IT Next October 2011 by Manan Mushtaq

it next

OCTOber 2011 / ` 75 Volume 02 / Issue 09

STRATEGY: Success Factor in Project Management

Boss Talk: IT Education Mgt: Handling Attrition

38 BIG Q

Interview Barrie Sheers from Quest on IT Automation

Unification: The Future of Storage Pg 51

Enlightening WITH INTELLIGENCE

Kapil Mehrotra Head,Applications iYogi Technical Services Pvt Ltd

Enlightening with Intelligence

volume 02 | Issue 09

IT managers grapple with the challenges of empowering their organisations through business intelligence solutions Pg 15

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Editorial

White Elephant or a Gift Horse Without an iota of doubt one can observe that the Business Intelligence

“It is heartening to notice that IT managers are all out to take the risk of jumping onto the BI bandwagon” Geetha Nandikotkur

(BI) wave is catching on, and if the market sentiments are an indication, that day is not far off when business leaders will demand it on their mobile apps from IT managers. You will be surprised to find most IT managers saying that implementing BI is considered a white elephant by organisations, as this entails huge cost and complexity. It is a fact and logically correct, that after investing in ERP, which is a large project by itself, asking for additional investment for BI would elicit a big ‘No’ from the top management. However, to everyone’s surprise, there is a radical change in the response of business groups, thanks to the efforts of senior IT managers and their teams. IT Next’s study on BI, unearthed certain practical issues that the IT managers face in BI and the areas they need to focus on, even before contemplating it. Barriers to BI absorption are massive for any organisation. Obviously, it is not just another IT project where the team handles challenges on its own. It is about buying the line of business, the business groups, per se, who are part of the project, as the end users and also the drivers. It is heartening to notice that IT managers are all out to take the risk of jumping onto the BI bandwagon. Amidst challenges and confrontations, they are trying to imbue their enterprises with intelligence tools, which is definitely captivating the top management and business groups. BI is a gift horse, as the business heads get to see a clear image of themselves in the market, which makes a big difference to growth.

Blogs To Watch! Forrester blogs on trends 2011 and beyond: Business Intelligence http://blogs.forrester.com/ boris_evelson/11-03-31trends_2011_and_beyond_ business_intelligence Gartner BI Magic Quadrant 2011 and SAS http://blog.saasinct. com/2011/02/01/gartner-bimagic-quadrant-2011-and-sas/ Business Intelligence Insight from Surveys http://www.empowerit.com/ blog/default.asp?postID=15 A/NZ Business Intelligence survey 2011 http://blogs.sas.com/content/ anz/2011/08/22/anz-businessintelligence-survey-2011/

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Enlightening with Page

Intelligence IT managers grapple with the challenges of empowering their organisations through business intelligence solutions

Cover Story

boss talk

interview

15 Will IT Managers be able to successfully harness the Business Intelligence Wave? An in-depth look at what IT heads across the enterprise are doing to factor in BI 18 Go by the BI Functionality, not by Low Hanging Fruit 26 An Intelligent Decision

Business process management tools drives banking efficiency

32 Experience the ERP Euphoria Systematic and need-based approach needed to experience the joy of putting ERP in place

36 Food for Thought on Writing RFP Clarity, precision and pragmatic approach is key to RFP

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06 Handling Attrition| Ninad Karpe, MD & CEO, Aptech Ltd, on IT Education Management and new demands in curricula

38 Barrie Sheers, VP, APJ, Quest Software| on increased demand for end-to-end IT applications by IT managers

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

28 Banking on BPM Paradigm

c ov er photography: subh ojit paul

insights

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Experience the ERP Euphoria |Systematic and need based approach required to experience the joy of putting ERP in place

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the big Q

opinion 08 Cost No Constraint | John Boers, CFO & CRO, INGVysya Life Insurance says cost is no constraint for ensuring quality in the IT systems

15-Minute manager 43 Success Factor in Project Management| Work Breakdown Structure is the key ingredient for successful project Management 44 Healthy Tips| Office Yoga-

Meditation for a busy manager at workplace

51 Unified Storage |

Unification: The future of Storage Experts tell you how to assess, classify the data and unify them for absorbing new data

cube chat 58 Off The Beaten Track | Influenced and inspired by

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IT NEXT

TECHNOLOGY | COVER STORY

SEPTEMBER 2011 / ` 75 VOLUME 02 / ISSUE 08

TECHNOLOGY: Desktop virtualisation promises less pain

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

Cloudy

Regulatory issues hamper adoption

PARTIALLY

Evolving risk-return models

Partially

Many options and services on offer

VOLUME 02 | ISSUE 08

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

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

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

September 2011

BY M A N U S HARMA IMAGING BY ANIL T

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

IT NEXT thanks its Readers for the warm response

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Cover Story1.indd 16

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,

8/30/2011 8:19:21 PM

Cover Story1.indd 17

8/30/2011 8:19:33 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 am a regular reader of IT Next magazine. The concept and presentation of stories in the magazine are simple, yet very effective. The graphic elements are excellent and appeal to the readers. Some of the sections are very interesting, for instance the 15 Minute Manager is a must read for all professionals. As a reader, I would like IT Next to publish more features and articles on Social Media Services such as AR\QR and mobile-based applications such as Android. Special focus on QR code and scanners would also be topics of interest to the readers.

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I am impressed by the overall coverage of various topics in IT Next magazine. I would like to see more content coming on security. Also, I would like to bring to your notice that readers are keen on getting insights into events. Regular updates on different events and trainings happening across India would be of immense interest, even if they are not hosted by 9.9 Media. Over time, the industry would refer to IT Next for such updates. Sunil Varkey Head, Information Security, Idea Cellular Aditya Birla Group

Erratum The cover feature titled ‘The New Men in Black’, security special in the July 2011 issue of IT Next, had inadvertently mentioned a few facts and figures from IDC on the security market on which the IDC would like to share some insights. IDC writes: According to Arun Singh, the Indian IT security

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constitutes security software and appliances market. By the end of 2011, Indian security software market is expected to grow $130 mn and is expected to grow at CAGR of 16 per cent during 20102015. Similarly, the security appliances market in India is expected to grow at CAGR of 20.2 per cent during the period of 2010-2015 with soaring revenue of $162 mn by end of 2011 and $350 mn by 2015. So, if we look at the growth rate that the security appliance market is seeing for the next five years, the market share of security appliance might cannibalise the security software segment with 59 per cent share of total security market by 2015. However, as a mobile user, no one would like to carry a security appliance along with it. That indicates that the dipping market share of security software segment will be there and majorly driven by endpoint security and web security application deployments at user end. Security software market segment-wise secure content and threat management (SCTM) segment had the largest chunk with 79 per cent market share followed by identity and access management segment with 14 per cent share in 2010. The SCTM segment will be majorly driven by endpoint security and network security software. By end of 2011, IDC expects that endpoint security software market will be nearly 67 per cent of the total SCTM software market followed by network security and web security software applications with 13 and 12 per cent respectively. Error regretted

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Boss talk | NINAD KARPE

I T E D U C AT I O N M A N AG E M E N T

Handling Attrition

ne of the greatest challenges IT companies face in common with all people-intensive organisations is ever-increasing attrition, creating the need for talent-creation and retention. At present, we are witnessing youth making fast strides in their careers, partly influenced by social media. This can be seen as both positive and negative. At a time when technology is aiding the development of IT professionals, it is imperative that the industry be focussed on bringing about the best talents and unleashing the true potential of its students.

“It is critical to be in sync with the changing demands of the IT industry and design curricula based on their needs”

Managers of Tomorrow At Aptech, we have been striving to address industry manpower challenges by creating the required talent. Through strong alliances with global IT leaders like Microsoft, Oracle and Red Hat, companies like Aptech help the industry by training students in the latest technologies. This in turn helps the IT industry through the availability of tech-savvy young professionals.

creating a talent pool. The collaborative model addresses the need for new talent and helps keep in check attrition. Having trained more than 6.4 mn students over the past two decades across 40-plus countries, Aptech is a catalyst for growth of new talent. Suggestion BOX

Futuristic Technologies Exposure to Tech Trends It is critical to be in sync with the changing demands of the IT industry and design curricula based on their needs. We, for example, create platforms for IT companies to harness talent as they depute their engineers to adapt to new courses and technologies. Frameworks around MS, .NET, Java EE and open source are drawing the interest of IT managers to develop standalone/client server/web applications. There is particular focus on data management courses around MS Access, SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL. Shortcomings in terms of hardware and networking are bridged with courses on routers, cloud computing, Linux, and Microsoft products and specific courses such as Security+, Certified Ethical Hacker and MCITP, thereby

itnext | O C T O B E R 2 0 1 1

“The books carry a unique perspective on strategy, execution”

The technologies deployed for education – such as e-learning, CBT, web-based tutorials and distance learning – are also shaping IT-related outcomes. Learners are using tools like audiovisual devices, videos, social networking and peer-to-peer discussion rooms. Content can be delivered over the web, CBT, intranet or extranet. Several smart ways of learning come into play this way, including live conferences, which are a very economical model in distance learning. A time will come when our educational assignments, certifications, teaching tools and virtual labs are all in the cloud and can be accessed using thin clients.

titl e: The Al exander trilogy WRITER: VA L ERIO MASSIMO MANFREDI PUBLISHER: MACMILL AN PRICE: Rs 280

The author is MD & CEO, Aptech Ltd and is former MD, CA Technologies

Photo graph y: Jayan K Narayanan

Anwer Bagdadi | boss talk

O C T O B E R 2 0 1 1 | itnext

Opinion

money wise John Boers, CFO & Chief Risk Officer, ING Vysya Life Insurance Co Ltd

RoI Factor

Cost No Constraint for Quality

or a customer-focussed insurance company like ours, the priority is to retain clients. It is also critical to leverage IT and treat it as a catalyst for growth to ensure quality, which is the most credible aspect of the business. To attain quality, we have redesigned our data centre and reviewed the option of building it through an outsourced model. While cost is not a constraint to ensure quality, we spend five per cent of the total sales turnover on our IT budget, while TCO plays a critical role. As a strategy, SLAs are clearly defined and we constantly leverage knowledge of the outsourced data centre vendor to achieve scalability, flexibility and modernisation.

Ensuring Quality When it comes to meeting certain standards and driving efficiency, I would expect a data centre to have the following: High availability, e.g. a TIA 942 tier 3 certified DC that provides an uptime of 99.5 per cent U PS, DGs and ACs should be redundant S calability with respect to power and space Be able to address aspects of physical security such as fire and flood protection, physical access, CCTV monitoring etc We have outsourced the DC at a low TCO to meet all the IT control requirements. We are ready to invest in quality today rather than spend a lot of money during a disaster.

Driving Efficiency The efficiency of a DC is derived from

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“We are ready to invest in quality today rather than spend a lot of money during a disaster” lower costs for power consumption. We replaced old servers with new servers like blade servers which consume less power. Infrastructure such as generators, UPS devices, ACs, chillers, BMS and fire prevention systems can also lead to greater efficiency. The heat generated from servers and the temperature of ACs should be balanced in a manner that leads to reduction in power consumption. A DC is a catalyst for growth and, if embedded with a good IT infrastructure available at all times to the employees, it surely leads to growth. This is a hygiene factor and we need to provide it to all employees at all times.

We have not carried out an ROI with respect to the data centre. However, costbenefit analysis was carried out on a comparison between having an in-house-built DC and an outsourced one. The organisation saves around 30 to 40 per cent in costs over a five-year period under the outsourcing model. The outsourced model option provides a very high resilient, scalable and available infrastructure facility to meet organisation’s growing business needs. The environmental controls of some of the leading hosting service providers satisfy very high data centre and security standards, like those of SunTone, TIA 942 and ISO 27001, and ensure less than two hours downtime per year. Hosting service providers have highly skilled manpower for not only our current requirements but also a totally managed service in future, if required. This option is a time tested one with many customers in the banking and financial segment already having availed the advantages. Besides RoI, the benefit factor is that the IT team is free from the hassle of taking a constant data backup, data centre upgradation, data deluge, network related challenges and so on, as it is taken care of in an efficient manner. The objective is to improve effective turnaround time and pave the way to absorb new IT infrastructure and develop specific applications. Since our core business is insurance and not IT, we expect to avail best services from the vendors who are specialised in building data centres. I expect the operational efficiency driven by IT to enhance customer experience and enable us to draw more customers to our business. At this point of time, the cost is not my concern given our spread across 50 countries as a group company, as IT is critical to us. The sole focus is to have sustenance and continuity of the systems which will enable business growth. The RoI factor to that effect would arrive from our infrastructure and customer data being secured in this model which is critical to our business.

update

Gartner Profiles 44 Technologies for India

Platforms such as SoA, COBIT and cloud computing will change the business dynamics in the ICT space

Tech Trends | In its 2011 Hype Cycle Report for Information

and Communication Technology (ICT), Gartner has profiled 44 technologies that are significant to India. Gartner says that a range of transformational technologies like service-oriented architecture, cloud computing and Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology (COBIT), will enable new ways of doing business across industries. The study classifies these technologies as emerging, mature and evolving. Gartner holds all of them to be important,

t Marke

Gartner Graph On Market Share of PC Makers in India Dell leads the market in the personal computing space in the second quarter of 2011 (Numbers in %)

Significant drop in the use of consumer desktops owing to the increased use of smartphones and tablet PCs Source:GARTNER

itnext | O C T O B E R 2 0 1 1

16 43

Others Dell

Acer HP Lenovo

11 11

HCL

trends deals products services people

as they represent important marketing and investment opportunities. According to the analyst, these transformational technologies will bring in a major change in the industry creating improved and sustainable model. Besides, the research group is witnessing a very high adoption rate towards Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and x86 server virtualisation, both of which are expected to become mainstream in less than two years. Asheesh Raina, Principal Research Analyst, Gartner, said, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Most technologies in India have a high to moderate benefit for organisations and will take two to five years for mainstream adoption. Technologies such as unified communications, mobile advertising, business service management tools and computational-fluiddynamic (CFD) analysis are slipping toward the Trough of Disillusionment and are at the proof-point stage.â&#x20AC;? Despite the economic down turn during the years 2008 and 2009, the ICT market has witnessed a high year-overyear revenue growth in 2010 owing to the demand for the same with changes in buying pattern, advances in software architecture, and evolution of new service delivery models such as SaaS. Gartner presents its views on the progress of some of the most interesting and significant technologies related to ICT in India that contribute to the performance of an organisation.

