Award Winning Tales

A 9.9 Media Publication

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September | 07 | 2010 | Rs.50Volume 06 | Issue 02

Award winning

tales Three categories, more than a 100 entries – nine winners. CTO of the

Year Awards 2010 | PAGE 28

Milestones RevisitedPAGE 52

NEXT HORIZONS

HP's Next CEOPAGE 68

VIEWPOINT

Identity CheckedPAGE 22

BEST OF BREED

S P I N E

Technology for Growth and Governance

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EDITORIALRAHUL NEEL MANI | [email protected]

107 SEPTEMBER 2010CTO FORUMTHE CHIEF

TECHNOLOGYOFFICER FORUM

War of words! Two vendors fight it out.

Two weeks ago I was in San Francisco, US, attending

VMworld 2010 – the ultimate event to learn about new trends in virtualisation and cloud com-puting. The conference was a big attraction but an ambush mar-keting campaign from Microsoft stopped me in my tracks.

In a straightforward letter (published as an advertisement in local dailies) Brad Anderson, Corporate VP, Server and Tools Business, Microsoft warned

warning in his keynote address. “Microsoft to talk about lock-in is a severe case of the pot calling the kettle black," he said.

It wasn’t just a coincidence that at VMworld 2010 VMware announced a slew of manage-ment and security products, directly taking on many of Microsoft's flagship products. Microsoft probably had an inkling of what was in store.

Microsoft has been offering public cloud from its Azure platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering and SQL Server, Exchange and Sharepoint as Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings, competing directly with VMware. But, clearly, VMware's leadership position in the virtualisation space has raised its hackles. Maybe that's the reason for the desperate tone in the campaign.

VMware customers that signing long-term enterprise license agreements can chain them for years to the unpredictable, often self-serving development schedule of an IT vendor—to the detriment of the customer's unique needs and priorities. Yes, that was Microsoft making the statement!

VMware deflected the shot well. Calling it a ‘sincere form of flattery’, Paul Maritz, CEO of VMware made a mockery of the

Is VMware worried? When I spoke to Maritz, he said: “Microsoft is a company with enormous resources and they sense the same changes in the IT industry as we do.” (To know more, read the interview with Paul Maritz in the 21st Septem-ber issue)

In the end, this is all about who's going to be the big dog in this market.

EDITOR’S PICK68 HP’s Next CEO

The next CEO needs to be Steve Jobs-esque. HP has its fiscal ship in order. Now it needs a shot of sex appeal.

6 07 SEPTEMBER 2010CTOFORUM THE CHIEF


LETTERS

WRITE TO US: The CTOForum values your feedback. We want to know what you think about the magazine and how

to make it a better read for you. Our endeavour continues to be work in progress and your comments will go a long way in making it the preferred publication of the CIO Community.

Send your comments, compliments, complaints or questions about the magazine to [email protected]

INFORMATION RIGHTS MANAGEMENT EXTENDS DLP SAFEGUARDS Very interesting article and com-pletely spot on regarding the issues and challenges thrown up by evolving tech and mobility. However, it seems to me that the current craze for cloud-based, everything-as-a-service, ap-proach may actually compound or simplify the problem, depend-ing on how access is handled. If all data resides in the cloud, then properly managed dynamic ac-cess to that central source would be key. This may be less of a problem compared to data that's spread out all over the device or location landscape.JUDE UMEH, Consultant, Enterprise Architect, and Rights

Management Evangelist – London, UK

CTOForum LinkedIn GroupJoin close to 500 CIOs on the CTO Forum LinkedIn group

for latest news and hot enterprise technology discussions.

Share your thoughts, participate in discussions and win

prizes for the most valuable contribution. You can join The

CTOForum group at:

http://www.linkedin.com/

groups?mostPopular=&gid=2580450

One of the hot discussions on the group is:

How do you treat your vendors - a partner, a

service provider, or a mere salesman?

Vendors are life support system of any successful IT

organisation. Without them, IT just cannot function. Be it

a mere bandwidth purchase decision or a complex appli-

cation integration, IT organisations always depend on vari-

ous vendors. They are also a good source of information

on industry developments, newer technologies, and long

term industry orientation.

—Shantharam K IT Manager at Ariba Business Commerce Solutions. In my first role I have experienced many situations where

we have taken help from our partners who supported us

at odd hours. I accept the fact that without their external

support the solution would have not been possible or

there would have been an increased business downtime

causing a major impact on business continuity. This was

all because of good relations and trust.

—Udayveer SinghSenior Consultant - Basis / Netweaver / Upgrades / Migrations - SAP Consulting – Indian Subcontinent.

FEELING THE PULSETechnology is ready to change the quality, reach and cost of healthcare.“With advancement of technology in medical devices and availability of strong analytical engines, the focus will move to early diagnosis:

http://www.thectoforum.com/content/feeling-pulse

CTOF Connect Steve Hanna, co-chair of the Trusted Network Connect Work Group in the Trusted Computing Group, on key security concerns in cloud models. To read the full story go to:

thectoforum.com/content/what% E2%80%99s-a- promise

OPINION

DR. NEENA PAHUJA, CIO, MAX HEALTHCARE



I BELIEVE



CURRENTCHALLENGE

BY V.S. PARTHASARATHY Group CIO, Mahindra & MahindraTHE AUTHOR is also Executive Vice President Finance and M&A, and Member of

Group Executive Board, Mahindra & Mahindra Group

CIOS NEED TO LOOK AT THE INFRASTRUCTURE THAT THEY ARE DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR AND THE IMPACT THAT IT HAS ON THE BUSINESS AND ENVIRONMENT.

AT THE Mahindra Group, environment responsibility forms the foundation of our sustainability road map. The group, which manu-factures and sells tractors, SUVs and cars, apart from holding diverse portfolios like IT, holiday services and logistics, has a clear focus on reducing energy consumption; controlling and reducing greenhouse gas emissions; effectively managing natural resource consumption

and waste; enhancing awareness on risks and opportunities of climate change across stakeholders; and articulating green IT and green pro-curement policy.

CIOs will need to look at the infrastructure that they are directly responsible for and the impact that it has on the business and environ-ment. Green data centre initiatives can reduce energy consumption—and deliver cost savings—while sup-porting IT growth.

For example, we are consolidat-ing our entire IT infrastructure and applications that are scattered across different cities and countries. We plan to have these consolidated in three large data centres. There will be a primary data centre housing all software and applications, a near shore disaster recovery centre and another recovery centre located in Chennai. The first phase of the proj-ect has already gone live at 44 of our group companies.

The consolidation will help us in faster decision making as we will have access to information across all our businesses. In addition, rather than investing money on a larger number of less powerful systems, we want to purchase systems that are powerful, even though these would be expensive.

Another area that has assumed great significance for us is the use of collaboration tools. We recently deployed a tele-presence solution to enhance our productivity and the executive decision-making process across multiple sites.

CIOs should play a major role in how organisations interact and collaborate with stakeholders and customers. As CIOs drive solutions to environmental issues they will gain insights that can be applied to broader corporate social responsibil-ity (CSR) strategies.

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Reap Green BenefitsSave costs and protect the environment using sustainable technology



CO NTE NT S THECTOFORUM.COMSEPTEMBER10

COVER STORY

28 | Award Winning TalesOur jury selected CIOs who topped the list for their ingenuity, sound management and perseverance. Now these leaders tell us what went in the making of these success stories.

COPYRIGHT, All rights reserved: Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission from Nine Dot Nine Interactive Pvt Ltd. is prohibited. Printed and published by Kanak Ghosh for Nine Dot Nine Interactive Pvt Ltd, C/o Kakson House, Plot Printed at Silverpoint Press Pvt. Ltd. D- 107, MIDC, TTC Industrial Area, Nerul, Navi Mumbai- 400706

COLUMNS04 | I BELIEVE:REAP GREEN BENEFITS

V S Parthasarthy, Group CIO, EVP – Finance and M&A, Mahindra Group on saving costs and protecting the environment.

68 | VIEW POINT: HP'S NEXT CEO The company now needs a shot of sex appeal. BY STEVE DUPLESSIE

FEATURES52 | NEXT HORIZONS: MILESTONES REVISITED Benefits-based approach will help in adoption of a new technology and success of the project. BY NILESH CHANDRA & SCOTT LEVER

Please Recycle This Magazine And Remove Inserts Before

Recycling

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SEPTEMBER10 Managing Director: Dr Pramath Raj SinhaPrinter & Publisher: Kanak Ghosh

Publishing Director: Anuradha Das Mathur

EDITORIALEditor-in-chief: Rahul Neel Mani

Executive Editor: Geetaj ChannanaResident Editor (West & South): Ashwani Mishra

Associate Editor: Dominic KAssistant Editor: Aditya Kelekar

Principal Correspondent: Vinita GuptaCorrespondent: Sana Khan, Nipun Sahrawat

DESIGNSr. Creative Director: Jayan K Narayanan

Art Director: Binesh Sreedharan Associate Art Director: Anil VK

Manager Design: Chander Shekhar Sr. Visualisers: PC Anoop, Santosh Kushwaha

Sr. Designers: Prasanth TR, Anil T Suresh Kumar, Joffy Jose & Anoop Verma

Designer: Sristi Maurya Chief Photographer: Subhojit Paul

Photographer: Jiten Gandhi

ADVISORY PANELAjay Kumar Dhir, CIO, JSL Limited

Anil Garg, CIO, DaburDavid Briskman, CIO, Ranbaxy

Mani Mulki, VP-IS, Godrej IndustriesManish Gupta, Director, Enterprise Solutions AMEA, PepsiCo

India Foods & Beverages, PepsiCoRaghu Raman, CEO, National Intelligence Grid, Govt. of India

S R Mallela, Former CTO, AFLSantrupt Misra, Director, Aditya Birla Group

Sushil Prakash, Country Head, Emerging Technology-Business Innovation Group, Tata TeleServices

Vijay Sethi, VP-IS, Hero Honda Vishal Salvi, CSO, HDFC Bank

Deepak B Phatak, Subharao M Nilekani Chair Professor and Head, KReSIT, IIT - Bombay

Vijay Mehra, Former Global CIO, Essar Group

SALES & MARKETINGVP Sales & Marketing: Naveen Chand Singh

National Manager-Events and Special Projects: Mahantesh Godi (09880436623)Product Manager: Rachit Kinger

Asst. Product Manager: Priyam MahajanGM South: Vinodh K (09740714817)

Senior Manager Sales (South): Ashish Kumar SinghGM North: Lalit Arun (09582262959)

GM West: Sachin Mhashilkar (09920348755) Kolkata: Jayanta Bhattacharya (09331829284)

PRODUCTION & LOGISTICSSr. GM. Operations: Shivshankar M Hiremath

Production Executive: Vilas MhatreLogistics: MP Singh, Mohd. Ansari,

Shashi Shekhar Singh

OFFICE ADDRESSPublished, Printed and Owned by Nine Dot Nine Interactive Pvt

Ltd. Published and printed on their behalf by Kanak Ghosh. Published at Bunglow No. 725, Sector - 1, Shirvane, Nerul

Navi Mumbai - 400706. Printed at Silver Point Press Pvt Ltd, D-107, TTC Industrial Area, Nerul, Navi Mumbai 400706.

Editor: Anuradha Das Mathur

This issue of CTO FORUM includes 8 pages of CSO Forum free with the magazine

www.thectoforum.com

22 | BEST OF BREED:IDENTITY CHECKED The need for access control systems

REGULARS

01 | EDITORIAL08 | ENTERPRISE

ROUND-UP

advertisers’ index

VERIZON IFC SCHNEIDER 3LG 05IBM INSERT AFTER 10SIGMABYTE 11SAS 15LENOVA 21LIFE SIZE 23BMC SOFTWARE 25TREND MICRO 47WIPRO 51ACE DATA 53IBM IBCCANON BCThis index is provided as an additional service.The publisher does not assume

any liabilities for errors or omissions.

65 | HIDE TIME: MURLI NAMBIAR, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT & GROUP CISO, RELIANCE CAPITAL

65

A QUESTION OF ANSWERS

12 | INFRASTRUCTURE IS INCREDIBLY UNDERUTILISED Mark Beaumont, Director, Global Product Development - IT Solutions Verizon Business on cloud computing.

12

22



Enterprise

ROUND-UP

INTERVIEW INISDE

Switching and routing markets show strong

growth in 2010 Pg 10B

PREDICTED GROWTH OF WORLD EN-TERPRISE IT SPENDING IN 2010.

PC Shipments will Grow in 2010. Growth will slow in second half of the year.WORLDWIDE PC shipments are projected to total 367.8 million units in 2010, a 19.2 percent increase from 308.3 million units shipped in 2009, according to the latest preliminary forecast by Gartner.

"The PC market revived in the first half of 2010, but the real test of its resilience is yet to come," said Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner. "We have reduced our forecast for second-half 2010 PC growth to 15.3 percent, approximately 2 percent below our previous forecast, in light of the uncertain economic outlook for the United States and Western Europe. There is no doubt that consumer, if not business PC demand has slowed relative to expectations in mature markets. Recent dramatic shifts in the PC supply

chain were in no small part a reaction to fears of a sharp slowdown in mature-market demand. However, suppliers' risk-aversion is as much a factor in these shifts as any actual downshift in demand."

Gartner analysts said businesses will find it very dif-ficult to delay PC replacements. The age of the profes-sional PC installed base is already at an all-time high.

“Businesses that delay replacing much longer risk alienating employees, burdening themselves with more service requests and support costs, and ulti-mately facing higher migration costs when they even-tually migrate to Windows 7,” Mr. Atwal said. “The bottom line is that businesses need to refresh their PCs sooner rather than later. "

2.9%

DATA BRIEFING

SOURCE : GARTNER

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A Strategy Analytics report is projecting that the Connected Convergent Devices (CCDs) market, ranging from Mobile Internet Devices to netbooks, will achieve a global installed base of over 400 million units by 2014.

QUICK BYTE ON CONVERGENT DEVICE MARKET

Intel Plans to Catalyze the Indi-an Internet economy. Lists steps to boost growth.INTEL India recently outlined its vision for catalysing the Indian Internet economy at an event held in New Delhi. Represented by Intel senior Vice President and Gen-eral Manager, Sales & Marketing Group, Thomas M Kilroy outlined steps neces-sary to connect more Indians to the 21st century opportunities through technology.

