quality life,” he says. Srivastava’s vision is to become the CTO of government or semi-government organisation: “I wish to implement cuttingedge technology to make process fast, efficient, transparent and provide good services to public employees through IT.” He cites the example of the Indian Railways IRCTC as a success story and also that of the Indian banks and some public sector undertakings. “The projects have been successful mainly due to the strong vision and tough action by the leaders,” Srivastava claims.

The IT head did not sail through his career.

He had to cope with pressure and combat many hurdles initially and had a tough patch trying to

cube chat

Fact File NAME M AHESH CHANDRA SRIVASTAVA CU RRENT DESIGNATION SENIOR MANAGER (SYSTEM S) CU RRENT ROLE WAN AND SECU RITY INC HARGE

Photo graph y: ji te n gand hi

“I feel that 3G and mobile phone-based applications are the promising technologies in terms of future growth” change the extreme attitude of his boss, who was replaced after seven years.

“The turning point in my career was in the year 2000, when there was a vacancy in the IT department,” he recounts. “The company management asked graduate engineers of the same grades to show their willingness to shift to IT department. I cleared the written test and interview and since then my job profile has changed permanently, from an Electronics Instrument Maintenance Engineer in the plant to System Analyst in IT department.” Since then, Srivastava has put in almost 11 years in the same company.

“I owe all this achievement to God. I thank the teacher of my intermediate college, my brother and colleagues for motivating me and for the person I am today,” adds Srivastava. To overcome stress, Srivastava

chants Om Namah Shivaya and also practises yoga regularly.

“I make it a point to regularly read technical journals and attend seminars and workshops,” he says. Some of his significant achievements include setting up a robust WAN with high uptime due to which most of the IFFCO applications have become the enterprise kind. These achieved 99+ per cent uptime on all WAN links in urban, semi-urban and rural areas and they have been able to maintain this uptime for the past two years. His second major achievement is in setting up highdefinition video conferencing within the organisation with no recurring cost.

This is being heavily deployed across the organisation using the existing WAN infrastructure.

EXPERTISE WAN, L AN AND IT SECU RITY, LOTU S DOM INO EMAI L ADM INISTRATION ACHIEVEM ENTS: (AWARDS ) 1. ONES TO WATC H BY C IO (JANUARY 2010) IDG GROUP 2. SECU RITY STRATEGIST AWARD 2010 BY INDIAN EXPRESS GRO UP 3. TOP 100 CISO AWARDS 2011 BY INFO SECU RITY & IV iz WORK EXPERIENC E 1996 to present, I ndian Farm ers Fertiliser Coo perative Lim ite d (IFFCO) C ERTIFI C ATION CC SA OF CHECKPOINT FAVOURITE BOO K S UPER POWER ?: THE AM AZING RACE BET WEEN C HINA’ S HARE AND INDIA’S TORTOISE, BY RAGHAV BAHL

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update

off the shelf

A sneak preview of enterprise products, solutions and services

Huawei Vision Unveiled The mobile phone runs on Android OS and is ‘pure touchscreen’ Key Features Android OS Large touchscreen display Stylish and Slim design 1GHz processor High speed 3G connectivity Wireless LAN GPS Navigation

MOBILES | Huawei, a leading network

equipment and handset maker, will launch its cloud computing-based Android smartphone this December in India. The smartphone, called Vision, will have a 3D user interface and carousel animation display.

“Huawei vision will be launched in the fourth quarter in India and we have still not finalised its price,” says Anand Narang, Marketing Director, Huawei Devices.

Huawei Vision will run on Android Gingerbread 2.3 and will be supported by a 1 GHZ Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM 8255 processor. The cloud computing feature of Vision will allow users to download applications without the need for much storage space on their devices as data would be stored on servers rather than on the mobile memory, and will be accessible over the mobile internet or Wi-Fi. Narang says Vision will not come locked with any telecom operator.

Instead, it will be bundled with free data usage plans from multiple operators.

Vision has an aluminium alloy uni-body in rose, gold, silver or charcoal, and a curve touch design. It supports 720p video recording and features a 5 megapixel auto focus camera with LED flash.