I llustration: photos .co m

Update I n d u s t r y

The computer in your pen

Upload from memory card

Keyboard on solar power

Inside the Livescribe Echo Smartpen there is a sophisticated computer, with 2GB storage that can run apps. It can record everything you write, say, or hear. You can even sync the audio with your notes.

With built-in speed of 802.11n, Eye-Fi Mobile X2 can make your pictures and video whiz through your Wi-Fi network. If Wi-Fi is unavailable, you can use the Direct Mode feature to transfer files directly from camera to phone.

The Logitech Wireless Solar Keyboard K750, can be powered by the sun and at full charge it can work for up to three months. You can charge it by a normal table lamp too.

IBM’s Chip to Put Human Brain in a Computer Tech Tidings | Research-

ers at IBM have created a new computer chip that mimics the processes in a human brain in a technological and psychological sense. Dharmendra Modha, who oversees IBM’s Cognitive Computing effort and is instrumental in this breakthrough, says, “What we have created are the seeds of an entirely new computing architecture.” The chip can analyse events that are happening currently and take decisions in real time. It is predicted that someday this chip, inspired by the human brain could predict tsunamis and highlight risks in financial

Chip with cognitive skills to predict environmental and market changes

markets. The technology is called cognitive computing, which is a program capable of recognising patterns, making predictions and learning from mistakes. The chips are a part of the six-

Around The World

year-old project that IBM was awarded by Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, an arm of the USA government. The idea was to recreate the brain’s perception, cognitive, sensation, interaction, and action abilities, while also simulating its efficient size and low-power consumption. Involving 100 researchers and some $41 mn in funding from the US government, IBM has spent an undisclosed sum on the project. The chip has digital silicon circuits “inspired by neurobiology to make up what is referred to as a ‘neurosynaptic core’ with integrated memory (replicated synapses), computation (replicated neurons), and communication (replicated axons).”

quick byte

I llustration: photos .co m

Tech Blog Impresario Starts VC Fund Michael Arrington, the founder of the influential technology blog, TechCrunch, has launched a $20 mn venture capital fund in partnership with Patrick Gallagher of VantagePoint Venture Partners. The VC fund goes by the name of CrunchFund, and its main aim is to support tech start-ups in Silicon Valley. Last year Arrington had sold TechCrunch to AOL at a reported price of $30 mn. Sources say that Mike will run the fund and will continue to write for TechCrunch, but will have no editorial oversight.

Leo Apotheker, CEO, HP, when asked about the company’s intention to pull out of consumer electronics space:

“I’m taking ownership for these decisions and investments with a focus on driving actions that deliver value for shareholders...”

O C T O B E R 2 0 1 1 | itnext

update

Computer Heart to Forecast Math formulas to predict drug impact

Tech Tidings | Researchers from

Columbia University, Cornell University and The Johns Hopkins University have developed a computer model of a human heart that can forecast at least some of the side effects of drugs used to treat certain tachyarrhythmias (abnormal heart rhythms). One of the researchers, Colleen Clancy, says, “The goal of the research is to create a virtual drug-screening system that models drug-channel interactions and predicts the effects of drugs on emergent electrical activity in the heart.” Colleen Clancy and her colleagues developed mathematical equations representing the opening and closing of ion channels. These

blog

India Close to 4G Telephony 4G services will soon be launched in India. The system is being developed in such a way that 4G (LTE) networks will remain connected even in those parts of the country where Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) players are yet to develop their infrastructure. The devices will switch to 3G or 2G, depending on what type of network is available. RIL is the only company to hold a pan-India BWA license, and other players in the space, are reported to have finalised their network equipment suppliers. Swedish telecom equipment manufacturer, Ericsson is working with many players in India on long-term evolution (LTE) technology. Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd and AlcatelLucent are also believed to have landed some LTE business. Then there is Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) involved in many filed trails on behalf of major players like RIL and Airtel. A new report from Pyramid Research suggests that by the end of 2016 India could have more than 17 mn mobile broadband customers connected to Long Term Evolution Time Division Duplex (LTE TDD) networks of the BWA players.

first drones airport to open in Wales Finally, robotic planes get an area of 500-square miles with a 4,100 ft runway

Rural Wales has been chosen as the venue for world’s first airport dedicated solely to unmanned aircraft. UK’s Civilian Aviation Authority has dedicated an area of 500-square miles for the new airport, which will have 4,100ft runway. The site is not restricted, and general aviation and military flights will be allowed to proceed through the airspace as normal. 12

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i llustration; sh igil n

News @

equations were then combined with other mathematical algorithms for developing a computer model of the human heart. The researchers looked for side effects, as drugs were mathematically fed to the model. They tested the model on two drugs, lidocaine and flecainide. Both the drugs were effective in slowing down heartbeats, without problems in the model of a single heart cell. But when the same drugs were applied to the tissue model of an entire heart, flecainide caused serious side effects, which proved that computer simulations could help in weeding out potential harmful drugs. The results were later confirmed.

Tech Tidings

update

Youngest Sarpanch Brings SAP Tech Trends | Chhavi Rajawat, the youngest sarpanch of Soda village in Rajasthan, became instrumental in making the German software vendor, SAP, unveil its first ‘e-enabling gram panchayat’ initiative. The village will soon have an Internet and intranet portal; complete with a technology education lab to enable its 10,000 inhabitants 24x7 accessibility to many government services. “There are a lot of government schemes. The benefits of these don’t reach the people because there is no proper data available at the village level,” says Rajawat. The first focus of SAP in the Soda village is to improve the efficiency and transparency in childbirth, marriage and death certificates, and the the focus in the next phase will be on development. projects.

Frequent

update

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TCS -Lufthansa IT Merger Plan IT giant, TCS, is planning an audacious M&A deal to foster growth. According to sources, the company has proposed a $500 mn bid to acquire a controlling stake in Lufthansa Systems, the captive information technology unit of the Frankfurt-based airline. The bid amount represents the upfront payment that TCS is willing to offer in return for a multi-year IT outsourcing contract from Lufthansa. Lufthansa is reportedly planning to divest 51 per cent in the subsidiary. International giants like Hewlett Packard-EDS and IBM are also in the fray to buy a stake in the Lufthansa Billion investment unit. However, TCS may be able to bag the deal as it is in a position on M&A to propose a business structure from IT & ITES in 2011 that will make it compelling for Source: Nasscom Lufthansa to consider the company as a favoured partner. In its bid, Credit Suisse is advising TCS. For the year 2010, Lufthansa’s IT subsidiary had reported revenues of $850 mn. The company serves customers such as British Airways and has 3,000 employees working for it in 16 countries. In 2008, TCS had acquired Citigroup Global Services, the captive business process outsourcing arm of Citi in India, in a $505 mn all-cash deal. The deal came bundled with a commitment from Citi for assured business worth $2.5 bn to TCS for nine-and-a-half years.

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BI | cover story

Enlightening with Intelligence IT managers grapple with the challenges of empowering their organisations through business intelligence solutions By n g e e t h a imaging by anil t

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B cover story | BI

usiness Intelligence platform, still considered a white elephant by most IT heads, though not yet highly pervasive in the market, has made a transition from its

forward to BI to provide the value of IT to the business, traditional image to make its presence felt across industry once they are done with the implementation of transaction verticals. It is beyond doubt that the business demand for systems such as ERP. a proper Business Intelligence (BI) tool is growing within Pendse agrees that the adoption of BI may not be organisations, though the adoption ratio has not kept pace aggressive as long as the challenges from the business users with the demand. continues. “The business users need to develop the habit Bhavish Sood, Research Director, Gartner India, observes of depending on data-based analytics as against the a cultural change enveloping the Indian firms where the practice of experience-based perception,” argues top management is concerned about performance Pendse. However, according to him, high and operational excellence and ready to make data transaction industries such as banks, the necessary investments, if it makes financial services, airlines, telecom and a business sense. “At this point of time, BI few others have absorbed the BI platform. software platform is not pervasive in the Kapil Mehrotra, Head, Applications, country, as the market stands at about iYogi Services Ltd, who has tested out $62 mn, with BI solutions primarily a few vendor solutions, finds a growing used for its reporting capabilities,” need amongst the business users to seek maintains Sood. right information, for the right decisionIt would not be an exaggeration to say, BI market in makers, at the right time. as analysts endorsed, that ‘ease of use’ Suresh Shanmugam, Head, Business factor is now surpassing ‘functionality’ and India Information Technology Solutions, Mahindra BI is considered a comprehensive tool. –Gartner & Mahindra Financial Services Ltd, from his From an adoption standpoint, KN experience in implementing a BI tool, finds the Swaminathan, GM, IS, TVS Motors, maintains top management being convinced with the idea that BI is still in the nascent stages, even while the that BI is the key to run a performance-oriented sales planning tool is actively being demonstrated organisation. in the companies. It is observed that enterprises have accepted Satish Pendse, President, Highbar Technologies, the concept of providing data to customers, and who has implemented SAP BI and Business empowering them with the ability to navigate and Objects, confirms that IT managers are looking

$62 million

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BI | cover story

$10.5 billion

Photo graphy: s ubhoji t paul

Most IT heads echoed that BI is very visualise data in a real-time mode rather expensive, while the performance observed than a report-only structure. is subject to several conditions. SAP’s Estimating the BI market to be in Sharma also agrees that cost is a big tune of $90 mn in the next one year’s inhibitor and as a result, the vendors are time, Srikanth Karnakota, Director, tapping the packaged projects along with Server & Tools Business, Microsoft the other solutions to help customers get Corporation (India) Pvt Ltd, admits off the ground quickly. that enterprises have started realising BI market According to IBM’s Tiwari, lack of that BI relates to profitability and is an opportunity in involvement of the business group is a important tool for efficient business. 2010 deterrent. Availability and quality of data are “The maturity of adoption is best seen –SAP discouraging factors, as one would need previous among BFSI, telecom and retail, followed data in order to fetch better benefits. Pendse by process and discrete manufacturing maintains that promise versus delivery gap has industries,” informs Karnakota. inhibited the adoption and there is considerable cycle Prashant Tiwari, Country Manager, Cognos & time between investments and gains for the business. Business Analytics, IBM Software Group India/ Application heads like Mehrotra opine that BI South Asia, observes that core banking solutions market is a confusing product landscape possessing are taking to BI to address customer requirements a widely divergent technology cost model, with and are increasingly leveraging MIS reporting for complicated deployment amidst speed to market. According to him, the automobile operational limitations. industry is using BI to generate data around its deal In BI implementation, management applications and telecom is trying to increase the IT managers are often its operational efficiency using BI. challenged with regard to Maneesh Sharma, Head, Business Analytics and performance, relevance Technology, SAP India, is bullish about BI market which and ease of use. Another has been thrown up a $10.5 bn opportunity in 2010, and is distressing factor that expected to grow at a significant momentum. “Organisations, Karnakota observes is the including the SME sector is looking at deploying BI tool lack of clarity about what to which will be the differentiator in the competitive market,” expect from BI system and says Sharma. in many cases, translation of Yes, the BI wave has caught up, but the fears have not a business decision-making faded away as the IT managers still face certain barriers to it. system is not the outcome of tools that are implemented. Barriers to BI The cost of implementation, Despite acknowledging the virtues that BI offers, IT managers quality of data and traditional do find certain barriers to its deployment. For instance, TVS’s mindset are also some of the Swaminathan says the main reason for the slow adoption inhibitors. However, those of BI is the lack of a proper tool from any vendor which can who have implemented be configured and implemented immediately. “All solution BI seem to be reaping providers want to take their own sweet time to understand certain benefits. requirement, create a solution, etc., while the users demand a quick solution which can be implemented in a week’s time and can be enhanced with ease and speed,” he says.

“BI tool has allowed managers to track performance across business units, operating subsidiaries and geographic regions” — Kapil Mehrotra, Head, Applications, iYogi Services Ltd

cover story | BI Neighbour’s Envy, IT Managers’ Pride Amidst constraints, IT managers are candid about the value creation with BI by creation of profit opportunity for business groups. Those who have implemented BI, vouched for the benefits that it provided in meeting management’s business needs.

Benefitsof bi According to industry experts, BI provides various benefits to its users. It can eliminate a lot of the guesswork within an organization, enhance communication among the departments while making the co-ordination easy and enable companies to respond quickly to changes in financial conditions, customer preferences, and supply chain operations. BI improves the overall performance of the company while helping the management to gauge the market pulse. Information is often regarded as the second most important resource a company has (company’s most valuable assets are its people). So when a company can make decisions based on timely and accurate information, the company can improve its performance. BI also expedites decision-making, as acting quickly

Go by the BI Functionality, not by Low Hanging Fruit

Techniques combined with appropriate investment plan and business value, will help in selecting the right vendor for Business Intelligence

he biggest challenge that enterprises are facing today is the growth in data and information, which is growing in a geometrical progression. As a corollary, IT managers are scouting for the right tool/tools to strengthen the information value chain. After having arrived at a point where many of the technical challenges and trade-offs of Business Intelligence (BI) are at least well understood, it is imperative to manoeuver to land into safe hands that can meet your requirements at your proposed cost structure. Given the plethora of solutions and the ambiguity surrounding the selection process, IT managers cannot overlook certain aspects of BI selection. For instance, focussing only on BI tools like customised BI solutions, Open source or SaaS-based BI tools is indeed a Herculean task.