At the event, Intel announced the availability of the Intel AppUp centre in India; made announcements with Meru Cabs and Croma; and with its customers dis-played over fifty devices powered by the latest Intel technologies. The Intel AppUp centre is an online software application store that aggregates, categorizes and validates applications that consumers can shop, collect and install from one easy source. Intel AppUp centre will come off beta very shortly.

Retail giant Croma announced its intention for a co-branded affiliate store, pow-ered by Intel AppUp centre that will be launched by October this year in India. NASSCOM also announced that it will work with Intel on the Intel Atom Devel-oper Program to build momentum for developers in India starting September/October this year. Through this program, developers will get access to Intel ser-vices to validate applications and software behind the scenes and joint marketing and revenue sharing opportunities through Intel AppUp centre.

THEY SAID IT

ERIC SCHMIDT

Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, talking about the size of the Internet information boom at the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe. Schmidt explained to delegates at the conference how the availability of information increased convenience, and enabled society to more effectively fight anti-social and malicious behaviour - but his talk raised some uncomfortable points.

“People will find it's very useful to have devices that remember what you want to do, because you forgot...But society isn't ready for questions that will be raised as result of user-generated content.”

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—Eric Schimdt,

CEO, Google

—Eric Schimdt,

E NT E R PR I S E RO U N D - U P



Novell Launches Cloud Security Service. Provides provisioning, access, security and compliance solutions for computing in the cloud.NOVELL has announced the general avail-

ability of Novell Cloud Security Service. Part of Novell's WorkloadIQ vision, Novell Cloud Security Service gives cloud provid-ers the ability to deliver secure access and compliance in the cloud for their custom-ers. Novell Cloud Security Service is a critical part of Novell's broader identity

and security portfolio, which enables enter-prises to have a consistent framework for managing identities across physical, virtual and cloud deployments.

With Novell Cloud Security Service, enter-prises can quickly and easily extend their identity infrastructure to any public cloud. Any changes that are made to their users or

The number of Black Hat or malicious hackers has gone up, with 57 percent respondents at DEFCON 18 admitting to being one versus 25 percent at DEFCON 17, a year ago.

permissions are immediately replicated in the cloud environment, thus ensuring one consistent identity and security framework for the enterprise, regardless of where the computing is actually taking place.

"Novell's ability to deliver a complete set of provisioning, access, security and compli-ance solutions that help both organisations and cloud providers control access, monitor activity and provide compliance is yet anoth-er example of their leadership in this area," said Jim Reavis, co-founder and executive director of the Cloud Security Alliance. "The Cloud Security Alliance is working closely with Novell to address many of the trust concerns end-user organisations have with cloud computing, including issues that go beyond just technology solutions."

Novell Cloud Security Service is hosted in the cloud, either where the provider hosts its application or via a Novell hosting partner. A user can log on directly or via the enterprise identity system. The service first verifies the identity and, if successful, will generate an identity token in the for-mat needed by the SaaS provider. The user is now authenticated to the SaaS service. Once inside the application, the applica-tion connectors that are provided with the service capture deep page-level user activity and provide the audit stream for compli-ance purposes.

As cloud models mature and businesses look at cloud solutions, security questions such as protecting data in the cloud, provid-ing audit reports for inspection and ensur-ing regulatory compliance are becoming increasingly important. For enterprises looking at moving critical workloads to the cloud, the combination of Novell Identity Manager 4 and Novell Access Manager is the only solution that offers seamless provi-sioning and access in real-time.

For cloud service providers who want to deliver a secure, compliant computing environment for their customers, the Novell Cloud Security Service offers a multi-tenant environment with built-in metering, billing and auditing.—Nipun Sahrawat

GLOBAL TRACKER Black Hat hackers on the loose

SOURCE: TUFIN TECHNOLOGIES ‘HACKING HABITS’ SURVEY AT DEFCON 18.

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25%

57%

E NT E R PR I S E RO U N D - U P

10B 07 SEPTEMBER 2010 CTO FORUM THE CHIEF


Switching and Routing Markets Growing: IDC. Continued strong growth in 2Q10.

GREEN TALK

NISSAN MOTOR has unveiled

Nissan LEAF, an affordable, zero-

emission car. Designed specifically

for a lithium-ion battery-powered

chassis, Nissan LEAF is a medium-

size hatchback that comfortably

seats five adults and has a range

of more than 160km (100 miles).

The car is powered by laminated

compact lithium-ion batteries,

which generate power output of

over 90kW, while its electric motor

delivers 80kW/280Nm. Nissan

LEAF can be charged up to 80%

of its full capacity in just under

30 minutes with a quick charger.

Charging at home through a 200V

may take about eight hours.

Nissan LEAF employs an

advanced IT system. Connected

to a global data centre, the system

can provide support, information,

and entertainment for drivers. The

dash-mounted monitor displays

Nissan LEAF's remaining power

- or "reachable area" - in addition

to showing a selection of nearby

charging stations. Another feature

is the ability to use mobile phones

to turn on air-conditioning and set

charging functions - even when

Nissan LEAF is powered down.

"The IT system is a critical advan-

tage," says Tooru ABE, Chief Prod-

uct Specialist. "We wanted this

vehicle to be a partner for the driver

and an enhancement for the pas-

sengers. We also wanted this vehi-

cle to help create a zero-emission

community, and these IT features

will help make that possible."

IN THE SECOND quarter of 2010

(2Q10), the International Data Cor-

poration (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly

Enterprise Networks Tracker found

year-over-year revenue growth of 32.7

percent in the Ethernet switching and

11.0 percent in the Ethernet routing

markets worldwide, reflecting con-

tinued strong performance across all

regions and key product segments.

CSC has announced it is expanding its alliance with the Virtual Computing Environment coali-tion (VCE), a collaboration of Cisco and EMC with VMware, to develop a new global solutions unit and create centres of excellence based on VCE’s Vblock infrastructure.

CSC now provides a transition to the cloud that combines its consulting, service oriented archi-tecture (SOA), applications modernisation and refactoring and trusted cloud managed services

CSC forms Cloud Computing Alliance. Aims to create centres of excellence to showcase Vblock technology.

year-over-year revenue growth of 32.7

percent in the Ethernet switching and

11.0 percent in the Ethernet routing

FACT TICKER

"The second quarter performance was

very good, following on the heels of

exceptional first quarter results for the

Ethernet switch market," said Rohit

Mehra, director, Enterprise Communi-

cations Infrastructure at IDC. "As seen

in previous years, the second calendar

quarter builds on the performance

of the first, which is what the market

delivered, showing strong year-over-

year growth from the slowdown the

market witnessed in 2009. "

IDC's update report found that the

worldwide router market showed

moderate strength in 2Q10. It had an

8.0 percent year-over-year gain.

"The continued market recovery in

2010 is very encouraging with all

regions and market segments making

a contribution," said Cindy Borovick,

VP, Enterprise Communications Infra-

structure and Datacentre Networks.

From a vendor perspective, Cis-

co's Ethernet switch market share

increased to 65.8 percent in 2Q10 from

62.8 percent in 2Q09.

with VCE’s Vblock platform, delivering client applications and business processes through an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) model.

Vblock combines virtualisation software from VMware; unified networking, security and com-puting from Cisco; and storage and security technologies from EMC. Vblocks support a broad range of operating systems and applications.

CSC’s Trusted Cloud Managed Services will use the Vblock as the basis of its Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and future Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings. In June, CSC unveiled seven cloud-enabled data cen-tres and new trusted cloud services – including CloudLab and CloudExchange – built to operate on Vblock infrastructure.

“Businesses are looking for ways to rapidly take advantage of the benefits of virtualization and secure cloud computing, and CSC is excited about the momentum we’re building in the marketplace with key VCE cloud implementations like the recently announced win with AMP in Australia,” said Michael W. Laphen, CSC chairman, president and chief executive officer. “We offer the global scale and consulting prowess, multi-vendor sys-tems integration, and applications expertise needed to deliver agile and secure business services on the VCE coalition’s unified fabric. Our strong and stra-tegic alliance with the VCE coalition helps our cli-ents take full advantage of both the economics and flexibility of virtualization and cloud computing.”

The VCE platform claims to drive higher levels of IT virtualisation and system utilisa-tion with a smaller technology footprint, which translates to higher energy savings and a reduced carbon footprint.

moderate strength in 2Q10. It had an

8.0 percent year-over-year gain.

co's Ethernet switch market share

increased to 65.8 percent in 2Q10 from

62.8 percent in 2Q09.



A Q U E S T I O N O F AN SWE RS M A RK B E AUMO N T

Infrastructure Utilisation: 70% of the year you are running at

20-25% capacity.

M A RK B E AUMO N T A Q U E S T I O N O F AN SWE RS



What are the various concerns CIOs have before

adopting cloud computing? Some of the important concerns are related to security, performance, accessibility and availability, depend-ing on where the cloud is hosted. Generally, the most important con-cern is always security; in fact, it is everybody's real concern. We put a lot of effort in ensuring that it is a very secure platform.

What made Verizon think about cloud computing?

Two years prior to our launch, we invested 10 million dollars and lots of man-hours to assess different methods of delivery. We knew that the market was evolving to a more service-based utility-based infrastruc-

ture. For us, everything accelerated because of the global economy and we speeded up what we were doing.

We are looking at ways to provide services that are more flexible and valuable to our clients. It’s predomi-nantly the reason behind coming into the market to offer a utility or a cloud based solution. Infact when we first entered the market with com-puting as a service, the concept of cloud computing as a service was not even popular.

What's been your observations on infrastructure

utilisation?We have had customers who have always been supported by a tradition-ally managed, hosted environment; they have always had a lot of peaks

and troughs in their infrastructure. We have got a number of retail organ-isations for whom we managed their online portals, shopping carts and so on and so forth. And we have seen their traffic profile sort of goes up for one minute and then it’s down and then it’s back up. You find that the actual infrastructure itself is incred-ibly underutilised.

While at various points of the year it will be utilised close to capacity, sort of 70% of the year it will be running at 20-25% capacity – at which point a lot of resources are just lying idle.

Do you think in India the SMB market would be the

only one looking at the cloud computing option?No, not at all; I think it’s available to P

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Underutilised

MARK BEAUMONT | VERIZON

Infrastructure isIncredibly

Mark Beaumont Director, Global Product Development - IT Solutions Verizon Business talks to Vinita Gupta about Verizon’s cloud computing offerings and the research that has gone into developing them.



A Q U E S T I O N O F AN SWE RS M A RK B E AUMO N T

all the markets though certainly we have many customers from the SMB segment. There are SIs, there are small SMB organisa-tions and so on. It appeals to lots of organisations, but sometimes in different ways. Some organisations use it for test and development; some organisations use it for web content. Other organisations use it to deliver applications or content to their application customer base which are geographically dispersed. So it really has a myriad of uses for different organisations.

Tell us more about the options offered by Verizon?

We have different operating sys-

The other vendors talk about Infrastructure-as-a-Service

(IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), so will Verizon also provide these services?So at the moment, CaaS fits into pretty much three buckets: in the cloud computing one, in the IaaS one and also elements of what CaaS is able to do could be classified as a PaaS – so it kind of fits into all those categories. We are obviously looking at ways by which we can generate more of PaaS and SaaS offerings in the future and to achieve that we might have some partnerships in place. — [email protected]

tems like Windows and Linux; we can set up the environment at all existing resources. If there was a certain capability or a requirement specific to the user, for instance if the customer has an infrastructure somewhere else but they don’t want to continue to invest in that infrastructure, we can actually set up Computing as a Service (CaaS) to augment that infrastructure. I would say that if a user is running a Solaris outsourced, we could actually manage that environment wherever that might be but also we can setup CAAS to augment that environment as well so that the user gets a bit of everything. The same applies to the storage and network side also.

“We are obviously looking at ways by which we can generate more of PaaS and SaaS offerings in the future.”

We put a lot of

effort in ensuring

that ours is a very

secure platform

We are looking at

ways to provide

services that are

more flexible and

valuable to our

clients

Cloud

computing

appeals to lots

of organisations,

but sometimes in

different ways

THINGS I BELIEVE IN

SUPPLY CHAIN LEADER LOOKS BEYOND THE TANGIBLES AND LOWERS TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIP

SOLUTION OVERVIEWCountry:- Singapore

Industry:- Supply Chain Management

CUSTOMER PROFILEModusLink Global Solutions, Inc. (ModusLink) is a leading, global provider of end-to-end multichannel supply chain management solutions. The publicly traded company has more than 25 years of supply chain experience, with more than 25 facilities in 14 countries across the Americas, Europe and Asia.

BUSINESS SITUATIONAs part of its technology refresh, ModusLink wanted to upgrade its corporate standard notebooks to leverage the latest technologies available to power its business. A reliable and robust IT platform is key to empowering its customer responsiveness and competitiveness.

SOLUTIONModusLink deployed both the ThinkPad T400 and ThinkPad X200. There are plans to also migrate its desktops to take advantage of the mobility and wireless benefits offered by ThinkPad notebooks.

BENEFITS• Extend wireless coverage with significant communication cost savings • Green features enable more energy savings • Robustness, reliability and seamless support for legacy applications empower 24x7 operations • Enhanced security for executive staff and mobile workers.

LENOVOCASE STUDY

Leading Global Supply Chain Provider Empowers 24x7 Operations with Robust, Reliable and Energy-Saving Notebooks

As the key decision maker, it is critical for me to look beyond the tangible features and focus on the non-tangible benefits offered. Lenovo shines with its excellent support and services, impressive turnaround time and innovative technology leadership.

Mr Chow Teng MunInformation Technology Director for Asia PacificModusLink

DIAMOND PROCESSING MAJOR CREATES INDIGENOUS CUTTING EDGE PRODUCTS FOR HIGH TECHNOLOGY DIAMOND INDUSTRYSahajanand Increases Robustness and Processing Power in its Products While Reducing Downtime and Power Consumption

We continuously think of better ways to understand the needs of the industry and we create products that help our customers to compete in the global marketRahul GaywalaExecutive Director, Sahajanand Technologies

SOLUTION OVERVIEW

Country: IndiaIndustry: High Technology Diamond Processing

CUSTOMER PROFILESahajanand Technologies is a trendsetter in the development of cutting-edge diamond manufacturing equipment, systems and processing solutions. It has been providing laser-based material processing technology, and imaging and artificial intelligence-based smart equipment for the diamond and medical industries, for more than 15 years. Other than India, it has a presence in countries like China, Botswana, and Thailand.

BUSINESS SITUATION AND SOLUTIONSahajanand wanted robust performance, less downtime and faster processing for their products. Therefore, they chose Lenovo ThinkCentre M90 desktops for use in their Magnus range of Diamond Planning systems, diamond processing Lazer Super series machines and StentSpect series machines for Stent manufacturing.

