ITNEXT OCTOBER 2013

INTERVIEW | RICHARD STALLMAN, software freedom activist and computer programmer | Pg 34

“Freedom is all that matters for users�

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

BossTalk

Business face to IT Pg 08

Insight

Right Mix to Secure Better: Embracing BYOD Pg 30

Open Challenge

Sharat Airani CTO, Intellinet Datasys

Dhananjay C Rokde Global Head, Information Security, Cox & Kings Group

October 2013 | `100 | Volume 04 | Issue 09 | A 9.9 Media Publication facebook.com/itnext | @itnext_magazine www.itnext.com |

The economic slowdown is compelling senior IT decision makers to go open on the open source as a cost saving strategy across stratums Pg 14

Editorial

Ready for the Open Challenge Contrary to the huge popular belief that open source is not all that open, we now witness a change in thinking.

Thanks to the economic downturn, it is paving the way for vast experimentation across borders. Open source, or free software as it is known, is catching the limelight and capitalising on the prevailing recessionary trend.

It is rather surprising to find that open source is no longer only a ‘me too’ option among members in the IT fraternity. The reasons? Simple. A few factors are driving the adoption of open source. Software vendors are crushed under their own margin weight and profitability, resulting in increased software prices. CFOs are getting more stringent with budgets and are refraining from allowing any new spend on sourcing additional software or license renewals.

Most senior IT managers echo the fact that they were asked to sustain just keeping the lights on and not plan any new projects which entail new expenses.

The obvious choice for Information Technology Decision Makers (ITDMs) was to open up to open source and make it ubiquitous across platforms and work towards using it as a competitive advantage.

Besides cost, many other aspects have drawn these ITDMs towards open source.

As one senior IT manager says, “I am constantly amazed at the large selection of high quality distros (distribution source) available to people for free. Essentially, Ubuntu offers a free operating system which has the stability and security at par with or even superior to that of Mac OS X, and can be installed on considerably less expensive computer hardware.” He goes to the extent of saying, “The world of Linux and open source software is fertile ground for new ideas to take off from because the programming code is available for anyone to review and build upon.”

Enthused by the buzz around open source, Team IT Next embarked on the cover feature in the current edition to understand what really inspired ITDMs to opt for open source and discuss how commercially viable it turned out to be.

“Contrary to the popular belief that open source is not all that open, we now witness a change in thinking. It is catching the limelight and capitalising on the prevailing recessionary trend” Geetha Nandikotkur

Blogs To Watch!

7 ways your company can support open source http://www.infoworld.com/d/ open-source-software/7-waysyour-company-can-support-opensource-227212 Enabling Management of Open Source Software in System Center Using Standards http://blogs.technet. com/b/systemcenter/ archive/2013/07/24/ enabling-management-ofopen-source-software-in-systemcenter-using-standards.aspx Choosing an open source software license http://www.techrepublic.com/ blog/web-designer/choosing-anopen-source-software-licensefor-your-development-project/ Open Hybrid Cloud http://www.redhat.com/promo/ opencloud/blog/

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

o CTOBER 2 0 1 3

Volume 04 | Issue 09

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

Open Challenge The economic slowdown is compelling senior IT decision makers to go open on the open source software as a cost saving strategy across stratums

Page

14 cover story

19 Commercial Viability: A Proven Fact

boss talk

interview

The big question today -- Is open source commercially viable in the current economic scenario?

20 An Open Challenge?

Are proprietary enterprise applications losing out to open source?

23 Open Field: Licensing and Cloud

How easy is it to handle open source and its licensing and support strategy?

How relevant is open source on Cloud?

25 Setting up an Open Culture

How to set up an open source culture within the enterprise and applications that run on open source INTERVIEW | RICHARD STALLMAN, SOFTWARE FREEDOM ACTIVIST AND COMPUTER PROGRAMMER | Pg 34

“Freedom is all that matters for users”

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

BossTalk

Business face to IT Pg 08

Insight

Right Mix to Secure Better: Embracing BYOD Pg 30

OPEN CHALLENGE

Sharat Airani CTO, Intellinet Datasys

Dhananjay C Rokde Global Head, Information Security, Cox & Kings Group

cover Design: ANIL T photos: JITEN GANDHI

THE ECONOMIC SLOWDOWN IS COMPELLING SENIOR IT DECISION MAKERS TO GO OPEN ON THE OPEN SOURCE AS A COST SAVING STRATEGY ACROSS STRATUMS Pg 14

October 2013 | `100 | Volume 04 | Issue 09 | A 9.9 Media Publication facebook.com/itnext | @itnext_magazine www.itnext.com |

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08 CIO - Corporate of Mahindra & Mahindra, Biswanath Ghosh on the need of imparting business face to IT

34 Richard Stallman, Software Freedom Activist on the moral differences between open source and free software

Right mix to secure better|

itnext.in

Altaf Halde, MD, Kaspersky says the challenge of IT managers is to map their activity against the evolving new technologies and needs that didn’t exist few years ago

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

EDITORIAL Group Editor: R Giridhar Editor: Geetha Nandikotkur Senior Assistant Editor: Subhankar Kundu

Page

30 15 minute manager 39 High Value, Low Risk I Hitesh Sahijwaal, Country Manager, OpenText India asserts on EIM and information readiness, information capabilities and information confidence

Update 10 How to Free up wireless checkpoints I Organizations could create more access points and user channels

DESIGN Sr. Creative Director: Jayan K Narayanan Sr. Art Director: Anil VK Associate Art Director: Anil T Sr. Visualisers: Manav Sachdev & Shokeen Saifi Visualiser: NV Baiju Sr. Designers: Shigil Narayanan, Haridas Balan & Manoj Kumar VP Designers: Charu Dwivedi, Peterson PJ, Pradeep G Nair Dinesh Devgan & Vikas Sharma

post event report 44 Data Center Visit | ITNext in association with Tata Communications brought together industry experts to discuss why IT decision makers face the million dollar question of opting for the right data center model.

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Chief Photographer: Subhojit Paul Sr. Photographer: Jiten Gandhi

sales & marketing Product Manager: Shreyans Daga (0999949343) Senior Vice President: Krishna Kumar (09810206034) National Manager -Print , Online & Events: Sachin Mhashilkar (09920348755) North: Deepak Sharma (09811791110) West: Samiksha Ghadigaonkar (+91 9833608089) Brand Manager: Varun Kumra Assistant Product Manager: Kshitij Garg Assistant Product Manager-Digital: Manan Mushtaq Ad co-ordination/Scheduling: Kishan Singh

Open Debate 43 Three expert panel | Debate on ‘Is SDN new or an old wine in a new bottle?’

cube chat 46 Thinking with Freedom | Pradeep Chatterjee, AGMCorporate IT, Tata Motors says it’s vital to make stakeholders agree to a common solution.

RegulArs

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

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Global technology provider achieves three-fold increase in data centre capacity With volatility, economic uncertainty, fast evolving technologies and ever-changing customer needs eroding business and IT capabilities, the stakes have never been as high as it is today.

Enterprise efficiency, operational results and prompt client responsiveness are no longer good to have but a necessity in today’s cut-throat marketplace.

At UST Global, a next generation IT service and business process outsourcing provider to Global 1000 firms, client responsiveness was a critical business mandate. However, an ageing and overburdened IT infrastructure meant that its system could no longer keep pace with customer service demands. This posed a huge challenge as UST Global was unable to predict storage allocations, resulting in unnecessary purchases of extra capacity and subsequent administrative overheads.

UST Global accordingly turned to Dell to enable them to take advantage of the latest virtualization technologies in its journey to data centre transformation.

Virtualization: Future Proofing the Data Centre Dell’s transformative solutions, powered by Intel® technology were critical in accelerating UST Global’s journey to the next-generation data centre.

Intelligent storage management Leveraging the powerful combination of PowerEdge™ blade servers, Compellent™ storage arrays and VMware® vSphere™ 5 technology, Dell created a custom-built, virtualized data centre for UST Global.

The extensive design and engineering of Dell’s virtualization solution enables UST Global to quickly deploy network and storage resources into production environments, thus ensuring prompt responses to client requests.

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

Today, UST Global’s future-proof, virtualized data centre has completely transformed its IT operations, resulting in significant benefits to the business. With a three-fold increase in server capacity, lower data centre footprint, and a dramatic reduction in resource provisioning time from six weeks to mere hours, UST Global is able to meet its customers’ requirements and drive business growth with ease. Last, but not least, UST Global has achieved ROI 50% faster than anticipated - an amazing feat, made possible by Dell.

To know more on how Dell Enterprise Solutions & Services, powered by Intel® technology, can help you overcome your business challenges, visit www.dell.co.in/domore

Important Dell Details: DELL’s TERMS AND CONDITIONS: All sales subject to Dell’s terms and conditions, see http://www.dell.co.in/tnc OR provided on request. MISTAKES: While all efforts are made to check pricing and other errors, inadvertent errors do occur from time to time and Dell reserves the right to decline orders arising from such errors. MORE INFORMATION: Go to http://dell.co.in/details.

TRADEMARKS: Intel and the Intel logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. | © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.

The Challenge Data centre storage capacity and performance capabilities stretched

Huge administrative overheads for the IT team es

ns

pe

Ex

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

Results Enhanced productivity & performance

ROI achieved 50% faster than planned

ROI Speed

Improved client responsiveness

INBoX INTERVIEW | RAVI CHAUHAN, MANAGING DIRECTOR, INDIA AND SAARC, JUNIPER NETWORKS | Pg 32

Weigh your security investments

SDN | COVER STORY

NEW KID ON THE NETWORK

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

New Kid on the Network Senior IT decision makers are learning the nuances of simplifying network orchestration with Software Defined Network, a new phrase in the industry Pg 10

BossTalk

Influencer to Innovator Pg 06

Senior IT decision makers are learning the nuances of simplifying network orchestration with Software Defined Network, a new phrase in the industry

PLUS

The Next Dark Horse: Tackling BYOA Pg 28

September 2013 | `100 | Volume 04 | Issue 08 | A 9.9 Media Publication facebook.com/itnext | @itnext_magazine www.itnext.com |

BY N G E E T H A D ES IG N BY H ARIDAS BAL AN

september 2013

IMAGING BY B IN ESH SREEDH ARAN

W

hile the industry comes up with new buzzwords from time to time, the latest on the go is Software Defined Networks (SDN). IT leaders and practitioners, and vendors, in particular, are looking at ways to influence senior IT managers to capitalise on this evolution called Software Defined Network.

IT NEXT thanks its Readers for the warm response

Is SDN a new concept?

INSIDE 13 | SDN Makes Network Management Simple 18 | Why is SDN IT Managers’ Best Bet? 21 | SDN Vs Virtualisation: Synergy?

26| What is Innovative About SDN?

SDN is an architectural approach to networking that separates the data, control and application planes that enable the intelligence of the device to be split from the packet-forwarding engine and be controlled centrally, while data transport is distributed. Most IT practitioners argue that while the concept of is not new; the approach should be new as it provides networks with more real-time intelligence, deep application integration and high levels of automation to prepare networking technology for the rigorous demands of the cloud era.

There is been sudden hype and aura created around SDN which definitely is no passing fad. Most vendors including, HP, Juniper, VMware, Cisco, Citrix, EMC, Netapp etc., have invested huge resources in SDN. Amandeep Singh Dang, Country Head-Networking, Dell India, claims that the new approach to networking was forged within some of

S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 3 | ITNEXT

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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.

Top story of the week!

Though much delayed, this is an important mail to you.

We are happy to inform you that both your feature story on BYOD and Data breaches have been showcased in the top Story and top Quote of the week, in the Top5 pick of the Week by Verizon.

Also wanted to let you know that there are about 15–17 agencies from all over the world who submit their work from their respective geographies, and only a selected few (five) get to be featured in the Top5 of the week. The selected Top five are then shared with the senior management of Verizon as the highlight and also with the other PR agencies across the globe which manage PR for Verizon Enterprise Solutions.

It is indeed a great achievement; and thank you so much once again for taking this story forward.

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

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

Reasons for CRMs’ Failure

‘Best Security Techniques’

Naeem Shaikh, Professional Services, Adfactors PR Pvt Ltd

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I just wanted to say thanks for the great story in IT Next. You have really captured the essence of our focus here at HDS. We strive to continuously innovate to simplify the role of IT managers and help them drive business efficiency within the organisation.

In today’s tough economy, we truly believe that a well thought out IT infrastructure strategy along with a strong focus on storage economics is critical to help IT maximise performance as well as innovate to stay ahead of the curve. As we look ahead, the ease of access to information and speed of decision making will certainly be the decisive factors that will drive competitive advantage and position the IT manager as a champion within the organisation. Having highlighted the business value of maximizing IT, and its ability to reduce TCO, I am certain that your readers will be able to derive immense value from the adoption of this approach within their organisations.

Vivekanand Venugopal VP & GM,Hitachi Data Systems

Juhee Bagri, Image Manager Perfect Relations

This is with regard to the cover story titled, ‘Best Security Techniques’ in the August 2013 issue of IT Next. The story gives a detailed account of the best security practices that CISOs across enterprises are adopting to address risks arising out of the new emerging trends like cloud, enterprise mobility (BYOD, BYOA), QR codes, etc. The article throws light on how enterprise security chiefs are turning to tighter controls on email, mobile devices and social media, the hub of all attacks, while effectively using DLP technology.