Criteria for Selection The primary task is to perform a basic evaluation of the current organisation system with the help of a BI expert. This would help you understand the best tools that can be implemented. How many will use reporting and what kind of users are going to use the BI tools? There are many types and kinds of reporting that can be produced for different levels of users; and not everyone wants to see the dashboards or KPIs.

“Business users need to develop the habit of depending on data-based analytics as against the practice of experience-based perception” —Satish Pendse, President, Highbar Technologies

The next step would be to segregate the users and check for the best of breed BI tools, with users going in for ad hoc analysis, drill down and drill through, predictive analysis and so on. Read about and check out the size of the vendor company and its support level commitment, and run customer reference checks before getting actively involved in PoC (proof of concept).

the executive to the CEO and CIO levels. If the IT manager has plans of using embedded BI, there are cases where he or she needs to embed BI reports into java or dot net applications. The reporting tools should generate reports from multiple data sources like excel and multiple database.

Cost Factor It would be important to check whether you are already running an application by the same vendor. For example: if your company is already using SQL Server or Oracle, you can check out the Microsoft BI or Oracle BI, since it will be easy for the connectivity and reporting. Also make a note to check with other BI vendors. Browse through the recommendations and ratings of the BI vendor or the BI tool by the research groups. Not to forget, the solution should be easy to use and deploy.

“While scouting for the right vendor, the IT manager needs to take into account the functionalities for which BI tool is necessary”

Price factor always plays a major role in decision-making. The cost variation would depend upon the option to go in for either user licence or concurrent licence. You must gauge the situation whether you can invest in customised BI or Open source solution, or SAAS-based BI solution, besides taking into account cost of user-based training. For instance, in case of large enterprises, multiple deployments will cost more for customised BI tools, with licensing and support. Manpower cost to build skills also adds to the investment. It is important for the IT manager to opt for a solution that addresses all the functionalities and provides good support rather than just the cost ratio.

Challenges and Business Benefits IT is important to outmanoeuvre the worst of the challenges taking cognisance of the future requirements and support techniques. To take maximum advantage of the BI, the IT manager needs to develop reports out of multiple data sources such as ERP, relational data source and others.

Functionalities that Matter While scouting for the right vendor, the IT manager needs to take into account the functionalities for which BI tools are necessary. For instance, ad hoc reporting analysis, drill down and drill through, ability to develop dashboards using KPIs and metrics are the key. End user-friendly interface and ease of use are important. You also need to check whether the reporting tool supports all kinds of reporting functionalities for your organisation’s needs at all levels, right from

The BI tool should have the capability to extend to next level of BI reporting such as mobile BI and deployment in tablets. It is ideal to invest in better support system and train in-house technical support team. A clear agreement needs to be signed to avail 24x7 support for the tool from the BI vendor.

Photo graphy: jiten ga ndhi

7% CAGR

Rajasekar Nonburaj, BI Consultant & Head, BI Professional Group, Sydney

group to take advantage of the drill down expected reporting, dashboards, publishing data and correctly on information before the on BlackBerry instruments, alerts through competition can lay its hands. It can also on BI mails and so on. improve customer experience, allowing platform Explaining the modus operandi of the BI for the timely and appropriate response to by 2014 working process, Swaminathan says, “Though we customer problems and priorities. The firms have –Gartner are not very satisfied with its output, the tools that recognized the importance of business intelligence we have deployed take data from the ERP and SQL for the masses has arrived. databases. The data is then presented in specified Mehrotra says, “Depending on the functions and formats. Structured reports, which users require features required, implementing a BI solution calls for at different frequencies, are provided to them. an investment of Rs 50 lakh to 2 crore, which includes Some users require the data on their BlackBerry hardware, software and user licenses.” instruments, which is met using these tools. We Swaminathan has initiated implementation of require certain information to be pumped to users at SAP BW and Microstrategy BI tools within the TVS

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cover story | BI various frequencies, which we are able to do, he adds. Swaminathan observes that the investment on BI would be anywhere between Rs 2 to 3 crore, if its full potential is to be realised, which would be towards hardware, software licenses and persons trained to configure user requirements. Highlighting the inherent benefits that BI tools could offer, Swaminathan says that it helped in evolving a structured report ready for users and improved manpower productivity. For Satish Pendse, who has implemented SAP BI and Business Objects, it meets the needs of analytics and KPIs of various functions such as project monitoring, HR, equipment monitoring, procurement and materials management and a few others. “BI provides dashboards to meet the top layer of these functions and for the head of the business,” says Pendse. Some of the capabilities of BI that impressed him

and his team were rugged back-end, easy to integrate SAPERP, excellent user-friendly front-end and dashboards. Since Pendse went in for the entire suite of SAP which included ERP, CRM, SRM, etc., he could avail considerable advantage in the license cost. “I would say around 25 per cent of the ERP cost would be the BI cost,” maintains Pendse. Financial services organisation such as Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services Ltd, implemented MAIA’s 1KEY BI scheduler solutions for reporting, business analysis and mass mailing requirement and witnessed 25 per cent increase in business productivity. (Refer to case study)

BI Capabilities

Despite the resistance and low take off, BI vendors continue to control the majority stake in the market revenue and some have succeeded in selling into their expansive installed base. They have been promising new releases featuring tighter enterprise application process, and stressing vertical integration that create vertical specific templates. IBM’s Tiwari has worked out a packaged BI solution, ‘Cognos Express’, targeted at the mid-market which comes with multi-level features aimed to meet customer requirements across functions by creating a single window for data warehousing, real-time monitoring, integration with coresystem, and so on. KN Swaminathan, GM, IT, TVS Motors SAP’s Sharma recommends that IT managers should start the BI deployment in smaller and phased manner to fetch better benefits as this will enable the company to identify loopholes. According to him, verticalisaton of BI is gaining prominence as sectors like Oil and Gas, BFSI, healthcare and retail are buying into this concept and tweaking it to their needs. According to Sharma, vertical-specific templates such as SAP’s ‘Out of the Box’ tool embedded with analytics that comes with project level configuration has reduced the complexity of organisational workflow by 80 per cent. According to Microsoft’s Karnakota, the line of business application poses most challenges with its silos approach to information storage. He recommends understanding the hooks, provided by the line of business, to open its information store for a BI solution, as the starting step. “To use BI to the best advantage, IT managers should evaluate which applications need to be interfaced with, and ensure the APIs and hooks to the information stored, are unlocked,” says Karnakota. Karnakota agrees with his peers that vertical BI is intended to solve common issues in the vertical, while at the same time providing simplicity in usage and less reliance on IT, besides integration with various databases and operating environments.

“Consumerisation of BI is possible, if BI can tell people what they do not know based on the underlying data”

Bridging the Business Communication Divide

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cover story | BI

Smart

Workflow Key to BI Structured and accurate data combined with the right skills and business needs will drive intelligent reporting and analysis Often one hears that the enterprise workflow is not geared up to absorb BI and the result of this is that the firm might fail to exploit the inherent potential of the tool. However, there are a few ‘must do’ activities for IT managers, if a BI implementation is planned. While the primary requisite is to have a structured data in place to generate good quality analytics and reporting, there are other key elements, which help in setting the house in order. K N Swaminathan, GM, IS, TVS Motors, recommends that it is important to identify the right kind of people within the company before delegating the task of deploying BI. He says understanding the existing ERP framework and working out architecture to integrate the BI with the applications is vital. Satish Pendse, President, Highbar Technologies Ltd, who has implemented SAP BI and Business Objects, opines that creating an appropriate business case is crucial to avoid any mismatch with regard to expectations and deliverables of the BI. “The BI solution should be architected keeping the existing infrastructure in mind, and should be scalable in nature. Educating the end user about the possible outcome of the BI is imperative.” Vendors opine that when BI is delivered through a portal, collaboration becomes automatic and seamless and in several cases, workflows in BI are related to approvals or corroborating interpretations of data. Srikanth Karnakota, Director, Server & Tools Business, Microsoft Corporation (India) Pvt Ltd, elaborates that the first step to making the environment BI ready is to evaluate a tool that delivers BI seamlessly into a collaborative portal that offers workflow, document management, BI, analytics, mobility and secure retention policies. Prashant Tiwari, Country Manager, Cognos & Business Analytics, IBM Software Group India/South Asia, maintains that it is important to conduct validation workshops to discover the customer status around budget planning, sales strucBI CapaConsumeriture and targets, data gaps, performance issues and financial system, bilities sation of BI which will help in recommending the right tool and also suggest corBI technology According to Gartner’s rective methods. provides organizaSood, BI is on its way to

tional data in such a becoming a commodity For Maneesh Sharma, Head, Business Analytics and Technolway that the organizasolution, paving the way ogy, SAP India, it is important that the IT managers take tional knowledge filters for consumerisation with cognisance of the governance structure in place, be it with can easily associate with the market consolidation hapregard to updating the system accurately and timely, getthis data and turn it into pening. “The vendors are comting insight into information on the wastage happening with information for the orgaing up with packaged solutions regard to production material and so on. nization. Persons involved and lowering the price point to Sanjay Mehta, CEO of MAIA Intelligence says IT heads in business intelligence make BI more pervasive,” says need to take into account reporting and analysis needs of processes may use appliSood. Gartner observes that all business users; educate business users to rely on single cation software and other users are demanding the same source of truthful data; establish data quality competency technologies to gather, experience from their BI tools centre and unlock your enterprise from the transactionstore, analyze, and provide that they have come to enjoy based application for reporting needs, he adds. access to data, and present with their personal tools. Like that data in a simple, useful the iPhone and iPad, Google and manner. Facebook, BI tools must be intuiWhile it is difficult to tive to use, without the need for IT segregate the tangible from assistance. the intangible benefits of BI, BI still has a long way to go to reach Mehrotra admits that it has the consumerisation tools status. led to cost reduction, revenue TVS’s Swaminathan points out, improvement, headcount “Consumerisation of BI is possible, reduction, and lowered TCO; and if BI can tell people what they do not most of all increased customer know based on the underlying data.” satisfaction, creating a risk-free But Pendse is positive about BI being smart work flow. consumerised. He says, “Availability

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BI | cover story increase, with data discovery platforms also earning the highest ease of use and complexity of analysis scores. Vendors and IT managers agree that there would be increased proliferation of interactive visualisation tools, more integrated data mining and packaged analytic applications that encapsulate the complexity of using sophisticated BI analysis tools. IT managers are in sync with Gartner’s predictions and are working out ways to absorb BI more aggressively. For instance, TVS’s Swaminathan has plans to implement BI tools around planning, budget forecasting and production areas and evaluation of the best tools that are available and which can be a good fit. Swaminathan says, “Implementing BI solutions add to the career advantage of an IT manager, as the top management gets to appreciate his/her efforts in bringing knowledge and information to Maneesh Sharma, Head, Business Analytics the doorstep of and Technology, SAP India the company in the form of dashboards. The trust reposed in the project leader goes up,” he adds. The future model of BI as per IBM’s Tiwari’s observation is a statistical mode for analysing the state of defects in the system, finding remedial solutions, and enabling the tool to provide risk-based information in real time. According to SAP’s Sharma, in-memory technology for mobility is gaining prominence which is integrated with social media. He observes a cloud-driven model evolving and getting into the hybrid mode for reporting and analysis. Microsoft’s primary objective is to cater to the consumerisation of BI aspect. “Our aspiration is to ensure scalability and integration with most data sources, ensuring that BI related usage scales go up,” maintains Karnakota. “The future of SQL Server and Windows Server will be innovating processors and OEMs to ensure that integrated innovation leads to lower overall costs, with built in OLTP and OLAP\BI capabilities. Efforts are on by most vendors to integrate BI with the line of business solutions to keep BI stack horizontal, resulting in high degree of customisation. MAIA’s CEO Sanjay Mehta believes that BI will meet the demands of tomorrow’s digital natives; integrate seamlessly with cloud data and platforms; align people, conversations, and data with business strategy; and make the most of the infrastructures we have today. Highbar’s Pendse is working towards creating the ‘wow’ factor in the BI space by enabling the top management to track KRAs and KPIs with effective back-end integration with ERP.

of BI output on mobile instruments such as smartphones, iPads, etc., is greatly helping improve the adoption of BI. Over medium term, one can expect this to catch the attention of business leadership. They will demand BI on mobile instruments from IT heads and it will be boom time for BI.” SAP’s Sharma believes that consumerisation wave is catching up as customers go in for cultural change. “BI has transitioned itself from ‘nice to have’ solution stage to ‘must have’ solution among business heads. According to Karnakota, the self-service approach of the business users for access to information through mobile offices cutting across corporate firewalls is driving the consumerisation wave and BI will soon be a sought after tool.

Road Map Analysts have clearly seen a positive growth curve for BI, as customers shift from measurement to analysis, forecasting and optimisation. Going ahead, Gartner predicts that interactive visualisation, predictive analysis, dashboards and online analytical processing (OLAP) usage will

“Organisations, including the SME sector, are looking at deploying BI tool, which will be the key differentiator in the competitive market”

o c t o b e r 2 0 1 1 | itnext

cover story | BI

Barriers

What is the state of adoption of BI by IT heads?

As Indian companies witness a yearly growth of 25 to 30 per cent, the need for business intelligence (BI) tools and services to create smarter, more agile and efficient businesses, is increasing. The BI software market is estimated to reach $65.4 mn in 2011, up by 15.7 per cent from 2010. There is increased adoption of BI tools across industry verticals, owing to increased competition and globalisation, which paves way for increased productivity. What are the barriers to adoption of BI?