BENEFITS Robustness, reliability and seamless support Empowers 24x7 operations Cost and time savings Immediate p roductivity Green features enable more energy savings High processing power for diamond planning and processing

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Earlier we used assembled computers but we faced many problems as the assembled PCs did not have high processing power and were not stable. But now we are using Lenovo ThinkCentre PCs known for their reliability and robustness.

Rahul GaywalaExecutive Director, Sahajanand Technologies

INDUSTRY OVERVIEWDiamonds are awe inspiring. One of the purest forms of carbon and hardest natural substances, they are not only used in ornaments, but in many indus-trial applications, too. Approximately 26 tonnes of diamonds are mined yearly, predominantly from mines in Africa, Rus-sia, Canada, Brazil, India and Australia. Africa leads the pack with close to 49% of the world’s diamond supply originating from the region.

India on the other hand, is the largest diamond cutting and polishing country of the world. It processes 95% of all dia-monds in the world, by number of pieces processed. This accounts for 82% of carat share and 60% of value share. It is also the third-largest consumer of diamonds after US and Japan.

Surat is the hub of this trade in India and close to 80% of all diamonds processed in the country are processed in this city with an annual turnover of $13.03 billion. (Source: India Brand Equity Foundation)

CORPORATE INTRODUCTIONSahajanand Group of Industries is one of the leading players in the diamond processing industry in India. They are a manufacturer and exporter of laser and vision technology-centered capital equip-ment for diamond processing industries. Their portfolio of services and solutions consists of diamond analysis and sys-tems, laser-driven diamond processing equipment, auto blocking and polishing machines. All these are used at different stages of the diamond manufacturing process.

There are five stages involved in con-verting a raw diamond into a polished one. In the first stage, diamonds are sorted depending on their size and qual-ity. After the classification of diamonds, the planning and marking stage follows, wherein different options that can be used to cut the diamond are looked into; depending upon the options, a diamond cutting expert can minimize wastage and increase the value of a diamond. Sahajanand’s Magnus range of planners are used for this purpose. They create a complete profiling of the rough diamond and suggest improvements.

The third stage is the sawing stage in which, following the mark made on the

diamond, the cutting process is carried out. Sahajanand’s Lazer range of ma-chines utilizes the latest laser technology and provides high productivity, automa-tion, elimination of finishing operations, reduced processing cost and improved up time in this stage.

The cutting stage is followed by the bruiting, auto-blocking and polishing stage. Machines used in these stages are compact and robust, designed for vibra-tion free and quiet operations. All kinds of processed rough stones can be polished on these machines.

Executive Director, Rahul Gaywala, said that they are competing in an extremely competitive global market where na-tional boundaries are diminishing. In this environment they have to keep innovating and developing new products to ensure that they always remain a step ahead in the competition. He said, “We continu-ously think of better ways and means to understand the needs of the industry and customers and, based on those needs, we create products that help our custom-ers to compete in the global market.”

SITUATIONBefore the advent of laser machines, all the above mentioned stages of diamond cutting have been very person depend-ent. Only an experienced diamond cutting professional can judge the right cut of the diamond in the planning process. At times, larger diamonds are not even cut for a long time because of the fear of eroding their value due to a wrong cut.

Also, even though diamonds are the hardest substance in the world, they are extremely brittle, too. One wrong blow from a hammer can break the diamond into unusable pieces. Diamonds were thus, always cut by other diamonds. This further reduced the yield from the raw product available.

Laser planning and bruiting machines by companies like Sahajanand have helped increase the yield of diamonds multi-fold. But, this has not been without challenges.

The laser machines used in this process need to have extremely high computational power to be able to graphically scan and draw 3D images of the diamond, enabling the planner in deciding the exact cut. The machines have to be extremely robust to survive in a 24x7x365 environment, with








LENOVOCASE STUDY




We develop our own sophisticated software which works very well on Lenovo’s computing hardware.

Munjal GajjarVice President- Information Technology, Sahajanand Technologies

no down times. And finally, as they are high precision machines, they need to be free from vibrations.

SOLUTIONThe solution provided by Sahajanand has been path breaking in many ways. Their machines are built by seasoned diamond cutting experts and experienced software professionals. They create extremely user friendly software for an audience that is not tech savvy at all.

Munjal Gajjar, Vice President- Information Technology, Sahajanand Technologies, mentioned that, “We develop our sophisticated software, which works very well on Lenovo’s computing hardware. We have also been using Lenovo/ IBM’s solutions since 2002 and have bought close to 2,100 machines (70% for the planners and 30% for the laser machines).”

Along with their industry leading software, Sahajanand’s Magnus and Lazer Super products have standardized the use of Lenovo desktops in all their models. They use Lenovo’s top of the line ThinkCentre M90 business desktops for all their processing and user interface needs.

“The planning and bruiting stage requires high processing power. Earlier, assembled computers were being used by us, but we faced many problems as the assembled PCs did not have high processing power and were not stable. But now we are using Lenovo Think-Centre PCs known for their reliability and robustness”, says Gaywala.

BENEFITSRobust and Error Free Operations “The machines are used 24/7 and cannot afford downtimes, thus if anything goes wrong it will have an adverse effect on our customer’s business and hence, we produce the best products using the best technology available. Lenovo’s Think-branded products are of good quality and Lenovo provides excellent service and support,” says Prakash Rakholia, Director-Marketing, Sahajanand Technologies.

Easy-to-manage ThinkCentre M90/M90p desktops support the latest data security, remote data management and worry-free storage—which help reduce costs, downtime and desk-side IT visits.

Since all of Sahajanand’s products are installed at remote client locations, low downtimes ensure that they have to spend less time and money on sup-port and have highly reliable machines.The Lenovo ThinkCentre M90 series of business desktops also support the latest recovery technologies for faster system restores. The ThinkVantage Rescue, Re-covery and Update features help the users recover from crashes quickly.

High processing powerThe ThinkCentre M90 features the Intel Core i5/i7 series processors with Turbo Boost and Hyper-Threading technolo-gies that provide faster performance and multitasking.

With the help of high processing power used in Sahajanand Magnus (the planner product) the diamond can be seen from all sides and helps in providing a lot more options than any human can think of. To begin with, it shows the 10 most suitable options to the user and can generate up to 30 new options, every 20 seconds.

With these options, the customer can easily decide on the best suitable shape in which the diamond should be cut and mark it on the diamond using laser tech-nology. Sahajanand has, till date, sold more than one thousand units of their Magnus planner product.

Green Features Enable Energy SavingsEarlier this year, the company launched their latest models of the Lazer Super

NO VIBRATIONS: All tower models of Lenovo Thinkcentre M90 family are equipped with cat-foot cushions that reduce table vibrations considerably, thus reducing the risk of errors in these high precision machines.








LENOVOCASE STUDY




diamond cutting machines. These ma-chines are able to produce 50-60% more output power than most other models that are available in the market. The Lenovo ThinkCentre business desk-tops add to the push on energy savings by Sahajanand. The Energy Star-compli-ant power supply unit and Lenovo Power Manager present in the Lenovo’s Think-Centre M90 helps in reducing the power usage and cost. Also adding to the green quotient of the machines, they are built with up to 42% post-consumer content, the industry’s highest, with minimum use of plastic.

“Being a responsible corporate citizen, Sahajanand Technologies operates on high ethical standards. The company is actively involved in preserving the environment by developing, manufacturing and selling environmentally friendly and energy saving diamond processing products. Helping to save the environment and lower energy costs are standard benefits of Lenovo Think-branded computers,” says Gaywala.

Lower VibrationsSahajanand manufactures extremely high precision laser-based machinery that works on expensive raw diamonds. It is important that the machines are abso-lutely vibration free and do not cause any defect in the diamonds because of unnecessary shivers.

All tower models of the Lenovo ThinkCentre M90 family are equipped

with cat-foot cushions that reduce table vibrations considerably, thus reducing the risk of wastage and errors in these high precision machines.

FUTURE PLANSIn the next two years, Sahajanand is plan-ning to sell around 3,000 new systems, all equipped with Lenovo Think-branded PCs. Sahajanand’s goal is to create as many automated solutions that are reliable and give great value to their customers.

According to Gaywala, sophisticated and high-end planners and advanced laser systems have changed the face of the industry. “We are committed to bring these high-end innovative technologies within the reach of every diamond manu-facturing industry and to make them drive on the road of success. We are on the verge of bringing 3rd generation technol-ogy revolution into the diamond industry.”

He said, “We are now working on a machine that can provides better accu-racy and can handle even finer inclusions in diamonds. The company is looking at Lenovo’s business computing solutions to power these machines, with all the ad-vantages that they offer — including high reliability and great processing power.”

Also, by the end of this year, Sa-hajanand is planning to launch an “Auto-matic Polishing Machine” and a technol-ogy wherein the diamonds can be directly transferred from the Magnus planner machine to the Lazer Super machine.

THE TEAM: The experts at Sahajanand Technologies work hard to create cutting edge products for diamond processing that are powered by Lenovo ThinkCentre M90 series

Lenovo makes every effort to ensure accuracy of all information but is not liable or responsible for any editorial, photographic or typographic errors. All images are for illustration purposes only. For full Lenovo product, service and warranty specifications visit www.lenovo.com. Lenovo makes no representations or warranties regarding third party products or services. Trademarks: The following are trademarks of Lenovo: Lenovo, the Lenovo logo, New World New Thinking, ThinkPad, Active Protection System and ThinkLight. Microsoft, Windows and Vista are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the USA or other countries. Other company, product and service names may be trademarks or service marks of others. © 2009 Lenovo. All rights reserved. Visit lenovo.com/safecomputing periodically for the latest information on safe and effective computing.

ABOUT LENOVOLenovo (HKSE: 992) (ADR:LNVGY) is dedicated to building exceptionally engineered personal computers. Lenovo’s business model is built on innovation, operational efficiency and customer satisfaction as well as a focus on investment in emerging markets. Formed by Lenovo Group’s acquisition of the former IBM Personal Computing Division, the company develops, manufactures and markets reliable, high-quality, secure and easy-to-use technology products and services worldwide. Lenovo has major research centers in Yamato, Japan; Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, China; and Raleigh, North Carolina.

For more information see www.lenovo.com.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

For more information on Lenovo, visit www.lenovo.com or write to us at [email protected]@lenovo.com








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BEST OF

BREED Turning IP Into Opportunity: NC State's Big Data Effort Pg 26

FEATURE INSIDE

Identity CheckedIdentity management and access control systems (IdM) go a long way in balancing security and rapid access. BY DREW ROBBIS THE AVER-

AGE AMOUNT OF IT BUDGET SPENT ON SECURITY

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SOURCE: GARTNER Security and speed are desirable yet often incompatible goals. Driving 55 MPH low-ers highway fatalities, but raises the blood pressure. Airport checks keeps passengers safe, but at a cost of billions of hours wait-

ing in line. As CIOs, you must continually balance the needs of security while giving users rapid access to the applications and data. Identity management and access control systems (IdM) can go a long way to

reconciling those needs. However, it is not as simple as just deploying a new application.

“Especially when considering best-of-breed prod-ucts, people tend to look at the technology first and then have to do a lot of backtracking,” said Bill Nagel, an analyst for Forrester Research in Amsterdam. “This is very much a process problem, where there is a whole raft of policies and processes you want to develop before selection.”



Picking Apart the PiecesSuccessful implementation of IdM begins with defining the scope of what you are hoping to achieve. A full-fledged approach to IdM, after all, consists of an array of tools and processes that are deployed across a wide variety of hardware, applications and services relating to different user groups. This is highlighted by the way Forrester compares vendors in this space based on 14 different technologies in use: Directories (LDAP) Enterprise single sign-on Entitlement management Federation Identity audit Meta-directories Multi-factor authentication Password management Privileged user and password management Provisioning Role management User-centric identity Virtual directories, and Web single sign-on.“You can't implement an entire IdM infra-

structure all at once,” says Gerry Gebel, VP and service director of Burton Group’s Iden-tity and Privacy Strategies service. “With an overall strategy, you can then select phases of projects or incremental functionality that you want to implement and have it fit into the overall goal and objective.”

Before formulating a strategy, it is vital to find out what you already have in place. Every company is already using some sort of IdM, even if it is just Active Directory. This means examining the policies, procedures, work flows, hardware and data sources, in addition to software. This survey must include look-ing at departments other than IT, since physical security, HR, finance, sales and other parts of the company may have their own systems in place that cover part of the field. For example, HR will already have some way of verifying employee identi-ties, and physical security may be issuing access cards that can double as a smart card for logging into IT systems. In addition, the sales and finance departments may have their own modes of granting access to vendors and customers.

Analysts rate the top five suites as Oracle Identity Management, Novell Identity Man-ager, CA Identity Lifecycle Management, Sun Identity Management (now owned by Ora-cle) and IBM Tivoli Identity Management.

In addition to the big five suite vendors, there are dozens of niche products in one or more of the IdM technology spaces listed earlier. Since the field is rapidly evolving, it is best to consult the latest analyst papers before finalising any decisions.

Gartner divides the IdM vendor space into three broad categories: single sign on, user provisioning, and Web access management, and publishes Magic Quadrants on each. During selection, it is important to also eval-uate the existing infrastructure and skills in the organisation, not just the functions of the application itself. “Most companies pre-fer to deal with fewer vendors rather than more,” said Gebel.

Looking aheadInitially, it may be impossible to obtain the ideal IdM solution out of any given suite or grouping of best-of-breed tools. But, since deploying IdM is a long range process, that isn't necessarily a problem, as long as you don't become firmly locked into a particular vendor or technology. In deploying a suite, therefore, emphasise the selection of elements that are the most mature or best integrated.

“There are a number of technologies that are relatively mature and can produce a lot of benefits,” said Gebel. “People can have a different set of starting points Web single sign on, an organised directory environ-ment, or provisioning and automating account set up there is not one tier or path people have to follow.”

— This article has been reprinted with permis-

sion from CIO Update.

Whatever we view as the right standard and the right solution today, by the time we have it installed, configured and operational, it is outdated.

Another key step in strategic planning of IdM is to gain agreement on the appropri-ate policies and procedures that balance the needs for security and ease of use. Only then can you get around to selecting the set of technologies that will best meet those needs. “A lot of people are coming to realise that ID management is first and foremost not a technology problem,” said Paul Don-fried, VP of Identity and Access Manage-ment for Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). “It is an issue that per-meates organisations.”