Innovate to Simplify the IT Manager’s role

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

567678 *Special rates apply

The biggest reason for the failure of CRM or any business solution is no ownership from the business. and leaving it to the peril of the IT team. These business solutions require a lot of change management in terms of best practice adaptation, which means a fair amount of decision making, change in working style and mindset and finding out business value. This is typically achieved only when change management is through a structured process and led by active involvement of someone, who, in his capacity, can influence the adaptation.

Prakash Kumar, Director IT at Delta India

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Boss talk | Â Bishwanath Ghosh

lead ership M anag eme nt

Business Face to IT

A

ny senior decision-maker in IT must impart a business face to IT, which then allows him or her to initiate business-specific aspects within the enterprise.

This is a key ingredient to driving operational excellence within the enterprise, even as possessing business insights and the courage to provide direction to the business help exhibit leadership skills.

Spot the Challenge Early Now, how can this be possible in an environment where IT teams are confined to the mundane job of keeping the lights on? Needless to say, they must possess a sense of responsibility towards making a difference. Thus, it is critical to spot any challenge or differential mechanism to drive operational and business efficiency early, which, in turn, can lead to innovation. And, I reiterate: innovation is the key to transformation in the current scenario.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;It is critical to spot any challenge or differential mechanism to drive operational and business efficiency early, which, in turn can lead to innovationâ&#x20AC;?

Innovation in Perspective If you look back, history clearly states that every enterprise started with a base level of IT, and organisations did not see any major competitive advantage because of IT. Those who implemented ERPs became run- of-the-mill: there was no differentiation which created an edge. Senior IT managers need to think of the short term and track technologies which can be emulated and leveraged and fit short term goals. They can be innovative in replicating innovations happening in technology front.

Here are a few pointers for senior IT managers towards being innovative: a) Experience pain points in the domain they are associated with and ensure that these challenges are not repeated and are weeded out b) Redefine the business models from an IT perspective so as to better understand the challenges of business and apply these models

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Suggestion BOX

The book that focuses on the specifics of marketing high tech products during the early start up period.

Writer: Jim Collins & M o rt e n T H a n s e n P u bl i s h e r : H a r p e r C o l l i n s Price: Rs 479

c) Spot new technologies and work out a model to evaluate whether it applies to your business d) Be the change within the business, allow them to use IT effectively and enable them to drive new initiatives e) Work out a logical framework and workable format around any innovative application strategy Most industry verticals find the role of IT changing within their organisations. In particular, the banking, insurance and manufacturing sectors see IT in a new light and find IT teams creating new opportunities. IT is now forcing business to think innovatively and also showing it direction.

For instance, in terms of project management and project roll out, IT is taking the lead in deciding project schedules and helping business in reaching its goal as well as completion.

I see most IT managers working out innovative work flow process, project reviews, being involved in data analysis and management, and being clued into every aspect and function that enables business groups to ensure efficiency. Besides, IT is enabling business with necessary applications and deciding payment schedules.

Bishwanath Ghosh, CIO - Corporate , Mahindra & Mahindra Limited

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+91 9999992084 www.deltapowersolutions.com

Update I n d u s t r y

How to Free up Wireless Chokepoints

Security Saas model is well suited for businesses that have few or none IT resources

TECH TRENDS | Metaphors aside, it probably goes without saying that office workers are running on more bandwidth these days. More than ever, in between bouts of actual office productivity, desk jockeys are using their systems and mobile devices to shop, play games, stream movies, music and more. But what happens when personal entertainment habits begin to trump actual work-related office apps when it comes to competing for office bandwidth? It could mean an important executive videoconference call only functions in fits and spurts. Or perhaps, it’s elongated wait times

While Telecom growth rebounded for service

Telecom providers, Semiconductor growth rate is down Telecome growth rebounded after the lull last year--increased spending by Telecom Service Providers in enhancing their networks and increased adoption of 4G technologies in US, China, EMEA and India is driving the demand from both TSPs and TEMs for servics.

Semiconductor R&D spend increased which will translate to growth for service providers in the near future.

Source: GSPR

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trends deals products services people

FY 2012 FY 2013

10%

Service Provider Growth RatesVertical Wise (In USD Billion)

12%

1.540 1.399

1.487 1.328

12% 16%

6% 0.512

0.574

0.347 0.402

Automotive Aerospace

0.32 0.340

6% 0.286 0.302

17%

0.211

0.247

Consumer Computer Medical Electronics Peripherals and Devices Storage

-11% 0.293 0.260

Semiconductor

Telecom

ISV

during a WebEx presentation that’s being viewed by 100 potential customers. On a wired network, this problem can be easily rectified by throwing more bandwidth at the problem and providing LAN users dedicated gigabit links to their desktops to remove competition at the chokepoints. In catastrophic situations and worm outbreaks, IT personnel know exactly which Ethernet cable to pull.

To meet increased bandwidth demands, organizations could create more access points and user channels — an endeavor that promises to be costly, time consuming and challenging to troubleshoot for any company.

A more cost effective approach involves visibility and awareness provided by some type of application control technology.

Organizations need a way to assess which applications are traveling over the wireless network as a basis for setting subsequent rules and policies. Once that traffic is assessed, IT administrators will then need the tools to allocate it to the appropriate channels. For example, if a user’s WebEx or remote desktop traffic is hampered because someone else is watching a Netflix movie, then rules could be created that would prohibit or rate-limit movies or games during business hours and give strict priority to business traffic.

Visibility is also an important factor when mapping out wireless network strategy, as it allows an organization to truly assess what is running on their network and ensure unfettered access to business-critical traffic while restricting or limiting all other unnecessary apps.

Audi Wireless Mouse

Nikon A1W1

Audi Wireless mouse is not a scale model of its car, but has “the shape of a stylised Audi vehicle”. The Audi Computer Mouse comes with a 2.4 GHz scroll wheel and a 2000 dpi sensor, with a maximum range of 6 metres. Price: Rs 5600

Nikon has announced release of the Nikon1AW1, advanced camera with interchangeable lenses. The Nikon 1 system proposes new forms of imaging expression.

Logitech Extreme 3D PRO Advanced controls and a twist-handle rudder, this joystick stays stable and precise through an acrobatic dogfight or a long-range strike. It hasTwist Control, PC Platform, Twist Handle. Rs 3399

Customers Should Rethink Security Strategy: HP TECH TRENDS | HP’s new products and services enable enterprises to disrupt the adversary marketplace, manage risk and extend their security capabilities to better protect themselves against a growing threat landscape.

Cybercrime continues to increase, with 92 per cent of Forbes Global 2000 companies reporting data breaches in the last 12 months. This growth is due to adversaries forming a more sophisticated and collaborative marketplace through which they share information and advanced data theft tools.

Studies estimate that the global cybercrime black market has a value of $104 billion per year.

New offerings disrupt adversaries, manage risk and extend organizations’ security capabilities

Evolving regulatory and legislative requirements are further adding to enterprises’ security burden, with an estimated average cost of noncompliance at $13.7 million for global organizations.(2) Additionally, in the world of bring your own device (BYOD), IT no longer

Around The World

controls the endpoint, offering the adversary many more control points to attack.

HP’s new products and services enable enterprises to approach their security challenges with a single view of information security, and to manage risk and compliance. “Enterprises today aren’t facing a single attacker; they are fighting a wellorganized, well-funded adversary marketplace,” said Ranndeep Singh Chonker, country manager, HP Enterprise Security Products, India. “An organization extends well beyond its four walls—it’s made up of a vast ecosystem of suppliers, devices that can go anywhere and, not to mention, a web that is literally worldwide,” said Susanta Bhattacharya, director, Infrastructure Technology Outsourcing (ITO) Portfolio, Enterprise Services, HP India.

quick byte

M2M Records Strong Worldwide Growth Accordiong to Research Analysts at Aanalysysmason, the device connections will increase more slowly than previously anticipated, particularly in the energy and utility sectors.

Machine-to-machine (M2M) represents a strong growth market across various industry segments. At the end of 2013, there will be 0.2 billion M2M device connections worldwide. This will increase to 2.2 billion by 2023. Utilities is the fastest-growing sector, which will account for 67% of overall M2M.

Steve Ballmer, outgoing Microsoft CEO

“I regret that there was a period in the early 2000s when we were so focused on what we had to do around Windows that we weren’t able to redeploy talent to the new device called the phone.”

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ASK THE EXPERT Techniques for Optimal Utilisation of small IT spaces

7 Ways to Optimize Your Small IT Spaces

Seven Solutions which can save time and energy; cut costs and make your IT environment simpler, more adaptable and manageable and help you optimize your IT space What is the most challenging aspect for senior IT managers today?

IT managers are challenged by the optimal use of their small IT spaces; according to me, IT spaces in small and medium sized businesses are often left unmonitored, unorganised, unsecured, and space constrained. In my opinion, properly deployed physical IT infrastructure is critical for any enterprise as it utilises mobility solutions, virtualises servers, and adopts cloud applications.

So, what is the major reason for the chaos in data centers and server rooms? How can the data center be placed in order?

In many data centers, the symptoms of chaos are readily apparent. The primary cause of chaos is unplanned, uncontrolled growth. As the business introduces new processes to help drive growth, IT responds by building and supporting new applications. IT equipment is rolled into the data center to support the applications and new systems are deployed in a hectic deadline-driven environ-

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dossier

Amod Ranade General Manager, Datacenter Business Development, Schneider Electric brings to light challenges faced by SMB companies to optimise their IT installations

ment. IT managers faced with the symptoms of chaos can resolve the issues by taking into account two key aspects: physical infrastructure deployment and change management behaviours. Hardware innovations which allow the easy deployment of self-contained zones of racks, and software developments which enable rational physical infrastructure change management are two keys for an affordable and non-disruptive data center face lift.

Deploy imaginative physical infrastructure Since data centers are evolving to scalable modular rackbased solutions, a “cure” can be applied to the chaos problem. By deploying a rack-based system that includes uninterruptible power supply (UPS) power, electrical distribution, monitoring, cable routing and air flow solutions, an integrated approach can be easily adopted, at reasonable cost. Racks have evolved to accommodate higher density IT equipment. Selecting a standard rack size is an important first step. A new row of racks can be set up as a self contained “zone” that resides on the data

ask the expert CUSTOM PUBLISHING

“Reduce downtime and avoid environmental damage with a vendor-neutral management system that allows for viewing of all physical locations” center floor but which operates independent of the existing infrastructure. These organised zones can proliferate as the existing chaotic infrastructure begins to phase out, either rack by rack or row by row. By leveraging the opportunity to install integrated rack systems, chaotic growth can be transitioned to controlled growth as the new equipment phases out the old.

Alteration of “change management” behaviours Change control is a systematic way for the IT manager to control his or her destiny. Traditional IT change control is characterised by a formal request to initiate a change in the IT environment, followed by a formal review of the suggested change, followed by an analysis of the predicted outcome, and formulation of a back-up plan if the change does not work out as planned. Frequently overlooked in this methodology, however, is the power of the change control process to direct the evolution of both IT and physical infrastructure. After all, a failure in IT infrastructure impacts one application or system, while a failure in the physical infrastructure (power, cooling) can potentially impact all applications and systems.

By adopting an automated change control process, an IT manager can positively influence how the data center evolves from a systems perspective. By including the facility or physical infrastructure side of the data center environment, the IT manager can also steer the evolution of the data center away from one that breeds organisational chaos.

Robust vendor management is also an important tool for avoiding chaos. The trend towards outsourcing of facilities and systems to third parties has blurred the issue of accountability for quality of performance. An IT manager seeking to evolve from a chaotic situation should insist on strict adherence to standard data center practices, including a change control process, as part of any contract for services outside of the direct chain of command. Only by having all data center personnel operating under the same standards of performance can the evolution from chaos to order occur.

70% of DC outages are directly attributable to human error and this highlights the critical importance of having an effective operations program

1. Manage and monitor multiple sites—Reduce downtime and avoid environmental damage with a vendorneutral management system that allows you to view all physical locations through a single pane of glass. Critical alerts, surveillance video, environmental probes, and remotely controllable power distribution units (PDUs) or outlet strips will enable you to make quick decisions and manage remotely.

2. Protect against power failures—Uninterruptible power supply (UPS) units protect critical equipment and maintain availability during scheduled and unscheduled power outages. They also protect against power surges, potential data loss, and lost revenue as a result of power outages 3. Use scalable power and cooling—Respond to changing IT needs and improve efficiency by using scalable systems to rapidly increase or decrease capacity as needed for power management. By rightsizing, capital outlays can be lowered 4. Take advantage of field upgrades—Use field-upgradable or buy-up enhancements in your spaces, such as the option of adding remote management to a pre-installed device. This makes new functions more cost-effective without requiring a large capital expense 5. Start monitoring energy use—Install equipment to constantly monitor energy use regardless of whether or not you are required to report it. This helps you to stay green and make energy-efficient decisions in the future, which can help reduce your OpEx over time 6. Deploy pre-installed equipment and—Purchase racks and enclosures with pre-installed equipment.

This ensures that equipment is pre-tested and validated beforehand, saving installation time and confusion.

Just plug it in and turn it on 7. Utilising non-dedicated IT spaces—If deployment must be done in a non-dedicated space, use a soundproofed rack. Soundproof, self-contained enclosure solutions include everything you may need for housing reliable IT deployment in any limited space.

The section BROUGHT YOU BY

How does one optimise small IT spaces?

Here are seven suggestions that can easily be implemented to optimise IT spaces:

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Is Rece

Ring

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Open Source Challenge | cover story

ssion

ing the

n Source Bells?