Cost and complexity barriers restrict user adoption and deployment across the enterprise. Data migration and integration are also the most potent inhibiting factors to BI adoption. Other challenges are departmental silos, data access, clean data, employee resistance, lack of business rules, etc. Getting the right data quality and one version of the truth and also ineffective data governance are other obstacles to adoption. Additionally, the take up of BI is being hindered by: employees resistant to change; cultural resistance; lack of understanding of BI role in improving business; lack of bandwidth due to competing priorities; lack

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Sanjay Mehta, CEO of MAIA Intelligence, highlights the barriers preventing IT managers from adopting business intelligence, while delving into its innovations and capabilities of skills internally in the line of business; and the fact that existing cultures do not encourage sharing of information. Elaborate the steps involved in making environment Business Intelligence ready.

The prerequisites for a BI deployment are ensuring that data is clean; business users are effectively trained and shortlisting and selecting a BI tool which gets deployed quickly and is able to adjust as you go. IT managers should deploy BI with the clear idea that there are numbers out there that they need to find, and know roughly where they might be. Post-deployment, IT managers should initially not spend a huge amount of time upfront developing the perfect reports because needs will grow as the business evolves. While building a data warehouse, IT managers need to take an integrated approach from the beginning and ensure that they are not locking themselves into an unworkable data strategy further down the road. Elaborate on the capabilities of BI tools to address vertical-specific needs.

There are two types of verticalisation

BI | cover story

“Dirty data should be tackled before making it ready for BI, as this may drastically affect business profitability”

business knowledge, improved happening in the BI space. One work processes and more in consolidation, and the other in effective relationships. terms of industry segments. Both are taking place on the established grounds that BI verticalisation What steps need to be taken to does not make sense for a few manage workflow smartly? generics. Financial consolidation Organisations must understand is seeing many knitted BI solutions and address critical challenges —Sanjay Mehta, CEO, MAIA Intelligence coming its way. Due to heavy M&A to manage workflow smartly in activity and a stricter regulatory a BI environment. The BI projenvironment, all branches, subsidiaries and sister concerns ect has to be recognised as a cross-organisational business of organisations have to have some common financial bindinitiative and it needs to be understood that, as such, it difing. That is where BI is capturing the screen space. The other fers from typical standalone solutions. The project should area is amongst industries such as BFSI, pharmaceuticals and follow a breakdown structure and a methodology. Business telcos, and a few others where templates are generated. Indusrequirements should be analysed and business activities tries like manufacturing, BFSI, pharma and healthcare, logisstandardised. Dirty data should be tackled before making tics and retail are some of the early adopters of BI in India. it ready for BI, as this may drastically affect business profitability. The necessity for and the use of meta-data should also be understood well. What kind of profit opportunities and productivity gains has this created for IT managers?

BI resolves reporting challenges such as creating one version of the truth, enables information self-service and creates meaningful data rollups for users. It also seamlessly integrates changes to business and consolidates multiple systems across the enterprise. What are the top trends that you see in the BI space?

Quite a few trends like self-service, real-time analytics, onthe-go data visualisation and business intelligence through mobile platforms are shaping up in BI space. All types of critical decisions – buying, selling, monitoring and optimising – are being made on the fly. BI on rich internet application (RIA) technology is evolving; mobility will be an important trend to deliver information on PDAs. The tool has the capability to send the report figures through an SMS gateway. What kind of business benefits have you observed using BI tools?

Is consumerisation of BI for real? How?

BI is still too elitist and growing too slow. Currently, it is in the corporate arena and needs to move to the consumer arena. How can we change this paradigm? How can BI affect consumers’ daily lives and affect decision-making as it does with internet searches or in the way Web 2.0 is doing? How can BI become a utility for decision-making with consumer BI applications being developed? Currently, our decisions are based on opinions, recommendations, advertisements and surveys and not actual data, which is measured or analysed. BI can drive consumerisation if segments across the enterprise rely on their own internal data to set goals. What innovations do you observe in BI?

We have already started exploring the Web 2.0based technology wave of RIA-based BI. Business users had never experienced this kind of intuitive GUI before. They loved this kind of sexy-looking dashboard dancing to their whims and fancies.

15.7 %

Some of the business benefits gained by our customers include regulatory and compliance adherence, enhanced sales revenue by identifying cross-sell and What are your plans for BI? up in 2011 in up-sell opportunities, better and clearer Our effort is to create something that is: assessment of non-financial revenue and • Simple: The right interfaces for the right BI market over costs and an increase in IT and business people at the right time 2010 process productivity. IT managers have saved • Seamless: Tightly integrated with data –Gartner costs through building reports into the core sources, applications and business processes business application (transaction reporting) and • Social: Allows people to collaborate around focussing more on the core development of other analysing information and making decisions productive applications rather than allotting time • Strategic: Closes the loop between strategy and to the frequent report requests from the business execution users across their organisations. The roadmap for the future is on-demand BI and Intangible benefits accrued through BI are embedded Business Intelligence. performance improvement, time savings, greater

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cover story | BI

Case study: Mahindra and Mahindra Financial Services Ltd

Intelligent

Decision Suresh Shanmugam, Head, Business Information Technology Solutions, MMFSL opted for a Business Intelligence solution to take care of the vast data needs of the Rs 15,000 cr group

“BI is supposed to project a clear picture, to define the corporate strategy and drive profitability for the company” —Suresh Shanmugam, Head, Business Information Technology Solutions, MMFSL

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Photography: jiten ga ndhi

inancial services organisation, Rs 15,000 crore group Mahindra and Mahindra Financial Services Ltd (MMFSL), which deals with over 10,00,000 customers has increasingly leveraged IT to drive operational efficiency. The growth expansion created a need for improving performance at the business level, which enabled the management to meet the future targets. This provoked Suresh Shanmugam, Head, Business Information Technology Solutions, MMFSL, to review a comprehensive BI (Business Intelligence) solution that helped to analyse business, improve data collection and performance and meet future targets.

BI | cover story Need for BI Increased transactions required MIS reporting and data analysis solution, which generated and scheduled reports, helping the management track the performance and dayto-day operations. BI was considered an appropriate tool to draw the required information to be observed in real time. This is expected to help in bringing productivity gains.

Challenges The challenges were immense for Shanmugam, as the top management’s expectations were huge. BI was supposed to project a clear picture, to define the corporate strategy and drive profitability for the company. “The top management understands that data they received through the system would enable them to understand the market pulse, identify strengths and weaknesses, while measuring the progress of the company from time to time,” says Shanmugam. An automated email was of prime importance. While the IT team had initiated a SMS solution, this was restricted to providing summary and not details. The details were sought as part of spreadsheet driven reports.

within the team as well as across zonal teams, which was hitherto done based on backdated information.

Creating a PoC Before developing a proof of concept (PoC), the initial challenge for the team was to rope in the top management into the BI arena. “As this was a Greenfield project, both the business users as well as the development team did not have an idea of what the end product would look like,” The management was not convinced about investing in technology during such cash crunch times. The IT team took a decision to do a PoC to generate reports from various businesses and back-office applications, which could help understand the data in terms of sales collection. The outcome of this had positive impact on the management.

Implementation Plan

Implementing 1KEY BI was done with certain objectives in mind, which included, providing business users with clear opportunities to improve their business performance through information delivery. The information was reflective of the business communities’ processes and their outcomes; and proSelection Process vide appropriate levels of formatting, This was the toughest of all tasks for timeliness, history, detail and quality as the IT head, as BI as a technology is increase at the per project specifications. still in the nascent stages. The market is business user As per the plan, we hired two invaded by a plethora of solutions, each professionals, one with technical knowledge vendor vouching to have the best solution. level due to BI’s to implement, and another to impart training to After a detailed evaluation process, MMFSL user-friendly the business users and IT software group. During went ahead to deploy 1KEY Scheduler and multiinterface the implementation process, certain reports’ dimensional data analysis tool from MAIA, prirequirements got easily resolved, while a few were marily for its mass mailing feature. According complex and time consuming. It was done in a phased to Shanmugam, the automated mailing system manner to observe the impact and consequences there added predictability to the AIS (Automated Identiof. The project team delivered the best through 1KEY fication System) environment. Scheduler where mass mailing was made possible to convert the information into reports. Product Evaluation Criteria Budget not being a constraint for MMFSL, the amount allocated for BI was to the tune of Rs 50 lakh. Business Benefits Shanmugam and team based their evaluation around serAccording to Shanmugam, the success of existing 1KEY vice level capabilities of the vendor, extent of customisation BI implementation boosted their confidence to procure the required, security features, technology fit, performance, newly launched 1KEY Touch, an interactive dashboard number of installations, existing customer reference, cost, based on the RIA (Rich Internet Application) technology. support and services of the vendor, flexibility, scalability, Implementation of 1KEY has resulted in 30 to 35 per cent migration capabilities to another platform and hardware productivity improvement at the IT level in terms of meeting and software requirements. the users’ reporting analysis needs. “We observed 20-25 per cent productivity increase at the business user level due to user-friendly interface of the solutions and its capability Why 1KEY to provide on-the-fly ad hoc reporting analysis”, says We found the 1KEY Touch BI tool possessed the ability Shanmugam. Some of the other advantages that MMFSL to create a single dashboard using reports from disparate saw were faster decision-making owing to the interactive systems, which is an added advantage, besides other specigraphics, gauges and filters and deeper insights into the fied prerequisites. The business agility feature enabled the business user pay out scenarios. Shanmugam intends to operational managers to monitor the productivity on realimplement BI at the finance level now. time basis and make tactical decisions on resource allocation

20-25% productivity

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insight | BPM

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BPM | insight

Banking on BPM Paradigm

Streamlined business workflow, information in real time, cost saving and customer confidence attract banks to BPM technology By H a r sha l P e n d s e

Why BPM Speed is the key differentiator now in the banking sector, besides efficient service delivery mechanism. Considering the widespread portfolio of process existing in a bank, spreading across investments, insurance, or the banking function itself, several bottlenecks arise in execution and maintenance of processes. Banks have been leveraging technology across its workflow, and BPM has been one of the tools that is looked at for effective integration. The reason for using BPM is that the tools support

conversations between the bank and its customers â&#x20AC;&#x201D; allow banks or other organisations to create multiple applications for designing business process models and rules that also let them, for instance, create simulations for potential hosts within banking expansion plans or while maintaining various processes that occur within the organisation. The idea for a BPM system first arose from a need to integrate capabilities across the enterprise for business transformation.

What to look in a BPM A plethora of solutions falls under the BPM curve. However, the idea is to spot certain solutions which would address specific workflow. Banks can look at various functionalities such as BPM technologies that exist, including Business Process Analysis (BPA), Automated Business Process Delivery (ABPD), Business Activity Monitoring (BAM), Business Intelligence (BI) and Business Rule Management Systems (BRMS), among others. These BPM technologies, complemented by compliance with Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) and web services, allow for strategic, pan organisation views spanning departments, branches and geographies. Banks can choose to deploy BPM to handle volume, lowvalue or critical transactions all via a single window. The whole idea is to go beyond deployments for routine transactions and implement BPM for complex processes related to, say,

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Photog raphy: photos .c om

the latest narrative for much of global business has been the whole new paradigm of doing business by leveraging the benefits of the much touted Social Web 2.0. Market experience has demonstrated that business processes in large enterprises are riding the crest of this new wave to compliment traditional process-to-process interfaces. Business Process Management, or BPM, in its new avatar takes cognisance of the realities of modern business to weave in a process automation approach where digital and traditional platforms work together. BPM initiative is more significant in the banking industry where business process complexity often makes process execution or delivery very arduous, shutting off individual processes from leveraging the advantages of an environment that allows different processes to work in tandem.

insight | BPM

“BPM initiative is more significant in the banking industry where business process complexity often makes process execution or delivery very arduous” —Harshal Pendse Director, Sales Consulting, Oracle India compliance or risk assessment. Therefore, a BPM suite should not only provide visibility to end-to-end financial processes, but also provide integration across legacy systems, giving managers access to real-time business intelligence.

Key Trend

Resolving challenges The challenges for PSU banks, with networks spanning rural and urban India, is not with IT, but with business processes with regard to putting up a dashboard. The challenge has been around the huge unstructured data that they have. BPM tools address these customer challenges. BPM solutions address such banking requirements with specific template tools. Besides PSUs, rural and co-operative banks are also deploying the tools. For instance, a private bank which processes 10,000 transactions per day has witnessed a cost saving of US $1.54 mn a year through the adoption of BPM across consumer finance, home loan, credit card, and foreign currency businesses.

Social BPM is coming into prominence, though the contours are still not clear, and it involves diverse voices for process improvement. It is not just about wrapping social networks around BPM suites, but more about involving all relevant stakeholders across the enterprise in a collaborative environment where human-centric and system-centric components are developed using standards-based architecture. * Understand business goals and Social BPM tool drives three objectives, map out the business business benefits in terms of improving operations and prioritise the key areas efficiency, visibility, and agility. It unifies collaboration, enables dynamic human * Define the entire project into multiple interaction and extends communication phases with realistic deadlines and with modern Web 2.0 channels. objectives. This allows the various

Guiding Doctrines

Deployment Process The prerequisite for any IT manager before deploying BPM is to comply with IT security need and work on a cost-benefit analysis. The first step would be to understand capabilities that are required — the interactions and processes that need to be supported such as the steps involved in the banking transaction process, starting from account opening. The next logical step would be to assess the kind of capabilities that already exist, if any. It is critical to deploy BPM on a pilot project before deploying it across the entire organisation.