On the connectivity front it has bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, and messaging capabilities including SMS, MMS, email, push mail and IM. It has a 3D mobile phone interface that bundles handset features into 3D panels on the home screen. The interface allows you to select any panel of the home screen with one swipe and makes it easy to prioritise the application view. The device will come installed with popular games — Angry Birds, Asphalt 6: Adrenaline, Order and Chaos Online, and Guerrilla Bob HD. On the availability of Huawei phones in retail outlets in India, Anand said, “As of now we have presence in 10 cities where we have tie-ups with different multi-brand outlets, and by the time we launch Huawei Vision we would have presence in around 35 cities across the country.”

Source: www.themobileindian.com

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Camera Vision Phantom V-Series GADGET Vision Research unveils two additions to the company’s Phantom® vSeries line of digital high-speed cameras with the introduction of the Phantom v1210 and v1610. These top-of-their-class cameras are the world’s fastest 1 megapixel digital high-speed cameras. They feature high definition and widescreen 1280 x 800 CMOS sensors. The Phantom v1610 is 60 per cent faster than any other camera, with the ability to acquire more than 16,000 frames-per-second (fps) at full resolution and up to 1,000,000 fps at reduced resolution.

Both cameras are based on Vision Research proprietary sensors offering not only high speeds, but larger 28-micron pixels that allow for superior sensitivity when shooting in low light.

The v-Series additions make possible image capture at more than 12,000 fps in full resolution when utilising the v1210, and more than 16,000 fps when the v1610 is called into action. The v1210 can be configured with 12GB, 24GB, or 48GB of memory, and the v1610, with 24GB, 48GB, or 96GB of memory.

Product Features • 1 Megapixel sensor (1280 x 800) with 28 micron pixels for outstanding light sensitivity • 12Gpx/s throughput (v1210) • 16Gpx/s throughput (v1610) • 650,000 fps at reduced resolution • 1,000,000 fps with FAST option • 1us minimum exposure • 500ns minimum exposure with FAST option

update

Hammacher’s Converter Features Easy to Use Lost Music Found Track Editing Best for Large Collections

CONVERTER | Available only from Hammacher Schlemmer, this is the combina-

tion recorder and stereo system that allows you to preserve your classic vinyl records and cassette tapes by recording them to CDs. It takes only three steps to faithfully transfer an LP or cassette to a digital audio CD-R or CD-R/RW, and at any time during recording you can pause to select only certain songs, turn the album or cassette over, and change albums or cassettes to make compilation recordings.

More than just a recorder, the system plays 33s, 45s, 78s, and cassettes through a 70mm full-range speaker, and has a built-in AM/FM stereo with digital tuner and single CD playback tray, all in a footprint less than 2’ sq. Two RCA inputs in the rear enable you to connect the device to another stereo system or external speakers. Includes automatic/manual track, increment control, record-level indicator, record-level control, backlit LCD, and remote control that requires two AA batteries. Needle plays LPs for up to 50 hours before requiring replacement.

Kaspersky Internet Security 2012 SECURITY | Kaspersky Internet Security 2012 delivers

premium protection from viruses, Trojans, spam, hackers, and more. Its cutting-edge, hybrid approach to digital security combines innovative, cloud-based technologies with advanced antivirus protection to deliver a faster, more effective response to today’s complex, ever-evolving threats. You, your private data and PC are completely protected as you work, bank, shop and play online.

Installation of the files needed to run Kaspersky Internet Security 2012 is very quick. At the beginning, the program looks for any conflicting security programs that are already on the system After this, it was a simple case of activating the product and its running. It is packed with features that you would expect to see in such a program and definitely offers a significant level of extra

Apple Unveils 8GB Touchscreen iPhone Apple will unveil a new 8GB iPhone 4 for the masses, with its all new iPhone 5 in the next few weeks.

With this revolutionary mobile you are free to make calls just by tapping a name or touching the name from the phone list. Merge calls and make conference calls or set your list of favorites, you would like to be in touch with. Easy messaging solutions include SMS with smart QWERTY keyboard with easy options to send multiple messages and chatting facility.

Integrated 2-megapixel camera and other photo management applications enable you to shoot, snap and store your every memorable moment in the mobile.

