March 31st 2012 Issue

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Vol XXX No 6 I March 31, 2012 The Business of Infotech

SPECIAL ISSUE

Special Subscription offer on page 104

INSI

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SIR RICHARD HADLEEAmbassador, New Zealand Trade & Enterprise

MEG WHITMANCEO, HP

JONATHAN LUCEO, Alibaba.com

C OHandbook 2012

ELAN DEKELCEO, Medico.com

TOM HODSONCEO, SMART Technologies

BILL ALLISONCIO, Deloitte

DR MICHAEL GORRIZCIO, Daimler AG

SAMIH KAWARCIO, Gulf Bridge Iternational

ARUN TEWARYCIO, Emirates Flight Catering

NITIN PRADHANCIO, Dept of Transportation, US

LARRY KIERNANCIO, Bank of Ireland Group

DAVID AWCOCKCIO, Standard Chartered Bank

DHIREN SAVLACIO, VFS GLOBAL

ARUN GUPTACIO, Shoppers Stop

ALPNA J DOSHICIO, Reliance Communications

NIKHIL T RANJANCEO, William Penn

PAUL ABRAHAMCOO, IndusInd Bank

KUNAL BAHLCEO, Jasper (Snapdeal.com)

SUBODH SATYAWADICEO, GVK Emergency Management and Research Institute

†IDC's Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker Q4 2011, for shipments in the Q2-Q4 2011 to businesses of 500 employees or more. © Lenovo 2012. All rights reserved. Lenovo, the Lenovo logo, For Those Who Do and ThinkPad are trademarks or registered trademarks of Lenovo. Microsoft and Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Intel, the Intel logo, Intel Inside, Intel Core and Core Inside are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. Lenovo reserves the right to alter product offering and is not responsible for photographic or typographic errors. Product images are just for reference and might not resemble the actual products.

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� | March 31, 2012 visit www.dqindia.com DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication

March 31, 2012

ContentsStar attraction Global CEo

‘It is in our DNA to put the customer first’ —Jonathan Lu, chief executive officer, and executive director, Alibaba.com

alibaba.com

‘Indians are already seeking information on the internet, and we are not exposing them to a new culture’

—Elan Dekel founder and CEO, Medico.com

24 Medico.com

‘Lack of infrastructure and shortage

of trained teachers is a

reality’

—Tom Hodson, president and COO, SMART Technologies

SMart technolgies

28

Glo

ba

l CI

o

RIChaRd hadlEE14‘Both cricket and it comple-ment each other’

—Sir Richard John Hadlee, former New Zealand cricketer

‘Having your own data center today is like having your own water tank or generator in the basement’

PEtER CoffEE 16

—Peter Coffee, VP and head, platform research, Salesforce.com

22

Hewlett-Packard

‘We have got our swagger back’

—Meg Whitman, CEO, HP

40 I Gulf Bridge international ‘We have ambitious plans for GBI to evolve from being a mere Gulf based company to a globally-focused one’

—Samih Kawar CTO, Gulf Bridge International

46 I department of transportation, US ‘I focus on utilizing technology innovatively and strategically to drive significant business value’

—Nitin Pradhan CIO, department of transportation, US

50 I Standard chartered Bank

—David Awcock, group head, technology, Standard Chartered Bank

38 I Daimler aG ‘We believe that mobility is an opportunity for innovation’

—Dr Michael Gorriz, CIO and head, ITM, Daimler AG

42 I Emirates Flight catering Services ‘Indian CIOs are unique, and a force to reckon with when it comes to volume handling’

—Arun TewaryCIO and VP, IT, Emirates Flight Catering

48 I Bank of ireland ‘BoI is looking forward to mobile channel actively’

—Larry Kiernan CTO/CIO, Bank of Ireland Group

34 I Deloitte ‘A typical organization has two shares—the core and the edges. The coming trend would be about the innovation in these edges’

—Bill Allison global technology services leader, Deloitte

20

‘Our stance is not to follow ‘flavor of the season’ initiatives’

DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication visit www.dqindia.com March 31, 2012 | �

54| ‘IT has become integral and led to

the formation of an IT Leadership Council’

56|‘The innovation agenda for the IT team and the CIO is everchanging while business as usual continues to see increased complexity’

58| ‘We women need more such (equal

opportunities) companies to reach the top’

lEadERshIP

—Dhiren Savla, chief information officer, VFS GLOBAL

—Arun Gupta, group CIO, Shoppers Stop

—Alpna J Doshi, CIO, Reliance Communications

‘The most game-changing decision was to outsource our IT functions to an external agency’

—Nikhil T Ranjan, founder and CEO, William Penn

78 William Penn

‘A quality team is the real differentiator’

—Kunal Bahl, founder and CEO, Jasper (Snapdeal.com)

82 Snapdeal.com

‘The idea was to use IT to engage with customers, go beyond the hygiene tasks,

and bring innovation’

—Paul Abraham, COO, IndusInd Bank

80indusind Bank

‘Our vision is to cover entire India, so that a unique tinge

is lent to the number 108’

—Subodh Satyawadi, CEO, GVK Emergency Management and

Research Institute

84GVK EMri

IndIan CEo

CasE study60| ITES61| Banking62| Automobile64| Insurance65| Engineering66| E-commerce67| Higher Education68| Travel69| Retail70| Textiles72| Healthcare73| Media74| Transportation75| Telecom76| Hydro Power

86 | E-governance

DeliveringtheBenefitsICT will not only act as a strategic device in addressing urban and rural divide but also deliver benefits of e-governance projects to the needful

90 | nasscom leadership summit 2012

BringingtheLeadersTogetherThis time the sessions were around the theme of ‘Hyper-specialization’ in the Indian IT sector

96 | C-ChanGE 2012 BeingtheChangeC-Change 2012 promised to bring a lot of change with its power-packed volley of sessions

102 | techpoint

TheIdiotGENERATION?The growing cyber culture and our overdependency on technology is likely to turn us into a society of idiots

online Content....................... 6

edit.......................................... 8

Inbox..................................... 10

Ganesha................................ 12

news............................ 106-116

Leisure................................ 117

Afterthought....................... 120

REGULARSREGULARS

� | August 31, 2011 For more on India’s IT industry, visit www.dqindia.com| DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication

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Top 20

Ibrahim AhmadGroup Editor

EDITORIAL COLUMN

Shyamanuja DasEditor of Dataquest

Top STorieSFrom Feb 16 - Feb 29 2012

z The Most Influential Global Indians in Technology

z DQ CMR Top T Schools Survey 2011

z 20 Hot E-commerce Start-ups

z Identify Yourself

z DQ CMR Best Employer Survey 2011

z Tale of 20 E-tailers: Dataquest’s list of the 20 Hottest E-commerce startups in India

z DQ CMR Top T Schools Survey 2011: IIIT Hyderabad

z Status of E-gov Projects

z An In-depth Look into Data Privacy

z Pre-budget 2012: Intense Expectations

z ICT in Education: Let’s Reach to Teach

z Are we ready for cloud computing?

z Trusting the Cloud

z Financial Inclusion: Reaching the Unreached

z Online Automobile Shopping

Reforms, the Only Solution

Is the CIO Losing out?

Our Offices

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Reforms, the Only Solution

Ibrahim Ahmad [email protected]

www.dqindia.com

Vol XXX No 6 March 31, 2012

Cut the subsidy burden, go after economic reforms, and that is the only way forward. This was, to my mind, the big message that came from the Indian finance minister Pranab Mukherjee’s Union Budget 2012-13 budget. Such measures are badly needed to take India to the next growth stage, or shall I say, to steer us away from the path of slowdown.

India’s fiscal deficit has only been growing and is likely to exceed the target of 4.6% of GDP, primarily because oil subsidy bill got bigger, and sale of state assets was not very successful.

This government badly needs to bring down India’s fiscal deficit, at a time when the economy seems to be slowing down and we could possibly be heading for another recession. And more than that this government must now take politically tough but economically wise decisions.

Without getting very specific, things like India’s subsidy for oil which is now about 2.5% of GDP, or the various badly leaking schemes to generate rural employment, or for rural health, which are becoming a huge burden on the country. A huge price to pay to keep voters happy, though in reality it neither helps the people nor the government.

The Finance Minister wants to bring down oil subsidy to less than 2% of GDP. I think it is a courageous intent. Another good move was the announcement to try and sell `300 bn worth of PSU stakes in the next fiscal year. The debate will always remain if we should sell off stakes in good performing units or not, but I believe, that emotions apart, our state companies will greatly benefit from the induction of fresh funds, talent, and technology.

Similarly, the government’s move to hike railway fares for the first time in 8 years is a very good decision. The message must go out to all—rich as well as poor—that this government’s job is not to dole out cheap railway tickets, but to ensure that our trains are efficient and safe. The government must convey the message that with railways and railway station modernization there can be huge opportunities for all.

The time is right, the opportunities are there, but we have messed everything up, and seem to have got stuck in a quicksand. It is critical that this government talks sense. It is a different matter how this will translate into action because of the pull-and-push compulsions of Indian politics.

Remember, the Indian economy grew by over 8% last year. If our target is to grow from the current 6.9% to 7.6% next year, then fast reforms, and subsidy reduction is the only way. If Manmohan Singh and the Congress party believe that populist measures will get them support and votes, then the recent 2012 Assembly Elections should be a big eye-opener.

EDIT

8 | March 31, 2012 visit www.dqindia.com DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication

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send your feedback for us to serve you better...

The Bogies of TechnologyThis is with reference to your article ‘The Bogies of Technology’ (Da-taquest, February 29, 2012). It’s a good article. I agree that the technol-ogy is same throughout, but it is used differently in different countries since the temperament of people in different countries is different. Hence only the features can be incorporated to suit a particular country. Here the market dynamics will do the needful. But each country must safeguard its own old-world charm, and all countries should live in harmony. To realize this, somebody like Gandhi with his spin-ning wheel should show the way.

Raghavendra Rao K, Hyderabad via Email

India E-shining?This is with reference to your article ‘India E-shining?’ (Dataquest, March 15, 2012). E-commerce has become a buzzword in the Indian market, and players are striving hard to mint money through this new source. I am an avid online shopper, and I must say that services delivered by these sites have been immensely amazing and trustworthy. As rightly mentioned in the article, these websites must be

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Corrigendumn This is with reference to the article ‘INR Depreciation: Is it Here to Stay? (Dataquest, February 29, 2012). The author name should read as Pradeep Khanna, chief executive, GLOBAL MINDSET and a thought leader in services globalization.n This is with reference to the article “Collections as ‘Customer Care’” (Dataquest, March 15, 2012). The author name should read as Rajeev Soni, country manager, Aspect India, South Asia, and Middle East.Errors are regretted—Ed

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`50The NPA Drill / 50

92 pages including cover Special Subscription offer on page 74

Vol XXX No 5 I �� 5�� 5�� The Business of Infotech

CSA2012

DQ-CMR Customer Satisfaction Audit

Storage .................................................................IBMServers...................................................................IBMIT Servcies.......................................... HCL InfosystemsEnterprise Software............................................... SAPLaser Printers & MFDs .............................................HPNotebooks ............................................................. DellDesktops..................................................................HPSecurity.........................................................Symantec

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s u r v e y o f 4 0 1 l A r g e e N T e r P r I s e C I o s

accessible to the common masses. And, this can only happen when their services can be accessed in vernacular and native languages. With mobility on the rise, we can surely become the leader in this field.

Gurpreet, New Delhi

One ID for AllThis is with reference to your article ‘One ID for All’ (Dataquest, February 29, 2012). We appreciate UIDAI’s efforts in the direction of creating one ID for Indians. Steps initiated by UID-AI are both innovative and enterpris-ing. As it has been mentioned almost umpteen times, one identity card for all will solve innumerable problems and issues being confronted by many. It will definitely create a benchmark in IT management.

Raman, Ranchi

Missing: The Voice of the Desi TechieThis is with reference to your article ‘Missing: The Voice of the Desi Techie’ (Dataquest, February 29, 2012). Well, I agree that we need some of the issues being confronted by the Indian IT professionals settled in India and abroad to be brought forth in print. For long we have heard and seen the ups and downs of an IT guy, but very few books have been authored by them. More and more techies should try to pen down their experiences.

Subodh, New Delhi

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ganesha


C OHandbook 2012

The Coalition of CompetitorsUnder the excellent leadership of Kiran Karnik, Nasscom indulged in collaboration and brought forth sectors that were left behind into the fold to witness a boom in global outsourcing

Nasscom is arguably the most successful trade association in the world, the single voice of all segments of this $100 bn industry and a force to reckon with as the prime mover of growth for our industry.

Started through a series of conversations between industry veterans Harish Mehta, Ashank Desai, and Saurabh Shrivastava and ably led in the initial years by the irrepressible Dewang Mehta, this is one association that has been a source of joy and pride for 20 or 30 of us who have been intimately associated with it for the past two decades.

There is probably none more familiar with the story of Nasscom than Kiran Karnik, who was pitchforked into the role after the untimely demise of Dewang after a brief period of hiatus. A rather unlikely self-effacing and cerebral sequel to the flamboyant Dewang chapter, few would have expected Kiran to have the impact he did and all without any visible changes to his style of quiet engagement and collaboration.

In an industry where every CEO is a pioneer of sorts and intelligence and articulation are embarrassments of the rich, it could be argued in hindsight that there could have been no better way. And indeed Kiran’s excellent book ‘The Coalition of Competitors’ describes with great detail the evolution and nurturing of this culture that has become the hallmark of Nasscom today.

Kiran himself epitomizes the best of all collaborative forces in this industry. After five years and more with Dewang in the 90s, I had not even stood for the election in 2000 but got redrafted in along with Jerry Rao by Kiran. It was with his support that I reached out to the SME community in the IT sector, an initiative which spread like wildfire and created the innovation movement and the EMERGEOUT communities which have become two

of the proud wings of an inclusive Nasscom. And it was during his watch as the president of Nasscom that a group hitherto focused only on IT services brought BPO and engineering services into its fold and reached out to fringe segments like gaming & animation, product R&D, and the then nascent captive centers which today contribute over 30% of industry revenues.

Kiran’s book brings out the nuances of competition as well as the benefits of collaboration and is a must read for all students and participants in this industry. Kiran rightly quotes a Chinese government official’s lament that but for Nasscom, a country with faster decision-making, better infrastructure, and massive foreign investments would never have permitted India to take such a lead in the sphere of global outsourcing.

The respect that Nasscom enjoys was evident in the twentieth edition of the Leadership Forum which saw key central and government politicians rubbing shoulders with IT, banking and manufacturing industry CEOs and global technology and academic leaders exchanging ideas on the future of this industry in a tough economic environment. Collaboration has been our watchword for many years and will continue to be the reason for our success!

It was during Kiran’s watch as the president of Nasscom that it brought BPO and engineering services into its fold and reached out to gaming & animation, product R&D, and the then nascent captive centers

The author is CEO of Zensar Technologies and a member of Nasscom’s chairmen’s council. He can be reached at [email protected]

DR GANESH NATARAJAN

Volume1: July 31st 2012Volume 2: August 15th 2012Volume 3: August 31st 2012

To know more contact: Arvind Razdan at +91 997 178 2277 or at [email protected]

20 in Dataquest represents...

Star attraction /richard hadlee


C OHandbook 2012

New Zealand can prove to be a good partner for growth. What are your views in

this regard?We are trying to highlight that New Zealand can prove to be a fruitful ground for Indian companies. One of the shining areas are software services companies that hold great promise of growth both on Indian grounds and globally. In order to boost trade between the two coun-tries, we are leveraging platforms like Nasscom Leadership Summit. Supporting our theory of a promis-ing ground are Indian companies like MphasiS, TCS, entertainment companies, etc.

We intend to assume an enviable space in the healthcare IT space af-ter having excelled with significant offerings like RFID tags to monitor cattle, geospatial, etc. Currently, we

—Sir Richard John Hadlee, former New Zealand cricketer

‘Both cricket and IT complement each other’

have a stronghold over offerings for infrastructure, telecom, healthcare, BFSI, etc. We are negotiating for free trade with India, which being a comprehensive agreement will add the much-needed zing to the growth of both nations. Consider the stories of China and New Zealand, where we have witnessed increased trade in the last 3 years. New Zealand being ranked at the premier posi-tion as the most honest country, offers it a competitive advantage to be a good partner in India’s success story.

What should cricket learn from IT and vice versa?Both cricket and IT compliment each other. In fact, had IT had an emphasizing presence during our cricketing days, then possibly I would have been a better performer. Technology and sports are expected

to assume new heights supported by the fact that today even players demand right decisions. Even a TV replay can be used to make conclu-sive decisions by leveraging IT. It also helps umpires make the right decisions. This helps avoid spoil-ing a game, a player’s career, and other consequent effects. We expect greater implementation of IT in ten-nis and rugby.

Is there a lot of scope for IT in sports?IT educates and engages public with graphics, for example, Virtual Eye, which has been used in the recent India-Australia cricket series that took place in Australia. Companies across the world could use this technology as it could help in better decision-making. n

Sir Richard John Hadlee, the first player to reach a landmark 400 test wickets was not only known as a match-winner for his bowling attacks, but he was also a superb hard-hitting batsman. He was one of the four great all-rounders of the 1980s era. From being one of New Zealand’s best known exports to the world of cricket, the former New Zealand captain is now batting on a different ground as the Ambassador of New Zealand providing the much-needed face to business development. At the Nass-com Leadership Summit 2012, he spoke at length about his small but innovative nation that holds promise to the world. In an interview with Dataquest, Hadlee provides insights about Indian IT companies in New Zealand, the nurturing hand offered to them, etc. Excerpts

SHILPA [email protected]

Rapid changes in technology have put pressure on IT infrastructure to keep up with the demands of modern Data Centres. Generic products, outmoded processes, and legacy designs cannot be re-

packaged as ‘Data Centre-ready’. Virtualization within the Data Centre is now taken for granted, along with the huge push for ‘Cloud Computing’ that makes applications and information accessible from anywhere and anytime. Cloud computing brings to the table a new paradigm that hides technical complexities by enabling on-demand, self-managed virtual infrastructure delivered as a service.

A decade ago, the largest data centre users were the telecom companies and banks. But during late 1990s, as e-commerce took off, major companies like Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple as well as hundreds of startups, began building and occupying their own data and IT infrastructure at co-located facilities. The downturn of early 2000 put new pressures on how Data Centres needed to be designed, run and managed.

Today’s Data Centres have become more complex and difficult to manage with changes in the network fabric, increasing applications and more demanding service level agreements (SLAs). This coupled with increased focus on disaster recovery continues to be a challenge for CIOs across all enterprises. Cloud computing is redefining how Data Centres are built and managed from a technology infrastructure standpoint.

A very important aspect about cloud adoption is the virtualization strategy adopted by enterprises. As enterprises virtualize an increased number of business applications, the private cloud is forecasted to grow significantly over the next three to five years. However, this growth will be accompanied by an equally significant dynamic information surge at the edge of the network as mobility and use of multimedia proliferates. From access to the core — the enterprise network is in for a period of “restructuring” to provide the required flexibility and scalability . Add network intelligence to the mix, and the challenges may even seem daunting.

In this context, newer technologies are focusing on end-to-end connectivity, providing virtualization benefits across the enterprise network. Extending cloud and Data Centre best practices all the way up to network access is helping to take cloud services down to end users and also help IT with improved provisioning, configuration and management.