Suite or Best of BreedOnce you have defined the scope and direc-tion you want to move in, it's time to evalu-ate the products that will achieve the desired end state. As usual there are two camps: suites and best of breed. Whichever route you take, Donfried recommends a focus on flexibility, especially since this is likely to be a multi-year project.

“More than anything, you want to avoid lock-in to any single vendor or any type of proprietary solution,” he said. “Whatever

we view as the right standard and the right solution today, by the time we have it installed, configured and operational, it is outdated.”

Suites (at least theoretically) offer smoother integration than best-of-breed. But integrated means different things to dif-ferent vendors. And since the IdM vendor space is rapidly consolidating, today’s suites may be composed of software

recently acquired from competitors. “Some-times these products have been integrated seamlessly, but with others it is an ongoing process,” said Nagel.

By 2013 DIGITAL IDENTITY

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Analytics: Turning IP Into OpportunityNorth Carolina State University's Big Data Effort. BY SUSAN NUNZIATA

North Carolina State University's Office of Technol-ogy Transfer is piloting an advanced analytics tool it developed with IBM to maximise its return on research investments. The "Big Data" effort can work for any enterprise looking to mine rich databases of

information with limited staff resources.NC State had a challenge. It needed a new process to monetise its

treasure trove of scientific advancements and university-invented technologies by matching these with potential research partners and sponsors. Any organisation sitting on reams of intellectual property (IP) will learn from the experiences of Billy Houghteling, Director of the Office of Technology Transfer at NC State. His office is responsi-ble for transferring University-developed innovations to the market-place and interacting with partners. "Our portfolio is very large, very diverse and it's understaffed," says Houghteling. "We have a hard time managing the intellectual property assets we have."

There are seven licensing professionals (including Houghteling) in the department and they are managing some 3,000 technologies. In addition, there are 12 support professionals in the department.

"Not only are we charged with managing the university's intellec-tual property assets, we're also charged with raising whole profile of technology in NC State," says Houghteling. "So we are always think-ing about what type of research partnerships we could establish between an industry partner and faculty member in, say, our depart-ment of chemistry, for example."

The most time-consuming part of the process is what Houghteling's team calls "triage," in which the licensing professionals review an oppor-

tunity to determine market potential, investigate the pat-ent landscape, and, if necessary, seek patent protection in order to move early-stage technologies to market. This tri-age process typically takes two to four months, and much of that time is spent on the back end trying to identify the right partners in a particular industry so they can be pitched on the project, explains Houghteling.

For the triage process, the licensing professionals search a plethora of documents, scour SEC reports, search blogs to see which company's R&D efforts are successful and which have failed, attend industry trade meetings and do anything else required "to really get a handle on who is interested in any given technology," says Houghteling.

IBM Big Data PilotThis summer, the department began piloting IBM's "Big Data" ana-lytics technology, which mines large amounts of unstructured Web data. The analysis is based on factors such as business relevancy, government policies, market needs and trends. In the pilot phase, the tools unearthed hidden business opportunities that likely would not have emerged under the old triage system, notes Houghteling. In addition, the analytics tools condensed the triage process down to a seven- to 10-day period. "We do this by identifying key words, using specific phrasing dedicated to key words, and by identifying specific documents," Houghteling says. "You can get these types of analytics tools to spit out a scored or ranked list of potential part-ners. That's attractive: to have a group of potential partners ranked based on how they match to our specs."

For example, a team of researchers at NC State is investigating new strains of Salmonella for use in vaccines. With IBM Big Data analyt-ics technology, it took less than a week for the university to analyze 1.4 million Web pages, including opinion blogs, social networks and documents. The analytics technology sorted through a wide variety of information and analysed the contents in real time to find relevant details, ultimately identifying potential investors and partners.

The pilots were conducted in collaboration with the university's College of Management Bioscience Management Group and its Cen-tre for Management Studies. For this project, NC State used:

IBM BigSheets, part of IBM’s BigInsights portfolio, a software engine that helps get insights from really large data sets easily and quickly

IBM LanguageWare, a text analytics tool created by IBM's Dub-

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lin Software Lab in Ireland for harnessing the wealth of unstructured data contained in text documents, Web site content and enterprise applications.

IBM Cognos Content Analytics, a software which gives organisations the necessary tools to access and analyse the volumes of unstruc-tured content.

These three components were running on IBM Distribution of Apache Hadoop. The ana-lytics solution interfaced with the University's TechTracS database, developed by Knowledge Sharing Systems. The proprietary database sup-ports innovation management functions and is used by the technology transfer offices of many universities to manage their IP portfolios. "It has its base modules that we have customised for our use at NC state," says Houghteling. "We license use of several seats of the TecTracS soft-ware and, in partnership with Knowledge Shar-ing Systems, we pay for process improvements particular to our processes and practices."The relational TechTracS database is used for all the agreement tracking, invention disclosure track-ing, compliance, and patent management for the University. It is also from that database that the department launches all of its marketing activities to potential partners.

In the pilot phase, the interface between the IBM Big Data solution and the transfer man-agement database went smoothly, and Hough-teling says "I don't foresee any challenges related to transferring information gathered by use of analytics tools into our transfer manage-ment database."

Business Benefits RealisedSo far, the IBM Big Data pilots delivered two strong benefits, says Houghteling:

They reduced the triage process down to seven to 10 days from two to four months;

The licensing professionals are now able to use their newfound time to work on raising the university's technology profile and build-ing new business opportunities.

As the pilots continue, "We're definitely in the process of making the business case [ for a full deployment]." Says Houghteling, "It's only a matter of time before these tools become available to every member of my office to test and see how they improve their daily flow of work and efficiency." This article has been published with prior permis-

sion from CIO Insight.



COVE R S TORY AWA RD WI N N I N G TA L E S

Three categories, more than a 100 entries – nine winners. CTO of the Year Awards 2010.

Award winning tales

VIJAY SETHI, Vice President IS, Hero Honda S.R. BALASUBRAMANIAN, Executive VP, IT and Corporate Development, Godfrey Philips India ARVIND TAWDE, Former CIO, Mahindra & Mahindra ASHOK WAHI, Professor of Information Systems at Jaypee Business School, JIIT University SUNIL KAPOOR, Executive Director, Fortis Healthcare

The awards were judged by:




Electricity consumers in the cities of Kolkata and Howrah, Kolkata’s twin city, can breathe easy even if the lights go off. Wondering why? Well, unlike most of us in other cities

of the country, they can at least be aware of the reason for the power failure by dialing a four digit number courtesy their service provider, CESC, a utility com-pany managed by the RPG Enterprise group.

As a vertically integrated power company, CESC's operations encompass coal mining, generation and distribution of power.

With around 24 lakh consumers in the above men-tioned cities, the IT team decided to deploy a fully automated CRM software solution for handling cus-tomer queries, concerns and complaints.

“The primary need for this solution was to ensure better and effective customer service,” says Debashis Roy, Vice President-IT, CESC.

A customised CRM software package was developed by the in-house IT team. The package inte-grated with other systems such as Distribution Management System (DMS), Geographical Information System (GIS) and Site Office System (SOS) with a view to offering a complete and comprehensive solution to the customer through a single point interface.

While the CRM software package lies at the heart of the system, several technologies such as IVRS (Interac-tive Voice Response System), SMS services and GPS have been deployed and integrated with the core CRM system to make the overall business process efficient and effective.

In case of a power cut, the consumer can now dial up 1912, CESC’s customer service cell number, where an IVR-based system prompts the consumer to key in

Lights onCESC deploys a CRM solution to increase revenue and customer satisfaction.

their unique 11 digit consumer number. The CRM system authenticates the consumer num-

ber and checks with the DMS and GIS systems to ascertain as to whether the power cut experienced by the consumer is on account of load shedding or due to a genuine technical fault.

If it is found that the power cut is on account of a technical fault, the CRM system automatically gener-ates a computerised docket number which is com-municated to the consumer. Internally, the docket number along with the relevant details are routed to the concerned Regional Reporting Centre (RRC).

CESC has deployed field personnel who travel in vans on a 24X7 basis in these cities. Using the GPS system, the field personnel closest to the customer’s residence is tracked and the requisite complaint

details are relayed to his wireless handheld instrument using the SMS service which is integrated with the CRM system.

The field agent visits the cus-tomer, addresses the issue and communicates the information over the same wireless system.

“Typically, in the erstwhile manual system it would take around 6 to 8 hours to restore power, whereas with the help of the fully automated end-to-end CRM system, it is now possible to restore power supply in less than an hour’s time,” says Roy.

The system has been widely acclaimed and has received accolades from various quarters. Many utility companies have approached CESC and are looking to apply this model to their organisation as well.

“The success of the CRM solution has been possible due to the committed and focused work of my IT team and I want to dedicate this award to them,” Roy said, after winning the CIO of the year award.

Higher revenues: Increase in revenue owing to higher sale of electricity due to significant reduction in cycle time for restoring power.

CRM data analysis: Proactive maintenance of vulnerable electrical components leading to lower network outages and consequent savings in revenue.

Customer satisfaction: The CRM deployment saw an increase in Customer Satisfaction Index Level.

“Manual systems took

8 hours to restore

power, now we can do so in less than an hour’s time”

— DEBASHIS ROY

Business Benefits



CTO OF THE YEAR - WINNER

ABOUT THE WINNER

Name: Debashis Roy

Organisation: CESC Limited

Project: CRM Software Solution

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CTO OF THE YEAR - 1st RUNNER UP

ABOUT THE WINNER

Name: Navin Chadha

Organisation: Vodafone Essar Limited

Project: Internal Clearing House

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Vodafone Essar has operations across the country and has over a hundred million customers. The mobile service provider was facing a challenge in terms of accu-

rate clearing when a customer was using a network outside his primary location, or in simple terms was on roaming.

The challenge for the IT team was to achieve fast and accurate clearing of the roaming Transfer of Account Procedure (TAP). TAP is the mechanism by which GSM operators exchange roaming billing information. Whenever customers use a network out-side of their home network, the usage of the calls are captured in a Call Detail Record (CDR) in the roaming network switch but the customer is to be billed by the home network.

TAP files are also necessary to have faster revenue realisation and to prevent any roaming frauds. His-torically, the exchange of the roam-ing TAP files between all 23 Voda-fone circles account for 80 percent of the total roaming business.

“There had to be a method through which the roaming part-ner intimates the home networks about the customer’s usage and in turn earns revenue for provid-ing roaming services,” says Navin Chadha, Director-IT, Vodafone Essar.

To exchange the usage/call detail records between roaming partners a common solution is required that can send the files to the respective operators. This solution is called the clearing solution and is similar to a cheque clearing solution existing in banks. All the

Smooth roamingVodafone developed a solution that helped in generating faster revenues and mitigating frauds.

Savings: Financial savings of around $11 million. Near real-time CDR updating (99.92 %) for revenue assurance team.

Shortening time to market: The lead-time between network and IT development projects is reduced by using ideal solutions to bridge the gap between the billing system and the Data Clearing House (DCH).

Web based GUI: The reporting service ensures that the business teams have complete control of the data processing and a deep insight into the correlation between revenue and subscriber behaviour.

settlements happen through the clearing house. “The existing data clearing solution was plagued

with lots of delays,” says Chadha. Due to these delays there were apparent revenue

leakages. To resolve this problem, the Internal Clear-ing House (ICH) was set up.

The solution was conceived in the second quarter of FY 2009-10 with the architecture and design being finalised within 45 days. The solution was developed with a nine member internal team with inputs from the chief architects and subject matter experts. After rigorous testing by all concerned departments like marketing, finance, etc., the solution was successfully

rolled out in 23 circles. The contract with other data

clearing houses (DCH) has not been extended for handling Vodafone to Vodafone roaming files. Going forward, it shall be the internal teams which shall be handling these activities as part of their daily operations.

The results and the figures reported have been validated by the respective business teams of Vodafone and they have acknowledged the ben-efits realised by the company in terms of significant revenue savings and by plugging the rev-

enue leakage gaps. “The ICH implementation was a testimony to the

innovation which the IT team has brought to the Vodafone way of life. This demonstrates our com-mitment to be a strategic partner in business,” says Chadha.

“Benefits were in terms of significant revenue

savings and plugging

the revenue leakage gaps”

— NAVIN CHADHA

Business Benefits




In a span of 21 years, Gati, one of the leaders in the express distribution and supply chain solutions segment in India, has consistently explored various ways to bring value to the

customer.Recently, the challenge for the company was to pro-

vide its customers with real time delivery of informa-tion and also the image of Proof of Delivery (POD). POD is a proof to the sender that the goods have been delivered and accepted by the receiver.

"We needed to provide custom-ers with real-time delivery results and eliminate the risk of losing physical copies of PODs," says G S Ravi Kumar, CIO, Gati.

Ravi Kumar adds that he looked at various solutions available in the market but found them expensive. The return on investment (RoI) was just not there.

He initiated a project that was code named 10c. The project focused on capturing the POD information in an image form through an innovative and inexpensive method. In addition to the key purpose of capturing the POD information and the image, this project also provided additional features such as docket (airway bill) tracking, rate finder, transit time finder, pin code locater, etc.

“The solution needed to be low-cost and easy to implement across a non-technical workforce,” says Ravi Kumar.

To combat the expensive solutions in the market,

Need for speedGati devised a simple solution using entry level handhelds to deliver almost real time reports.

the IT team used an inexpensive, entry-level handheld device with GPRS and image capturing capabilities. This handheld had a camera and used a couple of applications that were developed in-house. The application were developed using JSP / JAVA. The size of the image was limited to facilitate easy transfer and viewing.

On delivery of goods, the image of a POD and related information is uploaded to a central database. This ensures that delivery information is updated

almost in real time and consider-ably reduces the processing time and associated effort. Earlier, it took an average of three days for the image of POD to be uploaded on the website.

The handhelds were rolled out in 240 locations in three months’ time.

The solution also made track-ing physical PODs irrelevant and did away with the cost of courier-ing PODs. At present more than 25, 000 transactions per day are captured by 900 plus delivery personnel across the country. The captured information is made

available on Gati's website.Ravi Kumar recalls that at the start of the project he

thought that the deployment would take a year’s time since the delivery staff had no knowledge about the use of technology. “To our surprise, our staff found the device easy to use and took to using them within a short while, as it simplified the delivery process for them,” he says.