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stakeholders internally and outside the organisation to collaborate effectively and easily * Ensure a cumulative process. Avoid disparate phases by building on each phase to ensure proper integration and smoother information workflow across the enterprise * Pure human-centric BPMs are passé — what corporations now want is a unified tool that can integrate EAI and business process * Tools that support open standards and encapsulate how businesses work in the current environment, while seamlessly integrating with future changes

Key Takeaways While, adoption of BPM is not really cheap, the returns and the benefits are umpteen. A recent study from an analyst group indicates that about 63 per cent of customers took less than six months to complete their projects, while 23 per cent of them deployed BPM in just three months. Keeping projects short and manageable give the enterprise good control over the changes and allow users — in the same office, across a country or even across time zones — to adapt. The best practices of BPM will ensure that the return on investment (RoI) is achieved in less than three years. If the data is structured, the RoI is faster. BPM will help the banks in monitoring KPIs and SLAs, analyse and identify trends, optimise business model, while creating business friendly workflow.

insight | BPM

I llustration: photos .co m

ost IT managers aspire to experience the benefits of ERP and want the pride of deploying and implementing it. Building a business case is a must to fulfil this ambition, which in turn, can be based on multiple premises. Some of these include limitations of legacy applications in meeting business needs, obsolescence of technology, de-support of existing applications by product vendors, and improving the efficiency of internal systems for better bottom line results. Given the multitude of reasons and their interdependent nature, defining and building an enterprise applications business case has become an increasingly complex process. It is critical to go into the basics and understand what the existing systems

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BPM | insight

Experience the

ERP Euphoria A systematic and need-based approach is called for, if one wants to experience the joys of putting ERP in place By Sun i l K u m a r S o n i

can or cannot deliver; and make build versus buy decision to create a process for building a business case.

What Can ERP Do? The enterprise resource planning (ERP) products available in the market are essentially transaction processing systems embedded with two very strong features â&#x20AC;&#x201D; integration of process and data across functions, and implementation of generally accepted best of breed processes for various industry segments. a) Data Integration: Single Source of Truth Data management is the most critical issue across organisations, with the

Steps in the ERP Process Strategic plan Readiness assessment Preparing for vendor selection Vendor selection Planning the implementation Implementing the ERP solution Post-implementation assessment

data deluge and levels of transformation that it goes through. The challenge lies in deciphering the valuable data within the company, which is continuously being churned. b) Integration of Processes The clichĂŠ is to break the functional silos that traditionally existed and organise them into business processes. Creating a hierarchy of internal and external customers as part of the process, will enable organisations to meet its objectives. The biggest benefit delivered by the integrated process model provided by ERP products is the reduction in transaction failures, which is related

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insight | BPM to revenue loss and operational efficiency. c) Unified Platform Preferred Management of IT costs due to heterogeneity of applications has been a major nightmare for IT managers. Organisations typically deploy a mix of home-grown applications and best of breed products. This has certain adverse effects resulting in substantial cost increase. Opting for a unified technology platform will ensure increased competency in a comprehensive manner. d) Governance & Compliance Governance and compliance are the key change agents. Broadly speaking, most of the pre-built ERP type products have developed functionalities addressing the governance needs of organisations and these call for fresh applications and doing away with legacy ones. e) System Redesign, Elimination of Waste, Reduced Overall Cost of Doing Business One of the strongest points in favour of packaged solutions is the opportunity for forced adoption of industry best practices. EAs typically have inbuilt bestin-class business processes allowing organisations to make a relatively quick change from inefficient processes to more organised, orchestrated and efficient ones.

“While increase in operational efficiency or in net profit is the primary requisite, taking cognisance of converting intangible benefits into tangible numbers on the balance sheet is vital” —Sunil Kumar Soni Chief Information Officer (CIO), Ester Industries Ltd

Do it in Phases The case for build or buy decision typically needs to start with a high-level functional fitment from available products. However, the mistake that organisations usually make is that after doing a functional fitment, they do a comparative evaluation between competing products and thus, by default, make a buy decision. In majority of the cases nonfunctional issues and requirements take a backseat even though they are instrumental in deciding the fate of the implementation. To give an instance, a classic case in point is the initial hype created by integrated CRM products. CRM

wave started in the late 90s and the products offered a whole range of functionality sitting on an integrated database. Over the years, however, CRM implementations had a higher degree of failures/lower adoption rates as compared to ERP products or niche functional products. Organisations now realise that it is more pragmatic to successfully implement a small part of the CRM functionality rather than trying to implement the full set. This case illustrates the need for careful decision on build vs buy. While products offer a whole range of functionality, they don’t cover every nook and corner of the business,

$7.5 11% $180 bn mn

CAGR for the ERP market through 2011 in India Source: AMR Research

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Indian ERP market in 2010

ERP market opportunity in India Source: erppandit.com

BPM | insight so to speak. On the other hand, business issues and problems are not compartmentalised in functions and processes and often not only cut across them but involve non IT issues as well. If there is a direct solution available in a product, then the problem is solved. However, as is often the case, if the complete problem cannot be solved by one or two products, then a careful build decision or a mix of build and buy decision needs to be taken.

Why the Change? IT managers need to have clarity about the need for a new technology. In the absence of such a case, the measurement of benefits becomes fuzzy and the new technology becomes a new legacy. Common reasons cited for the change include: a) Burnt platform with no more additions possible resulting in a competitive disadvantage. For example, a case could be when the expansion plans of an organisation are limited by the IT systems currently deployed. For instance, a retail chain had deployed a system which could account for only 999 stores. So when the organisation realised that they could cross over 1000 stores, they had no option but to replace the system on that ground alone. In such cases, the survival or growth of business needs to take precedence over the traditional RoI factors. b) Obsolete technology, which would be a critical decision that the IT manager needs to make if a technology upgrade and application change is necessary rather than invest in costly remedial efforts. c) Raising the benchmark for the competition would help, as leading organisations worldwide, routinely invest in forward looking technologies by way of product implementations, or bespoke development to beat competition and stay ahead.

RoI is Key Once a need has been established, and a decision to either build an enterprise class application or implement a product has been made, issues related to

1 to2%

of sales turnover will be ERP investment Source: erppandit.com

funding of the project arise. Typically, organisations need to address the question of how, what and when the return on investment (RoI) will take place. While increase in operational efficiency or in net profit is the primary requisite, taking cognisance of converting intangible benefits into tangible numbers on the balance sheet is vital. The RoI can come either in the form of an increase in revenue or from reduction of operating costs. Technology is deployed to drive down the cost when it is commoditised. In such cases, EAs not only fund themselves but also become a sound business investment. In business segments where material costs are a significant component of the overall cost of goods or services, ERP can be completely funded by reducing material carrying costs, increasing

Benefits from ERP Constant information flow Tracking the customer supply chain made easy Single database integration of marketing, sales, quality control, products, supply, inventory, etc utomated and standardised A business process Single dashboard for financial data IT systems will have large appetite to absorb M&A requirements

inventory turns and reducing finished goods distribution costs.

Bringing Homogeneity One of the relatively recent challenges that organisations have started facing is the heterogeneity of applications. This has resulted in a new field called harmonisation. Setting the correct context for right applications is important. The paradox is that as no single application or technology can meet all business requirements, the decision-making fluctuates. Besides, new acquisitions lead to newer requirements along with integration challenges. Application fragmentation causes information processing to become tedious and time consuming, leading to delay in decisions, besides the increased maintenance and support cost. Thus, the question around how to drive harmonisation within ERP crops up. The word harmonisation is defined as a service that allows a fresh look at the systems in their entirety. It enables process integration, creating common data platform with information delivery going in real time. The concept of harmonisation or homogeneity takes cognisance of the need for: multiple technologies and products to co-exist; country specific versions of processes to be made available; product/service specific versions of processes; and uniform categorisation of data. Taking these factors as given, the study then reviews all the available processes, data definitions and technology platform. The processes are then re-engineered to arrive at a minimum set of common processes, where the data gets separated and managed efficiently. The transaction failure points are also identified and solutions are devised to eliminate the failures. Another term that is coming into vogue which is critical in case of ERP, is harmonisation remediation project, which will enable IT managers to take a decision that is a trade-off between getting benefits out of the implementation and the cost of managing change that will necessarily follow such remediation.

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t is difficult for organisations, constantly looking at organic and inorganic growth, to sustain themselves given the vast business ecosystem. Given this backdrop, every organisation feels the need to depend on a few groups or individuals for business sustenance. Transactions are constantly happening between groups, either verbal or written, and proposals floating across aspects. However, amidst the urgency to get the task done, most organisations and their executives or managers overlook certain finer aspects of the transaction process and documents, in particular the RFP (Request for Proposal) details. The Information Technology industry is not an exception to this. IT managers are constantly

Food for Thought on Writing

RFP

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challenged to make the right choice in terms of the product or technology deployment. Given the plethora of technologies, products and vendors invading the market, IT managers are on the edge of ambiguity. One of the ways to get it straight and right is to have a clear proposal which is self-explanatory. This is indeed difficult, as there are always discrepancies in any document.

Must Factor in RFP There are a few ingredients which form a critical part of an RFP design, irrespective of the product, technology or business that one cannot ignore. They include: a) Organisational overview: The brief about the organisation one represents. This component should include details of primary business expertise, history, net worth, global presence and employee head count.

Clarity, precision and pragmatic approach to drafting an RFP document will drive business interest by D h a n a n jay Rokde

Photo graph y: Jayantr K Narayanan i maging : prasanth

insight | RFP

RFP | insight b) Target audience: Clearly addresses as to who this RFP is meant for. You may want to add industry credentials like ‘Looking for an ISO 9001 vendor’; or look for past implementations like ‘Vendor organisations who have undertaken large bridge-building projects exceeding Rs 150 crore’. You can also add sector-specific details like ‘Should have worked on multiple government projects concerning microfinance and credit’. c) Required deliverables, materials, services and maintenance: This section needs to contain as much detail as possible of the desired outcomes from the overall deliverables. d) Providing technical details in the proposal is mandatory for the vendors, to clearly understand the challenges. e) Some obvious assumptions may be excused; however all contractual bindings, agreements should be mentioned here. The selected vendor will not engage in a similar engagement until the cessation of the contract till the stipulated period. f) Deadlines, stages and milestones: The entire activity needs to broken down in phases, and each phase should have a clear deadline. It is very important to clearly define this section as it can be linked to payments in stages. Hence you can keep a track of progress, and also budget the outflow accordingly. For instance, assign desired deadlines and percentage payout of the total project bid- finalisation of design, build prototype, pilot training, crew training, test flight, etc. g) Realistic deadline for the vendor to produce the final deliverable. h) Maximum bid criteria: Based on your budgets you need to specify the penultimate monetary figure which you are not willing to exceed for the particular activity. You can also mention a disqualification criteria if any vendor’s bid exceeds the said value. i) Award of contract: The selection criteria must be very clear and precise. The criteria may be lowest bid, maximum implementation experience, best industry credentials, maximum subject matter expertise, best third

Points to Ponder 1. Do not follow some random template 2. What works for some, may not work for you 3. R FP template is just a starting tool 4. C lear communication reduces 40 per cent of the complications in future dealings 5. Be as descriptive and precise as possible 6. A void ambiguous language to avoid multiple clarifications and followups 7. A lways include information of the current environment 8. M ention of existing processes and the desired process is a must 9. H ave clear performance and milestone indicators 10. Develop clear vendor prequalification criteria within the RFP

party negotiated prices, etc. While mentioning date of award of the contract is vital, providing multiple contact details is critical.

Credibility at Best

A request for information (RFI) has a greater capacity to get information about the bidder’s capability for delivery of material and services. RFIs should be used for major procurements.

Some of the clauses that should be incorporated and which determine the authenticity of the proposal would be around legal, penalty, personnel, project re-negotiation and modification claims. Legal bindings on the vendors must be clearly mentioned, e.g., signing of non-disclosure and compete agreements; and applicable laws like trade secret, employee health and safety, etc. Similarly, should the vendor delay the overall project or delivery; you should have a penalty clause in place to protect your organisation from the resultant financial harm. The penalty clauses should be clear in terms of the amount of deviation and the amount (or percentage) or penalty. For instance, should the vendor forfeit an amount of Rs 10 lakh for every 30 days of delay in the project; or in case the reliability and efficiency of the space craft drops below 99 per cent at anytime, he should be penalised an amount of Rs 50 lakh?” Vendors may often look to further outsource the work to other parties or consultants for a small margin. A personnel clause can protect your organisation from these freelance or third parties. It is a good idea to mention a mandate like: “All vendor personnel must have served in the vendor organisation for a period of at least three years” or “All personnel deployed by the vendor are subject to scrutiny like reference checks and technical interviews”. It is normal for large projects running over a period of four to five years, to deviate from the deadline or budget due to reasons beyond the control of your or the vendor organisation. To normalise such a loss; you should have a re-negotiation clause to protect the interests of both the parties.

A request for tender (RFT) is used by public organisations and governments.

Dhananjay Rokde, Global Head, Information Security,Cox and Kings Group

Alternate Proposals A request for quotation (RFQ) is used when price is the only winning condition.

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Barrie Sheers | interview

Your Quest Ends with Automation Barrie Sheers, Vice President, Asia Pacific & Japan, Quest Software, the $767.1 mn IT system management solutions provider, in conversation with N Geetha, points to the increasing trend among IT managers to look for end-to-end application monitoring of IT infrastructure

With IT Heads facing the challenge of ‘do more with less’, how does Quest help them achieve this objective. The focus has been around offering innovative IT management solutions that improve operational efficiency, boost productivity, control costs, reduce risks, and facilitate compliance. It revolves around the need to aid customers in simplification of the development process, accelerate release cycles and increase code quality for database and SharePoint applications. There is an increasing demand and need for automating all functionalities and tasks. We find increasing need for automation across functions, which is driving down cost. Among all the solutions that you offer, which addresses the challenge of bringing down cost? How? Almost all of our solutions offer cost-effectiveness and simplification of the processes. We have

identified a collage of solutions spread across several domains that qualify for such IT deployments as administration, automation, development, optimisation, migration, consolidation, identity and access management, data protection, and performance monitoring in the physical, virtual and cloud environments. Most IT projects revolve around migration process, active directory and databases, and IT heads are seeking right tools to reduce cost. Performance management applications are the key solutions that address customers’ challenges and help in bringing down infrastructure management costs.