While planning a cloud-ready Data Centre one has to consider the following factors:

Reliability and Availability• - IT services are delivered to/or consumed by an end-user within an organization or an outside client and there is absolutely no time for downtime. To be fully reliable and available, the data in the cloud infrastructure must always be available, no matter if a failure strikes one or any combination of its components. This level of availability is vital, since many times the architecture of a cloud-based system relies on resources that are shared across a multitude of groups that are both external and internal to each group.Automation- • Virtualization is clearly driving much of the innovation around cloud-based services. These cloud-based hosting environments and service models are evolving towards “zero touch” provisioning. The benefits of which are: reduced costs, better resource utilization, rapid ser-vice delivery and mobility of applications within and across Data Centres, all while reducing CapEx and OpEx. This dynamically changing environ-ment demands automated configuration management processes that reduce human errors and enable maintenance and replacement by au-tomated tools.Seamless support for physical hardware and virtual technologies: •Cloud-based environments are expected to be hybrid and be able to sup-port a mix of technologies. So whether it is your existing Data Centre or a new one, cloud-based Data Centre solutions should take full advantage of the available solutions from a multitude of vendors, integrating with traditional IT systems whether including hardware, software and virtual-ization seamlessly.Scalability on-Demand• - A cloud-based environment should be able to support a large number of people or workload at any given time without causing any disruption and delay. It is therefore important that solutions

for resource and data management must be easily available to adminis-trators. Performance Measurement• - With huge pressures of meeting SLAs, maintaining performance and costs and meeting compliance clauses, it is important that a cloud-based environment should regularly and auto-matically deliver critical information on predetermined parameters.Simplified Management• - A cloud-based system should be able to shield the backend complexities from an enterprise user. End users of a cloud-based service should be able to manage their own Data Centre using templates and ability to access and store information. In addition, the administrator interface must also function with ease, providing a single window view of all resources – physical or virtual.Highly secure• - Shared and instantly accessible cloud-based infrastruc-ture comes with its own set of security challenges. With service oriented architecture, there is increased communication between servers as well as from client and this creates the need to have network security with access control. Security platforms as well as security services such as fire-

wall, NAT, IDP and VPN are consolidated into a single security platform which allows administrators to consolidate security processing and seg-ment the shared network infrastructure thereby resulting in increased ef-ficiency and flexibility. Virtual Network• – Taking network virtualization across the enterprise from the Data Centre to the enterprise campus network is going to be very important to help realize the power of Cloud. Open Standards like Shortest Path Bridging (SPB) 802.1aq have added virtualization capabili-ties and an enhanced version of IEEE Shortest Path Bridging gives enter-prises the option of extending their enterprise applications and services across the network — from the Data Center to the network edge. So SPB can actually isolate a service from the network, and at the same time it helps seamlessly integrate the two, thereby giving true network virtual-ization, almost at the drop of a hat.

Highlights of Enhanced SPB 802.1aq for the enterprise include:SPB can be deployed across the network/fabricSPB can help simplified, consistent provisioning and managementSPB provides Layer 3 virtualization capabilities for traffic segmenta-tion and optimization that form the core of virtualizing the network for deploying cloud services.

Cloud computing services, enabled by virtualized Data Centres, for both enterprise and consumer markets are becoming more prevalent as more and more customers are discovering the cost benefits and convenience of using computing services on the Internet. Data Centres will continue to evolve so that they can deliver any application, anywhere, at any time in the most cost effective manner.

Building Cloud Ready Data CentreDarshan Watve, Country Sales Manager - Avaya Networking

Star attraction /Peter coffee


C OHandbook 2012

How has the perception of cloud changed in the past few years? What are your thoughts with respect to the ap-plications that are coming?You are right—the conversations around the cloud have

changed. Three to four years back, I would not encounter a CIO who would not have any apprehension about the cloud and be certain about its func-tion. Today, they say they understand the new capabilities in the cloud.

A lot of organizations understand and want the cloud because it’s cheap. But this is a small piece. Talking about the cloud strategy is like talking about an electricity strategy. Having your own data center today is like having your own water tank or generator in the basement. The cloud is a utility and that should be used correctly in business and thinking of new business opportunities that you could not do before. Using the similar example of electricity, having the cloud and using it to do what you have always done in IT is like using electricity to just light the office.

‘Having your own data center today is like having your own water tank or generator in the basement’

—Peter Coffee, VP and head, platform research, Salesforce.com

Star attraction /Peter coffee


C OHandbook 2012

AKANKSHA [email protected]

The internal applications are matured and staying in an old IT architecture rather than cloud. The key word is not migrate but innovate and integrate. There is no business value in migrating one application that is working fine from one place to another. For enterprises, applications that are already functioning are not a problem, but missing the opportunity because they do not have specific applications and services that could be easily built using a cloud platform is one. The question they need to ask themselves is, ‘What are the things that we do in spreadsheets and emails because we could not get an application to do these things’?

This is a scenario where a bunch of university students talking about business that they will create in 3 years from today. They will not buy a server or waste time in buying licenses. Many present organizations of today will be competing with companies that do not have the overhead and inertia of IT investments. The organizations should start that process today and not 3 years later to respond to the new competition.

Enterprises are looking at 2 functions—handling data and managing the sources of data. Are both of the above being offered together?One the most important develop-ments that have happened is firstly that all organizations realized the significance of external data. Formerly, they only looked at the internal data which was collected by IT from the business and ac-counts. Now the data that greatly matters originates from the social network, partner ecosystem, and supply chain.

Social media is an interesting space. People find value in being known to the people they want to

build relationship with. They will invest in telling you things about themselves and are pleased with the idea that they get to tell their own story instead of wondering what inaccurate information is floating around. People know what an individual has chosen to tell them.

Secondly, the speed of improvement of the devices has gone up. Earlier, writing an application would take years. But mobile devices have changed things, environments like facebook, LinkedIn, etc, have helped the developers. Two important things here are—first, the data originates from the cloud and two, how people interact today with data using mobile and social networks. And the platforms today allow developers of every organization to leverage cloud. The CIOs are more responsive to understanding the need of the data and analyzing this big data. They realized that trying to make the data better is an enormous business that most people struggle with.

Can you share a little about the idea behind Data.com. How

does it fit in with the entire portfolio of Salesforce.com?Around couple of years back, we bought this company called Jigsaw, which was a leader in crowd-sourced data services. It is a layer that brings in the data, our next product. Database.com gives structure to the way of handling data. Force.com platform, as you would know, helps build custom business function around that and Visualforce layer allows you to deliver it on mobile devices. So as you see, none of these work in silos, all these are layered to offer an integrated solution.

If you look at the government and public sector, keeping the factors of developed and developing markets in mind, what is the story that they should be told?Federal government said very early on that all of the organizations use public money and public resources to produce an enormous data set. This data could deliver enormous value to third parties and hence it made a requirement very early on that every federal agency should add a few slices of web presence to make their data available to the third-party app developers to make data useful. In one of the univer-sities that I recently visited, the students were using GPS of mobile and Google API to locate the public buses and frequency of the next shuttle from the university. This is an example of how public will get their data and use that data for many purposes.

The government should not think of everything, but do what they can do. Cloud is about making opportunity available for everyone. And this is happening in the US and many forward-looking countries. n

For enterprises, applications that are already functioning are not a problem, but missing the opportunity because they do not have specific applications and services that could be easily built using a cloud platform is one


Global CEo/alibaba.Com

As an online portal, have you witnessed a greater use of the online medium by women for doing business online?The internet provides a fair opportunity to entrepreneurs across the world, owing to which Alibaba.com now has more than 72.8

mn registered members from over 240 countries. However in some devel-oped markets, such as the US and Australia, around 26% and 27%, respec-tively, registered member base are women. This significant percentage can be attributed to a multitude of factors but, more importantly, e-commerce is exposing female entrepreneurs to potential business opportunities in the global markets.

In India, there has been a healthy growth of 71% y-o-y female registered members as of June 30, 2011, reflecting a positive trend. E-commerce is helping them detect future demands and adapt to the market changes in the dynamic business environment. As the economic recession affects the home, more and more women are also looking for ways to supplement their household income.

‘It is in our DNA to put the customer first’

—Jonathan Lu, chief executive officer, and executive director, Alibaba.com

Jonathan Lu was appointed as chief executive officer of Alibaba.com in February 2011, and later on elected to the board of directors of Alibaba.com in March 2011. He is also the executive vice president of Alibaba Group as well as the non-executive chairman of Taobao Marketplace. As the leader of the portal whose mission is ‘to make it easy to do business anywhere’, Lu talks to Dataquest about how he has taken measures to uphold it, make the site more accessible for small business owners to reach to the global audience, etc. Excerpts

DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication visit www.dqindia.com March 31, 2012 | 21

C OHandbook 2012

How has Alibaba.com contrib-uted to the growth of the Indian SMEs?India is a unique and a very impor-tant market for Alibaba.com because of its large MSME population (26 mn units), a robust domestic market and a growing export sector. India has emerged as a low-cost manu-facturing base and an alternative supplier market to China for global buyers. The entrepreneurial spirit that is unique to Indians is being further bolstered by various SME-friendly government initiatives.

We have contributed to the Indian SMEs by dedicating our efforts to educating, training, and serving Indian SMEs on how to effectively utilize e-commerce to grow their business both in In-dia and abroad. Over the last few years, since first commencing local independent operations in India, we have organized training sessions on e-commerce and global trade for our gold supplier members in over 15 cities.

In addition, we re-launched the India channel (http://india.alibaba.com/) in our marketplace in Septem-ber 2011. The India channel caters specifically to the Indian suppliers and provides an easy and efficient platform for international buyers to source from India.

E-commerce has witnessed a boom in India. How would you describe India’s share in Ali-baba.com’s global pie?Before 2007, Alibaba.com invested in providing e-commerce in India the much-needed boost. With India comprising more than 10% of our registered members on our global platform, we feel an enormous re-sponsibility in ensuring the growth of e-commerce in the market for the future.

Internet penetration in India has increased in the last year, with over 121 mn internet users, including

29 mn users from the rural popula-tion. As internet penetration con-tinues its steady growth trajectory, e-commerce and Alibaba.com will continue to allow local businesses to penetrate other markets, local and abroad, in a fast and economi-cal way.

What we are continually seeing is that India is becoming both a supplier and a buyer market. More and more buyers in India are sourc-ing from within the country. In Q3 2011, 34% of the total inquiries received by the Indian suppliers were from Indian buyers (for exam-ple, suppliers in Ludhiana can now easily reach the buyers in Chennai or vice versa).

How would you describe 2011 in terms of IT implementation?It is the DNA of our business operations to put the customer first. Our IT focus for 2011 centered on enhancing user quality and user experience, as well as strengthening the depth and breadth of user infor-mation captured on our platform. We also evolved our business model by developing performance based and transaction based services.

In 2012, we will continue to focus on upgrading our e-commerce platform. Our original business model was to bring suppliers and

buyers together to ‘meet at Alibaba’, now we are moving to a model of ‘work at Alibaba’, where IT is the key in driving this strategy. With ‘work at Alibaba’, we seek to use technology to provide suppliers with services beyond trade. We are providing software and internet in-frastructure to help small businesses manage their customers and their company. We are exploring ways to incorporate social media that would allow the network business to increase their interactions. And we are already undertaking a project to develop multiple language versions of our international marketplace to serve better the growing interna-tional customer base.

Internet has provided the edge for every business. What is the road ahead for you?Today, the ‘online marketplace’ has advanced considerably as more and more businesses are getting comfort-able with this space. As internet penetration continues to expand, with over 121 mn internet users in India, we see a higher adoption of e-commerce by small businesses to generate further trade.

Our priority is to continue edu-cating Indian SMEs about the rel-evance and benefits of e-commerce. In India, hundreds and thousands of suppliers are leveraging the internet through e-commerce to generate sales, leads, and enquiries. SMEs have been able to optimize on both big and small orders via e-com-merce. International trade is no longer simply the realm of multina-tional companies. Millions of MS-MEs around the world have gained visibility in the global marketplace through e-commerce. With the focus of business shifting towards India, it is time for more Indian MSME suppliers to make their move through e-commerce.


With the focus of business shifting towards India, it is time for more Indian MSME suppliers to make their move through e-commerce


Global CEo/HEwlEtt-PaCkard

On the first quarter results:n If you look at companies who go through these turnarounds, these things are not done in less than 2 years, and often they take 3 to 5 years. You’ll see forward progress. We’ve got a jour-

ney ahead of us.n It took us a while to get into the situation in which we find ourselves. It’s going to take us a little while to get out.n The first thing we have to do is stop the revenue decline. Then we have to start growing revenue, you have to gain share in every single market. I would hope that as we get through 2012, you’ll see revenue decline flatten out, and as we get into 2013, we’ll start to grow. It depends on how fast we can get af-ter some of the challenges in the business. A lot of this is in our own hands.n I’d really like you all to take away these 3 messages: We’re committed to clarity. We’re getting back to basics. We are building HP to last, focusing not on short-term expectations.

On February 22, 2012, HP announced its first quarter results in which its earnings and revenue have dropped with quarterly sales decline for PCs, printers, and enterprise equipment. Meg Whitman, the CEO of HP asked for patience from shareholders. The previous fiscal saw awkward strategic moves which led to the ouster of a CEO thus making it a difficult year for HP. Taking over the job in September 2011, Whitman appears to be ex-tremely optimistic. Here is what she had to say at the quarterly announcement and at HP’s Global Partner Conference in Las Vegas on February 15, 2012. Excerpts

‘We have got our swagger back’

—Meg Whitman,CEO,HP


C OHandbook 2012

On HP’s Divisionsn When I came in September, I thought the most important thing that I could do was to get the noise out of the system and create stabil-ity. Be a steady hand on the tiller for this terrific company. And so what I wanted to do is get HP out of the headlines for the drama and into the headlines for our products and what we do for our customers and partners.n The first decision that I had to make after I joined was around our personal systems group. Whether or not we are going to keep the PC business. We did a lot of thoughtful analysis and came to the conclusion that PSG and HP and you are better together than we are apart and I feel great about that decision.n On web OS, you know that we made a decision to contribute the code to the open-source community. It will take 2-4 years for this to fully play out, but my view is that the industry needs another operating system. Most of the operating sys-tems out there are closed systems. I think there is an opportunity here for another OS that can utilize the creativity of the development com-munity to enable us to do things that we never dreamed were possible. So, we are going to be patient and support that.n Later this year, IPG is going to bring to market, partner man-aged print services which is going to enable you to extend customer relationships that will recognize entirely new revenue streams. Many people think IPG is about print-ers and ink. It is the same things going on. I promise you that IPG is doubling down on innovations, we are increasing R&D spends and it should be a big part of your busi-ness going forward.

On Focus Areas n I am a big believer in focus. Could we please do 3-4 things extraordi-

narily well. We are deeply focused on 4 different areas. First is con-verged infrastructure. It is a distinc-tive area of competitive advantage for us. We coined the term and we do it better that anyone else. The second area is information optimiza-tion. We have a world of exploding data that is largely unstructured. It is an opportunity for you and us to solve tough data problems for our customers. Third focus area is secu-rity. Top of mind for everyone. The last focus area is cloud. It is going to be as important as the transition from mainframe to client server. The way technology is delivered is going to change and we need to be forefront of that and we will.n We are going to double down on organic innovation. We are doubling down on our R&D spend in every single division of this company. There is no competitor that can compete across the entire HP portfo-lio. There is no competitor that can invest in R&D the way we should be able to invest and we will.

Looking Aheadn In August last year, we did con-fuse people a bit about what HP is. When I joined the company, I got a lot of questions about HP’s strategy. So to be really clear, HP will remain the largest provider of IT infrastructure, software, services, and solutions for individuals and organizations of all sizes.n HP will be 70 years old in 2013. And what the executive team and I want to do is to set HP up for the next 70 years, so that you can build your business with a long-term horizon. We are focused on the short term but we are also focused on building the business for the long term.n HP is coming back strong after a rough 2011. We got our swag-ger back. So let’s go out and sell with confidence. Let’s go back to our customers and say HP is back and that they can count on HP. Let’s beat the competition and make 2012 the collective best year ever.n We will continue to do acquisi-tions. There is always going to be very interesting young companies that can benefit from HP’s scale and size. But we have to do a better job with organic innovation. We have an asset in HP labs, which to some degree has been underutilized over several years. I want to bring HP labs closer to the business units so that we can get from incredible ideas to commercialization faster. I want that group to become a little bit more commercial.n We are going to have a corporate marketing program that is going to be consistent across all business units. One opportunity that we have is the notion of one HP. We are a collection of powerful business units, but we also need to bring the breadth of our portfolio to our customer as one HP.

E AbrAhAm [email protected]

WhenIcameinSeptember,IthoughtthemostimportantthingthatIcoulddowastogetthenoiseoutofthesystemandcreatestability.Beasteadyhandonthetillerforthisterrificcompany


C OHandbook 2012

Global CEo/MEdiCo.CoM

‘Indians are already seeking information on the internet, and we are not exposing them to a new culture’

—Elan Dekel founder and CEO, Medico.com

Elan Dekel, founder and CEO, Medico.com, was earlier associated for six years with Google, where he was responsible for Google’s product management in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Leading venture capital firms such as First Round Capital, FirstMark Capital, Greylock, Nexus Venture Partners, and prominent angel investors back Medico.com.

Medico.com, a global health-fo-cused internet company has launched Medico.in, a platform for Indian consumers to source health informa-tion, and to become well-informed and active drivers of their own health. After tasting success in Spain and the US, the company has now entered the Indian market.

The portal with high quality health reference information, com-munity features, and a powerful question and answer platform allows users to take advantage of the experi-ence of others. Dekel in his chat with Dataquest, shares information about medico.in, a platform that is free for users to share information, and to ask and answer questions. Excerpts


C OHandbook 2012

Global CEo/MEdiCo.CoM

Can you talk to us about the inception of the project?The concept of this

project can be traced to my last job where I was associated with Google for more than 7 years. In the last 2 years of my tenure, I would analyze how Google would help markets develop the internet. During this time, I noticed that many countries do not have quality health informa-tion available online and individu-als were searching for information online. There was also a peculiar trend owing to lack of information as Indians would refer to American websites. The information on these sites would be region specific and hence of not much help. Hence, we decided to create a web platform to impart information that has content catering to specific countries.

The philosophy is to educate the patient about his condition so that it would help in better outcomes in treatment results. Hence, the website has reference information about disease/articles, and offers a platform for patient-to-patient inter-action where doctors too can partici-pate. We believe patients do have a lot of information. We are trying to offer a support mechanism to the medical fraternity where the patient can seek additional information.

The portal has a remarkable presence in the US, Spain and Brazil and is now making the right moves to capture the huge potential that the Indian market has to offer. Currently, we have three editions—the first one in Spanish targeting users in Spain, Latin America, and the US Hispanic market, the second one in Portugese for Brazil, and the third edition targeting the Indian audience. Services of medico.in are offered free of charge for users. Individuals neither need to register themselves, for viewing answers, nor is registration required for post-ing questions.

Are there any particular measures of caution undertaken considering that it is a medical site?We ensure that only specific infor-mation is uploaded on the web-site. For example, we do not allow individuals to promote new treat-ments or recommend doses of drugs or even diagnose. For example, if a patient is diagnosed with backache and if the doctor recommends sur-gery. Then we allow another patient to advise yoga. In other words, the information is scanned by a doctor before it is uploaded. In every coun-try we are associated with senior doctors, like for example in the US, the CMO devises policies that deals with the content uploaded. In India, we are associated with Dr Purvish Parikh, former head of oncology at Tata Memorial Hospital who is guiding us with strategies, country-specific medical issues, etc.

The Indian environment is totally different as it is a home to alterna-tive therapies like ayurveda, yoga, etc, which are very interesting. We intend to spend more effort in this direction when we upload content in relation to India. Indians are already seeking information on the internet and we are not exposing them to a new culture. It is just an additional information to what the doctor gives. Approximately, more than one third Indians (39%) go online to seek health related information.

The high cost of face-to-face consultations with medical profes-sionals may be one reason for this, with the internet being preferred as a cheaper alternative. More young individuals (in the age group of 18-24 years and 25-34 years) use

social media to find information to health related queries. It is found that approximately 18% of respond-ents throng social networking sites to find more on healthcare issues. With the increase in demand of online healthcare needs, most of the top healthcare websites are largely geared towards the scientific and academic communities and indi-viduals from India. In the future, we would also like to branch out to other healthcare related services.