“The solution needed to

be low-cost and easy to implement

across a non-technical

workforce”— RAVI KUMAR

Faster process: Instant delivery of POD image, reduction in processing time for delivery activities

Cutting risks: Loss of POD in transit eliminated. Improve-ment in invoice sub-mission process which in turn improved the cash flow

Fast RoI: Total invest-ment recovered in less than six months

Reduced costs: Eliminated courier, manpower and com-puter costs

Business Benefits

CTO OF THE YEAR - 2ND RUNNER UP

ABOUT THE WINNER

Name: Ravi Kumar Ganapati Sampath

Organisation: Gati

Project: Real-time Delivery of PODs

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SMART CIO OF THE YEAR

ABOUT THE WINNER

Name: Rajesh Munjal

Organisation: Carzonrent India

Project: Taxi Dispatch System

CATEGORY: SERVICES

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Isn’t is extremely easy to call a cab these days? Just dial one of the cab operators – like Easy Cabs and the taxi arrives on your doorstep in less than half an hour, as if by magic. A lot of tech-

nology in the back-end makes this magic possible.One of the winners of our Smart CIO awards,

Rajesh Munjal, Head - Information Technology, Car-zonrent India (Easycabs & Hertz India), creates this magic by which the cabs are able to reach their cus-tomers in time.

Easy Cabs was the first radio taxi company in India to implement a fully automated taxi dispatch system in India. The technology was bought from a Singa-pore based company with lot of promises and com-mitment as it was successfully running in Singapore. But, the system was not without loopholes. “However because of Indian infrastructure conditions, connec-tivity issues and support issues we were not able to get full output from the application which was imple-mented at the time of launch of our Radio Taxi Opera-tions,” says Munjal.

This was at a time when the business was growing really fast and the company was servicing more than 100,000 reservations at their Delhi operations. They were in an expansion mode and were increasing their fleet and so dependency on technology was also very high. More than 50,000 customers were using the solution to hire cabs.

“It was very difficult for us to work with the tech-nology that did not even deliver half of the business requirements while consuming a lot of resources. At the same time it was a very tough call to replace the entire system which was in use for more than three years and was fulfilling the basic need of the busi-ness. Replacing the entire system was a huge risk to the business,” says Munjal.

Convincing the management to replace the entire

Turning the wheelsA new cab management system increases reservations by 20%.

Clear insight: Provides a dashboard for capturing the cus-tomer usage pattern, enabling better fleet utilisation and provid-ing information on the revenue being gener-ated by each car

Business growth: Reservation levels for Easy Cabs have increased by more than 20%

Faster processes: Time per reservation is also reduced by more than 30% which has helped in improv-ing reservation agent productivity

system was even more difficult because of two simple reasons. “Firstly, we were asking for a huge invest-ment in technology. Secondly, we proposed replacing a system that was delivering on the basic needs of the business with a system which was not proven at all,” says Munjal.

They evaluated many solutions and finally found a domestic company that agreed to customise the applications and hardware as per their business requirements. “After convincing the management we were able to replace the entire system in only 45 days,” says Munjal.

The Taxi Despatch System is an integrated end to end solution for their Radio Taxi Business which is operated under Easycabs Brand. It is being used for enquiry, execution, GIS/ GPS based tracking and complete customer relationship management (CRM).“The implementation has been very successful and we have been able to build confidence in the industry that domestic products can deliver quality services apart from being very competitively priced,” says Munjal.

The system has been able to help in providing a dashboard for delivering real-time information for the business and capture the customer usage pattern. It enables better fleet utilisation and provides informa-tion on the revenue being generated by each car.

The biggest impact of this has been that the reserva-tion levels for Easy Cabs have increased by more than 20% as they are able to cater to more bookings by the same fleet. “The time per reservation is also reduced by more than 30% which has helped in improving our reservation agent productivity,” says Munjal. “This has also resulted in a substantial reduction in communication costs, greater control over business, and more efficiency.”

Business Benefits




Yes Bank was itching for a data warehouse and business intelligence (BI) solution way back in 2006. But when they started scouting for such solutions in the market,

they found that these solutions came at a huge price (to the tune of a few crore rupees).

In addition, the time to implement these solutions was extremely long, which would make the solu-tion obsolete in a scenario which called for dynamic response to the ever changing market conditions.

“It would have taken us two to three years to implement the entire solution and reap business benefits. Also there is a constant need to liaise with implementation partners/vendors for enhancements and changes,” said Umesh Jain, President and Chief Information Officer, Yes Bank.

Though the various business groups required a BI solution, the same was not affordable given the emphasis on reducing costs. In 2008, the bank decid-ed to grow its business and entered into other areas of banking like retail, SME, etc.

Yes Bank was facing multiple business challenges with respect to obtaining business intelligence reports. The data stored in multiple places did not facilitate information sharing within various departments. In addition, more than 250 plus reports and MIS were being generated by the bank daily. The source for these reports was discrete systems that lacked integra-tion. Each department maintained its own database, which resulted in inconsistencies in the reports from various departments. Valuable time, effort and pro-ductivity were lost in resolving these inconsistencies rather than acting upon information.

The distribution of reports through emails was also an information security risk as all recipients were able to see information related to other recipients as well. “As the entire data was available on the FTP site, any-one could access it,” says Jain.

Intelligent bankingYes Bank created its own BI solution that helped them increase productivity and share key data at all levels.

Resources in-house: In-house development of BI solution

Productivity gains: Productivity gains of approximately rupees five crore realised

Cost savings: Cost savings of around rupees 70 lakh per annum

To address these issues, the bank set up a Business Intelligence Center of Excellence (BICoE) that constituted of technology and business users. The BICoE conceptualised Kaleidoscope – Yes Bank’s in-house BI initiative.

The entire development of the BI solution was done in-house using Yes Bank’s existing resources. The solution was sent for production within two months. The platform was hosted on shared infrastructure with zero additional hardware costs. The total cost of the project was around Rs 42 lakh.

Based on the requirements, a data warehouse was created where the information contained in the bank's various applications was integrated. Role-based access to Kaleidoscope was provided.

The new BI solution did not merely restrict usage to a few key stakeholders in each department. So as to have the maximum organisational impact, all end-users, from managers to the juniormost staff, were empowered with information relevant to them.

The bank realised that taking the necessary action after getting the information was as important and so the BI solution has a feature that stands out—Action-able BI. “It is no use disseminating information if the users do not act upon it. The information in Kalei-doscope is integrated with actions to make sure that users act upon the information,” says Jain.

Post deployment of Kaleidoscope, Yes Bank saved on seven to eight full time, high cost resources that earlier generated these reports. They have been now moved to other functions within the bank resulting in savings of around Rs. 70 lakh per annum.

Jain adds that the bank has seen huge productivity gains and no longer do the users need to manually collate and verify the data from across systems. “With the current content that has been built up, produc-tivity gains of approximately rupees five crore have already been realised,” he adds.

Business Benefits


ABOUT THE WINNER

Name: Umesh Jain

Organisation: Yes Bank Ltd.

Project: Business Intelligence Solution

CATEGORY: BFSI

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ABOUT THE WINNER

Name: Arup Choudhury

Organisation: Eveready Industries India

Project: Redesigning supply chain solution

CATEGORY: MANUFACTURING

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Eveready started its India operations in 1905. Since then, from a battery company it has diver-sified itself into a FMCG company with a deep and wide distribution network covering 3.5 mil-

lion retail outlets across the country. The company now deals with a diverse range of products including Carbon zinc and alkaline batteries, torches, packet tea, mosqui-to repellents, CFL lamps, GLS lamps and rechargeable batteries. The diversity in the line of products required an efficient and agile supply chain.

Traditionally the supply chain at Eveready was thought to be at par with the best in the industry. However over the years, external factors changed but the company was slow to respond, resulting in inef-ficiencies building up in the supply chain.

“We embarked on a drive to redesign the supply chain based on the current business scenario. From the traditional ‘direct to warehouse’ model we moved to the ‘hub and spoke model’,” says Arup Choudhury, CIO, Eveready. This resulted in setting up six mother warehouses across India as a layer between the child warehouses, manufacturing units and sourcing locations. Once this was achieved and the sourcing rules drawn up, it was necessary to automate the entire supply chain process. This helped in reducing manual dependencies and removed inefficiencies in the system. The need was also felt to centralise the planning process so that the locations could focus on proper execution of the plan.

Traditionally, sales forecast was totally based on the market scenario perceived by each individual sales personnel, which resulted in considerable gap between forecasted demand and actual sales. This gap created an imbalance between production and distri-bution planning; this in turn created imbalance in the pipeline inventory. There was no system in place that could do proper statistical forecasts based on past his-torical trends. “We decided to build this into the new

All charged upEveready remodels its supply chain enabling better demand forecasting.

Inventory man-agement: Supply chain inventory has decreased by 15%, which is thrice the project cost.

Better planning: Forecast accuracy has increased from 60% to 85% resulting in better customer satis-faction.

system and ensured that it fed into the supply chain system,” says Choudhury.

The structured analysis between the actual figures and the projected one was either not available, or not on time. So a third system was required for the real time sales and operations planning. This would get real time data from the demand forecasting, supply chain planning and the base ERP systems.

“In last few months, the forecast error has started showing a downward trend. The Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) indicator has pointed towards that,” says Choudhury. “The finished goods distribution in the entire pipeline has started showing a more realistic outlook than the past. The pipeline inventory is getting optimised with the passage of time. The overall inventory value KPI is showing that trend,” he adds.

The execution from the warehouses and plants are now monitored on a continuous basis. This has resulted in efficient execution of plans. The organisation has transitioned from producing to capacity into a more realistic produce to fulfil demand. This in turn has unlocked valuable working capital. “The forecast accuracy has increased from 60% to 85% resulting in better customer satisfaction. The supply chain inventory has also decreased by 15%, which is thrice the project cost.”

In the course of execution of an award winning project, Choudhury has learnt many important les-sons that would help him in his career going forward. To start with, he knows the way to get easier manage-ment buy-in. “The other two takeaways for me were that you must monitor the project tightly and keep all the key stake holders in the loop. Finally, training is the most important aspect in a supply chain imple-mentation as it is very difficult to enforce processes on people working in warehouses.

Business Benefits




Wockhardt, a leading player in the healthcare industry vertical, manu-factures and markets formulations, biopharmaceuticals, nutrition prod-

ucts, vaccines and active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). In late 2007, it acquired Morton Grove Phar-maceuticals (MGP), a liquid generic and specialty dermatology company in the US.

The challenge for the IT team at Wockhardt was to consolidate the platform of the acquired company and look at optimum utilisation of resources such as systems, sales force, warehousing and infrastructure. While Wockhardt was on SAP ERP, MGP was operating on a different platform for its business operations.

“There also was a dire need for reducing the lead times and delivery times for greater availability and customer responsiveness. Repetitive, redundant and unnecessarily complex operations were required to be simplified, combined and reduced,” says Suresh She-noy, Senior Vice President-IT, Wockhardt.

The IT team studied the processes of MPG dili-gently before plunging into the consolidation phase. The project involved seamless integration between operations in the countries of different time zones and geographical areas like USA (Chicago and New Jersey), Switzerland and India with fully secure con-nectivity through MPLS tunnels.

The project also involved integration of external stakeholders like third-party logistics and custom-

Healthy integrationWockhardt consolidated heterogeneous systems across the globe with its in-house IT team.

Successful integration: Successful integration of different legal entities along with third party logistics on the same platform.

Centralisation: Centralisation of sales processes and shipments. Centralisation of all debtors and creditors.

Optimal manpower: Reduction in manpower. Better customer service and delivery.

Reduced paper use: Reduction in paper movement due to electronic integration. In SAP there is minimum paper movement.

ers through Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), and banks for payments and collection. One of the major challenges was to protect business information with proper firewalls and connectivity. This was taken care by way of middleware servers.

Advanced EDI integration, SAP NetWeaver, SAP-dispute management, lockbox process implementation and collaborative tool of process automation and their integration with SAP were the technologies used.

The new implementation had complexities and it required a model that demanded non standard SAP functionalities with minimum human intervention and yet having the necessary control point checks. This was customised using the advanced ABAP / OO technologies to make this complete requirement work seamlessly.

The implementation has shortened the turnaround time of processes from around 24 - 48 hours to an hour or two, bringing in huge improvements in the overall business.

"We have seen reduction in manpower and improvement in customer service and delivery. In addition, availability of MIS reports across the globe have brought in a lot of business clarity and insight," says Shenoy.

The project was completed in three months by the internal IT team with immediate RoI benefits. “It was a perfect integration of people, process and technol-ogy,” says Shenoy.

Business Benefits


ABOUT THE WINNER

Name: Suresh Shenoy

Organisation: Wockhardt Limited

Project: Consolidating systems of an acquired company

CATEGORY: HEALTHCARE/ PHARMA

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ABOUT THE WINNER

Name: BLV Rao

Organisation: Infotech Enterprises

Project: Virtualisation and optimisation

CATEGORY: IT/ ITES

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Infotech enterprises is a Rs. 1000 crore company, founded in 1991. It is a global engineering servic-es provider specialising in Engineering Services, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and IT

services. They provide their services to a wide range of industries including aerospace, automotive, energy, government, high technology consumer and medical devices, marine, rail, retail, telecom and utilities.

It combines extensive software development capa-bility based in India with global delivery through offices in the US, UK, Germany, Australia and the Netherlands that provide local customer interface and project management.

Agile smart secure itSave money by managing better.

Virtualisation: Delivered 160% extra storage at no cost and 240% more computing power

Customer satisfaction: Exceeded expectations of its 22 customer audits in the FY 2009-10 with zero non-conformities

The business challenges of Infotech Enterprises were directly linked to the technology backbone. These included urgencies arising on computing resources, power supply /distribution, infrastructure availability and scaling up of systems.

With diverse operations and Fortune 500 clients it was important for the company to be extremely agile and secure. BLV Rao, VP , Head-Global IT, Infotech Enterprises has a framework called Agile Smart/ Secure IT or ASIT to deliver high quality solutions to the IT organisation's clients. ASIT is considered at all steps and aspects of technology implementation.

The first part of the project included virtualisation and optimisation. While delivering high technology projects it was important that BLV Rao and his team were ready for the future too, which is why they selected private clouds. By virtualisation, “the team was able to deliver 160% extra storage at no cost and 240 % more comput-ing power,” says Rao. (The table shows the solutions provided and the benefits reaped from them.)

Apart from the specific benefits tabulated, the busi-ness as a whole has been impacted in more ways than one. “Our flawless delivery model has helped us attract new customers,” says Rao. It has also helped the business to be extremely agile, scalable and secure without worrying about the ability to deliver. The cli-ents are extremely happy with what they see. “We have exceeded expectations of our 22 customer audits in the FY 2009-10 with zero non-conformities,” says Rao.