Quest’s objective is to provide intelligent monitoring and optimisation of IT infrastructure. Can you elaborate with an example as to how you are able to achieve this? Customers, in the current setup, need intelligent solutions to monitor networks, applications,

database and virtualised infrastructure. Our solutions provide monitoring support and have the capability to diagnose and resolve issues in real time. For instance, the products Foglight and vFoglight help clients in effectively monitoring and managing their IT infrastructure. The most critical challenge for a customer now is to ensure that applications meet the needs of the business, simultaneously improving user satisfaction, while tracking the root cause of the problem. The steps to address this would be to identify the backend applications and components that cause the problem; get the visibility needed to manage realuser performance at service level and capture every user session from business, IT and end user perspectives to get a 360 degree view of end user management. Quality of diagnosis is the foremost criteria for IT heads now, who aspire to consolidate and watch entire applications on a single dashboard.

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interview | Barrie Sheers What are the challenges that the IT heads face with regard to IT management? A considerable amount of time and resources are spent in carrying out day-to-day administration of IT systems. IT heads seek intelligent tools to help them automate these processes and instead, focus on critical projects. Another common challenge faced is the need to constantly upgrade and carry out the migration of their systems. The tools that can seamlessly carry out migration with minimal downtime to end users are invaluable. User administration, management and access control, from a security point of view across diverse applications, is a growing challenge for most customers, and they are keenly looking at comprehensive identity and access management solutions. Which component of the total IT infrastructure is most difficult to manage and why? We have a diverse set of client base and each one of them has different priorities based on the nature of their business. For our e-commerce clients, minimal response time is the priority. For enterprise customers with large user base, rapid allocation of resources to users and managing their identities is a concern. In the BFSI segment, identity and access management (IAM) and data protection are the key issues. For large telecom and IT/ITES customers, database management and performance optimisation are important. IT managers seek solutions across these diverse needs under one roof. Customers across industry verticals require 100 per cent uptime, though the transaction systems and requirements may be different. Elaborate on your services and how it is helping IT

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heads (which is the most critical component)? The IT management solutions is a $2 bn market opportunity in the Asia Pacific region and about 50 per cent is done around virtualised environment. We spend more than 18 per cent of our revenues on R&D, besides, customer support is another key focus for us. According to IDC, about 100,000 customers across banking, manufacturing, aerospace, healthcare, telecommunications, and many other sectors have deployed IT management tools to increase operational efficiency. We help our clients manage better and get more out of their critical applications, databases, windows infrastructure, and virtual environments. Our

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Customers, in the current set-up, need intelligent solutions to monitor networks, applications, database and virtualised infrastructureâ&#x20AC;? Windows management solutions support Active Directory, Exchange, Office Communications Server, SharePoint, SQL Server, System Centre, Windows Server and PowerShell. Questâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Toad is the marketleading database management tool designed to boost DBA and developer productivity as well as improve database performance. We offer database management products for Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, MySQL and Sybase. Our

Barrie Sheers | interview User account and password synchronisation is being employed and organisations are adopting suites with features ranging from user provisioning to access and activity auditing. There is increased interest in deployment of identity and access management tools

What are the budgetary requirements for the tools? These intelligent IT management tools typically cost a fraction of the investment that organisations make in procuring their platform software from vendors such as Microsoft, Oracle and VMware.

offerings in the virtualisation management suite span desktop to server to storage, focussing on simplified management of the virtual environment and driving up cost-efficiency and flexibility. Please elaborate on the trends in IT management solutions. IT heads are increasingly looking at end-to-end application monitoring of their IT infrastructure. Simplification in monitoring of cloud-based solutions and security compliance is of key interest to them. Over the last few quarters, we have also seen an increase in the number of customers seeking solutions for IAM. Another aggressive trend is security and authentication of networks and devices through which remote access is provided.

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What business benefits have customers witnessed by deploying these tools? Our clients consistently look up to us to drive operational efficiency, boost productivity, control costs, reduce risks, and facilitate compliance. For example, a large client in India recently adopted our MessageStats solution to optimise their auditing and compliance. They were able to draw detailed insights into the system while seamlessly reporting and monitoring multiple messaging platforms. It helped them ease compliance by speeding the audits by providing regulationspecific, internal control reports. Just to give an instance, one of the largest infrastructure companies had the challenge of managing the data and information flow between its multiple groups. The company, which comprised 70,000 employees, had a complex messaging environment, which constituted MS Exchange, BlackBerry, Enterprise Server, OCS and Active Directory. The required solution was MessageStats and Quest Reporter, an extensive messaging, reporting, and analysis solution that provides a complete view

of all messaging components including, Exchange, Office Communications Server 2007 and BlackBerry from a single interface. The reporting tool collects, stores, and reports on data from workstations, Windows servers and Active Directory, providing the information that administrators, security offices and help-desk staff need to baseline configurations, report on installed software, assess the security of Windows infrastructure and perform Active Directory (AD) pre and post-migration analyses. An agentless tool, Reporter reduces daily management workload by automating data collection and report generation.

What is the market spend on such management tools in the Asia Pacific region and in India? On an average, clients allocate 10-15 per cent of their IT budget towards monitoring and optimising their existing IT infrastructure; it is similar in India. How is cloud going to affect this market? Evolution of cloud-based delivery model is going to help IT automation and management solutions market as the hosting, replication, and online tools are required in the cloud environment for monitoring and enhancing performance of the infrastructure. There is an effort to collaborate with all the technology and cloud service providers such as Microsoft, Oracle, VMware, and understand the technology and cloud roadmap which will enable us to understand customer requirement and direction. Our varied acquisitions across storage, security and other areas will give a fillip to the effective use of IT management tools.

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15minute manager

training Education workplace compensation workforce trends skills development personal development

Office yoga Meditate at work place Page 44

Strategy: Project Mgt–Success Factor this page Review: Smart Computing–5 Tips to buy iPhone page 46 Trends: Being a Visionary–Dreaming Big page 47 Training Calendar: IT\Telecom Training page 48

BY Berjes E r i c S h r o f f

imag ing: photos .co m

he most obvious question that confronts the IT manager in an interview or other form of assessment during an escalation process is: “In your entire career as an IT manager, can you calculate the percentage of projects you have been involved in that have actually been implemented successfully and the percentage that have failed?” Before confronting such a challenge, it is critical to understand what an IT manager would consider successful project implementation. Pertinent questions would be: Does this mean delivering the project on time? Or, does it mean delivering the project within budget? Alternatively, does it mean delivering a project that meets the user’s requirements? Other possibilities are: How many times have your projects overshot the budget and not been delivered on time; and how many times have your projects been delivered on time, within budget and so on? Most often, the projects could not be implemented successfully because they did not cater to the user’s requirements.

Reality Check Prior to taking up a project, or as a process of post mortem, it is imperative to

project Management

Success Factor Work Breakdown Structure is a key ingredient for successful project management

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15-MINUTE MANAGER

Create Differentiators The success factor in any project revolves around the right ‘project management’ tools used, and cannot be done on an ad hoc manner. Before venturing into addressing the project, it is critical to understand whether IT project-management differs from managing non-IT projects, such as engineering, manufacturing and construction programmes. In my view, the aspects that make IT-related projects different, are not the tools and techniques that are used for project management, which are common across all, but factors like the limited lifespan of technology, the risks that are involved in IT-related projects, rapid development requirements, etc. These are relevant as they meet the rush-to-market demands and identify the correct stakeholders (which is not always an easy task) and, above all, the multiple dependencies on other projects. Even today, many IT managers tend to concentrate solely on technology, but fail to understand how important a knowledge of management is to their own success. Without the domain knowledge and capabilities around project management, how do you expect to manage large projects? How do you plan, identify, select, manage and implement resources, be they time, money, technology or people, for a project? At senior IT manager level, using project management as a tool is not only going to offer you the edge in becoming a success and con-

OFFICE YOGA

MEDITATION FOR A BUSY MANAGER AT WORKPLACE

Meditation and emotional well-being The emotional benefits of meditation include: Gaining a new perspective on stressful situations Building skills to manage your stress Increasing selfawareness Focussing on the present Reducing negative emotions

Meditate for just 10 minutes each day and free your mind of clutter and stress

Why meditate? Most people experience stress and tension daily. All this harms the body, mind and the quality of life, and is unnecessary Meditation releases stress and tension It helps overcome anxiety and worry Meditation calms down your restless thinking It frees your mind from negativity, worries and unhappiness You can meditate anywhere, any time. Meditating at work is very doable. For those working in stressful environments, meditation can actually make you much more productive at work and enjoy work even more Meditate at work to relieve stress fast Find a quiet place to sit outside for 10-15 minutes (during your breaks). Find a nice, quiet spot somewhere, whether indoors or outside, to sit. Practice being still and quiet. Practice controlled breathing techniques. This is an essential practice of meditation. With your eyes closed and all thoughts pushed aside, breathe in deeply through your nose. Then exhale slowly through your mouth. Repeat. Harness your thoughts. Again, your mind is at the core of meditation. You must be able to completely harness your thoughts. One easy way to do this is to imagine yourself blowing away thoughts (like you’re blowing bubbles) as they enter your mind. Source: Successconsciousness.com

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Photo graphy: photo s.o m

address certain issues and mull over the questions from an IT manager’s perspective. The areas of focus should essentially be around what went wrong, how it could have been addressed differently in terms of judicious utilisation of money and time. The answer to these questions is simple and straightforward. Any project of any magnitude takes a positive curve if it is delivered on time, within the stipulated budget, meets customer requirements and drives financial returns adhering to the organisation’s strategic plan.

15-MINUTE MANAGER

“Recruitment of skilled resources for the project to ensure timely delivery and quality work is a big challenge” MC Srivastava, Sr Manager(Systems), IFFCO

“The first and the last word in project management is communicate, communicate and communicate” Arun Gupta, Group CTO, Shoppers Shop

tributing towards your career growth, but your reputation to successfully plan, handle and implement projects, will be enhanced. Formal education in project management will definitely add value towards your successful implementation of projects.

Some Learnings Some time back, I was asked to lead a new unified communications project for an organisation, which was complex by its very nature. The first step I took, and which I strongly recommend as a first step for all projects, was to create a Work Breakdown Structure, or WBS.

At senior IT manager level, using project management as a tool to successfully implement projects will enhance your reputation

Event Chain Methodoloy Probabilistic moment of risk: An activity (task) in most real-life processes is not continuous and uniform. Tasks are affected by external events, which can occur at any point. Event chains: Events can cause other events, which will create a chain or chains. These events chains affect the course of the project. Quantitative analysis determines the cumulative effect of these chains on the project. Critical events or events chains: Single events or events chains that have the potential to affect projects are the ‘critical events’ or ‘ events chains’. Project tracking with events: It is possible to refine information about future potential events and forecast future project performance. Event chain visualisation: Events and event chains can be visualised using event chain diagrams on a Gantt chart. Source: Wikipedia

WBS is a method I personally love, since it reminds me of the good old programming methodology, called Jackson Structured Programming (JSP). Albeit, this methodology is not used any more, WBS is an adoption of this methodology into project management, and is a structured way of decomposing a project into its various components and levels. WBS can be represented in either an indented format or graphical format. I use both. Time-consuming as it may be, in my view, it is the best methodology to get a clear picture of all the steps involved in the project. Usually, during my discussion about WBS with my team members, some important steps that I may have omitted or overlooked are pointed out. This methodology also paints a very clear overall picture for the entire team working on the project. Of course, subsequent to this step, methodologies such as CPM, PERT and Gantt Charts are absolutely invaluable and necessary. Although many companies have a project management office (PMO), this is not common across organisations.

O C T O B E R 2 0 1 1 | itnext

15-MINUTE MANAGER Smart Computing

Many organisations that I know of in India assign a team to determine whether a particular project should be pursued or not. However, a checklist like the one below, serves its purpose for guiding companies to evaluate whether a project should be considered or abandoned. Points to consider include: Is the project strategically aligned with corporate goals? What are the gaps in terms of skill acquisition within the organisation? What kind of technical gaps are there within the teams? Who are the stakeholders? Do we have the necessary financial and manpower resources? What is our competitor doing? Of course, the list is endless and can be modified and expanded to suit project contracts for externally solicited projects.

We see the market being flooded with companies rolling out numerous smart phone models, giving customer a lot of headache to select the appropriate one. So, naturally people are confused among different models and different brands. Points to consider while buying a smart phone:

Leading the Project

Five Tips to Buy a Smartphone

Operating System: Androids are used in almost all the phone companies but the main advantage is that they can be used with any network provider. The phones are blessed with more features like high-end graphics, high quality bigger screen sizes and more powerful processors. The open source nature also makes it a great deal. The Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 is comparatively easier to use, but surprisingly didn’t become so successful. Touch or QWERTY or both: Touch screens are quite famous this time. They are slimmer and provide smoother user interface. The high quality and better video experiences are the few best quoted features of the touch screen phones. But operating with a touch screen keyboard while typing could be bulky. The qwerty keyboards are easy to type and provides better typing speed and suitable button layout to fit your needs There are phones with both touch and QWERTY interfaces. If you like both they can be your best buy. The type and application supported: For lots of people applications could be the prime reason to buy a smart phone. Apple’s application store has more than 30,0000 application and the Androids are also catching up fast. So, look on for the applications support in your phone before giving it a start.

imaging: bi nu m p

Prices of the smartphone: The prices are the major factors that could determine your buy. The price of a good smartphone ranges anywhere from 10,000 to 40,000 bucks.