We are also planning to launch this website in local languages like Hindi so that individuals can feel the ease of use. The advent of mobile and smartphones will lead to more individuals visiting the website for more information. We intend to spread awareness about ourselves in the market and partner with bigger websites in India to offer our platform to users and then turn it into business.

How would you rate the adoption of IT in healthcare?There is a lot of interest shown towards the adoption of IT in healthcare but at the same time it is riddled with challenges, even in the US. Whereas, India is at a favorable position where it can jump onto the IT adoption bandwagon the very first time. In the US, hospitals have 200 different databases and none of these systems is integrated, making the scenario complicated.

In the US, they want to make all this interoperable, which is a huge challenge. The legacy systems pose a challenge in the US, but if you build something from scratch it can be built in a much better way and its potential is bigger. For example, in India since there is no legacy data, infrastructure can be built right in the very first time. Adoption of IT in healthcare will allow easy access of patients to their own data.

Shilpa [email protected]

India is at a favorable position where it can jump onto the IT adoption bandwagon the very first time

©2012 Schneider Electric. All Rights Reserved. All trademarks are owned by Schneider Electric Industries SAS or its affiliated companies.Schneider Electric India Pvt. Ltd., 9th Floor, DLF Building No. 10, Tower C, DLF Cyber City, Phase II, Gurgaon - 122 002, Haryana, India. Phone: +33 (0) 1 41 29 70 00

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Global CEo/SMaRT TEChnoloGiES

How has technology been able to change the classroom experience?Education is the key driver of any economy. There is a par-adigm shift in the way education is imparted and received

all over the world. Having recognized this evolution, India is gearing up to match the global quality standards and ensure unified dissemination of knowledge, regardless of disparities in socio-economic backgrounds. Research has established that interactive technology implementation in education enhances learning, improves student outcomes and encour-ages collaboration.

Tom Hodson joined SMART Technologies in 2006 after a stint with a consulting firm serving Fortune 500 companies, special-izing in the areas of strategic customer management, market-ing, and business integration. In his capacity as executive vice president and managing partner, he was responsible for large-scale projects in the areas of post-merger business integration, customer marketing and strategic account management. Hodson is well known for his outstanding leadership skills and has consist-ently ranked in the top 5% of his peer group in North America. Co-author of ‘A Blueprint for Winning with Today’s Customer’, Hodson’s business results reflect an ability to deliver strong growth in complex and competi-tive environments. In an interview with Dataquest, Hodson shares his vision to change the classroom experience. Excerpts

‘Lack of infrastructure and shortage of trained teachers is a reality’

—Tom Hodson presidentandCOO,SMARTTechnologies


C OHandbook 2012

How would you rate technology adoption in the education sector in India versus other countries?The Indian society has always given the utmost importance to good edu-cation. Parents invest substantially to ensure their children receive quality education. Technology has significantly helped in reducing the digital divide between nations by providing easy access to 21st-century learning environments for all. Thus, we have noticed similar technology adoption trends across the globe. Though, the growth curve for evolution and adoption of tech-nology has varied from country to country, there has been a clear rise in technology adoption with increas-ing awareness of its benefits when applied to teaching and learning.

Lack of infrastructure and short-age of trained teachers is a reality that adversely impacts the adoption of technology-enabled classrooms in In-dia. However, with increasing aware-ness about the benefits of these tools and their application, many private schools in India are gradually evolv-ing into digital classrooms for better student engagement. The govern-ment is also recognizing the immense potential of technology in education as is evident from the launch of Aakash tablets. We at SMART Technolo-gies have also collaborated with the governments of four states to cre-ate digital learning environments in government schools. We have received encouraging response from govern-ment officials across India and are quite positive about the future outlook of educational technology being ap-plied in public schools.

How does your company plan to be a part of the technology adoption drive in the education sector in India?The Indian government has been in-vesting heavily in the development of education. However there are numerous challenges which need

to be addressed to ensure access to quality education. Technology could play a pivotal role in bridging the educational divide that exists between village schools and private schools. Technology is transforming teaching and learning from a one-size-fits-all model to an experience that is much more personalized/dif-ferentiated, engaging, flexible, col-laborative, and empowering.

Post-secondary and K–12 educa-tion institutions have witnessed the benefits of distance learning as it pro-vides students the opportunity to learn from teachers around the world and benefit from their expertise. Distance learning could be especially useful for students located in remote areas who have to walk a substantial distance to reach the nearest school. This mode of learning is highly effective in allowing collaboration and learning amongst students and provides them a holistic immersive learning environment and experience. Distance learning is also a viable solution to the teacher-shortage problem. SMART Technologies has also collaborated with the education boards of various states namely, Delhi, Uttaranchal, Kerala and Tamil Nadu to ensure that the benefits of ICT reach the grassroot level. SMART has also tied up with Rajkiya Pratibha Vikas Vidyalaya popularly known as RPVVs, a system of schools run by the Directorate of Education, Govern-

ment of Delhi to install interactive whiteboards and provide training to teachers about the usage of technology in classrooms.

How would you rate India’s importance in the global pie?Education is the fastest growing segment in India. As per industry reports, multi-media/digital learning space in the K12 domain is estimated to be over $450 mn industry by the end of 2012 growing annually at a 60% CAGR. According to Future-source Consulting, since 2000, there are more than 5 mn classrooms in India with only about 1% interac-tive whiteboard penetration. Thus, the educational technology sector in India offers huge potential for growth. The country has been identified as an important emerging market for SMART and we continue to develop our business across the region. The transition from blackboards to inter-active whiteboards is a clear indica-tor of the education system evolving and embracing technology. There is a growing need and focus on IT enabled education, leading to the demand for comprehensive value-added educa-tional solutions such as the SMART Board interactive whiteboard. SMART Technologies will continue to be com-mitted to the India market and roll out effective collaboration solutions, contents and resources as well as services and support.

What are your company’s plans for the future?We will continue to be committed to the Indian market and roll out effec-tive collaboration solutions, content and resources as well as services and support. Right from hiring the right talent to enlisting a strong group of distributors as well as significant ef-forts in marketing will help us further gain market share in the India/South Asia region.


With increasing awareness about the benefits of these tools and their application, many private schools in India are gradually evolving into digital classrooms for better student engagement


Global CIo/DeloItte

‘A typical organization has two shares—the core and the edges. The coming trend would be about the innovation in these edges’

—Bill Allison global technology services leader, Deloitte

Bill Allison is the global technology services leader at Deloitte, responsible for delivery of the full life cycle technol-ogy services to global clients. A principal with Deloitte since 1999, Allison has more than 25 years of experience in the analysis, design, and implementation of information systems, systems strategy, and business process improvement and has worked with some of the largest, most complex technology clients in the world. Currently, he acts in a risk and advisory role on many of Deloitte’s most significant engagements.

In his previous stints, Allison held leadership positions including serving as the national managing director for en-terprise applications; the role of regional managing director for Deloitte in the United States’ Pacific Southwest, where he oversaw significant, profitable growth in the region. Before assuming leader-ship positions, Allison was a consulting principal in Deloitte’s Midwest Region of the US.

Allison has spoken at various internal and external engagements, all relating to his work with enterprise applications. Among those are the Global Analyst Summit, Enterprise Application Summit, and Global Technology Council meet-ings, as well as Deloitte DBrief webcasts for client executives on various technol-ogy topics.

He has a Bachelor’s degree in busi-ness administration from Illinois State University apart from also attending the Northwestern University. Excerpts


C OHandbook 2012

Based on your overall observation, which technology trends do you see gaining

traction in terms of investment in 2012?This is something I have been talking about. The organizations of today want things to be better, cheaper, and faster. Overall, one of the things that the CEO and board members especially worry about is risk management. They want the service providers to be better in differentiated skills, so there is a constant pressure on innovation. They should be certified to serve. Another thing that clients expect is reasonable offering with demand workforce. In IT there is a lifecycle of processes, what clients want to see is how seamlessly to arrive at that transition. And, lastly talking about faster delivery, it is not about working 24x7 responses, but being nimble and highly correlated to the demand and supply.

A typical organization has 2 aspects: Core and the edges. While mission-critical applications sit in the core, other enterprise applications form the edges. The coming trend would be about the innovation in these edges. These will be defined by cloud/system architecture, BI and analytics, mobility/BYOD, and big data/new data category.

Among these, while cloud has been around for a while, it is now that the service providers and the customers are ready to plunge into cloud. And, in the coming years, we will see a larger adoption and implementation of cloud services. Talking about cloud, service providers have done away with the experimentation and have reached to having a stable product in place. The next level, if for making large enterprise clients, identify and adopt what is the best solution.

You have been talking about the death of ERP and then you revisited it, calling it a false alarm. Is it because ERP is changing or it is the rebirth of ERP?What has made ERP still relevant and what makes us say the end is far for ERP, is the resurgence of ERP. By definition, ERP is enter-prise resource planning, where the financials and payroll were first integrated with production planning and inventory controls. And many companies had been doing good business by bringing what we call as automating the core back-of-fice processes.

As a matter of fact, legacy ERP lies in the core serve at the heart of the business and operations and has other applications in the edges. All the organizations trust and believe in ERP and slated investment plans for expansion.

Few years back, it was said that the introduction of cloud could dis-rupt and lead to the end of ERP. But, cloud technology could not threaten ERP, as the enterprises trusted the core and preferred licensed, on-premise, enterprise applications. And instead of replacing ERP, they

are looking at options around it, with ERP at the core. Having said that, enterprises continue to move up and create complementary strategic platforms for information.

From the business front, we will see a shift from traditional time and material based contracts to subscription and outcome based projects that would be benchmarked on value, cost, and delivery time. We might see a new trend of part-nership, what we define as coopera-tive competition, and in the future, we would see market consolidation. This consolidation will not only be between competitors and customers but also involves service providers to achieve the best solutions.

What is your take on the changing role of the CIO? In an MNC scenario, where the policies framed are headquarter-centric, how independent is the CIO of the India centers?Be it a large or small, global or local, all the organizations should work towards attaining a balance between strategy and tactics. All the CIOs aspire to be part of the boardroom discussions and they are gaining importance in the organiza-tion as more IT is being part of the core business strategy, but even the board should involve and align the IT strategy with the corporate one. A disconnect between the two, could lead the organization into a trouble.

India is a strategic market for all major organizations. It is also be-coming the innovation hub for their major activities, and this includes Deloitte too. Indian CIOs for larger and global organizations are playing a significant role by enabling IT and driving this. However in order to make a bigger impact, the CIOs have to be more heroic.

AkAnkshA [email protected]

Indian CIOs for larger and global organizations are playing a significant role by enabling IT and driving this. However in order to make a bigger impact, the CIOs have to be more heroic


Global CIo/DaImler aG

With employees preferring to bring their own technology to the work place, issues like security etc are glaring at the CIO. How are you handling it?Currently, we intend to permit our employees to bring their

own mobile devices and attain access to their most important information. Therefore we have set up a highly secure and attractive solution, which allows the user to access company email, calendar, and contacts as well as read attached documents, while at the same time ensure that Daimler main-tains control over critical company data. Currently, we are running a pilot after which we plan to offer it to all the employees.

—Dr Michael Gorriz, CIO and head, ITM, Daimler AG

Dr Michael Gorriz, CIO and head, ITM, Daimler AG, is respon-sible for strategy, planning, and development of all IT systems as well as the operation of all data centers and communication networks. Dr Gorriz etched his career graph at Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm GmbH, a German aerospace company, which was later known as the Daimler-Benz affiliate DASA, and has recently been merged into EADS. In 2000, Dr Gorriz took over the reins as vice president, IT business systems at Daimler’s IT management division. Later in 2005, he was additionally promoted as CIO Mercedes-Benz cars and vans, and entrusted the re-sponsibility of worldwide IT systems within the division of Mercedes-Benz cars and vans at Daimler AG. In an interaction with Dataquest, Dr Gorriz highlights the challenges that the CIOs face with bring your own technology. Excerpts

‘We believe that mobility is an opportunity for innovation’


C OHandbook 2012

The intuitive handling of new hu-man interfaces is one aspect in this context, as usage is very easy and simple for everybody. As users are more tech-savvy, we do not offer help desk services.

Nevertheless, a clear strategy on topics like platform, internal app de-velopment, data security, and access management is a mandatory founda-tion to seize all these opportunities successfully.

Last year, we formulated a strate-gy for mobile computing and viewed ourselves in a good position.

Are you of the opinion of draft-ing policies for mobile strategy to enable smooth use of such devices at the workplace?In a large corporation like ours, policies are required and a widely accepted tool to enable in the usage of mobile devices or any other device. The interesting and important part is the chance to review existing desktop/laptop policies and harmonize them with the new mobile policies.

It is felt that the CIOs should take advantage of the buzz around green IT to upgrade their systems and drive cost reductions. How simple would you rate it?Green IT is intended to make a significant contribution to Daimler

Group’s sustainability and future success. Since the commence-ment of the project in 2009, we are constantly identifying measures to attain new heights in cost reduction and reduced energy consumption. Due to the consequent global implementa-tion of green IT, power consump-tion could have been reduced by more than 159 kilowatt-hours and 95,000 tons CO2 emission during the last 3 years. In 2010, we received accolades in face of ‘Gartner Data Center Excel-lence Award’ for our green IT efforts. So, green IT is more than a hype—it is a valid activity to support sustainability.

How would you describe 2011 in terms of IT implementation and what are your priorities for 2012?Last year, a major task for the IT organization of Daimler was to build efficient IT system land-scapes in growth markets. With modular and flexible IT solutions, we significantly expanded our presence at locations like Chen-nai (India), Kecskemét (Hungary), and Bejing (China). One of our priorities for 2012 will be to hire and leverage on local IT experts for Daimler’s growth activities in China, India, Turkey, and Brazil. In addition, we will continue with the implementation of an IT operating model, a program to globally harmonize IT tools, methods, and systems in order to further improve efficiency and effectiveness. Last but not the least, we will continue to prepare our company for the ‘digital life@Daimler’. Under a project named ‘next workplace’, from 2012, we will start the rollout of a new col-laboration platform for 190,000 PC workplaces worldwide.


Pressure on corporations is increasing with respect to allowing employees to bring their own easy-to-use devices at work

How has your IT department evolved in being able to tackle the situation?As mobility is driving the consum-erization of IT, pressure on corpo-rations is increasing rapidly with respect to allowing employees to bring their own easy-to-use devices to work. This brings challenges and huge opportunities and will have significant effects in the workplace in the coming years. Thus, we have set-up a team for mobile computing to determine requirements of future technical architectures and develop a mobile strategy for our company. Besides the technical challenges, legal and data protection issues are becoming more dominant. In the ongoing discussion on how to miti-gate these risks, the IT department has turned into the stakeholder for the users.

How would you describe the evolution of the workplace scenario with the entry of smart devices?Mobility and smart devices change the workplace fundamentally. Expectations from users—espe-cially digital natives—are differ-ent in many ways, completely new use cases arise and working styles undergo a radical change. More and more people want to be ‘always-on’ expecting immediate access and integration of business and private life. This development is impor-tant for Daimler as an automobile company, the car is becoming part of their extended living space. We be-lieve that mobility is an opportunity for innovation and we do nothing but the best to create the environment to discover it.

Which strategies have you undertaken with regard to these devices?We tend to see more opportunities offered through the new technolo-gies and concepts of smart devices.


Global CIo/Gulf brIdGe InternatIonal

How would you describe GBI’s efforts in carving a niche for itself?GBI is a pioneering telecom company from the Gulf and for the Gulf region. We are setting new industry standards and break-

ing the mould by creating a carrier-neutral business model, which will serve all customers equally. Our next-generation communications network will truly connect the world to the Gulf.

The network is designed to connect all the Gulf countries—Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. The network topol-ogy, of core ring configuration, means that GBI is the first cable system to connect all Gulf countries providing each with a dedicated and secure route.

Samih Kawar, a 30-year-old veteran of the telecom industry, in his current role as the chief technical officer of Gulf Bridge International is responsible for the design, implementation, and operation of the GBI cable system. In his previous stints, Kawar has held senior posi-tions in a number of leading telcos including Verizon and Flag. Throughout his career, Kawar has been responsible for a broad spectrum of diversified business activities including project management, system implementations, operational responsibilities, and mergers and acquisitions. In his discussions with Dataquest, Kawar talks about GBI’s claim to fame as the first cable to land in Sify cable station in Mumbai and GBI’s plans for the future. Excerpts

‘We have ambitious plans for GBI to evolve from being a mere Gulf based company to a globally-focused one’

—Samih Kawar CTO, Gulf Bridge International


C OHandbook 2012

Through our landing partners and other operators we offer the most comprehensive coverage across the Gulf region. In countries beyond the Gulf region, the cable connects east-wards to Mumbai (India) and will provide the lowest latency between India and each of the Gulf countries. Westwards the cable crosses the Red Sea and Mediterranean to Sicily (Italy) with diverse routing to Milan and then onwards to London, Frank-furt, Amsterdam, Paris, and Mar-seille. The global network of GBI now covers over 30,000 km includ-ing the subsea network of 13,000 km of deployed cable. As part of our commitment to ensure operational excellence, we have conducted an extensive and rigorous training with all our landing partners.

GBI became the first operator to offer 100G connectivity on parts of its undersea cable network? How would you describe the achievement?We are investing in and deploying the latest fiber-optic technology. GBI is offering an activated 100G line interface on parts of its subsea cable network as well as 100G long haul line interface on our terrestrial network. GBI is the first operator in the region to offer an activated 40G line interface on our subsea cable network. With a capacity of at least 5.18 terabits, the GBI cable system will enable real-time com-munications for telecommunication operators and other major indus-tries, while encouraging a greater sophistication of service offerings. It’s the first system of its kind to be installed in the region in more than a decade.

What are the biggest issues that you face as a CTO of a cable network company?As the CTO of a cable network com-pany, there are several ongoing chal-lenges that I face. The first is being

able to respond to rapid changes in traffic patterns and configuring capacity on the network accord-ingly. The second issue pertains to resilience and security, as we oper-ate in very congested waters and there is always the risk of a cable being damaged. To address both of these challenges, we have designed the network topology and deployed the most advanced equipment to minimize the risk.

Do you expect the European crisis to bring in any specific challenges for the IT department?I do not foresee any specific chal-lenges. Clearly, there is great uncertainty in the market as to how the economic crisis in Europe will unfold. However we believe that our business model is robust enough to cope with any downturn in business from Europe. At a time of economic turbulence, international bandwidth requirements can increase as com-panies and individuals reduce their international travel and instead use voice and data services.

GBI became the first cable to land in Sify cable station in Mumbai (India). What are your company’s plans for the future?We have ambitious plans to ensure that GBI evolves from being a mere Gulf based company into a glo-bally-focused organization. We are

assessing opportunities to expand the reach of our network in Europe, Africa, and Asia. In Europe we will seek to offer greater diversity and coverage, and in Africa and Asia we intend to extend our connectivity. And, we see GBI as being strategi-cally poised to be a communications hub between these 2 continents.

In addition, we are exploring options to expand our business vertically into areas such as data centers, etc. Currently, 7% of the world’s population speaks Arabic, but less than 3% of all content is in Arabic, which will change rapidly in the coming years and will require regional data centers to store content.

How would you describe 2011 in terms of IT implementation and what would you describe as your priorities for 2012?From a business perspective, one needs to strike a perfect balance between delivering an excellent operational service on a day-to-day basis, while at the same time invest in and encourage innovation. The skill set of an IT staff needs to mir-ror this requirement. IT technology, from both systems and applications perspective, is constantly evolving requiring organizations to upgrade and invest in their staff ’s skills.

As a new company, our focus has been on sourcing and implementing our IT systems. We have selected our key suppliers for network management and fault reporting, customer care and billing, etc. These systems are being installed and handed over to us and the final training and testing was also done in preparation of the launch. In brief, 2012 will be very much about bedding these IT systems down, assessing how well they are meeting our needs, and making any changes that are required.