The biggest learning for Rao in this whole exercise has been about taking calculated risks. The team in this case was working against odds on multiple facets of the technology organisation. The other big learning for him has been in the form of persistence and team management. “It is extremely important to manage the team emotions when you are working on a project of this scale and complexity. They must be motivated at all times to make it work” says Rao.

Business Benefits

Area of Implementation

Solution and Benefits

Desktop Power savings of 34% by deploying policies for standby and shutdown

High-end monitors

Power savings of 54% by deploying low power LCDs for 19 and 21-inch monitors

Network Optimised 14 LAN segments to 6; reduced 22 devices on the network Intelligent network with Ethernet power-off

when not in use - savings 32 % WAN links utilisation enhanced by 28 %

Servers Consolidated and virtualised; reduced 34 servers Blades with virtualisation - utilisation and

efficiency enhanced by 22% Created virtualised systems for testing

-savings 24 %

Storage Consolidation and optimisation; resulted in 18 TB extra storage - 28% storage freed by compression and de-duplication Low power consumption per TB by

implementing Sata II disks

Data Centre Reduced power and cooling expenses by 22% Overall computing performance improved

by - 22 %

Printers Prints reduced by 60- 70 %

SIGNIFICANT ACCOMPLISHMENTS




WOMAN CIO OF THE YEAR

WINNER

ABOUT THE WINNER

Name: Alpna Doshi

Organisation: Reliance

Communications

Project: Campaign

Automation

On the campaign trailRCOM CIO Alpna Doshi wins the Woman CIO of the Year Award.

With a customer base of almost 110 million, Reliance Communications (RCOM) easily ranks among the top five telecom companies in the

world. CIO Alpna Doshi’s innovative “Campaign Automation” system has done wonders for RCOM’s operations and marketing departments.

Faced with challenges ranging from reducing costs to increasing productivity, Doshi had to combat a host of issues before streamlining the campaign process.

First and foremost was the issue of cutting the huge costs involved in campaigning. A lot of efforts also needed to be put on effective data capture in cam-paigns as only then could the campaigns be refined and tuned for targeted campaigning, as opposed to carpet bombing. Additionally, automation of opera-tional processes and improving scalability and perfor-mance of the campaigns was a necessary mandate.

RCOM, hence, turned to an ingenious solution that would not only look at providing solutions to all the aforementioned problems but also provide new busi-ness benefits.

While campaign automation involved the ability to plan, design and execute direct/indirect campaign without much human intervention, automation pro-vided an easy-to-use solution to plan, test and execute marketing campaigns of any size or level of complexity.

SAS' proven capabilities for campaign manage-ment, analytics, data integration and business intel-

ligence, along with flexible deployment options, empowered the creation and deliverance of the right campaign at the right time.

The deployed campaign management solution provided graphic tools for determining the appropri-ate target audience for any campaign. Equipped with powerful tools, business users were more efficient and effective, producing smarter, better targeted, more profitable campaigns.

The innovative architecture thus developed provid-ed the complete set of capabilities needed for a cus-tomer-focused marketing process, enabling RCOM to deepen customer insight and choreograph customer interactions. In the process, the solution became the crux of RCOM’s long envisaged campaign manage-ment project.

Utilising the best of business intelligence, cus-tomer service/customer relationship management and database/data warehousing concepts, campaign automation was conceived to plan, design and execute direct/indirect campaigns with a focus on eliminating human intervention.

What RCOM delivered was a flexible, scalable and high performance system that met all the challenges effectively, as promised. Furthermore, it added value in terms of various business benefits such as an inte-grated marketing platform for closed-loop marketing with campaign management, advanced analytics, data integration and business intelligence.

Better tools: The automation solution provided graphic tools for determining the appropriate target audience for any campaign.

Reduced manual errors: Solution eliminated human intervention.

Better marketing: Closed-loop marketing.

Business Benefits

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DOSSIER

NAME: Raghu Raguram

DESIGNATION:Senior VP and General

Manager

ORGANISATION:Virtualisation and

Cloud Platforms,

VMware

Virtualisation may not be for everybody yet, but a hybrid strategy could suit many. During VMworld 2010, held recently in San Francisco, VMware

announced a bevy of new offerings to bolster their product line. Raghu Raguram, Senior VP and General Manager, Virtualisation and Cloud

Platforms, VMware spoke to Rahul Neel Mani during the event. Excerpts:

What is VMware’s strategy to string together the applications and end-user devices that,

you claim, will provide enterprises savings? How will VMware make this work? Historically, we started in the infrastructure space with a focus on making existing data centres better by deploying virtualisation technology.

Today, as we speak to our customers, they are struggling with a lot of technology issues. One of them is on the application front. Application development is still tough. How does one take advantage of the ‘cloud-like’ infra-structure to develop applications is a big question being debated. That’s when VMware started getting into the application platform development space.

There are two parts to this business. One is the framework on which developers write applications and the other is the run-time environment which works best on VMware virtu-alised infrastructure. This is the first point of synergy.

With the framework, you not only deploy internally but deploy to other clouds as well. This gives customers the freedom of choice. Out first step is to take Windows desktops and run it on the cloud environment that we are building and our second step will take all the applications and make them appear seamless to the users regardless of the device that they use to access those applications.

You are focusing on all the three areas of the cloud viz. Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS),

Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). How are these services going to build up in terms of your research and products?VMware has defined specific areas where we put in our Research and Development investments. At the same time the company constantly looks at acquisitions and partner-ships to drive growth. You will see us build more products in the infrastructure space and expand to other areas.

N O H O LDS BARR E D R AG H U R AG U R A M

SENSEHYBRID



X X X X X A M B E R T N O H O LDS BARR E D

Innovate More: As users virtualise, they will free more resources for

innovation



for the Web architecture. Secondly, they might use something like Twitter API to send out notifications or they might con-nect to a SaaS application like Salesforce.com. So the fundamental business need does not change but what changes is how that application is written and how rich the application can be. We have nothing to do with such applications but we can help CIOs to free their budgets so that they can create such applications and run it on our platform.

Concerns like security and platform stability still loom large. How

close do you think are critical business applications to moving on to the cloud?This will again vary from sector to sector and company to company. I shall give you an example here. A US-based Movie Rental company Netflix, which offers movies on the Internet, is moving its entire infrastructure on the Amazon cloud. They do not have SAP, but there is no question on their applications being non-critical. If the cloud service is down, they will not only lose a lot of busi-ness but also their reputation. Netflix could do this because their applications are well suited for the cloud.

Now, let’s take an example of a typical manufacturing company running on SAP with data feeds connected to the main-frames. Very likely this company will never move to the cloud. I gave examples of

Similar to our announcement in the security space (vShield End Point) you will see us building our application platform capabili-ties and end-user computing capabilities.

The common theme across all of these will be management and you can take it as the fourth area. The acquisition of Integrien – a performance analytics solution provider – is in the management space, and will help our customers immensely.

Do you think enterprises can view your offerings as an entire portfolio

and not point offerings?This whole portfolio is what we now call as an ‘IT stack’. The basic premise is that the cloud disrupts the IT stack and you need to think of your stack in a fundamentally dif-ferent way. You need to think of it as a new infrastructure stack, new application plat-form and new end-user stack. That’s where each of these things fit in.

Within each of these layers, you will have sub categories of your own and that’s where our acquisitions will also fit in.

Do you see customers taking the cost out from their IT

infrastructure and reallocating it for rewriting applications for their virtualised infrastructure? If so, how will it happen?It is now proven that if customers virtualise their infrastructure they save anywhere between 30 to 60 percent on their hardware costs and therefore their operating costs comes down drastically. In most cases we have seen customers reallocating these sav-ing to the application development teams so that they can build applications for their business teams.

In today’s conventional IT infrastructure, 70 percent of the IT budget goes into maintenance and a very small percentage remains for investing in new capabilities. In wake of this fact, the more the users virtualise, the more the capability they get to reverse the trend i.e. more resources for innovation and development than maintenance.

So, would these applications be any different than traditional ones?

Changes in business applications depend on the nature of business. For example, a lot of applications being written today are

two extreme scenarios. That’s the reason a hybrid strategy makes sense for many customers.

Would this trend continue in the future and will we see the nature of

applications change as the momentum around virtualisation and cloud comput-ing continues to grow?Yes. Look at the Web. Twenty years back, people were writing applications using COBOL. Today we see developers talking more about Java, Ruby on Rails or PHP. That does not mean that COBOL is over but the new open-standards based platforms are becoming more popular.

The same thing will happen with the cloud. For example, if you want to write an applica-tion to place an advertisement on Facebook or send a notification on Twitter, the applica-tion written will be very different from the manner they are written in Java.

Is Microsoft’s Azure a competition when it comes to the cloud and

development of applications?My answer to this would be both yes and no. The development framework of Microsoft does not compete with VMware. But once a developer has built an application they may want to run it on various platforms and these could be competition to Microsoft like our VMforce.com (JV with Salesforce.com), on Google App engine, etc. These are alter-natives to Azure.

In the end, what’s going to be the momentum for VMware in terms of

SaaS offerings?Independent of VMware, SaaS applications are growing rapidly at a rate of 30 per cent year on year. As employees of VMware, we had no SaaS applications till two years back. Today, we use around 15 such applications internally.

SaaS applications are selected by line of business users. For example, our choice of using Salesforce.com was made by our sales team and not IT. Our choice of using Success Factors where we conduct our per-formance reviews was driven by HR. SaaS applications are becoming mainstream. At some point, IT will be called in and said to deal with these applications. —[email protected]

N O H O LDS BARR E D R AG H U R AG U R A M

“The basic premise is

that the cloud disrupts the IT stack and you need to think of your

stack in a fundamentally different way.”



Milestones RevisitedBenefits based approach will help in adoption of a new technology and success of the project. BY NILESH CHANDRA & SCOTT LEVER

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FEATURES INSIDE

When leaders measure the success of a proj-ect, or check-in on its status, they usu-ally ask the project

manager, "Is the project on schedule? Will it be completed by the due date?" This focus on meeting project deadlines and schedule ripples through the organisation and influ-ences how a project manager and a project team approach their project.

We believe that this emphasis on project schedule distracts a project team from their real purpose, which is to ensure that the benefits promised in the original case for the project are actually delivered. Taking a bene-fits-based approach, where the project mile-stones are linked to the delivery of benefits rather than simply completion of tasks can significantly improve the realisation of busi-ness benefits from a project. In this article, we articulate such a benefits-based approach and show how it can be applied to any project.

Consider the following all too common, albeit simplified example: A technology project has a looming go-live date. As usual, there is a lot of work to be done and the entire project team is putting in long hours to ensure their tasks are completed prior to go-live. End-user training was completed

Wireless by Choice: Ready for the all wireless workplace? Pg 55

NEXTHORIZONS



N E X T H OR I ZO N S PROJ E C T M A N AG E M E N T

new arrangement. As contract negotiations dragged on, the major milestones associated with contract signature loomed and the program manager who was leading this large and complex project grew nervous.

He shifted resources to sup-port completing the transaction and away from developing the governance organisation. As a result, the governance organi-sation was significantly delayed and wasn’t positioned to man-

age the new contract when it was signed. The client organisation incurred additional vendor costs due to a lack of contract over-sight and user satisfaction suffered.

This PM was overly focused on signing the contract and failed to recognise that the real value of the project was in effectively managing the vendor and their agreement.

Taking a benefits-focused approach does not mean re-vamping the existing approach to project management, but simply re-orient-ing the metrics used to measure success. For any project, four simple steps can be taken to ensure a more benefits-focused approach:

1. Ensure benefits are clearly defined before starting a project, preferably in a quantified manner.

2. Identify simple metrics that allow track-ing the realisation of benefits.

3. When developing the project plan, iden-tify a realistic time line for benefit delivery.

4. Setup project milestones to match the delivery of benefits.

In summary, taking a benefits based approach is a different way of running a project and can result in a significant improvement in the adoption of a new tech-nology and the success of the project.

—Nilesh Chandra is an experienced technol-

ogy consultant PA Consulting and an expert in

helping clients define strategy and implement

their large enterprise programs. Nilesh can be

reached at [email protected].

Scott Lever is an expert in outsourcing, trans-

forming IT performance, and organisational

design. Scott works with clients considering

and implementing outsourcing solutions across

a range of business processes including IT,

finance, and human resources. Scott can be

reached at [email protected].

a few weeks ago but some users could not attend the training for a variety of reasons. As a project manager, you now face two options:1) Re-assign critical team members to deliver a second round of training (possibly delaying other tasks and go-live), or2) Schedule a round of training after go-live.

A project manager who is measured on the ability to meet project deadlines has a strong incentive to choose the second option, with the result that not all end users are fully trained at the time of go-live.

How can such users use a system if they haven’t been trained? Obviously, an organisa-tion does not get any value by just having a system live. The value is realised when peo-ple actually use it! And yet, we often see proj-ect managers who have incentives to make the wrong choices as they deliver projects.

Such choices have a long term impact on user behaviour. The emphasis on tracking task completion by date results in not track-ing user training and system adoption as a metric for success. It is easy to miss early warning signs that users may be finding a system difficult to use, or not using the system and relying on other workarounds. When such problems are eventually detected, the problem may be much more widespread and difficult to resolve. These issues apply not just to technology delivery projects, but all kinds of projects in general.

Case Study No. 1An organisation had implemented an ERP system on time and under budget. However, in order to complete the project within the schedule, end user training had to be drasti-cally cut down. At the time of go-live many of the users had not been trained to use the system. After go-live, due to a lack of train-ing budget, internal “super-users” had to perform all training, rather than bringing in external experts. As a result, the quality of training suffered.

Over the years, due to natural attrition, fewer and fewer end users were sufficiently trained in making full use of the system. After many years of implementation, the organisation was still not effectively using their ERP and had developed a parallel set of easy-to-use duplicate systems based on paper, excel and other rudimentary technol-ogy. This resulted in wasted effort and cost.

In a benefits-based approach, we measure

the realisation of benefits. Instead of focusing on dead-lines, leaders should focus on metrics such as the percent-age of users actively using the system, the percentage of users satisfied by functionality, the degree to which the benefits promised in the business case are realised.

In our example above, the project manager would have no reservations in selecting Option 1 and setting up train-ing for the remaining users immediately. As a result, all users would be properly trained by go-live and the system will be used effec-tively from day one. Since the success of the project is measured by the extent to which it is used, rather than by meeting some arbi-trary deadlines, usage of the system and its adoption will be closely monitored and the organisation can be assured that business value is realised.