Network support: Many smart phones comes with predefined networks and don’t work with other network providers. For example the iPhone is launched in India by Bharti Airtel, so it works on the network of Airtel. The Blackberry is marketed in India by Tata, Vodafone, BSNL, etc. Choose your network wisely keeping in mind the plans, network coverage, call quality and reliability. Source: http://dailywiki.org

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While project management tools and processes are vital for the success of any project, core value comes from the individual leading the project. Most consulting groups ask IT managers to identify the project leaders from existing resources. It is indeed a challenge to find an individual with the right prerequisites to differentiate a good project manager from a great one. There are certain key parameters which are adopted to identify suitable project leaders. Some of the attributes that can be looked at are: Leadership ability Problem-solving skills Ability to influence the team and the customer Communication skills and good command over the English language (sadly, often overlooked) Credibility Ethical behaviour Having a great project manager on board will ensure projects are delivered on time, within the specified budget, and that they meet the customer’s requirements (internal or external) and returns that are in line with the organisation’s strategic plans. BERJES ERIC SHROFF, Senior Manager, Information Technology, TATA Services Ltd

15-MINUTE MANAGER

Being a visionary

Dreaming Big Clear articulation of your dreams will throw up better opportunities By Bhavi ta Sa x e n a

il lustratio n: photos .co m

ision cuts across all borders, and IT is no exception. A visionary will have no limits to growth in technological evolutions. Great leaders and statesmen across the world have advocated the idea of cherishing one’s visions and dreams, arguing that they are infants of the soul and will emerge as the most successful factor in achieving the goals. Incidentally, the IT fraternity also endorses the idea that imagination is more critical than facts, and can turn the impossible into possible. Being a visionary or person who has the power of visualisation seems

to activate the law of attraction and bridge the gaps in the lives of people, circumstances and resources to achieve goals. Some effort has been made to define a vision and a visionary, which may provoke the thoughts of many IT managers. To mention, a vision can be political, religious, environmental, social, or technological in nature. By extension, a visionary can also be a person with a clear, distinctive and specific (in some details) vision of the future, usually connected with advances in technology or social/ political arrangements. For example, Ted Nelson is referred to as a visionary in connection with the Internet.

Other visionaries simply imagine what does not yet exist but might some day, as some forms of visioning (or gazing) provide a glimpse into the possible future. Therefore, visioning can mean seeing in a utopian way what does not yet exist on earth—but might exist in another realm—such as the ideal or perfect realm as imagined or thought.

Vision Fuels Career Growth I am almost convinced that either by being a visionary or just by going with the flow, a person can reach greater heights in their career. Those who aspire to a vision will invariably have better clarity of thought about their career direction. This will keep them motivated to focus their energies on turning the vision into reality. Clear insights will enable one to explore all the possible ways and means to attain the vision, while every setback can be looked at as an opportunity. A visionary always radiates confidence that inspires others to align with.

O C T O B E R 2 0 1 1 | itnext

15-MINUTE MANAGER What it Takes to Be a Visionary

event calendar Top IT/Telecom Global

There are a few prerequisites expected of a person who can dream big. This is the profile of a visionary: One who has ability to originate emerging visions and identify growth opportunities around them One who has the courage to take risks Someone who is open and flexible enough to absorb change without losing sight of the future One who is able to paint a picture of the future, gives a sense of purpose and shows direction and targets for achievable goals One who is driven by a core persona and organisational values.

Event Calender for October 2011

Be Strategic event

Venue

Dates

OU Global Apps Certification Exam Oracle Testing Centre (OTC)

DIA - Pune

Oct 1, 2011

R12 Oracle Applications System Administrator Fundamentals

IN - Adyar Chennai

Oct 3, 2011

OU Global Apps Certification Exam Oracle Testing Centre (OTC)

DIA - Kolkata

Oct 8, 2011

OU Global Apps Certification Exam Oracle Testing Centre (OTC)

DIA - Bangalore

Oct 15, 2011

R12.x Oracle Project Costing Fundamentals

Online

Oct 17, 2011

OU Global Apps Certification Exam Oracle Testing Centre (OTC)

IN - Chennai

Oct 22, 2011

R12.x Oracle Asset Management Fundamentals

Online

Oct 24, 2011

R12.x Oracle E-Business Suite Essentials for Implementers

Online

Oct 28, 2011

OU Global Apps Certification Exam Oracle Testing Centre (OTC)

DIA - Kolkata

Oct 29, 2011

R12.x Oracle General Ledger Management Fundamentals

Online

Oct 31, 2011

Source: http://www.biztradeshows.com/

itnext | O C T O B E R 2 0 1 1

As with the actions required of a leader, being a visionary requires certain steps be initiated. Forming a clear vision is important. Once a vision is formed, it should be shared with a trusted group of family and friends who will help in nurturing the vision and in the voyage to reach the goal. In capturing the essence of the vision, every conversation will have some elements that reflect on the big picture. Some ways to nurture the same are to inculcate the habit of becoming a voracious reader, listen to the leaders and follow in their footsteps and be part of leadership forums. The key is to get insights into how they do things differently that makes them visionaries. Being open to feedback is also critical as it provides better insights and enriches learning. It is crucial to utilise every available resource to your advantage.

Not Without Challenges The journey to being a visionary and growing your career is not rosy. The major challenge is in managing uncertainty and ensuring that others align with your vision to drive you towards your goal.

Reality Bytes I wish I were part of the Gandhian era. His vision of a ‘free India’ turned into a reality, and he achieved it by

15-MINUTE MANAGER

Clear insights will enable one to explore ways to attain the vision, while every setback will be an opportunity

being rooted to his ethics and values. It inspired every common person to make his vision his or her own. A few from the current era that I can think of are Narayana Murthy and Azim Premji, who have also made the country proud.

Thinking Differently The prerequisite for a visionary to think differently is that he be true to his vision and just be himself, and not put up an artificial façade. When it comes to IT, the challenge is to ensure that top management realises the potential of the individual who thinks big, especially if the executive is not inclined towards seeing the big picture. Success in this will lie in how you can influence the management to see through your eyes and help them visualise the larger view. It could be in the form of presentations, data and intelligent interactions. Vision is often complex when it is shared with others. People are unable to see a clear path towards that and that uncertainty and insecurity makes them reject the idea without paying much attention. For this, it always helps to talk in a language that they understand. One way can be to break the big picture, or vision, into smaller frames and explain to each one of them

Bhavita Saxena, DGM, ISBS, RFCL Ltd

individually. In a numbers-driven company, it would be best to explain the vision in figures. If the company is in service, you might get more buy-in from talking in terms of turnaround time and customer satisfaction levels. Another way to look at things is to fix follow-up meetings to address their concerns and questions. Once they are convinced, the investments, resources etc, would follow. However, the journey may not be that smooth, so be prepared to handle some setbacks. The key is not to give up. It is critical to know when to be ‘in’ and when to be ‘out’ of the vision. One should be ‘in the vision’ when one needs to take action or lead. One should

Tipping points ‘Vision’ is never created by looking at the future while being aware of where we are… it is other way round

We visualise what/where we want to be and then look back to chalk out a plan to reach there Everyone in this world has a vision in the kitty but, if you still think that you are not a gifted visionary, then start with small steps

Pick up an area where the stakes are lower and just create a short-term vision and work towards making it happen Once you have achieved small steps towards a vision, you will have confidence in yourself and your vision

Once successful, you can replicate the same process in other areas of your life In no time, you will start formulating long-term visions

be ‘out of the vision’ when one needs to review or analyse. Finally, it is very important to balance attachment to and detachment from your own vision in order to make it a success. It would be important to mention a few insights from Scott M Davis’s book The Shift about aspiration and vision, which is very relevant to the current day scenario. The book says that the traditional marketing strategies revolve around short-term gains where immediate results outweigh long-term brand building. This strategy restricts to running agency relationships and enabling the sales force and is constantly being squeezed for funds they do not have. The best strategy is to build around working out a longterm vision, which might result in a few short term financial crunches. But the end result would definitely have a big boom and take the company to the next level. Davis points that best marketers are now creating integrated perspectives that start with the growth aspirations of the entire organisation. The book for visionary marketers tells how marketers can take action to engage more effectively with the executive team and ultimately ensure that they take a leadership role when it comes to the overall growth strategy. Same holds good in the IT space, where IT managers could display a good team spirit and dream big with regard to their personal and organisational growth, which makes him or her a visionary.

O C T O B E R 2 0 1 1 | itnext

Unified Storage

the big

UNIFICATION: THE FUTURE OF STORAGE EXPERT PANEL

Sivakum ar, Krishna n Head, IT, Bhartiya Samru ddhi Finance Ltd

The Situation...

Cut it from he re

How will Vasanth Kumar check data growth and its complexity? This question has been haunting senior IT managers across industries. Kumar is also the victim of rampant data growth and the complexity that it throws up, putting undue pressure on operations and the bottom line. This senior IT manager of a large manufacturing group finds that storage consumption is escalating with more and more terabytes being deployed. He has been implementing a variety of backup strategies and deploying all necessary tools, but the problem doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t seem to go away. Obviously, cost pressure is going up and managing and maintaining so many tiers is becoming an increasingly cumbersome process. His challenge is not just in storing data, but also protecting it against growing security threats. The key challenge is around categorising the data and applications and evolving an appropriate DR plan, while ensuring these are made available in real time, with 24x7 uptime. After deliberations and interactions with his peers 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.

Anil S hankar, Customer Car e Associate, Sr G M Solutions & Technology, Shoppers Stop

UC Du bey, ED, IT Iffco-Tokio General Insu ra nce Co Ltd

in the industry, Kumar has decided to try out unified storage combined with a virtualised IP storage strategy. Since Kumar has never laid his hands on these tools before, the challenge for him is to ensure that they are uncomplicated and versatile in nature. Certain inherent questions confront Kumar and he must justify his decision for a unified approach to the top management. The pertinent questions are around whether the unified storage along with virtualised storage operations help in rapid deployment, embedded with a fully functioning array. Will it seamlessly grow without disrupting business operations; have standards-based design for simplicity, compatibility and affordability; integrate with leading server virtualisation solutions to enable cost-effective shared storage and so on? Another fear that Kumar faces is in understanding whether the new storage strategy will simplify his task and provide advance automation; drive extensive application integration, and enable seamless snapshot, replicate, clone and the like.

o c t o b e r 2 0 1 1 | itnext

the big q

the big questions... What kind of unified storage and virtualiseD IP storage solutions

does Kumar need to evaluate and deploy? Which key elements does he need to include to arrive at a unified storage model?

How will these solutions help him address his data complexities and reduce the cost of storage operations? What steps does he need to follow in deploying unified storage and virtualising storage?

Here are the answers... classify data to reduce bulk FIRST ANSWER

Sivakumar Krishnan Head, IT Bhartiya Samruddhi Finance Ltd About me: As a technofunctional banker with over 25 years experience in core-banking, core lending, banking channels and crosscultural environments, I have implemented the latest technologies

The main issue here is the increase in data growth which puts pressure on the limited storage at the company’s disposal. Before implementing a unified storage solution, Kumar has to first analyse the origin of the data types and forms. A clear insight into the user classification, systems and processes that create data and its size, the periodicity of retention and its criticality is necessary. There can be some user-specific data which should not, in the first place, be stored in the common network folders. These should ideally be stored in the local hard disc of the user’s desktop. There can be some temporary data which are transient in nature and can be deleted within a day or two. Even if they need to remain in the network drives, the same may be excluded from the backup. Hence, identifying the data becomes critical for sizing the expected growth and for capacity-planning of the storage and short-listing the backup solution to be adopted. It will also help in the migration process. Unified storage meets the requirement of having NAS (Network Attached Storage) as well as SAN (Storage Area Network) in a single box. It also supports Fibre Channel. Kumar needs to evaluate unified storage for the following reasons. Depending on the nature of data, he should decide how the data will be stored — block based (recommended for mission-critical applications/ERP) or file based. The speed of I/O, swiftness of file sharing and data reliability will be critical. Consider the features and functionalities that come with the storage solution, including snapshot storage (for online file recovery), inbuilt backup application (NDMP) and replication. A facility to assign a specific disc quota to users/groups/trees should also be considered, along with Raid, volume management, files system creation, volume expansion and thin provisioning.

Second Answer Deploying unified storage in its full form will enable him to address his challenges. It will help in the following areas: 1. Reduce hardware requirement, since there is a single device that can be deployed with either block (Raid disc) or file storage (NAS) 2. Simple to manage. One box rather than multiple boxes. 3. User-friendly GUI will make the administrator’s job look easy with just one resource 4. Trying the dedupe will maximise block storage capabilities, enabling faster retrieval with less power consumed 5. Reduce TCO 6. Wizard-based setup and configuration tools will help with easier management 7. V M-ware, along with unified storage, will reduce server footprints 8. V irtual IP allocation to varied departments will avoid virus attack and spread

itnext | o c t o b e r 2 0 1 1

the big q

Assess different storage needs FIRST ANSWER Considering managing data as the maiden attempt for storage consolidation, Kumar should evaluate a multi-protocol unified storage solution for his environment. This would provide flexibility to accommodate the different storage needs of the environment. It would also ensure data growth is taken care of and provide greater manageability, besides keeping investments under control. Other benefits are compatibility with virtualisation solutions, built-in data deduplication and compression ratio. Kumar should also assess different storage needs along with performance and scalability requirement for the foreseeable future before jumping into an unified solution. The key is to have a balance between the different needs and to ensure the performance of any single need is not compromised.