Set your favorite song as your ring tone or choose your favorites from over 500,000 songs on iTunes paid ring tone store. Pick, edit, loop, fade in and out, preview and play, just in the way you want it.

Key Advantages Enjoy secure online banking Get protection from unknown threats Communicate in safety on social networks Protection from emerging threats Roll back changes made by malware Benefit from hybrid protection Protect your identity from phishing attacks

protection when compared to any standalone antivirus program.

The interface is nice and simple to understand with all the common items you will need easily accessible.

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update

open Debate

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

Can negotiations lower the product procurement cost?

Kaushik Kumar Ghosh IT Professional

Manish Shah GM, IT, Indusfila Group

I firmly believe that intensive negotiations can bring down product procurement cost. Infact the price reduction can be as much as 10-15 per cent. To get the best deal, however, the procurement team must do the groundwork well: a. Competitive bidding negotiation to know competitor’s product specification and price b. Know about global policy and tie-up c. Justify requirement roadmap for the product for better discounts d. Outsourcing services to the same vendor will yield better price gains. and increase the trust.

Procurement of certain IT products and services is highly commoditised.

Highly specialised products and services, which have a added value in terms of the brand offering it, remain negotiable.

Intense negotiation often leads to better pricing. At times, vendors, to ensure that they get quality customer who can be a point of reference, are willing to meet the ‘target price’.

Vendors term this as ‘special price clearance’.

While negotiating, one should not lose sight of the key deliverables and the metrics of measuring it, which is what the deal is all about.

Rakesh Mishra Head, IT&C, Jindal Steel and Power Ltd Negotiation promises higher value creation by matching customers’ individual needs with manufacturers’ capabilities. Art of negotiation has been recognised as a competitive strategy in a volatile industry. A negotiation-based procurement mechanism can be generally described as a process of ‘sequential search’, in which the buyer contacts prospective sellers one at a time until a mutually satisfactory solution is identified. It is essentially a process of joint decision-making with partial information exchange.

The Next Big Breakthrough Innovation tips for first generation entrepreneurs leaders TITLE: BREAKING AWAY AUTHORS: JANE STEVENSON AND BILAL KAAFARANI PUBLISHER: MCGRAW-HILL PRICE: $30

THE CO-AUTHORS unearth the essential factors that lead to the creation of successful innovations and the leaders who champion them (‘the CEO factor’).

It is this ‘magic’ mix that enables some leaders to create an innovation engine fuelled by all who work there, while others who are equally set on harnessing innovation’s growth potential, ultimately fail.

Here are the risk profiles necessary to stretch the potential without mortgaging the future; the quality parameters that are imperative to delight the consumer; the cultural factors that are essential to nurture the right environment; and the ability to empower and bring out the best in employees.

The authors, Jane Stevenson and Bilal Kaafarani, interviewed more than 50 top executives in a wide range of industries to pinpoint the paths that successful companies take to create great innovations.

IT NEXT Verdict More than 70 per cent of new offerings in the marketplace fail within the first year. How can companies predict which innovations and

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

inventions will be worth the business risk?

Star Value:

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update

indulge

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

The festive, season is round the corner, and the market is flooded with new products.

Before you decide to pick a new toy, here is a preview of some tech toys and trends to help you make up your mind

Tag Heuer LINK Smartphone It is made of alligator skin and is waterproof and shock resistant.

The 3.5 inch Gorilla glass screen, runs on Andriod 2.2 Froyo. upto 8 GB. Price: `3,50,000

NEW Terminator skull DVD Player This is one collectable item all Terminator fans would kill to own. It seems like the deceased T 101’s remains are still left as a DVD player.

Price: NA

HOT Panasonic Toughbook H1 Field Rugged PC tablet the H1 Field Tablet from Panasonic is for the rough outdoors with 10.4 inch sunlight screen.

Price: `1,50,329

IdeaCentre B520 Lenovo India has launched its “All-in-One Multi Touch 3D Entertainment PC IdeaCentre B520”. The 23 inch IdeaCentre .IT comes with a frameless screen and 3D vision.