Open Source has come a long way since its inception to armour IT managers against recession

by SU B HANK AR K U NDU

PHOTO /I LLUSTRATIO N/IMAG ING CRE DIT

D esi gn by haridas bal an

N

illu st rat i o n by ani l t

ow, with the recession alarm banging the ears of economy, senior IT managers across industries are taking a re-look at IT budgets. For the second time in last five years, the IT industry is witnessing a slowdown. The buzz among IT managers seems to be â&#x20AC;&#x153;how about open source?â&#x20AC;?

What is driving this trend? The major factors are rising software licensing fees, CIOs operating under constrained budgets, internet making way for new delivery models and evolving design architecture considering BYOD. In the current business environment, open source software and technologies beyond software are becoming an integral part of the IT landscape. This is particularly true in the internet age, where content

Inside 13 | Innovating with an Open mind 18 | Commercial Viability: A Proven Fact 21 | An Open Challenge?

26| Setting up an Open Culture

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cover story | Open Source Challenge

Innovating

with an Open Mind There are innovations galore in open source. Android is the biggest example. Open source paves the way for innovation to collaborate and share on communities

O

pen technology connects customers to a community of innovation that enables new business capabilities--when they’re ready for them.

The players, both in the proprietary and open source space, contribute to open source communities, both from a corporate capacity, as well as individual.

Android is the best example of innovation in open source. It’s based on the open source license which means anyone can work on all layers of the stack-- from HAL to Application layer. Innovation on open source projects is moving into the enterprise and consumer world much faster than in the past. Earlier, the question might have been “Shall we use open source?” Now, it is, “Which open source project shall we use?”

The open source movement remains at the front of innovation to this day, and not just in the commercial sector. Numerous

projects started by universities, loosely knit communities, and individuals are exploring areas yet to be taken on by mainstream proprietary software products. Now-a-days, many companies are carrying out their experiments in open source software.

Innovations’ Galore As Sharat Airani, CTO, Intellinet Datasys puts it, “Innovation is no guarantee of profit.

But it motivates people inside and outside the company. It generates a buzz and comments and improves the business image.

Look at the case of iPad, for example. Intel has been at the heart of the movement since Linus Torvalds launched the Linux kernel in 1991.”

Peter Lees, Principal Technologist and field product manager, Asia Pacific, SUSE says, “One of the most interesting new innovations in the open source arena is the rate

is king. According to NetCraft, around 50 per cent of internet web servers run on open source.

A recent study shows that enterprise computing is inevitably taking the open source route. The maturity of technologies and the transformation of development methods are opening up new horizons.

For example, Linux offers the ability to start small with community support, and grow into very powerful systems with enterprise-class support when needed, without having to worry about platform migrations.

Proprietary software vendors are also feeling the

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at which it is being adopted by commercial enterprises, either by IT companies building their products on top of open source foundations, or for organisations using those products without necessarily realising that they have open source roots.”

For example, the most popular “Big Data” analytics application at the moment is an open source project called Hadoop. This project is bundled by IT companies such as IBM, WANdisco and many others, and offered to customers looking to implement a Big Data analytics environment. Another example is SAP HANA, the new in-memory database appliance from SAP, which runs on top of a SUSE Linux operating system platform. In the consumer space, the Android software stack is making mobile devices available to open source developers, something that was previously restricted to a small number of companies.

pinch as senior IT managers and CIOs are looking at alternatives. These vendors are focusing on providing their customers with wider choice to bridge technologies together in heterogeneous environments. Asheesh Raina, Principal Research Analyst, Gartner, says, “The maturity of open source is not same all across. In some technologies like ERP software, open source is still in the nascent stage. While deploying an ERP system in an organisation, IT managers are little skeptical about open source, as reliability still lies with proprietary software.”

From a different perpective, an average mid-range

Open Source Challenge | cover story

“The beauty of an open source community is the drive to innovation.Users can share communities’ resources and expertise to solve problems and overcome challenges” Arun Kumar GM, Red Hat India

age innovation. Red Hat contributes to open source communities, both from a corporate capacity, as well as individuals, with many Red Hat employees actively participating in these communities worldwide From these contributions, Red Hat has been able to launch RDO project, a freely available, community-supported distribution of OpenStack that runs on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Fedora, and their derivatives.

Arun Kumar, General Manager, RedHat India says, “We do not own the communities, but sponsor, participate, contribute and share the same as everyone else within these communities, such as OpenStack and Fedora. The beauty of an open source community is the drive to innovation, where

enterprise hosted ERP solution for about 20 users costs between 20-25 Lac rupees per annum with a fixed onetime capex of about 20 per cent. Hosted open source ERP, CRM, SRM, Cash management or HRMS solutions cost about 1/20th of this cost. They are also supported on mobile platforms. It again depends on the maturity of the solution and IT managers’ comfortability with it.

Fuelling Open With middleware and enterprise applications, open source has been positioned as a strong alternative.

customers or non-customers of Red Hat can share challenges, and tap the communities’ resources and expertise to solve problem and overcome challenges.”

The mechanism of feedback helps. With this model, the focus moves from “What is broken?” to “What’s next for open source in my organization?.”

The IT community needs more education on open source and the options available beyond the licensed softwares. The challenge is to walk the open source path as it requires technology awareness . The convenient way has been the licensed software but constant innovation in open source is leading IT managers to explore this path as well.

It goes without saying that cost containment is a concern which leads IT managers to go open, but there have been studies that qualify a vast majority of enterprise open source assets as highly undermanaged.

IT managers realise the vulnerabilities involved with open source if they do not properly manage their open source assets. Be it legal tangles due to licensing complexities or security threats to infrastructure or fixing glitches in application, open source does come at a cost.

Srikanth S, ISD – Senior Manager, Information

PH OTOS im ag i ng by shi ji l narayanan

Big vendors like IBM and Microsoft have been investing in open source projects. The Linux development team in India at IBM is a key element of the worldwide IBM Linux Technology Center and has been in existence since the Linux Technology Center was founded in 1999. Local Linux developers work in many technology areas in Linux including KVM, Power Management, RAS, Linux on Power, and many other areas. The Linux Technology Center aims to help make Linux better, especially for enterprise customers, enable and optimise IBM products for Linux, and extend Linux and open source usage into new areas.

RedHat, a major player in open source sphere, has adopted initiatives to encour-

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cover story | Open Source Challenge

“The open source monitoring tools help us in tracking the network utilisation, internet links monitoring and server utilization”

Security, TVS Motor Company says, “We are using CAL (client access license). Alternatives such as open source software as monitoring tools which helps OpenOffice & Kingsoft can cut these costs.” us monitor and track the network utilisation, internet Players who ply on open source way like Redhat, links monitoring and server utilisation.”

Suse are of a slightly different opinion and feel But IT managers see value in open source as it positive about the changing trend. They feel that, in escapes the conventional management channels like most of the cases, the lower up-front and operational the layers of procurement as it’s completely free. The costs of open source platforms help businesses value in open source stems from themselves meet commercial the fact that it’s free, flexible and requirements. adaptable. But they’re also aware So, is open source Most popular Open Source projects of the challenges involved in commercially viable in maintaining it. However, the tricky the current scenario? Are Mozilla Firefox aspect is exposure to communities proprietar y enterprise as developers and so the internal IT applications losing out to open Apache HTTP Server team should be equipped enough source?

MySQL to choose the right time to make The new innovations updates and patches and the apt in the open source space, Apache Subversion time to pay for support services. the increasing relevance of PHP It’s a boon for start-ups. Startcommunity source model, ups can concentrate on revenue licensing and support strategy, Linux Kernel generation & market penetration fostering open source culture Firebug instead haemorrhaging cash on within the enterprise and expensive IT systems and software. significance of open source Bash Dhananjay Chandrasekhar on cloud model—only an Ubuntu Rokde, Global Head - Information ‘Open Challenge’ can take Security, Cox & Kings says, the meandering pathways of Apache OpenOffice “Proprietary applications are sold open source and examine its for 15000-20000 rupees per core dynamics.

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PH OTO by ahana mathani

Srikanth S ISD – Senior Manager Information Security, TVS Motor Company

Open Source Challenge | cover story

Commercial Viability.

A Proven Fact The big question today -- Is open source commercially viable in the current economic scenario?

N

o matter how much ever it’s discussed and debated, the question on the commercial viability of open source remains. Given the mandate ‘Do more with less,’ IT managers are looking for ways to cut down the IT spending without compromising on the infrastructure.

Recently, Twitter announced that it will execute the biggest IT IPO this year and it’s almost entirely built with Linux and open source - and the commercial possibilities for Twitter are huge. Red Hat, an open source company, now has over $1billion in annual revenue. The ecosystem around Linux is many times larger than the operating system itself. A couple of these examples signify the relevance of open source and its commercial feasibility.

“With a financial collapse, the IT industry dodged a huge cannonball. It was this period, OSS shot through the roof” Dhananjay Chandrasekhar Rokde Global Head – Information Security, Cox & Kings.

PH OTO by jiten gandh i

Relevance and Need for Open Dhananjay Chandrasekhar Rokde, Global Head – Information Security, Cox & Kings, asserts that open source software is on the rise in a slowdown scenario.

Looking back to mid 2008, when recession hit the world economy, he says, “With a financial collapse extremely well-known, the IT industry dodged a huge cannonball as world markets started to regain normalcy. It was during this period that OSS utilisation shot through the roof. Global software giants were being crushed under their own weight, forcing software prices to go up.” On the other hand, extremely conservative CFOs were opposed to any spending and never released additional funds for software renewals or fresh capital expenditures on buying newer licenses.

CIOs were asked to sustain merely on their “lights on” budgets. CIOs and IT middle managements were forced to look in the direction of OSS.”

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cover story | Open Source Challenge At times, it becomes a challenge for enterprises not comfortable with open source to accept it as a viable approach for developing quality software.

But those perceptions are changing. Be it business, non-profit or government, organisations of all sizes have been adopting open source software packages for different purposes. For instance, the Linux operating system and Apache Web servers power much of the Internet. The Firefox Web browser is leading the sphere. Content management systems like Drupal, Joomla and Wordpress are becoming increasingly viable options. An open source model can result in powerful, secure, useful, industrialstrength software.

Srikanth.S, ISD – Senior Manager, Information Security, TVS Motor Company, says, “Open source also presents a deep and profound challenge to the model of financial viability on which the software industry has historically been based. Yet, it remains unclear exactly how open source software can possibly be financially viable in the long term, given that the code is, by definition, made openly available for free.”

The major player in Open Source, Red Hat, quite

obviously, has a slightly different viewpoint.

“For commercially viable open source solutions, we need to look at enterprise-class, reliable solutions, coupled with support for the customers.

Open source technology that is standardised, interoperable, and modular provides choice and flexibility for organisations to choose the way they run their IT infrastructures and deployment,” says Arun Kumar, General Manager, Red Hat India.

Open source software is leveraging today because end users now expect most software and web services to be free.

Subhomoy Chakroborti, a believer in Open Source and General Manager, IT, Magma Fincorp, thinks the primary factor for the adoption of open source is cost and then, flexibility.

He says, “Getting IT budget approval is tougher for any IT initiative. Any savings on the TCO is an advantage.”

Peter Lees, Principal Technologist & Field Product Manager for Suse, Asia Pacific is not surprised to see the increasing number of commercial operations use open source as the basis for their products.

An Open Challenge?

Are proprietary enterprise applications losing out to open source? It is said that open source delivers where proprietary software fails.

O

pen innovation emphasises the importance of using external sources of knowledge in a company’s innovation processes. The use of outside sources is not new, but a growing number of IT organisations in recent years have learnt how to successfully capitalise on their companies’ productivity.

IT managers are no longer short sighted over open source. They have realized that OSS is here to stay

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& is a part of the longer journey, than just a cheap, crude patch. However, some believe that it could be a little premature to assert that open source delivers where proprietary software fails. But, there is a visible trend of IT managers being inclined towards open source as they find it to be an alternative solution to proprietary software. The reasons could be many - free to try, buy and update.

Arun Kumar, General Manager, Red Hat India, says,

“Proprietary solutions or closed technology often leave users locked into a vendor’s vision, as they are expensive, limited choice and slow innovation. Open solutions are the most flexible option, the most affordable, and leaves users open to new business opportunities and greater, faster innovation.”

But Srikanth S, ISD – Senior Manager Information Security, TVS Motor Company, says, “For some point of time, I don’t think proprietary software will completely lose out to open source, because there may be pluses and minuses in both proprietary and open source. Due to the promised design and working capabilities and stability, many enterprises are going in for proprietary software rather than open source.”

Open Vendors Proprietary technology vendors like IBM, Microsoft can see the changing trend as they are investing highly on open source.

As IBM continues to expand its leverage of open source as infrastructure to expand the portfolio, hardware, software and services products are built from scratch with open source in mind.

Sudhir Sastry, Client Technical Professionals Leader, IBM Software Group, India/South Asia, says, “However, it does not mean we won’t build proprietary products.

Even our proprietary products will be built with the foreknowledge that the IT world is increasingly a diverse mix of open source and proprietary technologies.”

Sastry adds, “There is a mixed scenario of proprietary and open source enterprise applications built on both open source and proprietary platforms. Open source has brought competition to the markets but it’s all about what delivers the best client value at the right TCO.” IBM is investing on open source technologies in new growth areas such as cloud computing (OpenStack), big data (Hadoop), virtualisation (KVM), and softwaredefined networking (OpenDaylight), in addition to continued investment in Linux, Eclipse, Apache and many other open source projects.

The biggest challenge facing closed source, proprietary software is that it will, by definition, only ever have a limited subset of developers and engineers who can create, maintain and support that software--the employees of the company making that product.