At a time of economic turbulence, international bandwidth requirements can increase as companies and individuals reduce their international travel and instead use voice and data services


Global CIo/EmIratEs FlIGht CatErInG sErvICEs

You run one of the world’s most modern, largest and one-of-its-kind flight catering facility in the world. What does your role entail?As VP (IT) and CIO my primary job responsibility is to support

my organization in exceeding customers’ expectations. My role becomes clearer if seen in the context of EKFC vision statement: Global leader in aviation catering and allied businesses that delivers sustainable stakeholder value. I support my organization in achieving the vision of EKFC by provid-ing the state-of-the-art technologies and solutions.

His industry experience is impressive—25 years of work experience with organizations like Tata Steel, Al-Futtaim Group, and Emaar Properties, Arun Tewary in his current role is working as the CIO and VP (IT) at Dubai based Emirates Flight Catering (EKFC).

In an exclusive interview with Dataquest, Tewary doesn’t mind admitting that after being a vociferous critic of cloud computing, he is on the ‘road to becoming a convert to cloud’ or how CIOs should lead from the front and acquire a position which doesn’t require continuous ‘blowing of our own trumpet’. Excerpts

‘Indian CIOs are unique, and a force to reckon with when it comes to volume handling’

—Arun TewaryCIO and VP, IT, Emirates Flight Catering


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Global CIo/EmIratEs FlIGht CatErInG sErvICEs

As a CIO, my emphasis is to pro-vide technology vision and leader-ship by formulating, developing, and implementing organization-wide IT strategies. These will in turn ensure continuity and improvement of busi-ness processes leading to organiza-tional gains, thus maximizing RoIs.

Critically, aviation catering is a time-sensitive industry, and there is a thin error margin with respect to delayed delivery of products and services.

Therefore our processes are fully integrated, starting from planning, raw materials procurement up to the preparation and final delivery of products to aircrafts; it’s important to keep a track of work in progress. Also, due to various statutory and hygiene-related requirements, a number of parameters need to be monitored and recorded at various stages of the production.

At EKFC, what role does technology play?Technology plays a very critical role in the overall operations of EKFC. The business at EKFC consists of tightly coupled and inter-dependent business processes. Technology acts as the lifeline for the industry, which ensures smooth, accurate, and on-time execution of all processes to achieve on-time delivery of quality food. Over the last few years, IT has been able to support the business to achieve mas-sive business growth and expansion.

All major business processes are carried out using IT systems. EKFC is using a state-of-the-art enterprise application which is a tier-1 ERP system. This enterprise application covers all major business processes: Human resources, payroll, finance, procurement, supply chain, sales order, product data management, shopfloor processes, flight cater-ing solution, plant and equipment maintenance, etc.

One of the most critical roles IT is playing is in the areas of menu

development, product costing, and planning & scheduling. Another challenging and unique process to food industries is that of multiple units of measure. There are number of items which acquire different unit of measurement at different stages of supply chain within the process. This factor of multiple UOM makes the entire process quite complex, because at every stage an accurate conversion needs to be carried out.

At EKFC, you have deployed a monorail system, the third of its kind in the world for washing and then sending tray sets, stores, and everything else around the building. What’s IT’s role in it?The ever-increasing airlines’ pas-senger figures and the passenger growth rate at Dubai Airport raised the demand of an in-flight catering. It was clear that automation was the answer—a system that will dramati-cally decrease the manual handling, satisfy the hygiene requirement, and systematically integrate all aspects of operations. Thus we designed and built one of the most sophisticated automation systems for such a facility, now integrated into a centralized Building Manage-ment System (BMS).

The automation system, support-ed by aligned processes and equip-ment, ensures rapid delivery of meal carts right from the facility to the aircrafts. The facility is completely automated, where each station is clubbed with an Electric Monorail System well controlled by PLC & Scada Control System. This automa-tion consists of following systems: Cart management control system and storage management control system.

Also, current information and previous records can be tracked when required. All commands and sequence of flow related to station priorities, charging, movement of meal carts/bins, default & final

destination are well defined, well programmed, and well communicat-ed to PLC through Profibus Ethernet combined technology.

What is the value addition that Indian CIOs bring to the table in global roles?Looking at Indian CIOs community from outside India, they appear more inwardly focused. The Indian CIOs are cautious and good for their organization, but I would not be very sure about their contribution towards the technology as such.

Indian CIOs are unique and a force to reckon with, when it comes to volume handling. But, when we consider the influence/contribution of Indian CIOs on products’ devel-opment, we do not come across very encouraging findings.

However, when you look at global companies, you find a large number of Indians (majority of them based overseas) in key roles. Also, these days, one finds many Indian CIOs based in India, managing interna-tional operations of their organiza-tions, thereby managing multina-tional and multi-cultural teams.

As a CIO who believes in straight talk, what advice would you like to give?CIOs should lead from the front. For the last couple of years, the role of a CIO is emerging and evolving and undoubtedly acquiring important dimensions. We all should draw maximum mileage out of this and acquire a position which doesn’t require continuous ‘blowing of our own trumpet’ and keep reminding the world that CIOs are important for the business. Since we all are part of a new phase of ‘Information Revolution’, which has changed the civilization and promises to change it further, hence be proud of yourself and your fraternity!

STUTI [email protected]


Global CIo/department of transportatIon, Us

How did you get into IT and finally come to join the US DoT as a federal CIO?I started my career in the mid-80s in technology marketing in Mumbai. I left that organization to come to the US on a gradu-

ate fellowship. After graduation, I was successful in building one of the first online businesses and it became the launching pad for my joining the Center for Innovative Technology (CIT), where I later headed the internet group as its managing director. This experience groomed me to work on the emerging technologies with entrepreneurs, start-ups, and venture capitalists, and hence

Nitin Pradhan as the departmen-tal CIO for Department of Transpor-tation (DOT) was sworn-in in 2009. He is the chief advisor to the US Secretary of Transportation for IT. DoT has over 55,000 employees, $70 bn in annual budget, and 10 modes including FAA.

Prior to joining DoT, Pradhan was an IT executive at Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS), the 12th largest school district in US. Earlier he was the MD of Virginia’s Center for Innovative Technology (CIT) and has been the co-founder and CEO of a wireless start-up.

Pradhan in his first interview to an Indian publication (Dataquest) talks about his focus area—to utilize technology innovatively and strategi-cally to drive significant business value. Excerpts

‘I focus on utilizing technology innovatively and strategically to drive significant business value’

—Nitin Pradhan CIO, department of transportation, US


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led me to start my own wireless com-pany. Later, I joined one of the largest and most successful public school systems in the US in a CTO/RMO type role to help transform education delivery using digital technologies. The White House invited me to join the Obama Administration in 2009 as the CIO of the US DoT after a rigorous selection process.

What are your roles and responsibilities?As the US DoT CIO, I essay 4 major roles. I’m the chief advisor to Ray LaHood, secretary of transportation, US on all matters relating to IT. I also have oversight over the entire DoT IT portfolio, with over 450 business and IT systems and an an-nual budget of over $3 bn. My office is in charge of all the IT infrastruc-ture within DoT except FAA. Finally, we are actively involved in partner-ing with our modal administrations (bureaus) in driving innovation, entrepreneurship, and creating business value in the transportation sector using technology innovation.

What is the major technology change impacting IT service delivery at DoT?The post-PC era is arriving. Cloud computing is changing the entire back-end of the IT industry, which is also having an impact on the tech-nology skill sets organizations need to have within their IT staff. Mobil-ity, including wireless, tablets, and smartphones, is changing the entire front end-user experience. As to where the technology is leading—I believe that in the future, most tech-nology products will be delivered as a service. We are going to start seeing IT products assembled from standardized components rather than developed piecemeal. We now know the flux the technology indus-try is in. This flux will create huge opportunities and disruptions and only the smart will thrive.

How is technology helping in driving innovation in DoT?At the US DoT, we have several technology platforms that drive in-novation. Our internal IdeaHub ideation and crowdsourcing platform is one such example that allows any employee to propose innovative ideas and enables others to improve on them through ratings and feedbacks. The best ideas can then be imple-mented across the department. While not all ideas relate to technology, it is the IdeaHub technology platform that is tapping the expertise, knowledge, and intelligence of the 55,000-strong DoT employee community.

Can you elaborate on exciting business technology initiatives at DoT?Most of the IT portfolios of DoT focus on business technology initiatives. These include global innovations like FAA’s NextGen—a comprehensive overhaul of the na-tional airspace system from a ground based radar system of air traffic con-trol to a satellite based system of air traffic management. This system is vital for meeting the future demands and to avoid gridlock in the skies and at national airports. Another very exciting initiative involves the research we are doing to explore the potential for connected vehicle technology, which could improve mobility and roadway safety by mak-ing cars, trucks, buses, and other vehicles aware of the vehicles—and infrastructure—around them.

As an Indian-origin CIO, what is the value proposition that you bring to this global role?

I focus on delivering busi-ness value immediately. First, this requires IT to be integrated into discussions of business needs and results early, often and at the high-est levels. Second, the IT organiza-tion must have the ability to quickly connect the dots across the enter-

prise and create targeted technology solutions efficiently. Finally, people are the core for successful technol-ogy transformation in organizations. IT is a people-centric affair. Attract-ing and motivating an exceptional IT workforce is the key to success.

During the last one year, can you elaborate on some of the IT innovations undertaken at DoT?We have been working on a number of innovative initiatives at DoT, like the Digital Transportation Exchange (DTE)—a strategic platform to connect citizens, businesses, state and local governments, industry, entrepreneurs, researchers, and investors though a public-private partnership like never before—by creating a thriving marketplace for technology transportation solu-tions. Think of it as a combination of a social network for transporta-tion innovation, a transportation technology incubator, an online marketplace to access innova-tive transportation solutions, and, finally, a mechanism to connect the transportation technology-related resources in the US. The DTE will promote economic growth and ef-fective, efficient government by cre-ating a nationwide virtual platform where private stakeholders can easily form partnerships to create new technology based solutions. We want to find sustainable ways to enable rapid innovation in Ameri-ca’s transportation community that engages the public in new ways.

Do you believe that Indian CIOs are now geared up for undertaking global roles?Absolutely! Indians have made remarkable strides in technology leadership globally—whether it is as CIOs, technology entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, or as a technol-ogy company CEOs!



Global CIo/bank of Ireland

Larry Kiernan is chief technology/information officer with the Bank of Ireland Group. Bank of Ireland (BoI) is a diversified Financial Services Group established in 1783 by a royal charter. In early 2010, Kiernan joined the bank and, as he defines, he is responsible for enabling technology strategy, developing technology delivery, and infrastructure and applica-tion service initiatives. Last year, BoI was in the headlines when under his leadership the bank chose IBM for a 5-year deal. As per this deal, IBM will manage the bank’s entire IT infrastruc-ture, which includes systems, servers, mainframes, local area networks, etc, apart from bringing innovation into the computer infrastructure to make it more scalable. Before joining BoI, Kiernan worked with Dell at various levels including as global VP for application, infra-structure, security, and services; global VP for technology engi-neering; CIO for EMEA; and CIO for APAC. In an interview with Dataquest Kiernan talks about challenges, new tech-nologies, innovative changes in banks, etc. Excerpts

‘BoI is looking forward to mobile channel actively’

—Larry Kiernan CTO/CIO, Bank of Ireland Group


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Since joining Bank of Ireland in 2008, what has been your agenda?In 2008, in the middle

of the financial crisis, I joined the bank. Although it was a difficult time to join, especially a bank, but also exciting as the bank was looking to change in a new world. The key message conveyed from the headquarters, which became the pri-ority pointer, was first understand-ing the cost agenda in technology rationalization and ensuring that the right thing was deployed at the right time to bring the maximum benefit.

Since the bank has been around for 200 years, hence the primary goal was all about spreading the legacy both globally and universally in new forms. Also, we were looking at using multiple resources systems and turning them into components for building up the entire stack of enterprise architecture.

Taking that agenda ahead, where have you reached so far? What are the major initiatives you are looking at?A few things that we looked at were transforming a federated IT organi-zation into a holistic IT organiza-tion, which served the bank and its vision. And it worked really well, as we were setting the priority from the IT perspective right across the bank. The world around is chang-ing, we see a significant amount of changes in regulatory aspect in financial transactions.

Currently, in the middle of these large transformational programs related to business payment and payment processing, we are also building a brand new online channel for transactions and businesses.

Similarly, we are building chan-nels of support to enhance the cus-tomer experience, since a customer talks to a bank through multiple channels—a branch, mobile, online banking, or a customer service center.

Can you elaborate on how you are building and enhancing these channels?Last year, we developed a consumer online banking channel and we wit-nessed high-traffic growth. Recently, we saw it growing not just in volume but also with time bringing in good customer experience.

We will be soon entering into the mobile channel space, which will be built upon an existing functional-ity that we put out there. We will explore the benefits and capabilities of NFC-enabled mobile devices, as and when NFC gains more accept-ance in the market.

You recently spoke at Nasscom Leadership Forum 2012, on what are customers looking for? An outside in perspective. What are your thoughts on the change with consumerism of IT?In my presentation I mentioned, while in the era of 1700s banking was about bank offices, today the services have moved and is avail-able through Web, ATM, branch net-works etc, and soon the banks will be in our pockets. With consumer-ism of IT, banks need to maintain 3 layers of IT internally. The bottom layers consisting of banking


Going forward, big data would be the key agenda for us because more and more people are now realizing the value of business intelligence and information that can help customers better

applications, ERP and the payment and transaction application; themiddle layer of big data analysis and the layer of integrating channels (like mobile devices, tablets, web, kiosks) on the top of it.

Unlike the European markets, the Indian market is very strict and regulation-driven. How do you make your IT scalable and agile in such a market?Yes, we follow a lot of regulations that help in defining the processes both internally and externally. For instance, regulatory changes around protection of customer data and Eu-ropean currency payment standards will change the present structure and introduce a standard way of doing business and recognizing customer value.

We are not only building new channels, but also integrating more channels with legacy systems.

What are your views about new technologies like cloud, mobility, big data, etc?Like every other organization, we are also looking at cloud. But it is probably not applicable in totality to the bank because of heavy regula-tions, the need for data protection, and security. From a private cloud perspective, cloud is not where you can put your core data; and a public cloud is out of the question.

Going forward, big data would be the key agenda for us, because more and more people are now realizing the value of business intelligence and information that can help cus-tomers better.

We need to consider data, un-structured or structured, coming from structure legacy data and the core systems, social media, and electronics that form major part of the business intelligence picture. This step will ensure better business.


Global CIo/Standard Chartered bank

How would you describe the challenges for the IT department with the rising use of social media?Social media is a growing phenomenon, the impact of which is still to be determined or fully understood. Currently, we have adopted a careful ap-

proach by restricting staff access to external social media sites in office premises using our network. This is due to the high degree of confidentiality that we owe to customers and clients and the need to ensure that data privacy is not compromised. However we have created internal social and collaborative networks, where staff can engage for business and other purposes such as organizing volunteering activities, etc.

We have deployed various security techniques to allow staff to use smartphones and iPads for business and personal use. We have achieved that by using ‘sandbox-ing’ techniques to separate access and ensure proper use of virtual private network and firewalls managed by security certificates. We are working hard to ensure that we strike the right balance of confidentiality and risk management, while allowing the us-ers to use their own or devices given by the bank when not in office premises.

What is your approach to social media with your customers?On the customer and client front, increasing efforts are being made to understand how social media can be leveraged for business purposes. Separating the hype around

—David Awcock, group head, technology, Standard Chartered Bank

Commencing his innings with Standard Chartered Bank in 1991, David Awcock, group head, technol-ogy, Standard Chartered Bank, has held responsibilities covering a wide range of technology needs across many business domains including consumer banking, commercial and institutional banking, and wholesale banking. He also led a major initiative to transform the bank’s core banking systems across more than 50 territories of the bank in rolling out a next-generation J2EE, Linux based system, in a multi-year program. Awcock is now responsible for all technology services across the bank globally and is engaged in taking the bank’s technology capabilities to the next level in support of the bank’s growth. In a tête-à-tête with Dataquest, Awcock highlights 2011 as seen from the IT mirror and his future plans. Excerpts

‘Our stance is not to follow ‘flavor of the season’ initiatives’

Expansive

reach

Leaders of industry, enterprise and the government are waiting

for the ultimate survey analysis of the communications industry.

Ensure that your brand is in it!

For more information, contact Gulnar Oberoi: [email protected]

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C OHandbook 2012

Global CIo/Standard Chartered bank

propositions around data and analyt-ics. We want to optimize the value of the structured data we hold currently and use that better, together with insights we can gather from the vast amounts of unstructured data that is available now, both internally and externally, to understand our customers and their needs better and provide more targeted products and services over time. We will also seek to manage this information better, reducing costs associated with data duplication and redundancy.

How would you describe the success of green IT and CSR initiatives at the bank?Our stance is not to follow ‘flavor of the season’ initiatives. Since many years, we have focused on ensur-ing our data centers are efficient whether that is through specific power initiatives or virtualization opportunities. We eliminated the use of paper by digitization and have also reduced the number of printing devices we use. When we consider initiatives, we take into considera-tion the context of the economics of the whole proposition and the opportunities particularly to do things without adversely impacting the environment or the societies in which we operate.

On the CSR front, we are very proud of the in-house system we have developed called ‘EOPs’. This is an initiative that is providing

local employment opportunities to around 40 women at a rural BPO in Masinagudi, Tamil Nadu, and has the potential to be used more widely crossing the borders of India. Es-sentially, it is a software system that anonymizes customer information completed on application forms, so that digitization through data entry can be done remotely and online by anyone with reasonable typing skills. It overcomes data confidentiality issues that previously forced us only to do this type of work in-house. The other benefit is that this system is not limited to financial services use and we are engaging with other parties to license the use of the soft-ware for use in other fields too. This system recently won a prestigious award—‘Social Innovation: Market Facing Innovation at Nasscom In-novation Awards 2012’.

Would you describe smart-phones as the flavor of the season?We don’t consider smartphones as the flavor of the season. They are here to stay. Our strategy can be traced back to 2009, when we decided to adopt the iPhone for internal use phasing out the use of BlackBerry. Today, we have more than 10,000 iPhones in use by staff and we have also enabled more than 3,000 iPads. We have built an internal ecosystem that allows us to provide our own app center where internal apps can be downloaded safely and securely and these apps cover a wide number of ‘on-the-go’ applications for the staff to use. We are adopting a similar approach with our customers for products and serv-ices we provide to them, but here we do cater to a wide variety of other smartphones. Although for apps and data use, iPhone is still the device to opt for, with other smartphones still to catch on our footprints.


Our strategy can be traced back to 2009, when we decided to adopt the iPhone for internal use phasing out the use of BlackBerry

social media, we are viewing it from a number of perspectives. First, we are trying to gather a better under-standing of customer opinion of the bank’s services and products and act on opinions, concerns, and grievances. Second, we see oppor-tunities to publicize, market, and build our brand, although again we have learnt from others’ attempts that this needs to be done with care. Third, we are seeking ways to leverage the medium to build our business over time by identifying opportunities and requirements that we can monetize— something that no one has yet done successfully in financial services.

Currently, we focus more on customer feedback aspects and have been running a pilot project in India. By monitoring the social networks for commentary about the bank, we are using software and analytical tools to analyze and direct comments to appropriate staff within the bank who can deal with issues directly, or who can use the data to draw inferences and conclusions that help us service our customers better. We want to use this information then, in a way that adds value for the bank to help our customers, and to build enduring relationships.

What are your learnings from 2011 and plans for 2012?In 2011, we continued with our long-term technology strategy of providing cost-effective services for the bank that helped us provide a better customer experience, ena-bling us to be different, and achieve competitive advantage. Overall, as a bank, we have outperformed with record results for 9 years consecu-tively. We have invested consistently in technology during this period and we consider that this investment has helped to underpin and shape our good performance.