Price: NA

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

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my log

Shashwat DC Executive Editor, IT Next (Online)

Illu str ation : P C Anoop

The Making of ‘Virtual Anna’ Team Anna have shrewdly used social media tools to spread their message. Here’s how...

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3 Essential

Reads

MaNOJ ChuGh | INTERVIEW

PRiVAte CLOUD iS ReADY tO tAKe OFF manoj Chugh, President, EMC India & SaarC and Director, Global accounts, asia Pacific & Japan, in conversation with N geetha, elaborates on EMC’s journey to the cloud and the strategy around virtualisation — the first step towards cloud adoption

When did eMC begin its journey to the cloud?

EMC started its journey (globally) to the cloud years ago, long before the term cloud became popular, laying the foundation for more focussed efforts that began in 2004.

In the year, EMC faced challenges familiar to most IT organisations: unrelenting growth of applications, servers, and storage arrays in the data centre that strained the capacity of existing resources.

When the company’s global IT function decided to leverage the power of private cloud, one of its key objectives was to deliver IT-asa-service. The company aimed to optimise both, IT delivery and business consumption of services, and be the service provider of choice. EMC aimed to enable endto-end, on-demand, self-service provisioning of IT services to its business units.

Our journey to the private cloud between 2004 and 2009 alone resulted in benefits such as: Reduced backup volumes. By an average of 95 per cent using

P h OtO G r a P h Y: J I G N ES h M I St rY

Team Anna, whose members even shot a 10-minute video of Anna talking about what would happen if he were jailed and then uploading it on YouTube. Almost immediately, there were thousands of people across the globe who had not only heard what Anna said, but who – by the power of seeing the activist speak – were convinced of his earnestness.

Through the whole thing, the various Facebook groups were drumming up support for the Lokpal Bill. For instance, the India Against Corruption page already boasts of connecting more than 4 lakh people across the length and breadth of the nation. There was also a telephone number circulating on which all one had to do was give a missed call to show their support for a revised bill.

Little wonder, when Team Anna wanted to show its strength through rallies, these groups came in handy and were able to ensure impressive turnouts.

But Hazare is not the first one to employ these tools. US President Barrack Obama was one of the first to demonstrate the true power of the internet in campaigning through his highly successful online election campaign. Similarly, Anna Hazare’s success can be credited to the clever use of web tools to reach out to the masses.

Hazare is both the creator and the creation of a web persona.

42

Avamar in concert with Data Domain systems. The amount of data protected increased by well over 40 per cent.

Desktop/laptop protection.

Data reduction averaged 96 per cent per backup, providing consistently faster backups than the previous online service with negligible performance and network impact. Overall data backup volumes have been reduced by 50 per cent, decreasing backup time by 75 per cent. The number of physical tape libraries was reduced by 60 per cent, and the number of virtual tape libraries was reduced by 53 per cent. EMC now supports backup of over 2,000 virtual machine clients. Its IT administrators are taking advantage of key tools such as Data Protection Advisor and Lonix for IT operations intelligence to monitor, manage, and automate data protection processes.

Measurable cost savings.

Moving from an all-tape backup strategy to a mix of disk and tape

has reduced the cost of tape media, and in the long term, more cost savings will be realised with the elimination of tape infrastructure and media vaulting.

is cloud real and disruptive?

Cloud computing is well and truly disruptive. In simple terms, while information is growing at over 60 per cent, IT budgets are growing at single digits only, posing significant constraints for the CIOs and IT managers. This has prompted them to find better ways to manage infrastructure, where cloud plays a major role.

Where does storage stand in the cloud model?

For cloud computing to be successful as a model, the ability to store, secure and access information in real time will be critical, which is where we play a vital role.

What is the cloud adoption scenario?

It is beyond doubt that private cloud is on the upswing, as 75 per

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EMC journey to the cloud and the strategies around virtualisation: Manoj Chugh, President Pg 40 ClOuD COMPutING | INSIgHT from start to finish, so the studio gets its return on investment (RoI).