Anil Shankar

Second Answer The bigger benefit with a unified storage solution is that it eliminates the need to maintain multiple storage solutions, thereby bringing in optimisation and at the same time minimising the management effort. For example, there could be multiple disc types (such as FC, SAS and SATA) in the storage ecosystem which could be effectively configured according to the type of storage needed. While a test and development environment could use SATA storage, the production should have FC. With a standardised approach to storage management under the unified solution, the organisation can focus on developing just one set of skills rather than having to manage multiple skills. This would provide a simpler way to manage the complexities of storage growth with efficiency using the existing network infrastructure, thus guaranteeing a cost-effective solution. The journey towards implementing unified storage should begin with a proper assessement of the storage capacity and performance requirement, such as usable capacity, IOP, throughput, etc. It is critical to establish a TCO comparison for at least top two of the solutions reviewed and get customer references on the simlilar line of business.

ge Stora

Customer Care Associate & Sr GM, Solutions & Technology, Shoppers Stop Ltd About me: With more than 17 years of experience in IT, I have worked on varied architecture, design, implementation of large IT projects and managing large outsourced programs

Storage & Data Management Services Standardisation Managed storage services online is getting more standardised with well-defined SLAs Managed Online storage services Management Level of Standardisation Focus on SLA

Implementation

Consulting

Ability to deliver remotely S ource: idc

o c t o b e r 2 0 1 1 | itnext

the big q

UNIFIED STORAGE For FUTURE DATA FIRST ANSWER

UC Dubey Executive Director, IT Iffco-Tokio General Insurance Co Ltd About me: Handling core IT for many years, I have been using applications to the greatest advantage and working towards minimising costs

Kumar should go for unified storage that should cater to both file and block level access supporting various protocols, so that he can get the functionality of SAN and NAS in a single storage with fibre and IP connectivity. He should consider multi-protocol storage array, which is a centralised disc array made available to host systems via an IP-based network. One advantage of unified storage is reduced hardware requirements. If he is using OLTP databases, he should focus more on the SAN component of unified storage, based on the kind of I\O load he has (the number of database-users). He should plan for FC or iSCSI connectivity at the starting stage itself. If he is looking more for file serving applications, he should focus on the NAS component of unified storage and, accordingly, procure the appropriate protocol licences , such as CIFS, NFS, FTP, etc.

Second Answer Kumar should be careful in choosing a unified storage system to accommodate his data growth plans for next three to five years. The management of the entire environment, irrespective of the applications or size of data, should be under the control of a single management tool to help him manage the storage with less manpower. Benefits can be derived from the combination of virtualisation technology and unified storage to reduce the number of physical servers and better storageÂ utilisation. Next thing to consider is the migration of his existing databases to this new storage system and its effect. Benefits would be better serviceability, management and support.

Notes NOTEs

More Resources 54

itnext | o c t o b e r 2 0 1 1

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

update

open Debate

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

Can being a visionary help scale up career?

Rakesh Mishra General Manager, IT& C, Jindal Steel and Power LTd

Kapil Mehrotra Head, Applications, iYOGI Technical Services Pvt Ltd

The most common characteristic of leaders at all levels is their vision. That means they can visualise and imagine an ideal future, well in advance. It is essential that we learn to manage and control this visualising capability of our mind, and focus it like a laser beam in the direction of our most important goals. Successful people are those who visualise the kind of success they want to enjoy and work towards it. Prior to every new experience, a successful person visualises previous successful experiences that are similar to the upcoming event or plan of action.

The topic raises several questions: What next? Is this achievable, is this right, is this the right decision, etc? Every IT manager or leader can start by being a visionary about smaller things rather than going straight into solving global issues. Being a visionary, scaling up a few aspects are important for him, which include, taking up the responsibility of a project like the CEO , identifying facts, creating a road map for the vision, executing it with passion and confidence, and aligning right resources, skills, infrastructure within the budget.

Dr KN Ingalagi Chief Manager, MIS, BMTC A great leader is born with a key attribute: a vision. Carrying a vision or foresight is critical for every individual who has the ambition to grow. IT managers are not an exception to the rule. Being a visionary becomes a prerequisite to excel in one’s career. IT heads must think ahead. The key aspect for an IT manager is to conceive great projects, think ahead, and guide the team to execute projects in a structured way in the interest of the company and themselves, which will definitely drive their personal growth. Unless an IT manager has the vision of what he wants he cannot lead his team.

I’m Feeling Lucky Title: I’m Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 Author: Douglas Edwards Publisher: Allen Lane Number of pages: 432 Price: Rs 550 Reviewed by: Anoop Verma

If Google is good, then who is evil? This question naturally comes to mind, because Google’s famous motto says, “Do not be evil.” On this count, Douglas Edwards refrains from providing a direct answer, but he does offer us a hint. “After Google,” he says, “I find myself impatient with the way the world works.” He goes on to list some usual gripes like traffic lights and DVR instructions. All this can be taken as boiling down to the idea that in Google’s lexicon ‘good’ is synonymous with competence and speed, whereas ‘evil’ denotes the exact opposite. In 1998, Google was born and 18 months later Edwards joined the company’s marketing department as the 59th employee. Though it is an insider’s account of the six years that Edwards spent in the company, the book does not throw up any information that might tarnish Google’s reputation. The style is upbeat and peppered with bold metaphors. Perhaps there is also the penchant for pomposity. The typical rivalries of the office space also comes to fore. IT NEXT VERDICT The book is packed with humdrum, and it takes much effort on part of the reader to detect the few kernels of wisdom.

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

Star Value:

o c t o b e r 2 0 1 1 | itnext

update

off the shelf

A sneak preview of enterprise products, solutions and services

Samsung Galaxy Note Captures your imagination on the screen with utmost accuracy that can be shared

key features Mobility | This is one macho device, * S pen, capable of writing like a which blurs the space between a real pen tablet and a smartphone. On the large * 8 Megapixel camera 5.3 inch screen you can see more in one * S planner for managing schedules glance with a minimum amount of scroll* Dual-core 1.4GHz processor ing and screen transitions. It comes with an innovative S pen, with which you can draw sketches, make lightning-fast screen captures, and write notes with increased accuracy. The material you create using the S pen, can be saved as S memo, to be edited, annotated and shared as desired. Samsung Galaxy Note, which uses Android 2.3, is light. This should come as no surprise as the same dual-core 1.4GHz processor, which is used in Samsung tablets, powers the device. You can expect a network speed of upto 21 Mbps and has an 8-megapixel camera feature. The device comes in two models 16 GB and 32 GB, so there is ample space to store all your multimedia. Connectivity is through 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and a range of other options.

itnext | O C T O B E R 2 0 1 1

View 3D with Sony HMZ-T1 3D movies and gaming could become as customised as the music on our smartphones. Sony provides 3D movie experience by allowing individual users to walk around with their own personal 3D screens. You got to wear it on your face, and it does look like some kind of futuristic gear. There are adjustments at the nose bridge and temple, to let you adjust the width of the eye and ear pieces so that you can have a perfect fit for the face. However, more than TV watchers, the device is aimed at gaming buffs. The device generates 3D images using a pair of 0.7-inch OLED panels, one in front of each eye. Each OLED panel displays a separate set of images. As the tiny OLED displays have a 1,280x720 resolution with details. Clear acoustics offers 5.1 virtual surround sound. It is impossible to overstate their effect. The broad viewing area actually turns out to be wider. The overall experience that you have from the device is equivalent to watching a 750-inch screen from 20m away. HMDI input and HDMI passthrough output enables one to hook up to a second headset. Product Features * 3D display * 5.1 virtual surround sound * HMDI input & HDMI pass â&#x20AC;&#x201C;through output * Clear acoustics * OLED has high resolution display * customised music download

update

Jabra Freeway for the Mobile

Features * 3 speakers and virtual surround sound * Voice Guidance for battery level, paring instructions and connection status * Connects to both Bluetooth devices at the same time * A2DP streaming for music display * 14 hours talk time with 40 days standby * 4.75 inches wide, 4 inches deep, and it is a solid 0.5 inch in thickness

bluetooth | The product targeted at those mobile, comes with a three-speaker virtual surround set-up, which provides exceptionally good sound. There is A2DP streaming for playback of music, podcasts and directions from GPS applications. Easy to operate with voice-based controls which guides the user in setting up. Connected with two Bluetooth devices, it keeps a check on the background noise. The audio is crisper, clearer and more vibrant than ever before and with its dual-mic technology, there is no background noise intrusion. There is no doubt that the Jabra Freeway is somewhat bulky as compared to conventional Bluetooth car speakerphones. It measures about 4.75 inches wide, 4 inches deep, and it is a solid 0.5 inch at its thickest. A fabric covered grille hides the three speakers. The device comes with a micro USB port. Talk time is touted as 14 hours with 40 days standby time. The device is extraordinarily easy to operate, and allows you to do all your talking and listening to music with both your hands on the wheel.

USB Powered Toothbrush USB | With the launch of

Diamond Clean HX 9332, the consumer electronics giant, Philips, has successfully given a new fillip to oral hygiene. This device is being billed as the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first USB powered toothbrush. You can charge your USB toothbrush using your iPhone charger. Use of AirFloss technology can fire a microburst of air and water between teeth at 45 mph to remove plaque. There are five brushing modes, and you can reach a seemingly crazy 31,000 brush strokes per minute. Patented Sonice technology drives fluid to stimulate gums. Insertion of Quadpacer beeps in 30-second intervals ensures that you

Samsung Series 9 Notebook Packed in a solid duralumin enclosure, which is extremely light, while being remarkably durable, the Series 9 notebooks from Samsung are designed with mobility in mind. There is backlit keyboard, brilliant LCD display screen and a spacious multi-touch clickpad. The chassis is just 0.64 inches think and yet it crams the power of new Intel Core i5 Processor and state of the art Intel graphics. There is 4 GB of RAM and 128 GB SSD. Having Turbo Boost Technology is conducive for accelerating the PCâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s performance by intuitively allocating CPU processing power when you need it the most. The Series 9 is lightweight at 1.3 kgs, and has a built in high resolution 1.3 MP camera to facilitate video chat, conference, and uploading clips. The acoustics is amazing due to the presence of 3 watt (1.5W x 2) stereo speakers and 1.5 watt sub-woofer.

Key Advantages * USB powered * Air Floss technology * Quadpacer * Charge your brush using the phone charger * Sonice technology stimulates gums with fluid * Five brushing modes

thoroughly brush all four quadrants of your mouth. The toothbrush comes with a case, which also doubles up as a charging dock-up using standard adaptor. Your dental nightmares, it seems, can now be given a final rest.

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cube chat | Anil Shewale

Off the Beaten Track “Nandan Nilekani’s thoughts influenced me to look beyond the traditional ways of growing in career,” says Anil Shewale, Senior IT Manager, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd By MANU SHA R M A

A My sucess

mantra Look for new ways to overcome challenges

itnext | O C T O B E R 2 0 1 1

staunch believer in destiny, Anil Shewale mapped out his future career in IT when he was still in school. Seeing how fascinated Shewale was by the virtues and capabilities that computers possessed, his father gave him the push to pursue his dream career in information technology. “Even though I did my early studies in a rural school, it was my father’s support that was instrumental in driving me towards the IT field. Since then, I have been studying various aspects of well-known personalities like Nandan Nilekani, while keeping abreast of the latest technological developments in the field.” Shewale admires Nilekani, whom he met when he was with Bennett & Coleman. Nilekani was invited to speak at a function during 2002-03, when the internet bubble burst. “His speech on future technologies and

in particular, the open source, influenced me to look beyond the traditional ways of growing in career,” remarks Shewale. Nilekani’s thoughts had a major impact on Shewale’s mind. After various stints at multiple firms, Shewale’s major career breakthrough happened when he joined the media group, Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. “I spent eight years in this company driving modernisation of email and collaborating on an open source platform using Redhat Linux which fetched good results, again, thanks to Nilekani’s influence. I also engineered their SAP architecture on an AX platform in 2005,” he says. The second turning point for Shewale came about a year ago, when he took over as senior IT manager at Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M). Since then, he has carved a place for himself in the company. He has benchmarked applications

cube chat

Fact File Name ANIL SHEWALE Current des ignatio n Senior IT Ma nager, M & M LTD

Photo graphy: jite n gandhi

He plans to wear various hats, including that of a Chief Technology Officer shortly, as he has over 15 years of experience for manufacturing. He says, “Nowhere is manufacturing engineering services (MES) virtualised. However, the idea struck me about six months back to drive this innovative project, which is today running.” All kudos to Shewale that the project has been appreciated by Rockwell International, the solution providers for the Mahindra Vehicle Manufacturing Ltd (MVML), a greenfield project that has come up near Pune. “Here the entire manufacturing is automated, and this has been one of the biggest concepts that I have deployed,” he adds. Elaborating, Shewale says, “Initially 50 servers were proposed for the MVML project. However, I was against the conventional method of virtualising the servers using HP hardware. I wanted to look at the application level and evaluated

JBoss application from Redhat. Convinced about the compatibility and interfaces criteria, I went ahead to convert our servers into virtualised environment, resulting in deployment of only five servers. Shewale has mapped out his own future. He plans to wear various hats including that of a CTO shortly, as he has over 15 years of experience. He aspires to take on the mantle of a CIO in a large firm in future. A Maharashtrian, Shewale loves Marathi literature, music and devotional songs. He admires Abhay Bang, a medical practitioner, who has devoted his life to developing the rural society and Sudha Murthy, wife of NR Narayana Murthy, founder of Infosys. “She is the actual driving force behind the success of Infosys; more than Narayana Murthy,” he concludes with a smile.

Current role IN FRASTRU CTURE S OLUTION ARC HITECTURE AND PROJEC T MANAGEMENT * ENTERPRIS E SECURITY * DR AND BCP PL ANNING * OPEN SOURC E SOLUTION S * OFFIC E AUTOMATION S OLUTION S * ENTERPRISE MESSAGING AND C OLL ABORATION * IT SER VIC E M ANAGEMENT ACHIEVEMENTS * VIRTUALI SATION IN MES S OLUTION FOR INFRASTRUC TURE AGILITY * ADO PTING STORAGE WITH NEW STRATEGY * BU S INESS APP ROAC H FOR SOURC ING DL P AWARD S STAR PERFORMER AWARD : BENNETT, COLEM AN & CO. LTD, 2006 - 07 Favourite Book THE ALCHEMIST BY PAULO COELHO FAVOURITE QUOTE “ IF YOU LOVE WHAT YOU ARE DOING, YOU WILL BE SU CC ESSF UL”

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