One stronger focus area in 2012 will be to seek to build better value


Leadership/dhiren savLa

In large organizations, IT is one of the few functions that run across enterprises and geographies as a common thread. With the world getting closer and smaller, it is imperative to

have a collective and collaborative thought leadership running across the length and breadth of the enterprise.

This leadership council has been in existence for some other functions like sales, marketing, and even HR for years now. With IT becoming an integral part of the businesses and enterprises looking at more and more co-sourcing, IT became an immediate candidate for this.

A typical and successful approach to formation of IT leadership council includes—

n Limited set of people for strategy and future out-look—the execution team is not part of this council

n Right representation of functions—IT operations, IT PMO, business IT, IT finance to name a few

n Balanced representation of businesses, geogra-phies, regions or markets—one individual can represent a set of similar businesses or a cluster of regions

n It’s a peer group council where the chair is moderator but not the leader

While an IT leadership council is formed, the objective is to—

n Define the IT roadmap and strategy for the enterprise

n Deliberate and give global view to the business strategy, aligning for execution

n Peer-learning platform—learn from others who have done this before and shorten timelines/increase success chances

n Governance board for large initiatives and investments

n Council defines, measures and analyzes KPIs for the function

n Platform to exercise ‘Think global, do local’— without missing the global big picture, the leadership council to ensure ability to leverage local strengths and deliver local needs

Across industries, the approach might change depend-ing on size, complexity, and diversity in the organization.

Interestingly, even the approach for clubbing of roles has changed; in the beginning of this century, most large corporations would have a regional approach. And, Asia used to be the subset of some region. The other approach which has gained momentum is dividing the world in emerging/growth market and matured market. This is having direct implication on the IT thought proc-ess and approach as needs might change completely. What matured markets have learnt few decades back could be learnt by the market, which is undergoing the growth phase without taking few decades to learn.

It’s interesting to observe that when cross-border IT leadership discusses business and IT challenges, most of them are identical, just represented differently. With knowledge, expertise, and most importantly, idea shar-ing, this leadership council can work wonders.

There are some cases in the industry wherein IT leadership council has been created across multiple en-

‘IT has become integral and led to the formation of an IT Leadership Council’

—Dhiren Savla, chief information officer, VFS GLOBAL


C OHandbook 2012

terprises in the same business—retail, banking, etc, are some of the good and successful examples for the same.

I have been part of the leadership council on more than one occasion.

In one case, I represented Asia Pacific excluding Ja-pan and the learning from those forums was enormous:

n Processes, methodologies, guidelines, and report-ing changed complete approach to the large project/pro-gram management

n That time, India was still in its early stage of growth so we were more like minnows However colleagues from the council reciprocated the same respect and there was learning from the Indian/Asian approach too. Some takeaways were outsourcing, off-shore development, ability to work within constraints, to name a few.

In another case, I represented South Asia for a company having diversified business interests and this region being the focus market. The biggest leverage from this council could be summed up as—

n Talent transfer program which was hugely successfuln Usage of global technology platformsn Outsourcing of some ‘business’ activities to this

region which also helped in doing more business and actually creating new products

In one case, we created extremely effective and agile global IT leadership council having very diverse set of representations. This council went through several iterations to achieve maturity and the required effectiveness:

n In an early stage, a large group comprising more of the central team alongwith some local representation

n This changed with clear representation for each spe-cific function from the central team—procurement and controlling, PMO, COE, GRC, and cluster representation from countries. Team size reduced by less than half.

n In the next stage, central functions were clubbed and local representation was market/region/business driven. This turned out to be very effective.

n As the council matured, the council composition was reduced to a handful of key people wherein individ-uals represented the region or a line of business for the world; shared functions were clubbed under one leader and each leader took additional responsibility of one or the other roles like PMO, COE, GRC, contracting, etc.

This approach made working very effective as it was a group of seniormost leaders who were responsible for the today and tomorrows of the business. Also, they got the right representation in the business leadership councils too. In other words, it became the think-tank for IT, which delivers business goals through IT translat-ing business strategy into IT strategy.

In another case, IT was the enabler and the differ-entiator for a particular business having an extremely

diverse set-up. Interestingly, business IT delivery was done from the central center of excellence (COE). For fast growing business it was important to create a global council with explicit focus on some key areas, namely:

n Focus on supporting current diversified operationsn Focus on growth of the current businessn Explicit focus on internal systems, controls,

and processesn Project management officen Governance, risk, and compliancen Pre-sales support for business and solutionn Diversification of businessn Focus on research & development using new edge

technology and application of the samen Addressing regional diversityn Creating shared service pool for support

and operationsn Global contractingWhen we state this, it may sound simple but while

we try to weave the leadership council around this diverse set of deliveries with one common objective, it does get really challenging.

It was important to have the right mix of leadership in building this council. Some of the key constituents were—

n Key leader responsible for IT deliveryn Key leader responsible for global contractingn Key leader focusing on internal enterprise—a

typical corporate rolen Leader having expertise in the future technologiesn Champion responsible for enterprise-wide

governance, risk and compliancen Regional leaders mapped with the business

operations structuren Subject matter champion supporting the future

and diversificationn Common shared service team leadership delivering

value for all of the above functionsCollaborative working with this diverse set of person-

nel ensures 360-degree view for various topics. It gives stimulating environment wherein ideas get profession-ally challenged and a completely different perspective is given for the situation or solution.

As we talk about all of these, it re-emphasizes the importance of a global platform like leadership council, forum, board, or committee for critical functions like IT.

In my view, some of the future trends might include leadership councils across enterprises, councils across industries, council having representations from business leaders (invitees).

In the coming years, platforms like this will only get larger role and importance in the enterprise. Yes! Com-position or objectives might keep changing.

[email protected]


Leadership/arun Gupta

We live in uncertain times with everyday bringing new challenges and opportunities for every business and

individual. Progressive and globally networked enterprises seek interventions across the company to overcome the challenges and leverage the opportunities. Change is perpetrated by organizations based on many internal interdependencies as well as industry dynamics. It would be foolish to believe that the CIO is central to such initiatives; neither is it fair to say that s/he is removed from the focus. Thus

‘The innovation agenda for the IT team and the CIO is everchanging while business as usual continues to see increased complexity’

—Arun Gupta, group CIO, Shoppers Stop


C OHandbook 2012

the innovation agenda for the IT team and the CIO is everchanging while business as usual continues to see increased complexity.

Adaptive leadership has been the hallmark of suc-cess in the c-suite; CEOs have steered companies through peaks and troughs of economic uncertainty, geo-political risk, and consumer sentiment. Darwin’s theory of evolution applies equally well to an enterprise, the way he predicted for species. The last decade or so has demonstrated this with conviction. Like all other lead-ers, the CIO had to adapt to these ecosystem changes as well as manage the fast-paced evolution of technology that posed new challenges and opportunities.

It is rare to hear (at least I have not heard of even one) of a CIO whose action or inaction caused a com-pany to file for bankruptcy; on the contrary in recent times the CIO has gained position of prominence in many companies. Even then never a day passes when someone is not discussing the CIO agenda; interestingly, the people debating the subject are not CIOs exchanging notes with each other but journalists, research houses, IT and management consultants, academia, IT compa-nies, all of them voicing their concern and opinion on what the CIO should be up to. The hype thus generated would dislodge even the strong and determined.

After the slowdown or recession depending on which part of the world you belong to, recovery, and once again uncertainty, the CIO has achieved optimized proc-esses and operations not just in IT but also across the business leaving little to optimize again within opera-tions and processes. The cycles of the early part of the century and the last one have already taken the flab out, reduced overheads and shortened processes.

Tools and technologies aided the journey with workflow, BPM, etc, which are now an integral part of most standard packaged solutions from ERP, CRM, and similar systems. Doing more with less has remained the mantra over the last decade or so, evolving technology trends and reducing price points have helped the CIO continue to deliver to this promise. I would guess that there would be very few organizations standing who did not leverage the opportunity.

So when I started looking around and asking CIOs about their agenda, everyone talked about the cloud, everything as a service, and a lot more which are there as multiple lists for everyone to see. Stringing all of these together into an action plan, it was evident that the CIO needs to continuously review the business con-text and weave in technology to drive agility. In simple English it would mean: grab opportunities quickly and do something about it.

Competitive difference is not long term anymore, it is in months at best; the early mover advantage or first

to market matters more than ever. So IT is expected to shorten timelines from concept to execution. CIOs can-not spend too much time in debating the merits and pit-falls arising out of any initiative. One of the big changes for the enterprise is the acceptance that it is okay to go with a semi-finished product; 80% is good enough to get started and make hay while the sun is shining.

Coming back to doing more with less, or the lament around constrained budgets, risk-averse nature of prevalent organization culture; yes, these are realities and we have to work around or despite them. Many CIOs confessed hidden or buffered budgets that provided some latitude; a few convinced the vendors to invest in quick and dirty solutions with a promise of rosy future contingent on success. My observation has been that most vendors would be happy to oblige if it results in business.

A small number of CIOs had no struggle at all whatsoever; they either got their budgets the legitimate way by talking with their CEOs or CFOs to fund tactical projects that did not exist during the budgeting cycle. For them, contextual agility is normal and a way of life. There was also a category which did nothing. Nothing as in letting the opportunity pass by; they had already convinced themselves of the futility of attempt. After stretching for a long time, the rubber band had broken.

Given lean IT organizations, such tactical forays into uncharted waters puts pressure on the existing team and stretched resources. It creates a risk to operations or takes away attention from already defined and commit-ted priorities. The adverse impact, if at all, needs ag-gressive management to ensure that the new initiatives deliver. Occasionally reprioritization is the answer; but who should decide what to continue with and what goes off the list?

I believe that this remains one of the contentious issues that every organization faces and can have severe political repercussions. The CIO is expected to have enough elasticity to provide for such new initiatives. However if something has to fall off, then the govern-ance process has to be strong to manage fallouts. Ide-ally, the IT governance committee or the CEO should take the call. The CIO should hazard this only if s/he has strong support and is able to stand firm.

All this may sound like a normal day at work to some; a normal day with multiple conflicting priorities demanding attention while the work-life balance seems to be a long forgotten phrase. The future may be easier on the nerves or it may impose new challenges; one thing is certain that it will never be a dull day for the CIO; after all change is the only constant.

[email protected]


C OHandbook 2012

Leadership/aLpna J doshi

[email protected]

things, for different reasons, at different times in their lives. And finally, we need to rethink the workplace in response to those differences. Increasingly, employers are realizing that they can be more flexible.

That they can root out the invisible barriers that poison careers like so much toxic gas. And as employ-ers like Reliance create new and innovative ways to offer women more choices, and better choices, they’re finding a huge reservoir of untapped talent. Plugging the dripping pipeline isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s the smart thing to do.

There’s no question that balancing work and family is still particularly hard on women.

Regardless of whether they have paying jobs, women still spend significantly more time taking care of the kids and managing the household than the men in their lives.

While women no longer feel that they have to hide their families, they still fight the realities—and the as-sumptions—that come with motherhood. They are wait-ing for the connection between gender and parenting to be broken. Domestic burdens are not the only reason the pipeline drips.

Hidden barriers, particularly at the highest levels, also block women’s paths. Studies show that when they quit corporate jobs, women cite lack of opportunity and general dissatisfaction—not family responsibility—as the main reasons.

I am proud to be working for Reliance, an equal op-portunity employer, which cherishes women on top. We women need more such companies to reach to the top.

We have realized that while the firms are hiring equal numbers of men and women out of college, 10 years later most of the women would have gone.

A few years ago, the Harvard Business Review gener-ated a lot of attention with a study called Off Ramps and On Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Suc-cess. The survey of mid-career women who held gradu-ate degrees or college degrees with honors found that 37% had taken extended breaks from work, stepping off the fast track, on average, for a little over 2 years. Most of them wanted to return to work, but less than half could find full-time jobs. The old idea was, all you needed to do was fill the pipeline with women and wait around for a couple of decades for them to move through the ranks. But there’s an enormous amount of seepage from the pipeline—once women off-ramp for even a short while, it’s incredibly difficult to get back in.

A few initiatives that could help to break the glass ceiling are: Training, mentoring, advisory, support groups, and leadership development. This could be cou-pled with policies and programs that will enable women in the long run to crack this so-called glass ceiling.

‘We women need more such (equal opportunities) companies to reach the top’

—Alpna J Doshi, CIO, Reliance Communications

Women are consensus builders. They really do look for different ways to resolve things. They are innovative and creative thinkers. And they do act on instinct and

intuition. In any number of professions—law, medicine, IT, business—equal or nearly equal numbers of men and women were hired out of college or grad school. But over time, the women seemed to disappear, a trend that has continued over the last couple of decades. This raises some serious questions:

Why are women still so scarce at the highest levels? Even though more and more women are entering the ‘pipeline’—being hired into entry-level positions in a wide variety of fields—why are so few still making it to the top? Why does the pipeline drip? There’s no simple answer. Some of the reasons are obvious: Balancing big jobs with small children is still a challenge.

Others are more insidious: Women are locked out of the informal networks where important business gets done. We also have to recognize that men and women often want different things—women want different


C OHandbook 2012

Case study/Ites

Creating Mobile Mindset

At SAP India, the challenge was to enable consumer devices with an enterprise set-up to offer

productive real-time applications to employees on the move. The last two years have been an exciting journey as the company internally embraced major technological changes—big data, cloud computing, business intelligence, and particularly consumerization of IT.

The objective was to use IT at a strategic level for business enable-ment and also as a strategic function that would showcase our businesses and also serve as a reference point for our customers,” says Anil Khatri, head (South Asia), global IT-client technology and field IT, SAP India.

Consuming ITIn fact, consumerism of IT was not an alien concept for SAP, it being one of the early adopters. The theme was ‘SAP runs SAP’ story. Globally, SAP currently runs around 14,000 iPads, 8,000 iPhones, and around 20,000 BlackBerry phones. The Indian story too is not very different from the glo-bal picture. Currently, SAP India in-

To enable a laptop-free world, SAP India has embraced mobility with solutions for conducting business in real-time and to access data anytime, anywhere

ternally is running 1,200 BlackBerry phones, 600 iPads, and 200 iPhones. To manage all of these devices, which obviously is a dynamically changing number, was tough.

Khatri goes on to elaborate, “We have a product called Afaria which was acquired with the Sybase inte-gration. Afaria is the industry’s lead-ing mobile device management and security solution for the enterprise. Afaria provides you with a single administrative console to centrally manage, secure, and deploy mobile data, applications, and devices. It helps to manage multiple mobile devices, giving us a vital and critical tool to think of enterprise mobility.”

The objective was to empower the sales and marketing teams with data anytime, anywhere. For Khatri, the hurdle was to create the mobile mindset in the employees but at the same time be device-agnostic. A mobility device gives the sales force the power in their hands to do busi-ness in real-time.

The RolloutAnother major issue for Khatri and his team was mapping these consumer-centric devices to an enterprise network. “Before this no one has ever experimented with these devices to be used in enter-prises like sourcing patch updates (which had to be sourced from the manufacturers) which were required when these were being imbibed in a corporate set-up,” says Khatri.

Having started in late 2010, the company took it up in an aggressive manner only in 2011 by pushing for this. The customer-facing teams were

also opened up for doing approvals on the fly, access CRM database, and also key in the upcoming business opportunities. “The teams can also do customized demos for the cus-tomer, do office productive work like drafting and sending mails and grant-ing approvals for travel requests, bill payments, etc,” adds Khatri.

No Compromises with SecurityKhatri emphasizes that despite all of this, security was never compromised. “We ensured that all this was done in a secured fashion,” says Khatri.

The company has stringent security policies in place. “We have password policies like the PGP—a security software—which is installed on these devices for mail encryption.”

In case the device gets lost or stolen, the device can be locked and remotely wipe out all data. Encouraged by the response that the initiative has generated, Khatri obviously will be embracing more devices, but in a controlled manner. Hence he and his team are working with manufacturers and the focus is to enable more productive applica-tions. Khatri envisions a day when the laptop will be replaced by a mobile device.


Key Takeawaysn It’s now possible to provide

customized demos for customers, do office productive work like drafting and sending mails and granting approvals for travel requests, bill payments, etc

n Password policies like PGP—a security software—is installed on mobile devices for mail encryption


C OHandbook 2012

Case study/Banking

The Genius of Cloud

Very few would know that Shamrao Vithal Co-operative Bank (SVC), one of the leading

co-operative banks is not only known for its growth but also for growing with technology. The bank groomed its internal IT department to develop its own in-house, 3-tier architecture based banking solution on a distributed database called ‘Genius I’ to provide a single window solution for all banking products required by its customers. It has its own core banking solution. And this is now available to more

SVC now has a platform that can run its core banking system GENIUS for the bank and customers over the cloud

than 30 other banks as well. Riding on the technology growth, the bank soon grew into a wide network encompassing 115 branches.

Boasting of a sophisticated IT department headed by Ravikiran Mankikar as the general manager, who is responsible for looking at both technology and the business of technology. The bank has formed a robust architecture of security at all the levels right from the net-work to application, database to the user level. At present, Mankikar is busy building a 3-tier data center at Thane, to support internal and

external needs. Apart from the latest and perhaps the most signifi-cant implementation, was bringing standardization and automation in the entire architecture along with adopting virtualization.

The bank is using the VMware solution for virtualization across 2 bunches. In the first it used 3 servers supporting about 20 virtual machines that run the head office applications. In the second bunch, the bank uses a cluster of 6 servers that would support around 15 virtual machines running the core banking application, which is used by about 1,000 employees. With the help of the new infrastructure the bank could bring down the total number of physical servers from 90 to 9.

One of the most critical functions to be derived from the implemen-tation was to have a platform that could run the core banking system GENIUS for the bank and for the customers and that it could be delivered over the cloud or managed service to other banking and finan-cial institutions. This is already in the process to be offered to around 25 banks.


Key Takeawaysn Using the VMware solution

for virtualization across 2 bunches

n With the help of the new infrastructure, SVC could bring down the total number of physical servers from 90 to 9

n SVC now runs its Core Banking System GENIUS over the cloud


C OHandbook 2012

Case study/automobile

A Cutting-edge Solution

Chakan based Mahindra Vehicle Manufacturers (MVML) is a manufacturing hub for

heavy and light commercial vehicles, SUVs, pick-up vehicles, and 4-wheeler vehicles for domestic and export business. Spread across a 700-acre campus, MVML currently has 14 major shops in its phase I while it plans to add additional 20+ shops in phase II.

The InfrastructureLike any large manufacturing hub, the IT infrastructure at MVML too was developed with high redundancy for catering to overall business requirements and provid-ing resource availability to critical business applications.

The architecture and the solution currently deployed was selected to cater to the future requirements.

Copper cables were replaced by fiber cables in the server consolida-tion stage. By operating a virtualized

To make infrastructure open and scalable for handling future growth, the IT team at MVML devised an out-of-the-box solution

environment (VMware) on the server end, MVML thereby reduces physi-cal hardware and saves power, space, green gases, and cost.

Crossing the HurdleThanks to the expo-nential increase of data usage per annum, the IT team was expected to struggle with an explosive data growth; this was compounded by the need to ensure data security, accuracy,

and availability from the compliance viewpoint.

Meanwhile, the infrastructure has to be open and scalable for handling the future growth; hosting of critical repository servers for each shop; high efficiency of servers and ap-plications; and managing the storage space requirement for hosting new services on the fly.

The SolutionThe manufacturing process was de-signed to run on an automated mode using the Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), which would ride on the IT backbone across 14 shops. The applications rollout for this de-manded 40 physical servers to host the whole gamut of process control systems.

Therefore the IT team devised an out-of-the-box solution with an inno-vative approach. “We consolidated the requirement and virtualized everything, thereby reducing it to 6 physical servers on the VM platform

which was thereafter hosted on a storage box resulting in a saving of `2 crore,” beams proudly Venka-takrishnan. To support the design, Hitachi Adaptable Modular Storage (AMS) was chosen to blend with the overall architecture.

“We selected this platform keeping in mind the long-term strategy, so that there will be no need to change the architecture. All applications that were running decentralized, got consolidated to a single platform; we also migrated data to the current platform keeping in mind the future requirements,” says Venkatakrishnan.