Case Study No. 2An organisation embarked on a major pro-gram to outsource their IT infrastructure. A large contract with a major IT service provider was the centrepiece of the initiative that included establishing the post-contract governance organisation to manage this

86%ORGANISATIONS

CAN LOSE UPTO

25% OF PROJECT

BENEFITS ACROSS

THEIR PORTFOILIO.

An organisation had implemented an ERP system on time and under budget. However, in order to com-plete the proj-ect within the schedule, end user training had to be dras-tically cut down.

SOURCE: KPMG



WI RE L E S S N E X T H OR I ZO N S

Wireless by ChoiceAre you ready for the all-wireless workplace? BY JEFF VANCE

With 802.11n offering performance and security on par with cabled Ethernet, why wouldn’t you embrace wireless?

This, anyway, is the vision of WLAN equip-ment vendors. The most telling slogan is

Motorola’s: “Wireless by default, wired by exception.” The truth, though, is this: all-wireless vision takes some parsing.

All-wireless is coming — if you’re talking about the end-user per-spective. No one is proposing wireless data centres. Ethernet to the desktop isn’t dead yet, especially since there’s no reason to tear out wiring already in place. Yet, as far as new equipment goes, it’s slowly being phased out.

“There’s no reason that client devices shouldn’t be wireless,” said Craig Mathias, a principal at Farpoint Group, a wireless advisory firm. “You can argue that even a good part of LAN infrastructure will be wireless eventually, especially with mesh architectures, but one thing that Wi-Fi still doesn’t achieve is Gigabit-speed throughput.”

Which means wires are here to stay, albeit in a pared back roll. If you need those thick pipes for specialised applications, such as video editing or CAD, you’ll still be running cable for a long time to come. Even things like continuous backup and disaster recovery would overwhelm Wi-Fi, but those IT-specific tasks should have little bear-ing on the typical end user.

Is 802.11n even a standard yet?Technically, no. 802.11n is still not rati-fied by the IEEE, although draft four was passed in May and most of the work left to do is fairly obscure, such as dynamic frequency selection. If you’re confused, you’re not alone, especially since 802.11n products have been shipping for some time now. Officially, those are pre-standard products, but they’ve been approved by the Wi-Fi Alliance, which stepped in to speed up the process.

Wi-Fi Alliance approval means these products have reached a de facto stan-dards threshold. They must interoper-ate, and they’ll be easily upgraded as the official IEEE standard evolves.

Despite a history of 802.11 standards in-fighting, most CIOs shouldn’t worry too much about the nitty gritty details of 802.11n. “The real question, espe-

cially in tough economic times is, ‘Why do it?’” said Chris Roeckl, VP of Marketing for AirMagnet, a provider of WLAN assurance tools. “The answer will surprise most people. If you’re talking about investing in new equipment, wireless is much more cost effective than wiring a new desktop.”

An Aberdeen study from last summer bears this out. The study found that adding users to a wired infrastructure costs about four times as much as adding them via wireless. Wireless deployments also take less time, while, counter-intuitively, triggering far fewer calls to help desks.

Security and throughput Let’s face it: 802.11 has a checkered past within the enterprise. First, there was WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy). Then there were the vari-ous 802.11 flavors that never quite interoperated as well as they were supposed to. Then there were backwards compatibility issues, with .11b clients killing .11g throughput. Then there were the competing infrastructure philosophies on how to control and manage WLANs; with people spending vast amounts of time and energy debating the merits of switches vs. gateways vs. whatever other architecture ven-dors dreamed up.

No wonder plenty of CIOs (and even whole industries) are wary of wireless. “Today, when we get called into financial organisations, it’s to



N E X T H OR I ZO N S W I RE L E S S

make sure there is no wireless,” Roeckl said. However, 802.11n is light years beyond its troubled .11a/b/g predecessors. “802.11n brings two fundamental shifts. First, it’s safe enough. Second, it’s fast enough.”

Compared to wired infra-structure, Roeckl argues that 802.11n is actually more secure than a wired environ-ment. Encryption schemes like WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) are extremely advanced; rogue AP detec-tion comes standard with most enterprise WLAN management suites; and VPNs add another layer of protection. Ethernet, by contrast, doesn’t have these protections at the transport layer. (Since Ethernet is physi-cally contained within buildings, you could argue that the transport-layer protections are things like security desks and identifica-tion badges.)

As far as performance, 802.11n deliv-

ers the throughput to sat-isfy everything but the most extreme, and rare, bandwidth-hogging applications. Mean-while, even those enterprises with 802.11a or .11g are gener-ally satisfied with throughput. This returns us then to the original question posed by this article: Are you ready for the all-wireless workplace? The answer? Not quite yet.

“There’s still work to do,” Farpoint Group’s Mathias said, “but it’s not a lot of work. In three to five years, you’ll see most of the major issues figured out.”

The problems aren’t trivial, though. They range from the need to support existing investments in legacy wired and wireless infrastructures to authentication issues to device control. All of these issues can be solved, but they take careful planning, and often require complementary technologies. For instance, in many industries auditors

require that WLANs have separate monitor-ing networks installed as an overlay.

“The vendors hyping 802.11n are the ones coming to us with lists of network analysis questions,” said Jay Botelho, director of Product Management at WildPackets, a pro-vider of network analysis solutions. In the near-term most 802.11n adoption will show up at the fringes of the enterprise. 802.11n will find its way into branch offices, or it will extend existing LANs into places that have no current coverage.

802.11n will also catch on in certain ver-ticals like health care and education, but it will take longer to penetrate the horizontal, generic enterprise, which will act with more caution, waiting to adopt 802.11n as part of hardware upgrade cycles.

“For large enterprises, 802.11n repre-sents an investment they aren’t ready for,” Botelho said. “They’re looking at 802.11n. They’re interested, but in tough economic times, they’re not ready to jump.”

802.11nIS ACTUALLY

MORE SECURE

THAN A WIRED

ENVIRONMENT



TE CH F OR G OVE R NAN CE S TA F F I N G

5 IT staffing challenges facing today’s CIOs. BY JOHN REED

POINTS5

UNDER STAFFING: Companies that

cut staff during the

recession are finding it

difficult.

MOVING INTO GROWTH MODE:Shifting into growth

mode can be difficult

MANAGING WORKLOADS:Gain support for higher

priority initiatives

KEEPING STAFF SKILLS CURRENT: Training is extremely

important

RETENTION: 34 percent of CIOs are

worried of losing top

performers

TALENT TANGLE

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S TA F F I N G T E CH F OR G OVE R NAN CE

If you’re faced with tight budgets, there are still ways to invest in professional education that won’t break the bank. For starters, investigate programs through IT associations. Many offer discounted rates on seminars and courses. Also, consider sending one employee to a conference or class and then having that person share his or her newly acquired knowledge with oth-ers on the team.

Circulating technology magazines within the group is another inexpensive way for staff to stay on top of trends. Helping to keep skills sharp not only benefits your department in terms of intellectual capital, but it can be highly motivating to employees to know their firm supports their growth.

5Retention: It likely has been a while since retention was a key challenge, but it’s an emerging priority for execu-

tives. In a survey by our company, one-third (34 percent) of CIOs said they’re worried about losing top performers to other job opportunities in the next year. As the econo-my gains momentum, the risk of employees leaving grows significantly.

So, do what you can now to become the employer of choice. Steps outlined above such as staffing appropriately, managing workloads and investing in training can go a long way in boosting motivation. Also take the time to thank employees who put in the extra effort, even if it’s just through verbal praise or a personal note. Retention strate-gies don’t have to be expensive to be mean-ingful and effective.

—John Reed is executive director of Rob-

ert Half Technology, a leading provider of

IT professionals for initiatives ranging from

e-business development and multi-platform

systems integration to network security and

technical support. The company has more

than 100 locations worldwide and offers

online job search services at www.rht.com.

For additional career advice, follow us on

Twitter at twitter.com/roberthalftech.

Even companies that are expanding may still be faced with limited IT staff or bud-gets, complicating matters. Following are five of the most common staffing challenges facing technology executives today and some strategies for overcoming them:

1 Under staffing: In a recent survey by Robert Half Technology, nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of CIOs said under

staffing in their firm’s IT department inter-feres at least somewhat with their ability to implement innovative or emerging technol-ogies. Many companies that cut employee ranks during the recession are finding themselves unable to respond quickly to changes as business conditions improve.

2Moving into growth mode: It may seem that good news shouldn’t present a challenge, but that isn’t

always the case. For many CIOs, shifting into growth mode can be difficult in part because employees may need to change their mindsets from one of caution to one of optimism. It can take some work on the part of technology leaders to help staff make the transition, particularly if the downturn was especially rough on the team.

When new initiatives are launched, CIOs should explain how the project will help the company as a whole to help build excitement. Managers also should include employees in the planning process and keep them updated on key business develop-ments that will shape demands. The more staff understands what’s ahead, the easier the adjustment will be, and the more excited they will be about it.

3Managing workloads: Helping employees meet objectives and keep up with performance expectations

is another key challenge today. Workloads

remain high at many organisations, so the introduction of new projects may bring resistance from staff.

By ensuring workloads are manageable and reassigning or removing items from individual to-do lists, you can help gain support for higher priority initiatives. Also solicit employee input on ways to stream-line processes or procedures, which can help free up time in your group for addi-tional assignments.

4Keeping staff skills current: Training is important in just about every field, but it’s all the more so in IT, where

technology changes at a rapid pace. If your employees’ knowledge is outdated, your firm is at a competitive disadvantage.

In an ideal world, every IT department would be prepared, organised and ready to meet emerging business needs. Yet today’s constantly evolving economic environment means that much is in a state of flux, especially when it comes to IT staffing issues.

34% of CIOs are worried about losing top perform-ers in the next year. As the economy gains momentum, the risk of em-ployees leaving grows signifi-cantly.



TE CH F OR G OVE R NAN CE S E CU R I T Y

IRC’s deadly sideInternet Relay Chat and the effect of botnets on security. BY JON STOUT

One of the easiest and most efficient ways to establish a Botnet is through the IRC.

Botnet creation, control and the IRCThe steps in the botnet creation illustrate the ease of creation and the fact that botnet creators usually distribute their bots to malicious third parties for a fee:

1. The botnet operator infects targeted pcs with malicious code (Trojan Horses and other destructive code) and commanding proto-cols that are then passed to the network server over the IRC. A com-mand and control (C&C) server is created that allows control of the entire network.

2. The botnet created by the process is often sold to a criminal or terrorist enterprise.

3. The buyer then sends instructions to trigger a Distributed Deni-al of Service, spamming or data theft attack.

4. The attack creates significant damage and attacks can be repeated.A botnet's originator (aka "bot herder" or "bot master") can control

the group remotely, over channels provided by the IRC, and usually for terror or criminal related purposes. Individual programs at the client level appear as “bots".

Control of the botnet is usually through an IRC server that is also

Many internet chat participants have enjoyed the benefits of the Internet Relay Chat capa-bility (IRC). This functionality

has added fast and convenient communica-tion, universal access and valuable function-ality throughout the entire world. But there is a downside to the IRC in the world of botnets and cyber security attacks.

What is the IRC?Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a form of real-time Internet text that is mainly designed for group communication in discussion forums.

The IRC is powerful and universal. It sup-ports all major computer operating systems and is easily accessible. With up to 600,000 users, the potential for cyber penetration becomes a world wide problem.

In addition to a vast number of server arrays, IRC client software is available for almost every computer operating system that supports TCP/IP networking.

What are Botnets?A botnet is a destructive tool that takes many forms. Among the most destructive uses are distributed denial of service (DOS) attacks, spamming and financial data theft/fraud.

Network Penetration and ControlThere are many ways to penetrate a network with malicious code. For example a simple, but risky way to compromise a network is to offer a special USB drive with innocuous but attractive code that carries hidden Trojan horses or other malicious code. However, this exposes the perpetrator to risk of discovery.

Allowing unlimited netsurfing on the web that includes unsafe or infected websites is another way of penetration but is random and can be stopped through vigilant network administration.

By far the most dangerous tool of anonymous network penetra-tion and control however is through the use of the IRC. The IRC exposes very large networks worldwide and, when attacked by a knowledgeable perpetrator, can cause tremendous and often anonymous damage.

known as the Command and Control server. Some of the latest botnets are self generating through the use of custom designed code. These botnets are potentially extremely destructive.

Large user networks, some as large as 20,000 users or more, are tempting targets of botnet operators and many of these offer little resistance to botnet operators.

AttributionGiven the widespread reach of the IRC public and pri-vate networks, anonymous channels, the widespread use of encrypted scripts, sale of botnets to anonymous third parties and the fact that large networks in other countries are the most productive, attribution to the actual source of the attack is often impossible.

Visitors to apparently safe or trusted sites under the hidden control of a botnet operator are easily fooled into downloading infected files and open themselves to malicious attacks. The fact that a trusted site located within the United States is no guarantee of safety because the IRC opens even safe, trusted sites to remotely controlled, anonymous attacks.

The danger of attribution is supported by recent research (Source: Sans.org ) that concluded that an overwhelming number of targets of cyber attacks in the United States are conducted through

domestic botnets that pass malicious code to the greatest number of users.

Military and large commercial sites are priority targets often resulting in disruption to commerce with potential loss of classified data.

Cyber security attacksBotnets allow criminal or terrorist elements the ability to control large installations of networked computers. By simply anonymously penetrating one individual PC that is part of a large network through a centralised Command and Control (CAC) Server, a cyber attack

perpetrator can monitor and anonymously control networks that individuals trust.

This control often goes unnoticed at the individual pc level and can be exercised across borders with little fear of discovery.

Anonymous and efficient penetration of large scale networks is the key to success of botnets. While defensive attacks against botnets are enjoying some success, the enemy is clever and innovative and the challenge is tremendous.

—This article first appeared at: https://www.infosecisland.com/

blogview/6992-Internet-Relay-Chat-and-the-Effect-of-Botnets-on-

Security.html

20,000USERS OR MORE,

ARE TEMPTING

TARGETS

OF BOTNET

OPERATORS

S E CU R I T Y T E CH F OR G OVE R NAN CE



Who Needs a Current State Technology Architecture?The exercise presents many application rationalisation opportunities

COLLECTING information about your current technology architecture is a major pain, so why bother? Is it just a waste of time or is it another enter-prise architecture myth?