Opportunities for new profits in this sector are substantial, to say the least. A report published last month

by Coughlin, projects that the media storage market would virtually double in the next five years — from $3.8 bn to $6.4 bn in revenue and from 11 exabytes to 62 exabytes in capacity. That is right, exabytes: a million trillion bytes. “Digital storage requirements are exploding due to use of higher resolution and stereoscopic content in the media and entertainment industry,” lead researcher Tom Coughlin wrote in the report.

Cashing on 3D Films

I

magine a company spending millions of dollars to buy workstations, software, servers, networking and storage equipment for everyone working on one large project. Then imagine recycling those systems and buying everything again for the next project.

This may seem like IT overkill, but it’s a way of life at Glendale, Californiabased DreamWorks Animation, creator of such highly successful movies as the Shrek and Madagascar series, Monsters and Aliens and the Kung Fu Panda series.

Films are a major driver for data storage in the entertainment sector; one of the hottest sub-sectors within the burgeoning international data storage market. In fact, this sector has its own professional conference to justify its importance. This market category includes all professional creative media, including feature films, documentaries, corporate videos, television shows and music videos.

The escalating use of high quality video such as high definition and super high

Weaving 3D DREAMS dREaMWORKs:

BY CHRIS PREIMESBERGER

Films are a major driver for data storage. DreamWorks has taken a leap to the cloud to accomodate its data overload

38

definition, which take up more than double the space of regular video, is a major cause for this jump.

At DreamWorks, a new movie automatically means fresh HewlettPackard z800 workstations, new software, additional storage and other equipment for about 500 highly trained artists and supervisors. An animated movie — whether it’s 3D or not — takes four to five years to produce, and the equipment stays with the production

$332 million Kung Fu Panda 2 amassed in worldwide box office receipts in the first 17days

DreamWorks’ 2011 movie, the 3D enhanced Kung Fu Panda 2, opened on May 26 and amassed $332 mn in worldwide box-office receipts in the first 17 days. Since the movie cost about $150 million to make (not counting marketing and distribution costs), the producers are already in the black.

Because video quality has improved so greatly in the last decade, 3D feature films tend to be more successful at the box office than standard films and have been ramping up in sheer numbers. “Once you’ve seen good 3D, you get spoilt and it’s hard to go back,” DreamWorks CTO, Ed Leonard, told eWEEK: “The expectations go up with each new release. I’ve been in this business for longer than I care to admit, and, in that time, I’ve observed that every film tries to outdo the last film.

The roots are still in great characters and in great storytelling, of course.

But we want to bring that to life in a way that you’re mesmerised ... You’re watching something that is taking you to a different place, and you’re forgetting about all the worries of life for two hours.”

DreamWorks churns out about three films during a two-year span, so an ambitious schedule is always in the works. Each movie has its own animation staff and HP workstations, which are constantly being updated as new, faster Intel processors become available.

“Because every movie is new, we change

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Weaving 3D Dreams: Films, especially animated, are major drivers of data storage, Pg 36 CUBE CHAT | MahESh ChaNDra SrIVaStaVa

CUBE CHAT

Think out of the Box

FAC T F I l E NaME M a h ES h C h a N D r a S r I VaStaVa C u r r E N t D ES I G N at I O N S E N I O r M a N aG E r ( SYSt E M S )

“i wish to become the CtO of a government organisation, implement cutting-edge technology and provide good services to employees,” says MC Srivastava, Sr IT Manager (Systems), IFFCO Ltd

CurrENt rOlE wa N a N D S EC u r I t Y INCharGE

“I feel that 3G and mobile phone-based applications are the promising technologies in terms of future growth”

BY MANU SHARMA

A MY SUCESS

MANTRA success is not always measured by what one accomplishes, but by the opposition and the struggle encountered.

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n ardent follower of Captain GR Gopinath and Ratan Tata, Mahesh Chandra Srivastava, Senior Manager (Systems) at Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Limited (IFFCO), admires the outside-thebox ideas that these two business luminaries have made a reality.

Srivastava says not many Indian business people qualify for the title of great dreamers.

Most are dynastic successors. “But these two, are different. They have not only come up with new visions but also driven them to reality,” he says.

“I feel Ratan Tata was tough and adamant despite his fellow managers feeling the Nano project may not take off,” Srivastava says. Likewise, Capt Gopinath was able to make travelling by air affordable for the lower middle class. These two have also motivated me to think outside the box.”