MVML deployed AMS 2100 for its mission-critical ‘Factory Automation’ application. In its deployment landscape, MVML includes multiple virtual servers on very few scalable physical servers. Storage is provisioned from AMS 2100 using iSCSI interface. Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning software provides thin provisioning capabili-ties and also delivers the required performance through wide-strip-ping data across all the disks in the designated pool.

In addition, Hitachi In-System Replication software bundle assists MVML in creating quick snapshots of production data for development and testing purposes.


Key Takeawaysn To support the future

growth, MVML chose a solution based on Hitachi modular storage with virtualization and a replication software

n Saved `2 crore on hardware procurement

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C OHandbook 2012

Case study/InsuranCe

India-first Always

With its launch in 2010, IndiaFirst Life Insurance became one of the youngest

life insurance companies in India. The insurance company is a joint effort of Bank of Baroda (44% stake), Andhra Bank (30% stake), and Legal and General (26% stake). The insurance newcomer initially focused on the bancassurance model and leveraged on the existing branch network of over 4,800 branches of its promoter banks across the country. A combination of domain expertise, customer knowledge, product innovation, and nationwide enabled them to cross the mark of `900 crore in new business premium. This was done within 500 days of its operations and the insurance company covered more than 1.2 mn lives across more than 1,000 cities and towns in India. The company intends to become a life insurance and pension business leader in providing significant value for all stakeholders through true customer delight.

In its pursuit to make the best use of its infrastructure, IndiaFirst Life Insurance made the right move—to virtualization

Even though a new entrant in the market, the IT department was faced with significant challenges in relation to server utilization. There was a need felt to improve the utilization of server resources because each server hosted just one application or database, thus result-ing in low server utilization. Being a new entrant in the market, in the early days handling such scenarios would mean a smooth road ahead in the future. There was also a need to reduce the provisioning time for new servers and applications; and im-prove manageability of data centers. But the bigger need was to reduce capital and operating expenditures.

The SolutionThe company has a primary data center at Mumbai and secondary at Hyderabad. Currently, User Accept-ance Testing (UAT) and develop-ment environments are virtualized using VMware ESX 4.0, while the production environment is virtual-ized using VMware ESXi. VMware software operates on IBM Blade-

Center HX5 servers, with 7 physical servers hosting 80 virtual servers. Prior to virtualization, 80 physical servers hosted one application each, but virtualization led to servers be-ing freed owing to server consolida-tion and hosting of critical applica-tions in the production environment. The virtualized infrastructure sup-ports both critical and non-critical applications, such as CRM, SRMS, and call center applications.

A pilot project deployed VMware server virtualization in the UAT and development systems where 50 virtual servers were hosted on live physical servers to evaluate virtu-alization benefits. These benefits included improved server utiliza-tion, shortened server provisioning time, and lower power consumption. Once UAT and development systems performed successfully in the virtu-alized environment, the production systems were migrated to a virtual-ized environment.

The benefits of consolidating servers in a virtualized environment have been a driver for the compa-ny’s IT team to plan towards con-solidating their databases (Oracle, SQL, and MySQL) in a virtualized environment. The company foresees tremendous savings in server costs with this consolidation.


Key Takeawaysn Significant improvement in

CPU and server utilizationn Savings in server

procurement costs led to savings in capital expenditure

n Reduction in provisioning time for servers and new applications

CASE STUDY/EnginEEring


C OHandbook 2012

Constructive Alliance

With its beginnings in the construction industry, later diversifying into

retail, manufacturing, and services, the mammoth Essar Group, which is around $15 bn in revenues and has 70,000 employees spread across 20 countries, touches many verticals like energy, steel, infrastructure, services, and many more.

With reference to the Engineer-ing Procurement and Construction (EPC) business, the vertical saw many developments from the IT perspective. Under the leadership of CN Ram, group CIO, the vertical designed its own power plant, and built right from conveyor belt to pil-ers, storage to plain track, etc.

The IT roadmap was about bringing standardization of processes with Standardize IT VM practices

Creating a RoadmapFor a multi-product company like Essar, the IT roadmap was about bringing standardization of proc-esses with Standardize IT value management (VM) practices. The first touchpoint being the low-hang-ing fruit-like finance and accounting, vendor master and material master, etc. Another implementation in the loop was adopting desktop virtualiza-tion with a thin client across all the employees (up to 70,000) to benefit from easier maintenance, low power, security, and the ease of testing any new version of OS/applications and rolling all in the PC together.

The rationale was to make the vendors and partners business more visible, and use this information for

analyzing the relationship, depth, and longevity of the partnerships, which could help in negotiating accordingly. Simultaneously, the above-stated step will improve the supply chain, raw material, and system based planning.

Also, since Essar uses SAP across all systems, they found it easier to modify intersections and easy to lay MIS at various levels from operational level to technol-ogy level. It’s a long-term process, like a journey of ultimate standard process/protocol across, while its planning and implementation started around across the group in mid-2010.

Putting in OrderRam wanted to create a strong link between business value creation and IT investments. In other words, spend money more wisely with value to fetch at least two times benefits from an implementation.

The major challenge in the process was to put a lot of things in order—attitude of people, bring technology to the forefront, and making IT a strategic tool. They established a team at the main IT level to deploy VM approach for the pilot projects.


Key Takeawaysn Adopted desktop

virtualization with a thin clientn Making the business of

vendors and partners more visiblen Essar uses SAP across all

systems, thus easier to modify intersections, laying MIS from operational level to technology level


C OHandbook 2012

Case study/e-CommerCe

Technology—The Differentiator

E-commerce players have been experimenting with new business models to exploit the newly

emerged (not actually new but exciting) business opportunity. The mydala.com management has been very focused in developing a strong technological backbone, which is scalable as well as agile.

Technological Architecturemydala.com’s IT team designed the entire architecture in FACADE model or an open API highly scal-able structure, which allowed them to integrate with other websites rapidly without needing to do any new programming. The company de-ployed LAMP and PIWIK, free open source web analytics systems.

So mydala.com, a discounted deals website, realized that it needs

Use of advanced technology turns out to be the only point of differentiation between the loads of e-commerce companies in the marketplace

to be accessible to its any and every customer as per their location. The company, in March-April 2011, did many technology deployments including the launch of mobile plat-form, varnish tools for reverse proxy technique, and few open-source platforms like Google Maps and ty-ing up with MapmyIndia.

The company launched India’s first WAP site and BlackBerry app for group buying. This entire framework has been built with a common code base and a single complete platform. Therefore, these latest deployments ensured better understanding of the preferences of the users and targeting of right users at the right time with specific deals that they are likely to be interested in, instead of sending all deals to all the users.

“We grew faster than our anticipa-tion,” chuckles Ashish Bhatnagar,

chief technology officer, mydala.com. “Initially, scalability was a challenge. So, we deployed 2 more dedicated servers in addition to 4 on cloud. Another challenge was the smooth-ness in transactions at user-end, so we deployed safety and security tools from Red Hat,”adds Bhatnagar.

Benefitsmydala’s cloud based server archi-tecture also has used performance booster tools like varnish HTTP accelerator, PHP accelerators, Mem-cache, etc, along with DB caching tools and running DB in memory. This, in turn, aided the company to scale up fast to handle more than 3-4 mn monthly unique visitors, currently with a page load time of 3 seconds and 99.5% uptime.

“Now, I am able to handle 1,800 PCs in comparison to 700 PCs before these deployments,” adds Bhatnagar. Again, using open-source framework, mydala.com has also launched its innovative ‘Deal Hunter’ offering that allows users to search for deals in the locations where they want and the system is highly scalable. In the first month of launch, we received more than 10 lakh searches.

To target a wider user base, the company will soon launch their iPhone and Android apps.

RUKHSAR [email protected]

Key Takeawaysn IT team is able to handle

more than twice the number of PCs, after the deployment

n We are able to provide only location and preference specific deals


C OHandbook 2012

Case study/HigHer eduCation

A Virtual Experiment

Management Development Institute (MDI), Gurgaon, experimented with

deploying virtual classes technology for one of its program. The objective behind this deployment was to create a classroom experience for students attending classes from multiple locations away from the campus. Hence a typical classroom would have 4 multiple locations including MDI. Around 5-15 students would be at MDI location and one student each at multiple locations.

The institute was looking for a solution that could fit the following requirements:

n Not just one-way communication but many-to-many communication. Therefore broadcasting of communi-cation was needed. Also, whenever in a class, a student wanted to commu-nicate anything, it should be commu-nicated to all. Students spread across multiple locations can communicate with each other and simultaneously everyone can hear and add to the communication.

MDI’s objective to provide a classroom environment at multiple locations through technology was not easy, but the integration of audio and video solutions helped

n Sharing of presentation by students as well as faculty.

n Videoconferencing for off-site students to see faculty and in-class students and vice versa to create a face-to-face classroom experience.

In order to address the above challenges, MDI deployed the fol-lowing technologies:

n Cisco WebEx Software: This cost-effective solution is available as a service based on number of licenses on monthly subscription basis. However MDI wanted to in-clude a videoconferencing solution for the classes.

n People Link Videoconfer-encing Solution: People Link PVCS Pro is a PC based desktop videoconferencing. With this tech-nology, we were able to implement the most advanced video technology for viewing both meeting partici-pants as well as data collaboration, including live sharing of PPTs, docs, excel sheets, and video files, informs Sangeeta Shah Bharadwaj, associate professor, Information Management and chairperson, Computer Center. Its audio system provided an in-built echo cancella-tion, background noise suppression, and is highly resilient to network errors common on the internet.

The experience with technology adoption has been a mixed one for the institute. It was realized that the classroom arrangement is not same as the round-table arrangement for meetings. Proper number of speak-ers had to be arranged for captur-ing the communication from all the students and broadcasting the

communication to all.It was very convenient for the

students who were off-site, they did not have to travel to MDI for attend-ing the classes, especially when students connected for classes from all over India and Singapore. Off-site students just needed a laptop with a webcam and internet con-nectivity to connect. Thus, except for connectivity challenges at their end, MDI did not face many issues. “Although we faced challenges in training the faculty in adapting to the new technology,” adds Bharad-waj. The faculty felt restrained in their movement in the class with this new technology.

ChallengesAt times continuously engaging the off-site participants was also a challenge. It is very difficult to replace a real-time classroom with a virtual technology, especially when it addresses management education which is very discussion oriented and interactive. All the participants are active members; always eager to share their thoughts. Thus manag-ing the same through technology intervention takes the steam away from discussions.


Key Takeawaysn Not just want one-way

communication but many-to-many communications can happen from multiple locations simultaneously

n Classroom environment is created at multiple locations and discussions can also take place smoothly


C OHandbook 2012

Case study/travel

Seeing Through the Third Eye

VFS Global is a subsidiary of Kuoni Group, a 104-year-old Swiss technology and services firm. It

started 10 years back in 2001 as an operation center and visa application center, but now has presence in more than 520 countries. It started the journey as a document collection and data creation firm for visa applications, and soon expanded its portfolio by providing digitization of documents, biometrics, banking, verification, etc.

The company had also operated a proper front-office for visa applica-tions, unlike a typical BPO operation. One of the recent rollouts has been for the Spanish government. It is delivering biometric solution for the

VFS and Capgemini joined hands to launch a special project—Third Eye

government which include hardware, software, and verification of multiple applications.

The key parameter or differentiat-ing factor has been trust, technique, and technology. And their perform-ance was measured on the time taken for end-to-end process.

Around couple of years back, VFS Global partnered with Capgemini. They wanted to revamp the applica-tion portfolio in order to work on a better time-to-market. With this partnership, the overall rollout time came down by 60%.

They (VFS and Capgemini) worked together on many initiatives. Around 12-18 months back, they set-up special project called ‘Third Eye’, under which there’s a command

center in Mumbai, connected to 18 call centers in multiple geographies providing support to more than 50 languages. The idea is to introduce a mechanism to perform quality check right from the command center.

Second initiative is to set-up a global security operation center for applications and lastly, to work on a solution for proving biometric, border management, and border control. They also worked on a mechanism to capture the voice of applicant and the customers (government).

While VFS has outsourced its call center operations and day-to-day IT maintenance to other service provid-ers, it partnered with Capgemini to work on productization, software application development and support, and also new lines of business.

With regards to this partner-ship, VFS received the ‘Capgemini Leadership Award’ for innovation. The solution created has helped in diplomatic missions automate the visa application processes, and bring security and monitoring services for fraud management and control.


Key Takeawaysn Set-up ‘Third Eye’ for quality

check from Mumbai command center, connected to 18 call centers and providing support to more than 50 languages

n A global security operation center set-up for applications and working on a solution for proving biometric, border management, and border control

n Worked on a mechanism to capture voice of applicant and the customers (government)

Source: freedigitalphotos


C OHandbook 2012

Case study/Retail

Virtualization and Cloud

Future Group is a leading name in retail with famous brands like Pantaloon and Big Bazaar

attached to it. The group employs 30,000 staff and operates in brand development, consumer finance, capital, insurance, leisure and entertainment, logistics, retail-real estate development and retail-media, and many more.

The retail major wanted to reduce its server stock numbering more than 100 physical servers from its data center, which was brought and set up around October 2008, and build a scalable architecture that would support the growing user numbers, new applications, and product development.

The DecisionLast year, Future Group partnered with VMware to deploy a virtualized

Future Group’s experimentation with cloud has fetched benefits in terms of cost and performance

infrastructure with VMware vSphere and VMware ESXi running on Sun servers. Like every organization, virtualization was their first step to cloud and they were finally aboard.

This helped the Group host multiple programs on the cloud like Point of Sale (PoS), customer loyalty program, gift voucher, floor planning, human resources systems, etc. It was about building differentiation from the competi-tion. But what was different here was the ease of the entire move-ment on the cloud.

According to Parakh Dave, chief information officer and chief technical officer, Future Group, the company worked very differently from any other organization, where the IT initiatives were very closely aligned with the business needs. Hence the company did not take the generic approach while moving from

physical to virtual to cloud, to keep a complete control over the process and avoid any technical and up-time challenge. The company opted for a hybrid model with both private and public clouds in play.

BenefitsA lot of problem fixation was done at the proof-of-concept stage with VMware server virtualization. Un-der this, the team first provisioned multiple virtual machines with a pair of physical servers running VMware vSphere. According to the company, this test was focused on evaluating the performance of the virtual infrastructure while deliver-ing business-critical applications like point-of-sale and customer loyalty program.

The immediate results came largely in terms of performance and energy. The average server CPU utilization went up from 10% to 40%. And the power consumption came down by up to 25 kVA. Also, intangible and long-term benefits were from the customer satisfaction, efficient workflow, and retail management.


Key Takeawaysn Partnered with VMware to

deploy a virtualized infrastructure with VMware vSphere and VMware ESXi running on Sun servers

n Helped the Group host multiple programs on the cloud like PoS, customer loyalty program, gift voucher, floor planning, and HR systems for differentiation from competition

photobucket.com


C OHandbook 2012

Case study/textiles

Drape and TradeMadura Fashion & Lifestyle managed to save `24 lakh per annum after migrating data to the IBM XIV Storage


Key Takeawaysn Consolidation of key

application data onto XIV Storage System

n Saving of storage capacity using thin provisioned volumes

n Scalable grid based architecture

n Streamlining of backup using XIV snapshots’ integration with Tivoli FlashCopy Manager which reduced downtime on production system

Madura Fashion & Lifestyle has the largest network in the apparel industry

in India, with a presence in over 1,500 multi-brand outlets and over 300 shop-in-shops across 125 department stores in India.

The Storage ChallengeAs Madura F&L began adding various brands to its portfolio, it was dependent on varied applications and database, on multiple storage sub-systems. Business applications like SAP, Oracle Retek for retail, and document management systems data were stored in separate SAN storage systems. This resulted in creating in-formation silos across the enterprise.

Data back-up was taking much longer and add to it the challenge of managing a mixed environment. Therefore the company expanded their back-up capacity, leading to significant increase in their operat-ing costs. Madura now needed a new, long-term storage strategy.

The Solution: XIV Storage SystemMadura F&L chose IBM XIV Storage System with 27TB usable

capacity. This storage system was connected with all the ERP and supporting applications, which are hosted across hardware platforms including the power series, Wintel X platform, and Sun Sparc.

Assisted by IBM’s hardware implementation team, Madura F&L migrated the production environment onto the XIV Storage System and integrated it with the existing server infrastructure. The entire project ranging from installation to nearly 20TB of production data migration was completed in just 75 days. A migration plan was put in place to ensure minimum disruption to the business.

XIV Storage offered a higher asset utilization rate, improved response time, and accelerated storage provisioning for new ap-plications. Using thin provisioning feature of XIV, the team was able to free up storage space, which was earlier locked due to over-provi-sioning.

During their pre-sales engage-ment with IBM, Madura ensured all issues and risks of migration were well documented.

The BenefitsThe XIV Storage System reduced administrative overhead through automation of load balancing, higher capacity utilization, and complex tasks. It offered a fully scalable so-lution across features including disk capacity, interfaces, cache, CPU power, and internal bandwidth, al-lowing system performance to grow in proportion to capacity.

The XIV’s snapshot functionality provided the software development team with instant, non-disruptive copies of production systems. Prior to implementation of XIV, Madura had 3 storage units, which were 3 differ-ent racks in the data center. Today, all this has been consolidated into a single storage rack, which in turn helps in reducing footprint and keep-ing the power and cooling costs low.

Signs off NP Singh, CIO, Madura F&L—IBM’s XIV Storage System provides a powerful, fully integrated set of software capabilities including snapshots and thin provisioning. We achieved over 13,000 inputs/outputs per second (IOPS) and all this paved way for a reduction in AMC cost by `12 lakh per annum as well as sav-ings in power and cooling consump-tion of nearly `6.5 lakh per annum.


C OHandbook 2012

Case study/HealtHCare

IT Heals

The PD Hinduja National Hospital and Medical Research Center is a modern multi-speciality

tertiary care hospital with a medical research center set up in collaboration with Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Boston. The hospital has to its credit, the ISO 27001 certification for IT management systems. Recently, as it completed 60 years of operations, Hinduja Hospital was awarded the best multi-speciality hospital in the India Healthcare Awards 2011.

Under the ScannerIn 2011, the IT department imple-mented a solution to convert speech to text for the radiology department. Approximately 75% of time taken in dealing with patient’s reports was reduced. As the implementation directly captured the report dictated by the doctor, it enabled to save time required to check copies that were dictated to typists. “After tasting success in this implementation, we are in the phase of implementing digital signatures,” informs Mahesh

In adherence to its commitment to excellence as the ‘Temple of Modern Healthcare’, the Hinduja Hospital infused new life into IT

Shinde, director, IT and telecom, Hinduja Hospital.

Success is also riddled with chal-lenges. In order to ensure success of the implementation, the doctors had to be trained and the system had to be tuned 100% to the Indian accent through daily training sessions. Even the IP telephony that was implemented last year was upgraded to a new version. “Earlier it was a different version, but now the ver-sion is a much acceptable one. This implementation has enabled cost savings on the cabling part, enables

conferences, etc,” quips Shinde.

Even the implementa-tion of ‘Zimbra mailing solu-tions’ enabled mirroring of mails, offered a variety of features, re-covery of mails

for VIP (top management), etc. “It enables sharing of folders, schedul-ing of calendars, user-friendly, etc. This solution is implemented on an open-source platform, is user-friendly, and is enabled with social features like Twitter, Facebook, etc, which still have not been enabled. We are in the process of rolling out new features and also conducting training programs for the employ-ees. In March 2011, we became the first hospital to receive the ISO 27001:2005 Information Security Certification,” informs Shinde.

Road AheadIf there is a new technology offering, even if it is 70-80% utilized, then it can be said that it is successfully implemented. Hinduja Hospital sets aside 2-3% of its budget for IT implementation. Talking about the future plans, he says, “We do have the required skill, but there is a lack of domain knowledge. But since there are no offerings specifically catering to the healthcare segment, we are trying to fit what others have successfully implemented in healthcare. In the future, things are expected to turn our way as it is expected that there would be special offerings catering to the healthcare segment.”