Peter Lees, Principal Technologist & Field Product Manager for Suse, Asia Pacific, cites a favourable example: “If the provider decides to change its product lines, or if the provider is bought by another company, customers are forced to ultimately deal only with the provider of that software, and must account for the risk that the application may suddenly stop being available.”

Open source software, in contrast, can be contributed to by a wide variety of companies, institutions and individuals. This means there

“There is a mixed scenario of proprietary and open source enterprise applications built on both open source and proprietary platforms.

It’s about what delivers the best client value at the right TCO” Sudhir Sastry Client Technical Professionals Leader, IBM Software Group, India/SA

is a much wider pool of talent that is available to work on developing features, making fixes, and providing support. In particular, it means that businesses can compare the support offerings from a range of providers, and choose the best fit for their requirements in a relatively competitive market.

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“Open source is not just an alternative to traditional commercial applications, it’s a movement, a silent movement that’s profoundly changing IT in enterprises” Sharat Airani CTO, Intellinet Datasys

Sharat Airani, CTO, Intellinet Datasys, says, “Open source is not just an alternative to traditional commercial applications, but also a movement which is in the process of profoundly changing IT in enterprises. This is a silent revolution, but an inexorable one.” It operates on two levels,

proprietary software developers.

Lees also says, “Another great benefit of open source over proprietary software is that, if necessary, organisations can modify the software themselves, developing their own intellectual property by tweaking or radically altering an existing software

2013

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NT*

WinXP

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Mac

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9.6%

55.9%

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July

9.0%

56.2%

1.8%

0.4%

15.8%

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June

8.6%

56.3%

2.0%

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15.4%

4.9%

9.1%

May

7.9%

56.4%

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15.7%

4.9%

9.7%

April

7.3%

56.4%

2.2%

0.4%

16.4%

4.8%

9.7%

March

6.7%

55.9%

2.4%

0.4%

17.6%

4.7%

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February

5.7%

55.3%

2.4%

0.4%

19.1%

4.8%

9.6%

January

4.8%

55.3%

2.6%

0.5%

19.9%

4.8%

9.3%

corresponding specifically to two major avenues of expansion: Maturity and Development.

The open availability of the software source code also means that it is generally less susceptible to “back door” security risks--there is a strong community of security experts that monitors software and not only highlights security weaknesses but can also offer fixes, often with much greater speed than

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product at the source code level, which can help fit the software more closely to the needs of their business, or even be used to create a competitive advantage.”

In comparison, a great deal of proprietary commercial off-the-shelf software still requires significant customisation during installation, which in many cases can exceed the costs involved in the software or hardware acquisition for a project.

source : w3 Schools

Recent Usage of OS Platform

Open Source Challenge | cover story

Open Field:

Licensing and Cloud How easy is it to handle open source and its licensing and support strategy? How relevant is open source on Cloud?

O

pen source licensing and support strategy could become a huge challenge and maintenance of source. With open community, it’s still not clear how source code changes are controlled and how versions would be maintained.

Dhananjay C Rokde, Global Head-Information Security, Cox & Kings differs. He says, “OSS licensing models are very simple. Most software will have limited flavours and a fixed support component. Most OSS is shipped under a standard GPL (general public license) or an MPL (Mozilla Public License). Non-standard customisations will obviously come at a cost.”

Some CIOs and IT managers find licence handling of open source a bit difficult as each software falls under various categories which needs to be tracked.

But using open source as free software can reduce so many licence related issues.

Open Support Subhomoy Chakroborti, GM-IT, Magma Fincorp says, “As per the support strategy is concerned, it’s advisable to get a vendor who has expertise on the stack and can build the solution around it. Regarding licence, it’s important to understand the underlying licensing requirements (like publishing framework changes back to the open community) to avoid any legal issues.”

Sudhir Sastry, Client Technical Professionals Leader, IBM Software Group, India South Asia, “It takes experience in terms of how to handle open source, how to comply with licences and how to exploit open source to derive maximum value. These are already well

understood practices with education available for people inexperienced with open source to learn from.”

Red Hat’s core business is based on a subscription model. With a subscription, customers enjoy a highvalue relationship with RedHat that goes beyond a typical customer-vendor agreement. Red Hat encourages its customers to provide feedback, so that it can focus on the innovation and opportunities for their organisations, rather than just ‘what’s broken’.

Arun Kumar, GM, Red Hat India says, “In an industry where there are changes and developments every single day, we have engineering teams that track every single change--a bug fix, security enhancement, or others, and ensure our customers’ mission-critical systems remain up-to-date and stable. It is not easy to do this, but with a team that is constantly on its toes and tapping into every single development, we have managed to provide the best services to our clients time and again. “ SUSE also offers support for open source software as its primary business model. For example, SUSE offers subscription-based support for enterprise Linux, cloud infrastructure software, and systems management tools.

Peter Lees, Principal Technologist & Field Product Manager for Suse, Asia Pacific says, “Specifically, the fastest-moving open source project at the moment is OpenStack: which is infrastructure software for the creation of public, private and hybrid clouds.”

Organisations making use of open source software need to decide how much they want to invest in internal resources to support their environments, and how much to use in a subscription to a support provider. This is essentially a risk management issue--how much of

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“Specifically, the fastestmoving open source project at the moment is OpenStack: which is infrastructure software for the creation of public, private and hybrid clouds” Peter Lees Principal Technologist & Field Product Manager for Suse, Asia Pacific.

Relevance on Cloud

the risk to transfer (to a support provider) and how much of the risk to accept (based on the value of the application to the business).

Dhananjay Rokde, Global Head - IS, Cox & Kings says, “Rokde says, “Clustering and configuring high availability adds on the cost exponentially, and vendors often force you into paying for components that enable those features. Any other benefit like replication, remote storage, encryption or backup is an added cost under some fancy line item. Technical support (which again comes in ‘n’ flavours) is over and above these costs.”

“Flexible licensing, Consume now – Pay later, Periodic invoicing, lengthy trail periods, infinite scaling, stringent Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and never being bothered about a server being ‘down’ or downtime are just some of the features the open source offers”, adds Rokde.

Open Source in Enterprise Open Source software Linux KVM Xen hypervisorst

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Application servers Red Hat’s JBoss Apache Tomcat

Web servers

Databases

Apache

MySQL PostgreSQL

Nginx NoSQL

In general, cloud computing relies on flexibility, agility and automation. Open source helps enable all of these since the code can be examined and any necessary integration work can be applied. One of the hottest technology trends in this decade has been the cloud.

The emerging cloud-based SaaS model offers immense opportunities but also raises new risks for organisations in relation to intellectual property infringement. Various open-source license management solutions are available to assist enterprises in making a safe transition into the cloud.

For enterprises planning on navigating the cloud environment—and for those that have already made the migration—it is important to take an inventory of the code incorporated in the software .

S. Srikanth, Senior Manager - IS, TVS Motors, says, “ We have to keep in mind that the IP policies developed for the traditional software distribution model needs to be assessed and updated to meet the obligations associated with the cloud environment Rokde terms cloud as the game changer. He says, “Data, Anywhere-Anytime-Anyhow!” That’s the modern day CEO’s expectation and expectations are sky-high.

Recurring Capex and increasing Opex are every CFO’s nightmare.”

An open hybrid cloud or hybrid IT doesn’t mean just connecting a few proprietary silos. It means weaving in a fluid, interconnected, and interoperable infrastructure that’s based on standards, draws from innovation wherever it’s happening, and leaves the customer in control of their own IT destiny and have visibility into the technology of business.

Open Source Challenge | cover story

Setting up an Open

Culture

How to set up an open source culture within the enterprise and applications that run on open source

T

he notion of an “open source culture” is gaining momentum as a business concept that transcends beyond IT. To establish such a culture, leaders must promote collaboration and the values of transparency and openness.

Open source culture is ultimately collaborative, and expertise-driven. Developing a successful open source culture inside an organisation also means developing the skills and abilities of technical employees, so that they can produce high-value, reusable work, rather than be constrained to simple operational tasks. Ideally, organisations want IT administrators to automate tasks and control them via policy, rather than requiring manual intervention for every activity. Essentially, this should be the goal for any IT environment, but open source offers more cababilities to control as the code itself can be changed, if necessary.

open standards while developing systems.

Peter Lees, Principal Technologist and field product manager for SUSE Asia Pacific says, “Open standards mean that network protocols, document formats, and programming languages are available on multiple platforms and can be used by multiple products.

This avoids the possibility of being stuck for choice (“locked-in”) at a later stage. For example, if you create a program using Perl (a popular open source scripting language), that program can run on many operating systems: Linux, UNIX, Windows, Mac, etc. If you use Microsoft Powershell for the same task, you’re limited to running that program on Windows only. That may seem fine in the short term, but that simple choice of scripting language has defined the deployment platform for the lifetime of the program, which may later impact the flexibility or costs of the business.”

Effective Collaboration & Communication Open Your Mind Subhomoy Chakroborti, GM-IT, Magma Fincorp says, “You need to have an open mind to adopt open source platforms. You can build enterprise grade applications completely on open source platforms. However valid skepticism still exists around scalability factor. You need to be sure that the architecture and design of your application is going to scale up to your enterprise’s demand in terms of data volume and transactions.”

Arun Kumar, GM, Red Hat India, says “In terms of grooming your IT staff to begin working with open source, one recommendation is to invest in training and certifications to ensure you have the skills your staff requires for success.”

The key requirement to developing an open source culture within an enterprise is to look for

Also, direct communication with a development community can help IT administrators at both ends of the expertise scale: for new admins, there is often a

Open Source Software Traditional Approach

Current Approach

Free Software

Active OSS adoption

Low-cost implementation

OSS Technical Solution Partner

Short Life cycle

Implementation & maintenance

Migration to Proprietary software.

OSS Solution Sustenance

Interim Cost saving

ROI + Quality

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cover story | Open Source Challenge

Subhomoy Chakroborti GM-IT, Magma Fincorp

wealth of frequently asked questions, online chat to get answers to basic questions. For experts looking to develop software beyond its original purpose and create new intellectual property for their organisations, direct access to and involvement with the community can provide a useful sounding board for ideas.

It is worth noting that open source communities involve both enthusiasts and the employees of open source support organisations. Organisations that need to meet particular service level objectives may find that

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relying on community support alone doesn’t match the timeframes required, particularly in the case of mission critical applications.

Applications that Run on Open Source Today, applications that run on open source platforms were built on open source run across the spectrum of consumer-facing to enterprise-class. More than 90 per cent of Fortune 500 companies are powered by Red Hat’s open source technology.

There are open source applications covering all aspects of computing. In the enterprise, there is the Linux operating system, database software such as Progress and MariaDB, email systems such as Sendmail (one of the first open source projects) and Postfix etc, and web software such as Apache, and more. For the desktop, there are open source office productivity applications such as LibreOffice, graphics applications such as GIMP, and web browsers such as Firefox, along with many other applications.

Proprietary applications run on open source platforms; for example, there are over 9,000 applications that are supported on SUSE Enterprise Linux.

OpenShift is Red Hat’s Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering that is targeted at developers who want to take their applications to the cloud without worrying about the physical resources. Since its initial release, more than 1,000,000 apps have been launched on the OpenShift PaaS. Subhomoy uses the open source platform in a big way in Magma in managing the Collection Field Force system.

He says, “This is one of our most critical platforms having field users as well as back office users. The field users are using an application running on Linux based handheld terminals and the back end users are using web solution running on Apache/Tomcat with Java as the Application platform and PostgresSql as the database. This application is being used massively by the Collection Field Forces for collecting the dues from the customers and providing money receipts on the go. Also, this is being used by the management in planning the daily activities of the field guys. The management gets to see the current health of collection at their fingertips.”

IDEs (Integrated Development Environments) like Eclipse, NetBeans, CodeBlocks let developers get started with “zero” investments. Application development platforms like LAMP set a powerful base for developers.

The proprietary IDE costs thousands of dollars per single user license.

Dhananjay Rokde, Global Head-IS, Cox & Kings says, “It is not surprising that most of the Instant ticketing portals, retail portals, instant ticketing websites, social connectivity & networking portals, news & reviews sites and ad-revenue supported content is all supported by OSS.”

PH OTO by drish ti

“You need to be sure of the architecture of your application that it can scale up to your enterprise’s demand in terms of data volume and transactions”

Open Data for Better Services

Data Portal India has been set up as a platform to support Open Data initiative and to help people. Neeta Verma, Deputy Director General, NIC, GOI in conversation with IT Next.

Q

Tell us about the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy. In your opinion what kind of benefits can this policy bring to the common citizens of the country?

The National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP) has been notified by the Government of India in March 2012. As per this policy, all Government Ministries and Departments are supposed to proactively release their data in open format. The policy was initiated by DST while NIC (National Informatics Centre) and DeitY (Department of Electronics and IT) have been assigned the responsibility of implementing this policy in India.

The main objective of this policy is to allow access to Government owned sharable data in machine readable form through a network,

o c t o b e r 2 0 1 3 | itnext

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organising workshops, seminars to sensitize, the departments about open data as well as processes to publish their datasets in Open format. We also handhold departments in their endeavour to publish data in open wherever necessary.

across the country in a proactive and periodically updatable manner, within the framework of various related policies, acts and rules of Government of India. Government Ministries & Departments have already nominated Data Controllers to lead their Open Data initiative.

NIC has set up an open government data platform.

Q

What are you doing to ensure that there is good usage of the datasets by the government and the citizens?

What kind of technology are you using in data.