With about 15 years in IT, Srivastava says he now has enough experience to drive projects on his own. “I come from a village in Uttar Pradesh and have seen and experienced the poor quality life,” he says. Srivastava’s vision is to become the CTO of government or semi-government organisation: “I wish to implement cuttingedge technology to make process fast, efficient, transparent and provide good services to public employees through IT.” He cites the example of the Indian Railways IRCTC as a success story and also that of the Indian banks and some public sector undertakings. “The projects have been successful mainly due to the strong vision and tough action by the leaders,” Srivastava claims.

The IT head did not sail through his career.

He had to cope with pressure and combat many hurdles initially and had a tough patch trying to

PhOtO Gra Ph Y: JI t EN Ga N Dh I

One of the most evocative advertisements I have seen is one for an Italian Telecom firm. It displays the power of communication, using the iconic image of Mahatma Gandhi. The commercial shows Gandhiji sitting alone in a simple building, speaking in front of a video-conferencing system, his thoughts and ideas being broadcast to millions across the globe — in London, Rome, New York, native America... Check it for yourself, to understand how evocative it is: http://bit.ly/gandhiad.

I have a strong feeling that if not Anna Hazare himself, then someone from his team has seen it and been inspired by it. I say this because the Anna movement seems to be going quite the way it is envisaged in the commercial. Right from the start, Team Anna has been using mass communication tools, in this case social media, extensively and effectively to reach out to the masses and outflank its opponents.

By reaching out to youth this way, Anna’s supporters have ensured Facebook and Twitter are completely abuzz with their activities. In fact, the day on which Anna was arrested in Delhi, the whole social network broke out in a righteous rage. Numerous groups and pages were created for Anna on Facebook and he was one of top trends on Twitter – globally.

While much of it might be extempore, one cannot discount the foresight of

change the extreme attitude of his boss, who was replaced after seven years.

“The turning point in my career was in the year 2000, when there was a vacancy in the IT department,” he recounts. “The company management asked graduate engineers of the same grades to show their willingness to shift to IT department. I cleared the written test and interview and since then my job profile has changed permanently, from an Electronics Instrument Maintenance Engineer in the plant to System Analyst in IT department.” Since then, Srivastava has put in almost 11 years in the same company.

“I owe all this achievement to God. I thank the teacher of my intermediate college, my brother and colleagues for motivating me and for the person I am today,” adds Srivastava. To overcome stress, Srivastava

chants Om Namah Shivaya and also practises yoga regularly.

“I make it a point to regularly read technical journals and attend seminars and workshops,” he says. Some of his significant achievements include setting up a robust WAN with high uptime due to which most of the IFFCO applications have become the enterprise kind. These achieved 99+ per cent uptime on all WAN links in urban, semi-urban and rural areas and they have been able to maintain this uptime for the past two years. His second major achievement is in setting up highdefinition video conferencing within the organisation with no recurring cost.

This is being heavily deployed across the organisation using the existing WAN infrastructure.

EX P E rt I S E wa N , l a N a N D I t S EC u r I t Y, lOt u S DOMINO EMaIl a D M I N I St r at I O N aC h I E V E M E N tS : ( awa r D S ) 1 . O N ES tO watC h BY C I O ( Ja N ua rY 2 0 1 0 ) I D G GrOuP 2 . S EC u r I t Y St r at EG I St awa r D 2 0 1 0 BY I N D I a N EX P r ES S G r O u P 3 . tO P 1 0 0 C I S O awa r D S 2 0 1 1 BY I N FO S EC u r I t Y & IVIZ wO r K EX P E r I E N C E 1 9 9 6 tO P r ES E N t, I N D I a N Fa r M E r S F E rt I l I S E r C O O P E r at I V E l I M I t E D ( I F FC O ) C E rt I F I C at I O N C C Sa O F C h EC K P O I N t FaVO u r I t E B O O K S u P E r P Ow E r ? : t h E a M a Z I N G r aC E B E t w E E N C h I N a’ S h a r E a N D I N D I a’ S tO rtO I S E , BY r aG h aV Ba h l

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