Key Takeawaysn Enabled to save time and

improved efficiencyn Mirroring of mails,

recovery of mails for VIP (top management), etc

n Solution is implemented on an open-source platform and is user-friendly

—Mahesh Shinde, director, IT and telecom, Hinduja Hospital

Hinduja National Hospital and Medical Research Center

Case study/Media


C OHandbook 2012

Long Live Content!With deployment of DSM, multi-screen media has overcome the challenge of longevity of the content and has made financial and social impact

and the content can be re-purposed. This has opened up a new revenue stream all together.

MSM will see the RoI of this project within the next 34 months, ie, by 2013, effectively.

Operational ImpactThe Merger and Migration of Content from Player-to-Player: In case of any M&A among the media organizations for convenient library merger, with DAM, it’s easier to migrate content from player-to-player.Consumers Demand for Con-tent: As savvy consumers demand the content on their platform. The DAM will enable the content on their platform and serve them any time, any place as per their demand.

Social ImpactDue to the MSM-DBB, all the tapes which are hazardous and magnetic are eliminated and changed to file based. Secondly, very few tapes are sent through courier or are hand delivered, which otherwise causes more carbon to the society, informs Ajay Kumar Meher, senior vice president and head, technology, Sony Entertainment Television.


Key Takeawaysn Financial Impact: The RoI of

this project will be achieved within 34 months, ie, by 2013, effectively

n Operational Impact: Consumers demand for content as savvy consumers demand the content on their platform. The DAM will enable the content on their platform and serve them any time, any place as per their demand

Multi-screen media was facing the challenge of storing huge volumes of analog content

in physical tapes in its video library. More than storage, re-use/syndication of the content on tapes was difficult as its assortment was increasingly person dependent.

Therefore Multi-Screen Me-dia (Brand: Sony Entertainment Television) deployed Digital Asset Management (DAM) to digitize all its analog contents (videos) to the digital file format. With MSM Digital Backbone (MSM-DBB), the compa-ny started digitizing its 10,000 hrs of library (tape based) contents and all the future contents from August 2010, with various metadata tagged with each digital asset. The meta-data tagging includes the basic and advanced properties of the asset and also scene based tagging on video time-code. This mass scale digitiza-tion project got completed in June 2011, but digitization of old content is still under process. MSM sourced software solution and hardware from IBM including:

n 35 servers for various functions such as ingest, apps, DB, transcod-

ing, portal usagen 2 nos of 80 ports brocade fiber

switch and 4 nos of 48 ports network switch

n 270 TB of high-performance online storage and 843 TB of near-line storage

n 900 slots of LTO5 robotics arm based tape library with 6 drives

BenefitsThe portal of MSM-DBB enables complete search of assets as per star cast, episode numbers, airing dates of the television episodes, and scenes. For example, now one can search all sixes of cricketer Yu-vraj Singh in the IPL 4 and the tool will search all video clips, where Yuvraj is hitting sixes and edit the assets accordingly.

MSM has competitive edge with respect to content flow for selling and also time to air. It will also build the effectiveness on the perform-ance by reducing the time to search the specific content by more than 70-90%. As the contents are avail-able on file format and also trans-coders are attached to the solution, a content can be transcoded to a specific format (web, mobile, etc)


C OHandbook 2012

Case study/transportation

Reserving the Unreserved

A network spanning over 6,000 stations ferrying a whopping 17 mn passengers everyday,

Indian Railways no wonder is one of world’s largest railway network. However as is the case in India, only 1 mn passengers traveling have confirmed seats while the remaining (16 mn) travel without confirmed seats. Therefore the Indian Railways needed a solution to end its travails of mounting losses to the exchequer and centralize the purchase and management of unreserved tickets.

Tickets for AllTherefore the Indian Railways deployed the Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS), which was developed and implemented by the Centre for Railways Information Systems

The implementation of UTS at the Indian Railways allows advance booking, cancellation of unreserved tickets, and minimization of manipulation

(CRIS). Under the new system, 1.5 crore passengers are issued tickets on a daily basis through counters spread across 2,500 locations across the country.

In addition, 350 automatic ticket vending machines have also been installed to ease out the rush at the booking counters. One of the high-lights of the solution is that it allows for continued ticketing service even in the case of unavailability of a back-end infrastructure.

Besides, the Indian Railways has also introduced a new technology of Automated Ticket Vending Machines (ATVM) in order to reduce the queue length at the booking counters.

These kiosks embedded with Sybase SQL to be used anywhere along with the use of RFID smart cards have enabled customers to

buy tickets through a user-friendly application supporting regional languages (in addition to English and Hindi). Thus facilitating the issuance of tickets without any human interaction.

ManagementPost the deployment, the transaction time for issuance of tickets has been minimized to less than 20 sec/ticket. The UTS also enables advance book-ing and cancellation of unreserved tickets from any station. Besides passengers can also book tickets anytime, anywhere, thus minimiz-ing the possibilities of manipulation and malpractice. On the control front, UTS has enabled centralized control for monitoring and auditing to ensure accounting of the tickets sold across all railway zones.

Also, UTS sustains the growth in passengers without any growth in the staff fare structure, destination, and other database updates. The solution created by CRIS handles 60% of the Indian Railways’ total unreserved traffic, yielding an aver-age revenue of about `4.7 mn/day. Passengers can now immediately buy an unreserved return ticket for any of the 8,520 trains that cover about 63,000 km track.


Key Takeawaysn UTS has reduced the

transaction time for ticket issuance to less than 20 sec/ticket

n Enables advance booking and cancellation of unreserved tickets from any station

n Enables centralized control for monitoring and auditing


C OHandbook 2012

Case study/teleCom

The Future of ProcurementThe e-procurement system at BSNL allows the bidders to submit securely encrypted and digitally signed electronic forms

online TOE itself. There was also a fallback provision in case the bidder decided not to be present online during the online TOE.

Upadhyay believes that although the manual system did not have any problem with the transparency issue, but public confidence went up when BSNL deployed the e-tender-ing system.

The next task was to find the best software provider in the industry. For this BSNL approached TCIL. “TCIL is from the same ministry and is operational into the telecom industry since 1970s. Secondly, it has an unmatched quality of experts in the fields of telecom and IT, that is why we have chosen the compa-ny’s services,” adds Upadhyay.

With the adoption of TCIL’s soft-ware, BSNL is now using the TCIL portal for e-procurement. “So far we have not encountered any problem in e-tendering. Now, bidders have no problem or grievance in bidding process because it has become more transparent through electronic portal and the new system has all the secu-rity features with it and nobody can muddle with it,” adds Upadhyay.

Overall, BSNL seems to be satis-fied with the use of TCIL/electronic tender e-procurement system, and is excited about the functionality with the system offers.

INDER [email protected]

Key Takeawaysn Transparency and securityn Service provider has no

access to the bids before it is opened

n Bids are encrypted using the bidder password and opened by the bidders’ password

India’s largest provider of fixed telephony, Bharat Sanchar Nigam has recently deployed e-procurement solution for its

tendering process.Since the BSNL tender for its

GSM infrastructure expansion is a high-value tender (original esti-mates peg it at approximately $2 mn), therefore the security and transparency aspect of the e-pro-curement process is significant.

Procurement was turning out to be a problem as it was taking time and a debate was on as to why BSNL should not move to a completely e-tendering system.

Therefore BSNL went for a sys-tem owned and managed by TCIL, based on the technology/application software of electronic tender.

The software provides transpar-ency to the bidder ensuring that he remains satisfied about the secrecy of his tender quote and that it hasn’t been shared with another competi-tor before the bid-submission. The system nullifies all the doubts and fears of the bidders as it allows the bidders to submit securely encrypt-ed and digitally signed electronic

forms, as well as, detailed bids for each envelope (ie, technical enve-lope and financial envelope).

The bidders are also provided with automatically generated ‘comparison charts’ which normally takes many weeks for the drudgery to compile.

RK Upadhyay, CMD, BSNL says, “There is a public perception that tendering through manual system is not transparent and efficient. So to build up the public perception into a positive phase, bringing more efficiency, more transparent, and speedier process to the procurement process, we deployed this system of TCIL.”

The bid-encryption methodol-ogy is such that no doubts can be raised about the bid confidentiality. The bid is encrypted at the bidder’s office by the bidder himself with a password-phrase created by the bidder himself, and this password-phrase remains with the bidder till the ‘online public tender opening event’ (TOE) happens. There is also an option for communication with the password-phrase securely online to BSNL officer during the


C OHandbook 2012

Case study/Hydro power

Online Booster

Established in 1975 as a central government enterprise, National Hydropower Corporation

(NHPC) is India’s largest organization for hydropower development with an employee strength of 12,000+. Apart from 10 projects under construction with a total installed capacity of 4,622 MW, NHPC has a total installed generating capacity of 5,175 MW from 11 power stations. By 2017, it is targeting to achieve 20,000 MW.

NHPC was looking for a solution that could oversee the project man-agement (right from planning to com-missioning) encompassing operation and maintenance, human resource management, finance and accounts, and procurement and contracts.

Number CrunchingA quick look at the numbers and one can see the enormity of the implementation. IFS India has implemented the solution across 31 locations while NHPC itself has deployed it at 23 locations. Around 7 modules have been implemented

NHPC was looking for a solution that could oversee the project management encompassing operation and maintenance, HR, etc

while more than 140 sub-processes have been included, and the number of transaction users is 3,327. The project has been rolled out in the following locations—Kolkata, Siliguri, Chandigarh, Dehradun, Jammu, and Subansiri.

HighlightsA centralized implementation has been done which means that the production server is based at the NIC in Laxmi Nagar, Delhi. With 31 sites having gone live in just 28 months, NHPC has created a his-tory. Moreover a centralized payroll & EPF processing system has been put in place, wherein currently more than 11,000 users are using the Employee Self-service (ESS) application.

The closing of NHPC’s annual accounts for 2009-10 happened us-ing the IFS applications. IFS India has also set up a help desk at NHPC and runs a 24x7 support center.

The information summarized through portals are extensively used by the top and middle management. IFS India has also deployed Primav-era facilitating a 2-way integration for project management and SCADA for integration between IFS applica-tions and SCADA.

BenefitsThe implementation has reduced pa-per documentation by providing online formats for quickly entering and re-trieving information. This has resulted in improved timeliness of information by permitting postings daily.

On the financial front, the balance sheet and the profit & loss accounts

have been put online. Now the management can pinpoint accurate vendor liability at any given period.

From the project management perspective, there is a complete monitoring of project schedule and cost incurrence right from incep-tion to commissioning. The payment cycle time for contractors has been reduced with an online interfacing with finance.

Any deviation can be reported as and when they occur, since there is online reporting of hindrances and incidences. Uniform codifica-tion is being used across NHPC for equipments, spares, stationery, and other inventory items. The booking of GRN and MIN can be done in real-time. Vouchers such as receipts and issues are system-generated. And, relevant account codes have been mapped to the inventory and asset masters based on the project and nature of transaction.

The system has the capability to reserve material against Material Requests. Inventory information for all the NHPC locations is available in the system and can be viewed by all concerned.


Key Takeawaysn Centralized implementation

with a production server based at Delhi

n Centralized payroll & EPF processing system with more than 11,000 users using the Employee Self-service (ESS) application

n Deployed Primavera facilitating 2-way integration for PM and SCADA for integration between IFS applications and SCADA


IndIan CEO/WIllIam PEnn

In the last 12 months what are the IT implementations that William Penn has invested in with regard to its business needs?In the last 12 months, we have taken a lot of new initiatives to bring

in more efficiency, transparency, and also increase our revenues. These

Having started off in 2004, William Penn, now a multi-brand retail store chain, was by definition a pen store, something similar to a stationary store. The differentiating USP that Willam Penn followed was a multi-brand retail store chain strategy with premium brands in what they defined as fine-writing instruments, desktop, and lifestyle accessories. And these pens were not the one to be found anywhere easily like Fisher Space, Pelikan, Sheaffer Cartier, Conway Stewart, Cross, Faber Castell, Lamy, Porsche Design, Retro 51, Sailor, St. DuPont, Waterman, and Caran d’Ache. The brainchild of Nikhil T Ranjan, founder & CEO, William Penn, the brand has come to associated with style and luxury. Cur-rently, having a network of 15 stores spread across Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hydera-bad, Chennai, and Pune, Ranjan is now targeting up to 20% y-o-y growth targeting to be a `100 crore company by FY15. Under the vision of Ranjan, the company is cur-rently growing at a 15-20% and he intends to continue the momentum. William Penn is targeting up to 25% growth in revenue, with over `56 crore in FY12 compared to `45 crore in FY11. Targeting the #1 position, Ranjan’s company, which presently houses 20 premium brands of fine-writing instruments, is plan-ning to increase its portfolio by becoming the numero uno choice for selling luxury-writing instrument brands segment. Over the next 18 months, Ranjan also plans to add on to his network of 15 stores by adding another 4-5 stores. Speaking to Dataquest, Ranjan shares his thoughts on how IT is helping the chain meet its growth demands. Excerpts

‘The most game-changing decision was to outsource our IT functions to an external agency’

—Nikhil T Ranjan,founderandCEO,WilliamPenn


C OHandbook 2012

were largely strategic and trans-formational investment putting a long-term goal. The most game-changing decision was to outsource our IT functions to an external agency/service provider in order to concentrate our focus on our core competency and we also got a consulting CTO.

Deeper into the IT implementa-tions, we implemented a Retail (B2C) CRM Program, which is a cloud based program, using the mobile number as the unique identification. We introduced a store inspection application on the mobile to bring more flexibility. We also introduced CRM for the B2B divi-sion. We integrated some of the new applications to our existing retail ERP. We also initiated an upgrade of our website CMS, you might see a few changes soon.

Another significant implementa-tion was the addition of Wooqer, our online learning portal.

Do you believe that the role of IT has changed from bringing internal efficiency to building a competitive advantage? What has been the significance of IT in your business?At William Penn, we completely agree that IT is about enabling each person across the organiza-tion—to be able to do more. IT is also about building a competitive advantage. All the initiatives that William Penn undertakes are well planned and implemented under the capable supervision of a team of IT consultants, with a focus on all aspects of business, including the human resource management, operations, product management, or customer experience. Our lat-est IT-related implementations and decisions like outsourcing to a third-party service provider and hiring a consultative CTO have been in sync to our business moves.

What are the business chal-lenges that you face in the retail vertical? What role does tech-nology play in addressing these?One of the key challenges and needs in our business is the knowledge of who our customer is and how we can best deliver value to this customer. Hence we are looking forward for IT to play the pivotal role in under-standing our customers better.

William Penn has implemented the Wooqer platform. Can you tell us about the challenges that the company faced before the implementation as well as the results post the implementation?Wooqer is a cloud based system that has tools of interaction. It of-fers subscription to the platform, analytics and support to functions like operations and marketing, and support to customers in the retail businesses. We looked for some-thing that could create audits, ap-praisals, checklists, data collection sheets, feedback surveys, training, and track the usage and perform-ance. It did take us some time to get started with the platform and discover our own ways of working. The discovery continues till date,

as the organization continues to find new uses of the platform.

Some of the immediate benefits included the streamlining of various processes that were already run-ning across the organization, with Wooqer becoming a single point of contact with the entire network and for all operational activities. Train-ing emerged as a large-use case as we found ourselves being able to achieve a lot more with the same set of resources.

Wooqer is more about a phi-losophy and way of working than just a tool. As a DIY (Do it Your-self) platform, Wooqer enables each individual in an organization to create solutions for their own problems, however small or big, and implement them the way they want. However that requires an ability to think of and create one’s own solu-tions and enough time to be spent on the platform to understand how and what problems it can help solve.

Wooqer has assisted in the democratization of ideas by making sharing of ideas and thoughts more free and open. It has also helped in seeking a majority opinion before implementing the key operational decisions. Hence Wooqer as a platform has been able to address many loopholes.

How smooth or cumbersome was the implementation process?The implementation per se was very smooth as it was a cloud based sys-tem. The challenge usually is at the user level, since the success of the platform depends on the acceptance and adoption by the users. As any retail organization is a distributed one, we had our challenges in train-ing and getting the team to adopt it. Having said that, we will continue to explore more uses of the platform each month.


Oneofthekeychallengesandneedsinourbusinessistheknowledgeofwhoourcustomerisandhowwecanbestdelivervaluetothiscustomer


IndIan CEO/IndUSInd Bank

Do you believe that the role of IT has changed from just bringing in internal efficiency to creating competitive business advantage? Could you talk a little about the new initiatives like Cash-on-Mobile, Direct Connect...

IT is all pervasive and an important part of any business—be it back-office processing capability, management of employees, analytics or information management or control, or customer engagement. Recently, after witnessing a change in bank management, we drafted a new focus. The drafts concen-trates on increasing internal cost-efficiency with steps like centralization, cost management, etc.

Also, we tried to look into customization and customer acquisition, as we were already a weak brand in a competitive market place. The idea was to use IT to engage with customers, go beyond the hygiene tasks, bring innova-tions, and use branding platforms to talk about it. As I had pointed out, we must integrate IT business and innovation.

Around this we brought small but impacting features. For example, an Automated Teller Machine (ATM) is used to draw cash with the help of a card. We introduced the feature choice of the denomination. Customers

IndusInd Bank, started its op-erations in 1994, at a time when the market was already crammed with multiple banks for all the categories of customers—big, small, household, en-terprise, etc. The bank had no unique set of customers, but it built its own niche with the help of technology and multi-channel delivery capabilities. IndusInd Bank was soon recognized as the first of the new-generation private banks, which received contributions from the NRI community. In a discus-sion with Dataquest, Paul Abraham, chief operating officer, IndusInd Bank talks about the bank, technology, and roadmap ahead. Excerpts

‘The idea was to use IT to engage with customers, go beyond the hygiene tasks, and bring innovation’

—Paul Abraham,COO,IndusIndBank


C OHandbook 2012

could send request for denomination as well. It was a small tweak in the software and hardware.

Gradually, based on customer feedback, we also introduced cash-on-mobile and quick redeem services.

As you already know Cash-on-Mobile facility is for the custom-ers to transact money to anybody irrespective of the fact whether the beneficiary has an IndusInd Bank account or not and even if he is using a debit card or not. With the help of a mobile application this money could be transferred to the beneficiary’s mobile number and hence the beneficiary receiver can use the mentioned code to receive the funds from IndusInd Bank ATMs without using his debit or ATM card.

Another initiative Direct Con-nect is our latest phone banking service through which we are trying to address the customer inconven-ience, who can reach us by dialing to the bank and going through the IVR process. The exclusive custom-ers can speak to the phone banking executive directly without going through the IVR. Lastly, the Quick Redeem Service, helps our credit card customers redeem their reward points on every transaction instantly by sending an SMS.

Responding to the RBI regula-tion, under which companies are requested record the cheque images, we had also launched a Check-on-Cheque service. Launched in Delhi and Chennai, with this process, it becomes easy to keep no other record than the statement and main-tain a periodic record of what we offer as cheque images along with the statement of account.

These are various latest instances of using IT as a responsive innovation and building competitive advantage.

Apart from building business val-ue out of IT, we used it as a tool for many initiatives. We have a national

grid of solar ATM and we monitor and manage it centrally. So, we have a network of rural ATMs in Punjab, which is monitored through a central monitoring console in Mumbai to check the energy utilization.

How do you look at the new technologies like cloud, mobil-ity, etc? What have been the lat-est implementations around it?With the evolving technology, we look forward to building an ideal state of architecture, which would be a dynamic thing over the years. This architecture would involve content, middleware, enterprise services, and core platform, tools for analytics, workflow, and many more things.