We are engaging with various gov.in website? departments to help them understand potential of open The website, data.gov.in, is data. We are regularly organising built using Open Source workshops, seminars to sensitise, Technologies. In fact, complete the departments about open data project of development of open as well as processes to publish data platform is managed their datasets in open format. We using open source technology. are also engaging with various Complete source code of Open stakeholders of open data viz.

Government Platform (OGPL) civil society, academic and is available in open for anyone research community, developers, to download. Over and above, journalists, and other groups to the basic modules for dataset explore innovative applications management, catalogues as well of Open Data in Indian Context. as public portal, it has exclusive Besides organizing periodic in modules for dataset format Neeta Verma person meetings, conferences conversion. We have also built Deputy Director General, National Informatics with community, we have also Visualization Engine over the Centre (NIC), Government of India opened up number of channels on open data Platform to enable our open data platform to engage users to explore the data sets with community online. The through its visual representation in charts, graphs & maps for easy comprehension. Also, OGPL beneficiaries of this open government data is not just the public, has a dashboard module to facilitate programme management and it is also the various government departments. It is quite often reporting on different dimensions of Open data initiative. State- for one government department to require the data that has been of-the-art open source technologies are being used to develop as collected by some other government department for planning, policy formulation purposes. The open data policy makes it easier well as host and manage such a platform. for government departments to share data with each other.

These days, it has become fashionable to say that the world is having an avalanche of data. There is so What are the main benefits of the Open Data Platform much data around us that the valuable data gets lost in that NIC has developed? the welter of meaningless data. So what steps are being Open Data Platform set up by NIC can be accessed at data.gov.in. taken to ensure that the data that is being made available This platform enables all government departments to contribute under the open data policy will be properly used? their datasets in open format. Thus, datasets are contributed are You see, when the data is machine readable, and is free to use, reuse processed through a predefined workflow system for approval and redistribute, it is called open data. If the open data is coming for publishing on the data portal. Citizens can access open data from government departments, then it is called open government platform to browse, and search for the data that is relevant to their data. This data is free from licensing, so anyone can reuse or needs and can also download the datasets. Not only citizens, civil redistribute it. In every government department, senior level society, academia, research organizations, journalists and many executive has been nominated as data managers. Data managers others who need data for variety of purposes are the potential identify, publish and manage the data sets from respective users of this platform. Community module is another important department. At NIC, we are engaging with various departments dimension of this open data platform. It enables potential users and help them understand potential of pen data. We are regularly of datasets to explore & discuss datasets online. Essentially, the

Q

â&#x20AC;&#x153;You need to be sure that the architecture and design of your application is going to scale up to your enterpriseâ&#x20AC;?

Q

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itnext | o c t o b e r 2 0 1 3

Q

Open Source Challenge | cover story platform has been designed to facilitate a lot of citizen engagement as well as participation.

Frequent Breakdowns hampering your business?

Q

In your opinion, what are the potential benefits of the Open Government data initiative?

The biggest benefit of the OGD is the increase in transparency of governmental functioning. Citizen Engagement is another important dimension of open government data. Citizens are now able to access the raw government data behind the pre-packaged reports from various e-Governance applications. Rather than being merely “read-only” users, citizens can now participate in collaborative access to government data, including “mashing up” distributed government data from different departments and organisations, discovering interesting patterns, customizing applications, and providing feedback to enhance the quality of published government data. For governments, the costs of providing information is reduced when the data is released through these OGD portals as opposed to rendered into reports or applications.

Q

Q

Don’t you think that once all the government departments start contributing their datasets in the open format, the Data Repository will become huge? How do you ensure that this data is saved in a secure environment? Will you be using technologies like cloud computing?

In our framework of open government data, departments have the choice of uploading datasets to data portal repository or simply hyper linking to a location on their website. However, by uploading datasets in data portal repository, they get special services such as permanent URL, online visualisation etc. In either case, we do not foresee any challenge of storing these datasets. We at NIC, have large number of datasets across country. Almost all government websites portals are hosted out of NIC data centres. Further, open data platform is built on highly scalable architecture at all layers of IT. Cloud Computing services are being made available in our data centres. They shall be utilised as and when necessary.

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There is talk of creating large number of datasets that are easily usable by the general public.

Tell us about it.

Today, it is possible for us to create variety of visualisations across government datasets for better understanding by various stakeholders such as citizens, civil societies, interest groups etc.

Datasets can be integrated with geo spatial data to create mashups that can help government departments in better planning and decision making. It is possible to combine the mashups with live pictures for better understanding of development schemes, social audit of welfare schemes. Lot of innovative apps could be developed around these mashups to facilitate effective planning and implementation of government programme. These apps can be made available for simple mobile phones for wider reach across all strata of citizens. Existing services can be customised or localised with to local content to increase their usability by citizens, enhance user experience.

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insight | Integrated security

x i t M o t h g i R re Better u c e S Integrated Endpoint Security attempts to draw the line between Corporate and Personal Data in the BYOD environment

W

ith ever-increasing businesscritical data flowing on a corporate network, Endpoint security has become extremely critical for IT managers to address issues of network protection. The influx of diverse computing and mobile devices has created the need to comply these devices with certain standards to ensure robust network protection before the network access is granted.

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Organisations are looking for integrated Endpoint security suites that have the right mix of modern technologies such as, Mobile Device Management, Encryption and Systems Management, providing IT managers with powerful control tools through a centralised management console.

IT Managersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Security Woes In todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s complex IT environment, organisations are caught between competing issues: rising business-critical data, managing

PHOTO /I LLUSTRATIO N/IMAG ING CRE DIT

BY SU B HANKAR K U ND U

“The challenge of IT Managers manifests when you map their activity against the raft of new technologies and requirements that simply didn’t exist a few years ago”

a more complex environment and external risk. The technology is frequently changing with ever-increasing data volumes, an alarming growth in malware, APTs and complexity. Hence, the challenge before IT managers: balancing resource, cost and security. IT managers and administrators have to wear multiple hats. They have to multi-task, stay on the learning curve, keep abreast of emerging technologies. This combination of changes in IT, coupled with changing work patterns and business demands, creates real tension in balancing resource, cost and security.

Altaf Halde, Managing Director (South Asia), Kaspersky Lab India says, “In the morning, they could be resetting servers, by lunch they’re adjusting firewall rule sets and access control lists. In the afternoon, they’re walking through mobile device configuration settings so the CEO’s new smartphone or tablet can receive email and access the network. And before close of business, they’re resolving network address translation conflicts on edge routers. All of this could be seen as just ‘business-as-usual,’ but the challenge manifests when you map this activity against the raft of new technologies and requirements that simply didn’t exist a few years ago.”

PHOTO /I LLUSTRATIO N/IMAG ING CRE DIT

Addressing the BYOD trend Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) is a trend that no organisation, be it large, small or mid-size, can shy away from. With mobility and mobile devices taking centre stage in determining the computing devices employees use in a corporate environment, IT managers are looking for solutions that can secure the data that resides in smartphones and tablets. Most businesses have invested in security that protects all endpoints within their corporate network – plus firewalls that prevent unauthorised external access to corporate systems. However, enabling access – to business systems and data, from mobile devices – means smartphones and tablets will effectively cross through the protective firewall. It goes without saying that if such devices are infected with viruses or Trojans, it leads to security vulnerabilities within the corporate network.

Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Business solution claims to have addressed the rise of the BYOD trend in the work place. It can be deployed remotely via centralised Mobile Device Management (MDM). Strengthened data encryption can secure individual files, folders, or even entire hard drives with Advanced Encryption Standard 256-bit encryption, which will ensure that data remains secure in the event of loss or theft. This encryption can also be used on peripheral devices and removable drives as well.

Halde says, “If businesses are to benefit from the potential productivity gains offered by increased mobile access--and employees are able to enjoy the convenience of BYOD--security and IT departments are faced with having to ensure their business is protected against all new mobile security threats.”

Kaspersky offers protection across mobile platforms, be it Android, iOS, Blackberry, Windows or even Symbian, but depending on the flexibility of each OS, Kaspersky mounts its solution. For an operating system like iOS, Kaspersky’s solution gets limited, as the source code is not shared. OS on open source like Android stands to avail all the features of the product whereas iPhone users can avail limited features, such as Remote wipe and anti-theft.

Altaf, without naming a customer, refers to a company in the manufacturing segment where there was a little skepticism about employees using their own devices as there was concern around the security mechanism of the devices.

By giving administrators greater visibility and control over mobile devices that access the corporate network, these solutions make it easier for businesses to benefit from rigorous, multilayer security and productivity-enhancing management capabilities.

Zero integration is required to deploy Kaspersky Security for Mobile, which delivers a single solution that combines Mobile security and MDM. Special containers can be set up on each mobile device--so that corporate data and applications are totally separated from the users’ personal data and apps. Flexible settings

o c t o b e r 2 0 1 3 | itnext

image : photo s . com

Altaf Halde, Managing Director (South Asia), Kaspersky Lab India

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insight | Integrated security ANTIVIRUS ANTIVIRUSMATHS MATHS

$965

$2398

How much you lose:

You’re a nice little earner for the cybercriminals

$10

Several SMSs to get a key that unlocks your operating system

$1433

$25

Your Skype account gets hijacked along with the money in your account

HOW MUCH do you cost?

$25 PASS

$3

$750 The sum stolen from your bank account with $10 000 in it (7.5% of the balance)

A computer infected with a Trojan and linked to a botnet

$100

Cost of restoring your data after it was encrypted

by Trojan Gpcode

$10

Your credit card details

$30 $50

Cost of a rogue antivirus that does absolutely nothing to protect you

Your eWallet pinched with your eMoney in it

Despite a drop in service provider prices the cost of using the Internet is hitting the average user harder than ever. Kaspersky Lab’s experts found that the World Wide Web can be an expensive place for those who take a cavalier approach to their security. Having analyzed the statistics of malware infection gathered from the most widespread online scams, they calculated just how much the average Internet user is worth.

for containers let administrators restrict data access, manage an application’s access to device resources including SMS, camera, GPS, the network and the file system and control how data encryption is applied within the container.

Relevance of Virtualisation Security in the IT Managers’ Work Structure There is a pervasive myth that virtual machines are inherently more secure than physical machines. Halde asserts, “The truth is that while virtual machines may be less prone to threats such as spyware and ransomware, they are just as vulnerable to malware in the form of malicious email attachments, drive-by-downloads, botnet Trojans and even targeted ‘spear-fishing’ attacks.” These threats persist while the virtual system is active and in use.

There are two sides to this. On one hand, companies are intrigued by the attractive value proposition that virtualisation provides. On the other, the challenges related to managing traditional agent-based and agentless virtual assets significantly limit potential benefits.

The ‘right protection’ overcomes the failings of legacy protection solutions, with an approach that mirrors that of virtualisation itself: flexible, adaptable, scalable and capable of delivering fast ROI.

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A scan of your passport stolen

$200

$20

Unauthorized access to your email account

$10

Access to your account at a hosting service like Rapidshare

$150

Theft of a high-value virtual character in an online game

Login details for a social networking site

$15 $1000 PASS

A new passport made from the stolen scan is being sold

Password to an IM service like ICQ, QIP, PIDGIN etc.

Kaspersky has come up with an agentless offering which is called Kaspersky Security for Virtualization 2.0. This solution has been integrated with VMWare technologies including, vShield and vCloud, and offers file and network level protection managed by Kaspersky Security Center. Anti-malware functions are offloaded and centralised making it easy for the IT manager to balance between protection and performance.

Challenges for Kaspersky Kaspersky looks forward to more adoption of MDM solutions in SMEs where below 500 licences are required. However, Halde does not want to allude to this strategy as an industry trend as it’s a challenge specific to Kaspersky.

The reason behind low adoption among the large enterprises is the deployed competing solution. IT managers and CIOs today look at integration within existing management center rather than deploying solutions from multiple vendor which leads to complex environment.

Halde says, “At Kaspersky, we see lot of action coming from below 500 category but I am confident, in the overall market scenario, more adoption is happening among the large enterprises.

Integration is a challenge for Kaspersky”.

interview | Richard Stallaman

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RICHARD STALLMAN | interview

Freedom is all that matters He has been fighting for decades against non-free software, he’s known for his philosophical differences with Open Source, political stance and more.

Richard Stallman, the software freedom activist and computer programmer, in conversation with Subhankar Kundu, decodes the core differences between Open Source and Free Software On your free software movement…

First of all, free software means software that respects the freedom of the user and community.

Freedom is having control of your own life and as part of your life involves doing things with computers, you have to have control over that part of your life just like other aspects. But this requires users to have control over the software that they use, which means it has to be free software. Free software concretely means that the users have the four essential aspects of freedom: Freedom 1 - freedom to run the program as you wish for whatever purpose; Freedom 2 freedom to study the source code and to change it to make the computing as per your wish; Freedom 3 – to redistribute exact copies to others and freedom 4 – to redistribute modified copies to others.

So, with these four freedoms, users have control over the software that they use and it implies that it has to be free software. So, the most important thing with these 4 freedoms is that it empowers users to have control over the programs.

Now, when they don’t have these freedoms, they don’t control the program. The program controls the users. The owner of the program controls the program and through it, they exercise the powers over the users. This power is injustice. This denies users the freedom. Therefore, non-free software is an injustice, a social problem and it should not exist.

Where do you see this gaining momentum?

Well, first of all, GNU Linux is a free operating system and their other morally-led free operating systems.