Quick calculations show that build-ing skills and processes to produce, maintain, and use current state architecture information can save a company a lot of time and money, as well as realise additional benefits along the way. Depending on the size of a company’s project portfolio and the use of the current state data across those projects, a company can save millions annually.

Before we jump into the calcula-tions, let’s dive a bit deeper and first take a look at the characteristics and benefits of a good current state tech-nology architecture.

Characteristics of a Current State Technology Architecture1.Traceable: documents key relation-

THINKINGBEYONDCHRIS CURRAN | [email protected] CHRIS CURRAN is Diamond Management

& Technology Consultants’ chief technology

officer and managing partner of the firm’s

technology practice. He writes the CIO

Dashboard blog at www.ciodashboard.com

Building skills and processes to produce, maintain, and use cur-rent state architecture informa-tion can save a lot of money

ships, interactions, dependencies that exist among systems, actors, and the underlying business functions which they support.2.Appropriate data model / metadata: considers the wide-range of data available, but narrows down scope to those important and accessible attri-butes – e.g. application names, ven-dor products, application owner(s), technology protocols, business func-tions, and operating systems.3.Consistent representation: uses a consistent / standard means of repre-senting information to facilitate com-munication of common architecture information.4.Centralised and reusable: acces-sible quickly and easily across organi-sations, enables enterprise transpar-ency, and helps ensure freshness of information.5.Up to date: Stale information is worthless.

Benefits of a Current State Technology Architecture1.Decision making: enables a degree of predictive modeling to ensure that there are no hasty IT investments and/or acquisition activities, and facilitates impact assessment right from the beginning.2.Cost modeling/reduction: provides an enterprise-level fact-based under-standing of the costs and benefits involved – e.g. for the current IT infrastructure this can help identify aging applications that are increasing support costs.3.Efficiencies: helps to identify waste as it contains the complete inventory of applications and their characteris-tics/functionality; it thereby acts as a catalyst for application rationalisation opportunities.4.Architecture governance: provides a basis for planning and adjust-ing architecture governance efforts



I T S K I L L S T H I N K I N G B E YO N D

On aver-age, IT or-ganisations only spend 0.3% of their total budget on develop-ing talent.

6 Steps to Close the IT Skill GapA shared understanding of the IT operating model is important to nurture talent

RECENT research reveals that 72% of executives place above average importance on talent management, yet only 44% of their companies have done an above average job in building the foundational capabilities to manage and improve talent. During a recent project with a health care CIO, we observed this gap in practice and want to share some of our observations.Early-on, we saw four major issues:

1.higher reliance on outsourced resources for roles that could be filled by more junior internal resources

2.misalignment of resources and responsibilities

3.limited leadership and succes-sion pipeline, and

4.disconnects between the training and competencies required to sup-port the operating model and over-arching IT strategy.

While these skill and resource problems may not be the only cause, on-budget and on-time delivery were 15% and 37% lower than industry average, respectively.

These problems are not unique. On average, IT organisations only spend 0.3% of their total budget on developing talent, yet the annual esti-mated costs associated with attrition and rehiring are 2.5 times greater than skill development spend.

Closing the IT talent gap — the divide between the skills IT pros grew

up with and the skills they need to add value tomorrow — won’t get any easier. But there are actionable steps your company can take now:1. Get HR and training supportCIOs need to partner with HR and training organisations to define a short-, mid-, and long-term talent management strategy to more effec-tively manage and uplift internal skills. One of these organisations must take strategic accountability for closing the talent gap.2. Ensure common understanding of the IT operating modelYou can’t hire and train people effi-ciently unless everyone — IT line management, HR and training — are on the same page about the IT operating model. Take the time to explain the operating model in detail. Confirm that everyone understands and appreciates the tight linkage between the operating model, roles and responsibilities.3. Regularly reassess your sourcing strategyRe-evaluate your IT sourcing strat-egy on a regular basis to ensure the appropriate technology functions are outsourced, and analyse how this impacts internal job families, job descriptions, and career paths.4. Factor skill management into your sourcing decisionsCompanies often outsource to save money only to find that their most

valuable internal talent is the first out the door. A sourcing strategy that analyses how outsourcing decisions impact internal job families, job descriptions, and career paths can help ensure that the right internal talent remains on board.5. Have a rock solid talent manage-ment foundationAn annual review process, promo-tion criteria, skills assessment pro-cesses, and training plans are too often taken for granted in fast-paced IT shops. Annually assess whether or not job families, job descriptions, and career paths align to the operat-ing model, overall IT strategy, and sourcing strategy. Where there is misalignment, work with the HR department to close the gaps.6. Proactively manage the changeUnderstand that employees are gen-erally sensitive about job titles, career path, and compensation changes, and be proactive about generating the appropriate level of awareness and benefits of changes at multiple points in addressing the talent gap.

We’re happy to report that the health care CIO succeeded in filling the internal talent gap by being more attuned, proactive, and strategic about managing internal talent. She recognised that people are the great-est asset to effective execution, and is now proactively managing internal talent as a top priority.

ahead of time rather than reacting to unknowns that surface over time.5.Training: delivers faster on-board-ing/learning for new employees through its information on how the business runs and the technology

that supports it.6.Assessments: provides a fast way to conduct impact assessments from either a business process and/or technology perspective; examples include using it to provide a regula-

tory and compliance driven project baseline or using a it to drive technol-ogy-related health assessment.7.Operational improvements: drives hypotheses development for opera-tions improvement exercises.



HIDDENTANGENT

The Facebook EffectA new force is changing employees' expectations

to learn computers in the twilight of their working life is huge. But, the times are changing fast.

Not being on Facebook is just so stone-age now. If your friends say that they are not on Facebook, young-sters are going to give them strange looks. Not only is the younger gen-eration getting on Facebook them-selves, they are getting their parents involved too. And those parents, mind you, are the employees who work in your organisation.

Employees, for whom the idea of a computer was that of an office machine till a few years ago, are now getting a taste of the fun things a computer can do. Your employees are no more scared of computers.

Shouldn’t this make your job easier? At least you will not have to teach your employees about logins and passwords.

On that front, probably yes – but this scenario throws a different kind of challenge. Since most of these employees would already be using web services like Google and Face-

MY MOTHER works for a public sec-tor bank. She narrated this incident to me about six years ago, when their branch was getting computerised. One of their senior employees had to learn to work on the computer. It was quite a culture shock for him. One fine day he called my mother to ask about a prompt that he saw on the computer screen. All he could make of it was that there was something on the computer screen that did not allow him to work.

It turned out that the computer wanted a password. The poor guy did not even know what a password was and mistook it for a ‘passport’. As luck would have it, he did not even have a passport – so he was even more perplexed. Mustering up cour-age, he asked my mother, “Madam, I do not have a passport; would it work if I show it my driving license?”

Now, that is clearly a problem with training. The generation gap between young employees, many of whom are natives of the digital age, and those who have been required

book, their expectation of the sys-tems that they are working on have also been changed.

To give you an example, Google recently launched a search service called ‘Google Instant’. Incorporated in Google search itself, it gives you search results as you type in the search box. You do not even need to hit enter. Compare this with the search feature in your CRM – if your systems are taking more than a couple of seconds to give results, you have fallen behind your business users' expectations.

So, believe it or not, being IT lead-ers you are competing with the likes of Google. You are pitched against companies who spend millions of dollars on their service levels and the quality of their interface. And, the best part is that these companies offer their services for free. Do not be surprised if you are asked this ques-tion by your management – if they can offer it for free, why can you not do even half of it after spending so much money?

THE AUTHOR IS Executive Editor, CTO Forum

“You are pitched against companies who spend millions on their prod-ucts.”

GEETAJ CHANNANA [email protected]

HIDE TIME | CIO PROFILE

65 07 SEPTEMBER 2010 CTO FORUMTHE CHIEF


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A Challenge a DayMURLI NAMBIAR Senior Vice President & Group CISO, Reliance Capital

IS WAKING up to a new challenge every day a very exciting way to lead a life or a very frustrating one? For Murli Nambiar, Senior VP and Group CISO, Reliance Capital, it is a very exciting one. Nambiar strives to excel in his pro-fession as well as perform well as his personal development. A challenge a day keeps him motivated for both.

Nambiar is a down to earth and extrovert person. He was born and brought up in Mumbai. During his childhood, his grandfather had inspired him greatly. “He was always there for me. That gave me the confidence and the strength to go far in life,” said Nambiar.

Nambiar did his graduation in Physics from Somaiya College and later completed his PG diploma in management studies from Mumbai Univer-sity. During his graduation, his favourite subjects were communications and computers. Nambiar has passed many certification exams, including CISA, CISSP, MCSE (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer), and BS 7799 Lead Auditor certifications.

PHOTOGRAPHY IS HIS PASSION: Nambiar loves photography. “I like to shoot landscape, birds and natural environment. I own a semi professional camera and my efforts have been recognised in contests, periodicals, magazines and calendars,” says Nambiar.

ENJOYS LONG RIDES ON BIKES: He is fond of bikes and enjoys going for long rides. “In my college days I didn’t have a bike but as

soon as I started working I bought a Hero Honda for myself. I now have an Enfield Bullet. Next month, I and my childhood friends are planning a trip to Goa on the bike.”

MOVIES AND READING: He likes to watch old Hindi movies. Amol Palekar’s Golmaal is his all time favourite movie. He also likes watching action movies like Mission Impossible. “I think Aamir Khan is a fantastic actor,” he says.

66 07 SEPTEMBER 2010 CTO FORUM THE CHIEF


HIDE TIME | CIO PROFILE

He started his IT career as an IT faculty at BITS (Bureau of Information Studies) and Tata Unisys Education Center, where, he notes, he got a lot of exposure to different systems. “Working on various systems helped me get a better understanding than what I got by learning from text books.” Nambiar says that he shared his knoweldge with his students as he wanted them to bra-oden their understanding and have practical hands-on experience.

Nonetheless he found himself changing directions to enter the corporate world. “Though teaching was gratifying, I wanted to work in a corporate envi-ronment to understand the challenges faced there,” he says.

He joined Rolta Industries as a systems engineer and then he moved on to join MashreqBank in Dubai as their LAN engineer. Mashreqbank was one of the leading banks in UAE at that time and was setting up their network and integrating their various branches.

After spending seven years in UAE, he moved back to India and joined ICICI bank as their head of information security group, where he worked for three and a half years. Since the last three and half years, he has been handling the information security division for the Reliance Capital group.

He tries to develop a good work-life balance by spending as much time as he can with his wife and two kids Esha and Varun. He complements his wife Anjali for balancing her time very well between her career as an interior designer and a homemaker. “She works to achieve her personal goals without disturbing the equilibrium at the house,” he said. —By Vinita Gupta

Snap Shot Help the needy Nambiar would love to set up

his own NGO for orphans / old people or join one

when he retires. “Orphans and old people require

more support and help as they cannot stand by

themselves. Today, I am unable to devote much time

to them, though I try to help by monetary contribu-

tions. This time I am planning to make a photo-

graphic calendar and sell it to raise money for some

NGOs,” he said.

Build a trustful team Nambiar wants to build a

trusting team, train his team members properly and

ensure that the team gets proper guidance. “I give

total freedom to my team members to do what they

do best but I am always there to guide and help.”

India is beautiful Nambiar loves to travel in

India. “In India there are so many beautiful and amaz-

ing places. One can spend half his lifetime but still

not do justice. For Nambiar, who has seen almost

the whole of Maharashtra and Uttaranchal, monsoon

season is the best time to travel.

66 07 SEPTEMBER 2010 CTO FORUM THE CHIEF


VIEWPOINT



that job at that level”–meaning, why would they leave?

What they probably need to do is what they did last time. They looked at a much smaller company with a leader with the attributes required for HP at this point in time. Hurd was perfect: ran a multi-headed company that was in chaos, cleaned it up financially, and put it on a path to success. HP was in chaos, losing money, spending foolishly, etc.

HP needed a boring, limelight-loathing, intellect to right the ship, take the hard line, and get costs in order. Hurd did exactly that. The results speak for themselves.

The next CEO doesn’t need to do that anymore. The next CEO needs to be Steve Jobs-esque. HP has its fiscal ship in order. Now it needs a shot of sex appeal. HP needs to make Hurd’s former job the COO position and bring in someone who can reshape the boring old company into a hot, sexy one. Apple, lest ye forget, was not sexy. It was a cultish geekfest in disarray. Jobs made it sexy.

A reporter asked me about Joe

FIRST of all, it is hard for me to believe that Mark Hurd is gone. I’m a moral guy, I’d like to think, and we may never know the whole story here, but I’m also a business person. As a business person, it would take a serious immoral or unethical lapse for me to can Hurd. The guy was a cost-cutting genius who put a big, sloppy ship back in order and never really even hiccuped during his ten-ure. I could overlook a lot of things for that kind of fiscal performance. I’m not saying he didn’t do anything wrong–I don’t really know.

Wall St., rightfully so, loves him. HP, arguably, is in the strongest posi-tion it has ever been in–financially, market position-wise, and general positive “vibe”-wise.

But, it is what it is. Hurd is gone. So what next? And who?

The first problem is the who. There is not a large population of people competent to run a $130B icon of a company such as HP. A smart CEO in Austin recently told me that “anyone you’d want to tap for that job at that level already has

Tucci as a possible replacement. I think Joe would be great. I also think there is no way he’d do it. He’d be great because he is a CEO that can run a business with a LOT of streams (EMC was essentially a one-trick pony when he came on board, now it’s a conglomerate) and that’s what HP is. He won’t do it because A) he’s close to retirement, B) his ego isn’t big enough to want to do it instead of retiring, and C) he doesn’t need the money. There are probably a few Joe Tucci types that would be great at the job, but won't do it because they are 60 something.

HP needs Hurd types: 50 some-things ready to make the step up. It’s a gamble for sure, but it worked well once, so why not again? I just think this time, the company is in an entirely different place and as such should look for an entirely different type of leader to propel HP to the next level. For the record, I’m against an insider being made CEO. COO, sure, but not CEO. This is an opportunity for new ideas and new blood.

HP’s Next CEO The right candidate

PH

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O B

Y P

HO

TO

S.C

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STEVE DUPLESSIE | [email protected]

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Steve Duplessie

is the founder of

and Senior Analyst

at the Enterprise

Strategy Group.

Recognised

worldwide as

the leading

independent

authority on

enterprise storage,

Steve has also

consistently been

ranked as one of

the most influential

IT analysts. You

can track Steve’s

blog at http://www.

thebiggertruth.com

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