Now, the question is where are they mostly used? In fact, they are used on a large fraction of servers and on supercomputers, it’s almost universal, and it’s used on personal computers and laptops too. In mobile computers, so far it’s just barely getting a foothold. But the crucial point is if you want freedom, all the programs running on it need to be free. If any program is not free, then that gives somebody control over your computing and that shouldn’t happen. So, if it’s a matter of level, then all levels need to be free. The

BIOS needs to be free, the OS needs to be free, server software needs to be free and application software needs to be free. But note that a private solution is free software if you pay someone to write a program for you and you get full rights for that code and then you run it privately, that is free software in a somewhat trivial way.

In this scenario, you’re not releasing it at all, so you’re the only user and you’ll have the four freedoms for free software. We are not saying that every program has to be released to the public rather than those users that must have it in freedom.

You have said that most users who use GNU/Linux operating system have never heard of the ethical reasons behind the development of the system because now-a-days this system and community are more often spoken of as “open source”.

Does this attribute to a completely different philosophy?

First, let me explain how the term “open source” came into existence.

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interview | RICHARD STALLMAN During the 1990s, as free software started to become successful, more people joined in using it, promoting it and developing it and some of them agreed with the free software movement that proprietary software is an injustice and some did not. But they still participated in the free software community. So, there were two different political camps and this was the debate between them. Through this debate, people coming into the community could find out about the free software movement. But in 1998, some of the people who didn’t agree with the free software movement wanted to hide our existence, especially from business. In general, they wanted our ethical ideas to be buried. So, they coined this term “Open Source” and constructed a new discourse around the term that didn’t present it as an issue of right or wrong. So, they meant to talk about the same collection of programs and same practices but discarding the ethical level of the subject. Their intention was to have a deep difference in philosophy. However, the definition they adapted was written differently and it was then interpreted by a different group of people. In fact, it did not end up drawing a line in exactly the same place and there are some programs that they call “Open Source”, we say those programs are not free software. So, that’s the difference at the practical level but the main difference is the value that the free software brings in to the user which is enormous.

You are against proprietary (nonfree) software and not open source. Where is the demarcation and where is the synergy between free software and open source?

No, actually in terms of how to develop a software, there’s no difference between them and us…

In fact, it’s common that in one software development project, you will find supporters of free

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itnext | o c t o b e r 2 0 1 3

software and supporters of open source. In practical provisions of software development, it doesn’t really matter what somebody’s political views are. If an individual wants to participate in the project, it’s absolutely fine. So, we welcome people who don’t agree with free software or free software movement to contribute to our projects, we don’t actually ask them what their political views are.

They offer us improvements to a program. The good practices are not different, tactical activities of software development are not different between free software and open source. But there are some cases where programs are open source but not free. That’s the fundamental difference in value, in philosophy between open source and free software.

“If any program is not free, then that gives somebody control over your computing. All levels need to be free. The BIOS needs to be free, the OS needs to be free, server software, application software - all levels need to be free” The lack of intellectual property protection (security) for software has always bothered technology companies. So, are these companies getting open towards free software?

There are programs that run on GNU/Linux software and most of them are not open source either.

There are open source developers, people who support the idea of open source who don’t find non-open source program wrong. So, they are more likely to look at that and say, “How nice, they are making us more successful by making use of what we developed.” Now, this is basically

RICHARD STALLMAN | interview are free to distribute the program but only in the same way that we distribute.If you try to make it proprietary, that’s copyright infringement and we could sue you. We have actually had to sue a company once. However, many times every year, we complain to those who are distributing our software in unethical way. We are firm that they got to change this because they are doing copyright infringement. Copyleft is not meant to subjugate others but rather to defend freedom.

listening to their egos rather than injustifying the use of open source.

However, I’m talking about specific programs which are open source but not free. There are some licenses which we reject because they’re too restrictive; they are just on the wrong side of the line. The open source people accept them.

Some programs released under those licenses are open source but they’re not free. I don’t know if those licenses are still used at all. They were used 15 years ago, but they’re not used now. But there is another case that is more common. It occurs in some android devices which is radically a free operating system or Google-released source code. The system in what they release is not complete. It includes LINUX and because LINUX is released under GNU GPL version 2; any company that distributes a version of android must have the source code version available to redistribute. Now, that source code is always under the GNU Public License version 2, so it’s free software. However, these devices are constructed in hardware so that they refuse to run a modified one. However, source code is free. Open source reaches a different conclusion because its criteria is only about the source code.

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

Can you throw light on licensing policies around free software? How can the customer leverage this?

Let’s not use vague abstract terms like leveraging because there are non-free applications that will run on GNU/LINUX and that’s certainly leveraging our systems but not violating licensing rules. It is evil and injustice. Any non-free software is an injustice. On the other hand, they take our code and make a modified version of a free program and make that modified version non-free, then they are stripping away freedom from the users of our code. This is not only an injustice; it’s also stopping us from giving freedom to our users.

We can make it illegal and that’s the purpose of copyleft licenses.

The GNU general public license is an example of copyleft license but there are other copyleft licenses too. A copyleft license makes it a legal obligation for use of the code in a modified work or it has to be under the same license and it has to be distributed in such a way to respect the freedom. So, this is our message intended to legally require all versions of my programs to be free software so that, every user get freedom. The way we ensure the user get freedom is by eliminating the middleman who strip away the freedom. So, if you have one of our copy-lefted programs and you make a modified version of it, you

How are you creating awareness around your movement?

We try to talk and write about it whenever we get a chance. It’s how we present ideas to the public. The thing is, because the open source people are the majority and because the mainstream media usually support them and talks and uses their terminology, most people only hear what they think and they may have never heard our views and arguments. Many articles describe me as having worked on open source. So, people hear the ideas of open source and then they hear that I work on open source space and that I support the ideas they heard--which is like saying that Gandhi was the supporter of the BJP. He wasn’t.

I’m not a supporter of open source and I would like people to know where I actually do my best to spread these ideas in print and in my speeches. The things I say, open source supporters would not say. …

They don’t present the issue in terms of right and wrong, and the reason is, they think that the idea is too shocking, too radical for a common business practice, it should never be done; they don’t say “don’t do closed source” because it’s an injustice, they say “it’s in your practical interest to let the users change and redistribute the program to improve the code quality.” So, they are appealing only to practical convenience values whereas we appeal to values we think are deeper.

o c t o b e r 2 0 1 3 | itnext

37

update

indulge

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

Here is a preview of the latest tech toys on the block to add to your arsenal.

Take your pick and then go splurging!

HOT

PWRglass

Glasses are the new toys. The buzz around the Google Glass is bringing this form factor in the forefront.

PWRglass is a similar accessory that keeps the popular augmented reality glasses working for longer than usual. It is packaged with 2000mAh Li-on battery and supports simultaneous charging through a miniUSB port. It comes in colours and a visual treat indeed.

Yet to be revealed

Leap Motion Controller Now, Leap Motion Controller senses your hands and fingers and follows every move. So one can do almost anything without touching anything. It’s the tiny device that just might change the way you use technology. It weighs 0.1 pounds, comes with 0.5 inches height, 1.2 inches width, 3.0 inches depth and runs on Windows 7/8.

Price: ` 5000 INR approx.

Olloclip Telephoto Lens The purists have to think twice now before they make a snooty comment on the limitations of mobile cameras. Serious mobile photography has been the in-thing for quite sometime now. The lens offers 2X optical magnification and it’s compatible to iPhone 5/4S I and iPod touch.

Canon VIXIA mini A versatile camcorder, Canon VIXIA mini weighs just 159 grams.

It’s small, compact and solid. Canon VIXIA mini stands out with well thought out features – f/2.8 fisheye lens for ultrawide angle shots, 12.8MP CMOS sensor and Canon DIGIC DV 4 Image, 2.7-inch capacitive touch display among others.

Price: US $229.

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itnext | octob e r 2 0 1 3

NEW

Price: `6200 INR

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

15minute manager

training Education workplace compensation workforce trends skills development personal development

Play Soccer to stay young at heart Page 40

Tech Strategy: High Value, Low Risk THIS page Healthy Tips: Soccers Improves Heart Health page40 Product Review- Asus At IFA 2013 Page 42 Pillars of Enterprise Info Management Page 41

By N Geetha

I

t is an unspoken truth that about 90 per cent of the data in any enterprise is unstructured and these envelop many business insights and most of the critical information, which can be used to increase the organisation’s performance. Most enterprises, as we see it, find structured data revolving around databases and ERP. However, information outside of these are crucial, which are often ignored and not taken into account; these could revolve around business processes, productivity, cast operations, compliance, security, etc.

I LLUSTRATIO N: HARI DAS BAL AN

What does EIM Strategy Require?

It is said that EIM, which is the technology and practice of maximising the value of information while minimising its risks, requires three things: Information readiness, information capabilities and information confidence. However, EIM has five pillars, which are critical if customers aspire to achieve 360-degree benefits within the enterprise. They include— enterprise content management, business process management, customer experience management, search engine and information exchange.

While most organisations have control over structured information— the kind of things that live in databases—few fully capitalise on their

Enterprise Info Management

High Value, Low Risk

EIM has helped senior IT managers achieve over 50 per cent enhancement in productivity and value of information o c t o b e r 2 0 1 3 | itnext

39

15-MINUTE MANAGER

It is always better to lead by example rather than speak from a hypothetical environment. It is also important to understand how customers can leverage EIM products and solutions from a SAP environment. Here’s an instance of how Dabur India Ltd., a consumer products group, established a shared-service centre to streamline its commercial transactions. Dabur used SAP Document Access application by Open Text.

The enterprise integrating the software with its deployed SAP ERP application, the company was able to drive consistence, enforce compliance, and improve efficiency of its commercial processes. Dabur’s key objective has been to eliminate the need for specialised staffing at each business unit, ensure consistency and full compliance of commercial transactions and build an efficient central team to handle commercial transactions for all business units.

The pillars of EIM solutions were used in deploying SAP document access application to centrally process documents arriving at manufacturing locations, leveraging current SAP business software to improve document and transaction visibility and speeding up processing.

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itnext | o c t o b e r 2 0 1 3

Soccer improves heart health Young heart According to a study conducted by Copenhagen Centre for Team Sport and Health in Denmark, soccer training improves heart function, reduces blood pressure and elevates exercise capacity in patients with Type 2 Diabetes. The study also revealed that training for the sport reduces the need for medication too. The study included investigations on the effect of small-sided games on 21 men with Type 2 Diabetes, of ages between 37-60 years.

Helps Diabetics as the oxygen uptake will increase and keep the muscles flexible

According to Jakob Friis Schmidt, who co-authored the study alongside PhD. student, Thomas Rostgaard Andersen, “we discovered that soccer training significantly improved the flexibility of the heart and the cardiac muscle tissue was able to work 29 per cent faster. This means that after three months of training, the heart had become 10 years ‘younger’. Schmidt says the heart muscles of patients suffering from Type 2 diabetes are less flexible increasing the risk of heart failure.

Advanced ultrasound scanning of the heart showed that the heart’s contraction phase improved. And capacity of the heart to shorten improved by 23 per cent–a research result that had not been reported with other types of physical activity. The study revealed that participants’ maximal oxygen uptake also increased by 12 per cent with their intermittent exercise capacity elevated by 42 per cent.

Now that seems like reason enough to head for the playing field.

S ource : CFO

Using EIM in the Application Environment

healthy Tips

PHOTO /I LLUSTRATIO N/IMAG ING CRE DIT

unstructured information—videos, images, documents, slides, etc. The volume, variety and velocity of this kind of information have made it increasingly difficult to understand and use, even as it becomes vital to every aspect of an enterprise.

“We at Open Text, which is into EIM solutions, believe in enabling organisations to grow the business, lower costs of operations, and reduce information governance and security related risks. We lay thrust on the key drivers of business success to improve business insight, strengthen business impact, accelerate process velocity, address information governance and provide security”, says Hitesh Sahjiwaal, Country Manager, OpenText India

15-MINUTE MANAGER

“EIM has five pillars, which are critical if customers aspire to achieve 360-degree benefits within the enterprise and it is easy to measure the outcome of the deployment of it” Hitesh Sahijwaal, Country Manager, OpenText India

The key objective for Dabur was to go paperless to support lean global operations; and its top management wanted to help local staff at each business unit to stay focused on core functions. The motive behind leveraging SAP through EIM was that critical commercial transactions like payments processing were being handled by people at each business unit and this added to its costs and often resulted in inconsistent and noncompliant transactions.

It needed to move away from paper-based processes where critical documentation like invoices, shipping and goods receipts, quality check clearances, and tax records were often lost. To achieve this, the company wanted to leverage information and functionality in its deployed SAP ERP application. Customers vouch that by adopting a document management solution that fully integrated with SAP ERP, it would have the visibility and control to ensure that its business transactions are processed with accuracy and uniformity.

How did the Integration Take Place using EIM? The company’s business units could scan the documents into the application, which would then link those documents

with related transactions in SAP ERP; this Document Access would also give Open Text’s shared service centre staff a clear consolidated view of its commercial transactions.

Dabur implemented the sharedservice model in three manufacturing plants and this estimates almost 50 per cent improvement in productivity, better utilisation of resources, recovering more cash and fully complying with regulations.

“We worked with SAP and team and together developed content management strategy and enabled transactions across the life cycle management process, worked on enterprise asset management strategy, understood the procurement process and used EIM tools to convert every data into structured data to get better analysis and insights,” says Hitesh.

Measuring EIM Every initiative or process is not proven till it allows the enterprise to measure the outcome of deploying the same. There have been both tangible and intangible benefits for enterprises spread across various verticals.

The use of EIM tools will bring in a sense of maturity in the process which makes the IT managers’ task easy and efficient. For example, a travel

Pillars of EIM * Enterprise Content Management (ECM)-Build information confidence-manage all the content throughout its lifecycle. Reduce governance and security risks and costs * Business Process Management(BPM)-Work more efficiently. Automating core business processes to improve efficiency, reduce costs, ensure compliance, and significantly increase service levels to constituents inside and outside the organisation * Customer Experience Management (CEM)-Build exceptional information experiences across channels and devices * Information Exchange--Secure, compliant exchange of information inside and outside of the enterprise * Discovery--Organize and visualize all relevant enterprise information

company which faces the challenge of providing consistent online experience and maintaining its corporate image and providing convenient access to a multitude of products, services and advice as a prime requirement is using EIM based Open Text Web Site

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15-MINUTE MANAGER

Product review

Asus at IFA 2013: New Transformer Pad

At IFA 2013, Asus showcased a few products to their tablet and hybrid portfolio.

We have an upgrade to the Transformer Pad, Fonepad and two new variants of the MeMO Pad. IFA kicked off with some pretty impressive announcements from Samsung and Sony, and both the electronic giants have launched smartphones/phablets and smartwatches. Asus on the other hand has launched products that are the successors to devices we have already seen in the market.

Starting with the Transformer Pad, the device is powered by theNVIDIA Tegra 4 chipset. It has a 10.1-inch IPS display with a 2560x1600 pixel resolution giving it a 299ppi pixel density. The CPU is clocked at 1.9GHz and the tablet has a GeForce GPU along with 2GB RAM. Asus claims that the tablet has the ability to last for 17-hours on a single charge. The tablet is relatively thin measuring 8.9mm in thickness and weighs 585 grams. The keyboard dock of the tablet is 7mm in thickness and weighs 570 grams. Combined, the package isn’t the lightest out there. The rear of the Transformer Pad has a 5MP shooter and the front has a 1.2MP camera for video calling.

For its connectivity options, the tablet has Wi-Fi a/b/g/n with Miracast, Bluetooth 3.0, HDMI with UHD video out and a full-size USB 3.0 port on dock. The tablet is available with 32/64GB built-in storage expandable via a microSD card slot. The keyboard dock houses a full-size SDXC card slot.

Asus also launched the MeMO Pad 8 and the MeMO Pad 10. Most of the specifications of the two are the same with the key difference being the dimensions, display size and the rear-facing camera. The MeMO Pad 10 is 10.5mm in thickness and weighs 522 grams. The MeMO Pad 8 is 10mm in thickness and weighs 350 grams. As the name suggests, the MeMO Pad 8 has an 8-inch display and the MeMO Pad 10 has a 10.1-inch display. Both the tablets have a display resolution of 1280x800 pixels. The MeMO Pad 10 has a 2MP rear camera and the MeMO Pad 8 has a 5MP rear camera.

The MeMO Pad 8 has 8GB built-in storage whereas the MeMO Pad 10 has 16GB. The 8-inch tablet has a 3950mAh battery and the 10-inch tablet has a 5070mAh battery.

Coming to the rest of the specifications of the MeMO Pad 10 and the MeMO Pad 8, the tablets are powered by a 1.6GHz quad-core processor and run on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. source: thinkdigit.com

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Management tools to ensure that all these are addressed.

The travel group initiated a strategy to develop and implement a Global E-commerce Technology Strategy leveraging IBM’s services that would enable rapid deployment and control across multiple websites, while still offering the flexibility to tailor local content where required. The solution was based on a single content management system and after having evaluated various options against the company’s travel requirements. With Open Text’s Web Site Management Server, the user interface is simple to use. The website manager enabled the travel group to integrate dynamic content from other websites into its own site, providing comprehensive destination information and advice.

The process enabled the group to create one master project and rollout to the various countries from that, removing the need to recreate the whole set-up every time. That saved the group two to three months of development work.

Another advantage that the EIM’s website manager provided was that any updates to website templates or code had to be made only once to the master project, which are replicated automatically in minutes to the other sites.

Key Takeaway EIM initiative helps organisations in: Locating fundamental information and benefit from the knowledge of the other individuals—regardless of location Web Content Management and Media Services components ensuring efficient distribution of appropriate content and media types across multiple devices as well as improved search capabilities Delivering productivity improvements, enhanced knowledge management, and team effectiveness Capabilities of the intranet solutions being crafted to support better ways to deliver resources streamline content delivery and storage and unify teams to enhance efficiency The module and integrated standardsbased solution being designed with enterprise or large organisations’ requirements in mind.

update

open Debate

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

book For you

Smart Thinking The book deciphers how positive attitude can lead to happiness and wealth

Naresh Pathak Head-IT, Corporate Office, Gurgaon (India) Sentiss Pharma Pvt. Ltd

Gates Zeng Networking Systems Engineering Specialists, Avaya

The definition of SDN that is currently emerging focuses less on decoupling and more on providing programmatic interfaces into network equipment, irrespective of the fact if there is a separation of the control and forwarding planes. In nut shell, it’s old wine in new bottle with new avatar. However, decoupling of the network control plane from the network forwarding plane, where its value is limited to features like reducing network latency. Decoupling of the network control and forwarding planes isn’t a new concept It’s a key feature of MPLS and it is also a characteristic of many contemporary Wi-Fi networks.

Though people talk about SDN as if it was a new concept, it is not really new.

In fact, the concept of separating and abstracting the different elements of network in order to manage it more easily and more powerfully has been around for at least 20 years. Every optical network around today also uses a form of SDN. So do wireless LANs. SDN has been around for many years but now it has started to be applied in different applications.

In a basic way today’s typical networking solutions and those based on SDN would achieve the same thing in providing a functional networking service.

Dhananjay C Rokde Global HeadInformation Security, Cox & Kings Software Defined Networking (SDN) is the latest approach to networking. It is based on Open Standards defined by the Open Networking Foundation (ONF). Nicira Networks has been the pioneers who designed this model. The ONF is backed by world renowned IT enterprises & its future is definitely looking bright. Behind closed doors; several industry leaders have termed it as “The Cisco-Killer”. However SDN is not about hardware bashing; it is all about network architecture & control design (routing & control plane definition).

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

Smart thinking is all about how adoption of a positive attitude in life will help a person to become rich and successful. The author of the book, Art Markman, is Annabel Irion Worsham Centennial Professor of Psychology and Marketing at the University of Texas, Austin and also a Congnitive scientist. He has focused on three key aspects of thinking: Smart Habits, High-Quality Knowledge and last but not least Applying Knowledge. The book is an easy read, full of good advices and seems to be based more on primary sources of information rather than secondary. The authors in one of the chapters also says that all those working on computer, which most of the workforce does, are likely to find the history of QWERTY keyboard interesting. And how it has stopped mechanical typewriters from jamming despite not being the best design.

“Creating Smart Habits’ is one of the useful chapters in the book as it tells us how to get rid of bad habits”.

IT NEXT Verdict Carries great tips on presentation skills, like starting with advance organiser, do not lose focus on three key points,and try to summarise in the Star Value:

PHOTO IMAG ING : haridas bal an

‘Is SDN new or an old wine in a new bottle?’

Author: Art Markman Publisher: Penguin Group Price: Rs. 385

o c t o b e r 2 0 1 3 | itnext

43

event Report -data Center Visit

Resolving the DC Puzzle IT Decision makers are faced with the million dollar question of opting for the right data center model

I

TNext in association with Tata Communications brought together industry experts to discuss key issues around emerging trends in the data center and how they impacted IT managers. The panel discussion was held on the 23rd of August, 2013 at the Tata Communications’ Data Center in Pune.

The panel discussion was titled, ‘Captive or Colocate: The million dollar question for all IT decision makers and panelists included industry experts along with technology thought leaders from Tata Communications.

The panel discussion had nearly 30 senior IT decisions makers participating from various industry verticals, who also visited the data center.

Round TaBle conefrence to discuss the emerging trends in the data center

Part i c i pants ne t wo rk i ng o n t he s i de li nes o f t h e e v e nt

a group discussion with the participants.

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Data Center Visit | event Report

sharing some interesting anecdotes with the participants

in an in-depth discussion on right center data model

Particpants engrossed at the event in an insightful conversation.

participants registering for the event

Panelists: a. Mr. Manish Bahl, VP & Country Manager – Forrester b. Ms. Shaheen Meeran, MD – Schnabel

DC Visit:

Participant receiving a memento

The participants went around the Tata Communications Data Center in Pune, which is a 1,32,000 sq ft facility set in a lush campus of more than 200 acres with a 220 kv substation on site-a great leap forward for the Indian data center industry.

As part of its green initiative, Tata Communications evolved a Carbon Disclosure Program and deployed energy-saving design features, with special floor and ceiling construction, ventilation, and lighting , which are partially powered by wind energy.

o c t o b e r 2 0 1 3 | itnext

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cube chat | Pradeep Chatterjee

Thinking with Freedom “I dream of teleportation so that we can travel to places instantaneously without any hassle”, says Pradeep Chatterjee Assistant General Manager (Corporate IT), Tata Motors.

By Subhank ar K u nd u

T My success

mantra

Understanding the scope of influencing process for agility

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itnext | o c t o b e r 2 0 1 3

he freedom to execute thoughts and achieve the results desired is something that has always inspired Pradeep Chatterjee in his career.

Looking back to the start of his IT journey, he remembers that, for him, the most exciting facet about IT was that it touched each and every process in an organisation, providing a bird’s eye view of all the processes, their linkages and the inter-dependency between departments. He was enthused by the scope of influencing processes across the organisation thus making it more effective, efficient and agile. This was what drove him to carry out extensive research work in soft computing technologies which showed immense potential for applications in electric / hybrid vehicles, diagnostics, forecasting, driver assistance systems, safety systems and development of autonomous/ driverless vehicles within which it operates.

Today, Chatterjee plays the role of an enterprise architect and application architect at Tata Motors. He is forward looking, infusing the same culture in his organisation. He says, “I am focusing on future technologies, technology road maps and selecting proper technology, after due diligence on what is suitable, on budgeting and plan for proof of concepts to be carried out.”

At Tata Motors, he, along with his team, has institutionalised an innovative technology selection process and implemented smart card and consignment bar-coding as part of business process re-engineering for material in-warding.

He claims, “It helped us reduce parking turnaround time of vehicles from nearly 3 hours to just thirty minutes.”

With pride, he asserts, “Not only is it appreciated internally, even vendors who had to run through the process as well as consulting

cube chat

Fact File Full Nam e: Prad ee p Chatterj ee Current Des i gnatio n: As s istant Ge nera l Manager (Corporate IT) Current Role: Enterpris e Arc hitec t and Applic ation Arc hitec t

“The biggest challenge I face is making multiple stakeholders agree to a common solution. I have discussed this with many organisations and find the situation is no different elsewhere.”

IT analysts appreciated it.” He has implemented and modified SRM (Supplier Relationship Management), a SAP product used for supplier management.

It largely helps in supplying parts as per production schedule, which are fitted in the vehicles. The biggest challenge he faces is making multiple stakeholders agree amicably to a common solution.

“Firstly, I try to understand the perspectives of each stakeholder and see how much can be accommodated with the value proposition and without conflict.

So, we have discussions with each stakeholder, try to make him understand why the proposed solution should work and how it addresses the concerns, perhaps in a different way. Once you are able to show stakeholders that their

concerns or requirements are addressed, it becomes easy to take it forward,” Pradeep points out prudently.

In the field of IT, his biggest inspiration has been the scientist entrepreneur, Stephen L Thaler. Pradeep says, “He is the founder of Imagination Engines Inc. His extensive research work in the field of machine intelligence led to several patents, with which he developed several capabilities and has a lot of applications in the real world.”

“I look forward to making transportation work faster and convenient. I dream of teleportation so that we can travel to places instantaneously without any hassle. With technology advancement, I hope my dream will come true one day,” smiles Pradeep, as he nurtures his dream.

Expertis e Enterpris e Arc hitec ture, Proc es s analys is a nd d es i gn, Arti fic ia l Intelli genc e, Neura l Ne t work, Fuzzy Lo g ic , Ge neti c algorith m , C, C+ + , vis ual basic , Matl ab, d Spac e, as s em bly l anguag e Work Experi enc e : 10 years i n autom ati on, m ec hatroni c s an d troubles hooting tFavouri te quote : “Try not to bec om e a m an of s uc c es s , b ut rather try to bec o m e a m an of value” – Al b e rt Einstei n Favourite book: The five dys functio ns of a team - By Patric k Le nc i oni Favouri te food : Swee ts Favourite d esti natio n: Seas hores (Puri , G oa )

Favourite gad get fo r work: L aptop Favourite gad get fo r pers onal us e: Mobile phone

o c t o b e r 2 0 1 3 | itnext

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my log

Sangita thakur varma Managing Editor, India Now

Making the best of both worlds

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c r at i o n : m a n av s a

hd

ev

3 Essential

Reads

INTERVIEW | RICHARD STALLAMAN

RICHARD STALLAMAN | INTERVIEW

FREEDOM IS ALL THAT MATTERS He has been fighting for decades against non-free software, he’s known for his philosophical differences with Open Source, political stance and more. Richard Stallman, the software freedom activist and computer programmer, in conversation with Subhankar Kundu, decodes the core differences between Open Source and Free Software

On your free software movement…

First of all, free software means software that respects the freedom of the user and community. Freedom is having control of your own life and as part of your life involves doing things with computers, you have to have control over that part of your life just like other aspects. But this requires users to have control over the software that they use, which means it has to be free software. Free software concretely means that the users have the four essential aspects of freedom: Freedom 1 - freedom to run the program as you wish for whatever purpose; Freedom 2 - freedom to study the source code and to change it to make the computing as per your wish; Freedom 3 – to redistribute exact copies to others and freedom 4 – to redistribute modified copies to others.

So, with these four freedoms, users have control over the software that they use and it implies that it has to be free software. So, the most important thing with these 4 freedoms is that it empowers users to have control over the programs.

Now, when they don’t have these freedoms, they don’t control the program. The program controls the users. The owner of

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the program controls the program and through it, they exercise the powers over the users. This power is injustice. This denies users the freedom. Therefore, non-free software is an injustice, a social problem and it should not exist.

Where do you see this gaining momentum?

Well, first of all, GNU Linux is a free operating system and their other morally-led free operating systems.

Now, the question is where are they mostly used? In fact, they are used on a large fraction of servers and on supercomputers, it’s almost universal, and it’s used on personal computers and laptops too. In mobile computers, so far it’s just barely getting a foothold. But the crucial point is if you want freedom, all the programs running on it need to be free.

If any program is not free, then that gives somebody control over your computing and that shouldn’t happen. So, if it’s a matter of level, then all levels need to be free. The BIOS needs to be free, the OS needs to be free, server software needs to be free

ITNEXT | O C T O B E R 2 0 1 3

and application software needs to be free. But note that a private solution is free software if you pay someone to write a program for you and you get full rights for that code and then you run it privately, that’s free software in a somewhat trivial way. In this scenario, you’re not releasing it at all, so you’re the only user and you’ll have the four freedoms for free software. We are not saying that every program has to be released to the public rather than those users that must have it in freedom.

You have said that most users who use GNU/Linux operating system have never heard of the ethical reasons behind the development of the system because nowadays this system and community are more often spoken of as “open source”.

Does this attribute to a completely different philosophy?

First, let me explain how the term “open source” came into existence.

During the 1990s, as free software

O C T O B E R 2 0 1 3 | ITNEXT

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Richard Stallman, the software freedom activist on why the freedom matters most in the use of software INSIGHT | INTEGRATED SECURITY

“The challenge of IT Managers manifests when you map their activity against the raft of new technologies and requirements that simply didn’t exist a few years ago”

HT MIX TO RIG RE BETTER CU SE

Altaf Halde, Managing Director (South Asia), Kaspersky Lab India a more complex environment and external risk. The technology is frequently changing with ever-increasing data volumes, an alarming growth in malware, APTs and complexity. Hence, the challenge before IT managers: balancing resource, cost and security. IT managers and administrators have to wear multiple hats. They have to multi-task, stay on the learning curve, keep abreast of emerging technologies. This combination of changes in IT, coupled with changing work patterns and business demands, creates real tension in balancing resource, cost and security.

Altaf Halde, Managing Director (South Asia), Kaspersky Lab India says, “In the morning, they could be resetting servers, by lunch they’re adjusting firewall rule sets and access control lists. In the afternoon, they’re walking through mobile device configuration settings so the CEO’s new smartphone or tablet can receive email and access the network. And before close of business, they’re resolving network address translation conflicts on edge routers. All of this could be seen as just ‘business-as-usual,’ but the challenge manifests when you map this activity against the raft of new technologies and requirements that simply didn’t exist a few years ago.”

Integrated Endpoint Security attempts to draw the line between Corporate and Personal Data in the BYOD environment

BY SU BHANKAR KU ND U

W

ith ever-increasing businesscritical data flowing on a corporate network, Endpoint security has become extremely critical for IT managers to address issues of network protection. The influx of diverse computing and mobile devices has created the need to comply these devices with certain standards to ensure robust network protection before the network access is granted.

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Addressing the BYOD trend

Organisations are looking for integrated Endpoint security suites that have the right mix of modern technologies such as, Mobile Device Management, Encryption and Systems Management, providing IT managers with powerful control tools through a centralised management console.

IT Managers’ Security Woes In today’s complex IT environment, organisations are caught between competing issues: rising business-critical data, managing

Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) is a trend that no organisation, be it large, small or mid-size, can shy away from. With mobility and mobile devices taking centre stage in determining the computing devices employees use in a corporate environment, IT managers are looking for solutions that can secure the data that resides in smartphones and tablets. Most businesses have invested in security that protects all endpoints within their corporate network – plus firewalls that prevent unauthorised external access to corporate systems. However, enabling access – to business systems and data, from mobile devices – means smartphones and tablets will effectively cross through the protective firewall. It goes without saying that if such devices are infected with viruses or Trojans, it leads to security vulnerabilities within the corporate network.

Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Business solution claims to have addressed the rise of the BYOD trend in the work place. It can be deployed remotely via centralised Mobile Device Management (MDM). Strengthened data encryption can secure individual files, folders, or even entire hard drives with Advanced Encryption Standard 256-bit encryption, which will ensure that data remains secure in the event of loss or theft. This encryption can also be used on peripheral devices and removable drives as well.

Halde says, “If businesses are to benefit from the potential productivity gains offered by increased mobile access--and employees are able to enjoy the convenience of BYOD--security and IT departments are faced with having to ensure their business is protected against all new mobile security threats.”

Kaspersky offers protection across mobile platforms, be it Android, iOS, Blackberry, Windows or even Symbian, but depending on the flexibility of each OS, Kaspersky mounts its solution. For an operating system like iOS, Kaspersky’s solution gets limited, as the source code is not shared. OS on open source like Android stand to avail all the features of the product whereas iPhone users can avail limited features, such as Remote wipe and anti-theft.

Altaf, without naming a customer, refers to a company in the manufacturing segment where there was a little skepticism about employees using their own devices as there was concern around the security mechanism of the devices.

By giving administrators greater visibility and control over mobile devices that access the corporate network, these solutions make it easier for businesses to benefit from rigorous, multilayer security and productivity-enhancing management capabilities.

Zero integration is required to deploy Kaspersky Security for Mobile, which delivers a single solution that combines Mobile security and MDM. Special containers can be set up on each mobile device--so that corporate data and applications are totally

ITNEXT | O C T O B E R 2 0 1 3

O C T O B E R 2 0 1 3 | ITNEXT

P HOTO/I LLUSTRATION /IMAGIN G C RED IT

away from the rigmarole of their tough duty for a few days, throw in some fun and some brainstorming sessions away from the boardroom, and they are like big boys on a school trip. They were unwired for once and unwinding, and what’s more, having fun doing so.

There is a lesson for all of us here. Being wired, of course, has its advantages. It keeps you prepared for an emergency. But a good game of golf or basketball or even a weekend match of football or tennis will leave you fitter to tackle these exigencies with sharper faculties. There are clubs that promote and host executives to take up sports that they may have left when they became too busy pursuing their career.

What’s more, this will also allow your family to join you in the fun. You can organise jamming sessions with colleagues, friends and families, have a brunch, a lunch or just go out for a weekend drive. You will not regret it neither your family nor your boss. For, you will be giving time to one and will be returning to work rejuvenated and anew.

Much like our leaders, who returned from the CIO & Leader event promising to return again the next year for another jamboree.

Leadership does not mean being in command every minute of the waking hour and some more. It means laying the ground for those much deserved off work hours too.

ust

PHOTO/ ILLUSTRATION /IM AGI NG C RED IT

The Guelph family’s attempt to turn the tech clock back to a simplified no-gadget life of the 1980s had the world talking recently. The Canadian couple not just banned mobile phones and internet in their home but also forces visitors to adopt their retrograde existence for the short while they spend with them. While some found the Guelphs downright funny, others found merit in their extreme way of life. I, for one, am rooting for a balance between the two.

Being information technology managers, we cannot imagine an ‘unwired’ existence. After all, our very bread and all the butter and jam are dependent on how well we master the medium. However, being hunched over our laptops with our fingers poised in claws on the keyboard, eyes forever trained on bright screens and with a shoulder shoved up to form a scoop with the ear to hold the smartphone perpetually glued to it, is giving us a number of physiological vulnerabilities.

Now imagine the plight of our children who have entered a wired world. We are their role models. If Guleph had a shocker when his five-year-old-forever-at-hisiPad refused to come out for a game of baseball/ball, well who is to be blamed?

Coming back home, the strongest note reverberating through the recent annual CIO & Leader event hosted by 9.9 Mediaworx, our company, was that of unfettered enjoyment. Take the leaders

Ill

PHOTO/ ILLUSTRATION /IM AGI NG C RED IT

We can’t give up our wired existence, but can we not strike a balance?

15

Right Mix to Secure Better, Says Altaf Halde, MD, Kaspersky Lab CUBE CHAT | PRADEEP CHATTERJEE

CUBE CHAT

Thinking with Freedom “I dream of teleportation so that we can travel to places instantaneously without any hassle”, says Pradeep Chatterjee Assistant General Manager (Corporate IT), Tata Motors.

BY S U B HA N KA R KU N DU

T MY SUCESS

MANTRA Understanding the scope of influencing process for agility

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ITNEXT | O C T O B E R 2 0 1 3

he freedom to execute thoughts and achieve the results desired is something that has always inspired Pradeep Chatterjee in his career.

Looking back to the start of his IT journey, he remembers that, for him, the most exciting facet about IT was that it touched each and every process in an organisation, providing a bird’s eye view of all the processes, their linkages and the inter-dependency between departments.

He was enthused by the scope of influencing processes across the organisation thus making it more effective, efficient and agile. This was what drove him to carry out extensive research work in soft computing technologies which showed immense potential for applications in electric / hybrid vehicles, diagnostics, forecasting, driver assistance systems, safety systems and development of autonomous/ driverless vehicles

within which it operates.

Today, Chatterjee plays the role of an enterprise architect and application architect at Tata Motors.

He is forward looking, infusing the same culture in his organisation. He says, “I am focusing on future technologies, technology road maps and selecting proper technology, after due diligence on what is suitable, on budgeting and plan for proof of concepts to be carried out.”

At Tata Motors, he, along with his team, has institutionalised an innovative technology selection process and implemented smart card and consignment bar-coding as part of business process re-engineering for material in-warding.

He claims, “It helped us reduce parking turnaround time of vehicles from nearly 3 hours to just thirty minutes.”

With pride, he asserts, “Not only is it appreciated internally, even vendors who had to run

FAC T FI LE F U L L NAME : PR ADE E P CHATTE R J E E CU R R E NT DES IGNATION: AS S ISTANT GE NE R AL MANAGE R (COR POR ATE IT) CU R R E NT R OL E : E NTE R PR IS E AR CHITECT AND APPL ICATION AR CHITECT

“The biggest challenge I face is making multiple stakeholders agree to a common solution. I have discussed this with many organisations and find the situation is no different elsewhere.”

through the process as well as consulting IT analysts appreciated it.” He has implemented and modified SRM (Supplier Relationship Management), a SAP product used for supplier management. It largely helps in supplying parts as per production schedule, which are fitted in the vehicles.

The biggest challenge he faces is making multiple stakeholders agree amicably to a common solution.

“Firstly, I try to understand the perspectives of each stakeholder and see how much can be accommodated with the value proposition and without conflict. So, we have discussions with each stakeholder, try to make him understand why the proposed solution should work and how it addresses the concerns, perhaps in a different way. Once you

are able to show stakeholders that their concerns or requirements are addressed, it becomes easy to take it forward,” Pradeep points out prudently.

In the field of IT, his biggest inspiration has been the scientist entrepreneur, Stephen L Thaler. Pradeep says, “He is the founder of Imagination Engines Inc. His extensive research work in the field of machine intelligence led to several patents, with which he developed several capabilities and has a lot of applications in the real world.”

“I look forward to making transportation work faster and convenient. I dream of teleportation so that we can travel to places instantaneously without any hassle. With technology advancement, I hope my dream will come true one day,” smiles Pradeep, as he nurtures his dream.

EX PE RTIS E E NTE R PR IS E AR CHITECTU R E , PR OCES S ANALYS IS AND DES IGN, ARTIF ICIAL INTE L L IGE NCE , NEU R AL NE T WOR K, F U ZZY LOGIC, GE NE TIC ALGOR ITHM, C, C++, V IS UAL BAS IC, MATL AB, DS PACE , AS S E MB LY L ANGUAGE WOR K EX PE R IE NCE : 1 0 YE AR S IN AU TOMATION, MECHATR ONICS AND TR OU B L ES HOOTING TFAVOU R ITE QU OTE : “ TRY NOT TO B ECOME A MAN OF S U CCES S , B U T R ATHE R TRY TO B ECOME A MAN OF VALU E ” – AL B E RT E INSTE IN FAVOU R ITE B OOK: THE F IV E DYS F U NCTIONS OF A TE AM - BY PATR ICK L E NCIONI FAVOU R ITE FOOD: S WE E TS FAVOU R ITE DESTINATION: S E AS HOR ES (PU R I, GOA)

FAVOU R ITE GADGE T FOR WOR K: L APTOP FAVOU R ITE GADGE T FOR PE R S ONAL U S E : MOB IL E PHONE

O C T O B E R 2 0 1 3 | ITNEXT

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Tata Motor's AGM-IT, Pradeep Chatterjee opines that it is critical to think with freedom and understand the scope of the process

Lenovo® recommends Windows 8 Pro.

WHEN YOUR THINKPAD TAKES A KNOCK, THE DATA DOESN’T GET KNOCKED OUT. THINKPAD OUTTHINKS FALLS AND BUMPS WITH MAGNESIUM-ALLOY ROLL CAGE. The Lenovo ThinkPad ® features a unique magnesium-alloy roll cage that protects the HDD from falls and bumps. This prevents any damage to the critical components and keeps your data safe.

Crash zones

Impact points

Tough chassis

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AP _ IND _ PRN _ Q2-14 _ 36700 _ IT Next 28x20.5