Presently, we have been building on the deep back-office innovation around virtualization, thin comput-ing, and optimizing data movement and communication architecture. Over the past 2 years, we have set the roadmap looking at cost of in-vestment protection. We virtualized over 150 servers into 8. We have data centers in Mumbai and Chen-

nai, which are based on the green quotient.

Talking about the areas of bulk usage where we have a large back-office process, following the market trend, we are introducing thin computing in every new branch. In this way, we are building an internalized cloud.

We use technology for serving 2 divisions—back office and opera-tions. In back office, IT is purely used for predictive assessment for customer pricing and anti-money laundering scenario mapping. While in operations, IT can play a crucial role in increasing efficiency.

What is your next step?One of the next steps from here is consolidation play, ability to do transaction while customers are on move. Mobile banking is just the tip of the iceberg, but there are lot many opportunities possible with partnered solutions with telecom and microfinance.

For instance, in rural banking the major issues in this space are cost and reach. The central projects of building a national identity (UID) database will bring ease of getting identity and then we would be able to offer services through delivery channels like mobile. We are seeing a lot of bundling happening across verticals like hospitality, banking, and education. There is a huge world out there and a lot of opportunities for banking to explore newer channels.

However these are long-term plans. At present, for switching our Core-Banking Solution (CBS), we had the solution from a UK based firm. With the maturity of the term, we have switched to another CBS of-fering by an Indian service provider, which is already mid-way and we would most likely be available with the latest CBS.


Withtheevolvingtechnology,welookforwardtobuildinganidealstateofarchitecture,whichwouldbedynamic.Thisarchitecturewouldinvolvecontent,middleware,enterpriseservices,andcoreplatform,toolsforanalytics,workflow,andmanymorethings


IndIan CEO/SnapdEal.COm

Not many Indian players are actually using technology and data mining, that have turned out to be the key differentiators for the growth of e-commerce companies in the long run. What is your take on this?

Yes, you are right in saying this. Traditionally, Indian companies are using technology but not as per the current need. They have also not been good in data mining. They generally concentrate on demand-supply lines.

On the other side, we are absolutely technology savvy and data paranoid. For example, the speed at which the website loads is very important and many access internet through their workplaces or mobile, where generally internet bandwidth is low. So, if it takes longer time in opening or the transaction fails, then it turns off the customer for good. So we have consciously invested a lot in engineering our bandwidth so that the website opens up in a sub-second.

Similarly, we use a lot of data analytics and business intelligence tools like Pentaho and many more to study the buying and browsing behavior of the

With clear focus to position and act as an online marketplace, and create a trustworthy brand, Snapdeal is deter-mined to touch daily lives of every com-mon man and vendor. Recently turned two, the start-up, which had started in February 2010 has been successfully able to run as a multi-channel direct market-ing company. There are many firsts and innovations to its credit in terms of creat-ing marketing and branding properties.

Kunal Bahl, founder and chief executive officer, Jasper (Snapdeal) is the man behind this success story. Bahl, an engineering graduate from University of Pennsylvania who has experimented with various entrepreneurial ideas, gives due credit to his team for Snapdeal’s sustained growth. Snapdeal’s core senior management team consisting of 10 gems (mostly IITians), continues to invest in people (75 new IIT hires in 2012) and technology to actually experiment and innovate in its online marketplace busi-ness model in this bubbling yet maturing e-commerce industry. Excerpts

‘A quality team is the real differentiator’

—Kunal Bahl,founderandCEO,Jasper(Snapdeal.com)


C OHandbook 2012

users. We have made our systems so robust with the help of our core 15 people analytics team that by the time the user types Snapdeal and our home page opens, we are done with our calculations at the back-end to offer only location specific deals to ensure regular and satisfied customer traffic. We use real data, iterative in nature not absolute data.

We are on a combination of cloud hosting and traditional hosting for our production server. We have partnered with akamai for the web acceleration and static data serving.

After 2 years in the e-com-merce industry, do you think the role of a CIO is important in an online retail company?The role of a CIO is as important as the technology itself in the e-commerce industry. Primarily, the person should actually introduce the culture of data centricity in the organization as well ensure driv-ing the culture of data utilization in reality. He/she should be able to create the right processes through which the IT and concerned teams can collect the right set of data. Last but not the least, also keep looking out or create sophisticated tools to look at the right data. Correct data only affects positively to the levers of the business, else one gets lost in huge volumes of data.

Despite being a core online brand, Snapdeal seems to have a huge spend on marketing in media such as TV, print, radio, and internet, and also created branding properties at unusual places like airports etc...Initially we realized that it is ex-tremely difficult to create a brand in a primarily unorganized and cluttered marketplace. So, we tried our best to keep fun alive in our work by keep-ing our marketing spend miniscule but extremely innovative. We think very deeply before spending—why,

what, where, and how we are spend-ing. Especially at the airports, earlier no one was branding there but each traveler spends time there waiting in long queues. So, when we pitched for the airport through our vendor, the authority even did not know how much to quote. But now it has become a property, after our contract gets over there, whoever plans to do branding there will have to have pay atleast 4-5 times the amount of what we paid.

Similarly, on Valentine’s day, when everyone was busy in push-ing/selling flowers, cakes, chocolates, we sold 1.5 lakh condoms. This clutter-breaking idea gave us tens of thousands of new customers and we trended on Twitter with 1.3 mn tweets about Snapdeal that day alone.

One has to enter people’s lives and affect them. It’s like passing a hot knife on hard butter.

What has led to the tremendous and unproportionate growth of this industry in the last 24 months?Increasing internet penetration has played a crucial role. But travel portals have actually laid grounds for this second coming with their huge spends on market-ing and advertising. This made

many people comfortable about spending online.

Many players have exited the e-commerce industry at the same pace at which they en-tered. What is your advice to all new and upcoming e-commerce players?The quality of the team is the big-gest strength of any organization. Even technology comes after people. We have hired 75 more engineering graduates from IITs this year. Players need to think deeply about the role they want to play and how (business model) in the industry. They also need to make their businesses sustainable and defensible to ensure scalability in future. They also need to address the logistic and payment issues along with maintaining profitability, else negative cost per transaction will certainly lead to their closure.

Where is the e-commerce in-dustry heading?E-commerce industry this year is definitely heading towards consolida-tion in 2012. There will be lesser number of players/entrants now and venture capitalists will spend less, says my sense. In the last 8 weeks, I have received a proposal to buy 3 VC-funded e-commerce companies, out of which two had raised more than $5 mn each and one had raised more than $15 mn. Many companies have started selling almost everything; this trend will not last for long. Because for most of them profitability has come down considerably and as a result are suffering from monthly cash burn of `25-30 crore.

But I am hopeful that this e-com-merce industry with size of $0.5 bn will grow up to a size of $15 bn in the next 5 years with increasing internet penetration, players becom-ing smarter and creditworthy, and increased access.

RukhsaR [email protected]

Ourmajorinvestmenthadgoneintobuildingtheinternalstate-of-the-artdatacenterforourin-houseworkapartfromhiringtechnologyexpertsbypayingtop-of-the-lineremunerationandalsotrainingthem


IndIa CEO/GVK EMRI

How would you describe your effort at GVK EMRI 108?Overall, approximately 4 bn people die every year due to the lack of prompt support mechanisms. In case of an emergency, people do not know where to seek help from, which results in

the golden hour being lost.Hence we designed a unique emergency model 108, to address issues

pertaining to pre-hospital care, medical emergencies, etc. The response

In September 2011, Subodh Satyawadi took over the reins of GVK Emergency Management and Research Institute (EMRI) as the chief executive officer. With a fleet of 3,150 ambulances, GVK EMRI is providing 108 emergency response services in 11 states covering a popu-lation of 40 crore. Currently, Satya-wadi is at the helm of affairs of all operations of GVK EMRI. Prior to this appointment, he was the region-al COO of Gujarat and the northern region. In 2008, Satyawadi joined GVK EMRI, after a stint of more than 23 years at various senior des-ignations with NDDB and Mother Dairy. He has played a pivotal role in the expansion of the 108 project in Chhattisgarh and Himachal Pradesh. Recently, he led his team to another achievement, though of a different kind—the NASSCOM Social Innovations Award for 2011 in the category of multi-stakeholder partnership. In an interview with Dataquest, Satyawadi speaks about the toil that went behind the moment of pride. Excerpts

‘Our vision is to cover entire India, so that a unique tinge is lent to the number 108’

—Subodh Satyawadi,CEO,GVKEmergencyManagementandResearchInstitute


C OHandbook 2012

centers of 108 get activated once a call is received on the toll-free number and requisite online direc-tions are issued to the EMT. The patient is taken to a nearby hospital, depending on the emergency, and it is mandated that the hospital provides primary stabilization free of cost.

Initially, this service was started as a test model in the city of Hy-derabad with 70 ambulances and then later spread to the entire city. Gujarat became the first state to show interest in partnering with us. Currently, we have an MoU with 14 state governments and the model is operational in 11 states covering a population of 400 mn.

When it is implemented in all the 14 states, it will benefit a population of 600 mn. Every 8 seconds a medi-cal dispatch is done and everyday we attend to approximately 12,000 emergencies—saving more than 250 lives everyday. In the last 6 years, we have attended to approximately 17 mn emergencies.

Although we would like the proc-ess of deliveries to be institutional-ized, but the last minute mode of seeking help has led to pregnancy-related emergencies scoring the highest in the rural areas. We have been able to prove helpful in almost 126,000 deliveries. Meanwhile, in the urban areas accident-related emergencies account for majority of the emergencies.

What is the support from the various governments for this project?A direct expenditure related to the helpline is borne by the government, while other expenses such as man-agement-related, research-related, etc, are borne by the GVK group as donations. Till now we have donated more than `100 crore.

To take this concept further, various state governments like Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Utta-

rakhand, Goa, Tamil Nadu, Kar-nataka, Madhya Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Chhattisgarh, and Himachal Pradesh have committed to assist GVK EMRI in regulation, channelizing funds, leveraging infrastructure, promoting public awareness, etc.

What is your vision for 108?One component of the number is an emergency response center, where the call center filters the call and takes an appropriate deci-sion depending on the emergency. The emergency could relate to heart attack, snake bite, pregnan-cy-related complications, law-en-forcement-related issues, etc. The call centers dispatch ambulances that are closest to the scene of the emergency.

Ambulances are stationed in different areas depending on where the projected emergencies are expected to arise so that the response time is the least. These ambulances are in constant touch with the emergency response cent-ers where physicians are on duty 24x7. In addition, even an ECG of the patient can be transferred from

the ambulance to the emergency response center. We feel that such services should be an entitlement that should be available throughout the country. Hence we believe that the common resources should be leveraged upon.

When we commenced this service our vision was to cover the entire state, which we did within a span of one year. Currently, we are fully operational in 10 states except in Madhya Pradesh where the service is still in the expan-sion state and would be in the league of the other states in the next 6 months.

Our vision is to cover the entire India, so that there is a unique tinge lent to the number 108. Digital-izing EPCR so that all the vitals of the patient are available during an emergency and can be transferred to the ambulance from an emergen-cy center, would prove useful in treatment.

Any particular accolades that you would like to mention?

To be recognized as being faster than 911—the helpline in the US—in delivering services, is one recognition that infuses pride every time we step into service. So, this recognition along with accolades has also brought with it interest from other developing nations in the South Asian/African regions for training, etc.

Apart from field-related emer-gencies, our trained professionals have answered emergencies in the hour of need. Also, they have as-sisted in deliveries in extreme situ-ations—buses, bomb blasts, natu-ral and manual disasters, Gujarat bomb blasts, etc. Recently, during the hooch tragedy and Kosi river floods, we put our best foot forward. We also have boat ambulances that help reduce response time.


Toberecognizedasbeingfasterthan911—thehelplineintheUS—indeliveringservices,isonerecognitionthatinfusesprideeverytimewestepintoservice

E-govErnancE


ICT will not only act as a strategic device in addressing urban and rural divide but also deliver benefits of e-governance projects to the needful

Delivering theBenefits

On May 18, 2006, the Cabinet gave its go-ahead signal to the key components of National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) proposal, including assigning the role and responsibility to various government entities (DIT, NIC, DAR&PG, line ministries, and state government departments). The components also

included formal assigning of tasks of the identified mission mode projects (MMPs) and support components under NeGP to various line ministries and departments.

Realizing the Real BenefitIt’s almost 6 years now after the Cabinet approved NeGP, in a bid to bring justice to the common man (citizens) of the country, when it comes to delivery of the government serv-ices and implementation of other socio-economic schemes for the benefit of the masses. Overall, some achievements have been partially realized and some are in the pipeline, but the real gain of NeGP is yet to be realized. It sounds good when citizens talk about governance and demand their rights. NeGP worked as a caveat and awareness tool for the citizens, making them aware of government services at various levels.

Under NeGP, connectivity infrastructures like State Wide Area Network (SWAN), data/information accessibility centers like State Data Center (SDC), front-end deliv-ery centers like Common Service Centers (CSCs), etc, have come up well and are still getting expanded. NeGP also recommended applications, which have to be studied, conceptualized, and developed so as to deliver the desired services to the citizens. To focus on these applications, NeGP came with MMPs, so as to implement these applica-tions in a targeted manner. Almost 27 MMPs were defined, out of which some are linked to central line ministries, some are to state government departments, and some of them are integrated applications interfacing both central and state functionaries.

Much has been done but the beneficiaries, especially the marginalized section of the society, are yet to realize the outcome of NeGP. Bringing the benefits to the targeted


C OHandbook 2012

people can only bridge the urban and rural divide.

Understanding the Existing GapsLet’s understand the gaps and how we can expedite the implementa-tion of mission mode e-governance projects. In the last 6 years, the knowledge that I gained as a part of e-governance project enabled me to write about some of these existing gaps. Also, I have concentrated on solutions and ways, which would probably help in smoothly driving e-governance projects. Some of these are illustrated as under:

n PPP Route: Realizing that government departments alone can’t tackle these large, complex, and voluminous projects and industry participation would play a pivotal role in up-keeping these projects, NeGP adopted Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) route, which in turn not only helped in private investment but made it possible for long-term sustainability of these projects, both in terms of assured service delivery and commitment.

The beauty of PPP came to NeGP in the form of initial investments to be taken care by the PPP partner, apart from service delivery assur-ance during the terms of the BOOT contract. The outlay which the PPP partner invest in such projects, once the project is implemented, they re-cover their built-up and operational costs, including profit in the form of service transaction cost.

True to my experience, I can very much say that PPP is the best route to take up such e-governance projects. It has worked as a cata-lyst in resolving the long striving government department’s manpower paucity and also helped in join-ing hands with private partners in outsourcing the non-sovereign func-tions to a PPP operator.

Secondly, since the PPP opera-tor’s entire revenue model rests in

ICT has become one of the most effective tools in bridging the gaps between urban & rural, rich & poor, and advance & legacy

the assured service levels to the citizens, the sustainability of these projects became de facto.

However it’s also true that the PPP model has not been adapted by the government departments to its fullest capacity. The champions and head of the departments should take a lead role in changing the mindset of the people within the departments, so that public services can be rendered to the needy citizens of our country in a timely, transparent, and cost-effective manner. Citizens are more than happy to pay the minimum service fee for the services which otherwise they are striving to get, even after paying a heavy cost in terms of time and effort apart from getting dragged into corrupt practices.

n Leveraging the Power of ICT: During the conceptualizing of the NeGP, the decision-makers rightfully thought about the power of electronics and ICT. A country like ours having more than 1.2 bn people and other entities involving multiple agencies, stakeholders/units catering to more than 35 languages and 150 dialects, where citizens have started demanding their civil, constitutional, and service rights, just assume the level of field work required, spread over the entire country having an area of 3,166,414 sq km, covering 35 States/Union Territories, 640 districts, 5,924 sub-districts, 7,935 towns, and 640,867 villages.

If, such is the volume and numbers, one can’t imagine handling them manually without the help of ICT and other advanced technologies. Whether we talk about agriculture, health, infrastructure, education, or others, the way forward is to leverage the power of advance management techniques and ICT, which helps us improve decision-making, transparency, accountability, and in overall service delivery. ICT has not only become the essential catalyst to our daily life but also helped us to improve in totality. ICT has become one of the most effective tools in bridging the gaps between urban & rural, rich & poor, and advance & legacy.

Government departments must in-fluence the power of ICT in handling the e-governance initiatives within their departments. There are chal-lenges when it comes to adaptability and employees of government depart-ments feel ICT tools as a threat to their sustainability and existence.

However the reality is just opposite of their thinking. ICT has not only improved their working condition and decision-making, but has also helped in increasing employment and productivity. Of course, it had brought in transparency and expeditious delivery of services perhaps government employees are not used to. These are the challenges that department heads need to tackle, to change the mindset of the people within their purview, maybe by changing management practices, capacity building, and effective communications. Hence new measures such as giving productivity-linked incentives have to be brought forth.

n Integration and Replication: To avoid duplicity of cost and effort, government departments must think of replication and integration. Many a times, it has been found that duplicity of effort and cost is


E-govErnancE C OHandbook 2012

wasted due to lack of integration and replication especially when it comes to investment on common ICT infrastructure such as data centers, communication network, and application.

Government departments can link and exchange data, solution architecture, application, etc, by using a common ICT infrastructure, but in reality it’s becoming a distinct dream. The call of the day is that all such government departments must talk and discuss with each other, in order to avoid duplicity of effort and cost for expeditious implementation of projects and to deliver public serv-ices. For example, we have SWAN, SDC, CSEs, NDCs, etc, which every government departments, be it state departments or central line minis-tries, should think through, when it comes to utilizing these com-mon platforms. Then comes efforts wasted in development of depart-mental applications. True that every department has its own business requirements and service delivery mechanism and application architec-ture may vary, but at the same time we must admit that every state has similar departments.

If this is true, then why can’t we replicate an application which is ma-ture and smooth in one state to rest of the states? For example, treasury and VAT application is smoothly run-ning in Gujarat, College Admission Application is smoothly running in Odisha, Vehicle Registration System is smoothly running in Delhi, eSeva is successfully running in Andhra Pradesh, land registration in Karna-taka, property registration in Mahar-ashtra, MP-online in MP, etc. Similar is the case when it comes to central line ministries, for example, Passport Seva Project model can be replicated to other line ministries. Projects such as Aadhaar can work as a panacea and an enabler for better governance for many public services as well as developmental initiative aim towards

GOLOK KUMAR SIMLIThe author is principal consultant and head, technology, PMU, Passport Seva

Project, Ministry of External [email protected]

marginalized and disadvantaged section of the society, when it comes to verification of individual’s identity and address proof.

But in reality, when it desires to replicate these applications in other states government departments are neither willing nor thinking in those directions. In essence, the same story is being repeated for every new application, ie, DPR, BPR, RFP, Tendering, T1, L1, and finally selecting a new bidder and so on ... be it state departments or central line ministries.

n Focused Approach: Imple-mentation of e-governance projects in a time-bound manner as per the desired results not only requires a fo-cused approach but in many a cases it also requires out-of-the-box think-ing. Most of the time, it has been observed that the government depart-ments are practicing the same old methods for project implementation. This is resulting and contributing to outcome quality issue and long-term sustainability distress. Time has come, we must think of using Quality and Cost Based Selection (QCBS) method of bid process management leaving behind mere L1 selection, so that the department uses a competi-tive process among short-listed bid-ders. This will take into account the quality of the proposal and the cost

of the services in the selection of a successful bidder or PPP partner, who is entrusted the job of project imple-mentation and sustainability. Cost as a factor of selection shall be used judiciously. The relative weight to be given to the quality and cost shall be determined for each case depending on the nature of the assignment.

It’s also pertinent to note that the key challenge for government departments have been the lack of understanding shown by many service providers (PPP partners), when it comes to IT solution offerings and deployment. Take the example of cloud computing, which has huge potential to address e-governance issues. However service providers are not providing answers that departments are looking for. For successful and smooth take-up of e-governance projects, the service provider should not try to hard sell their solutions without understanding the department’s complex and age-old processes.

ICT would act as a boon to the departments provided they address the core issues such as the process of re-engineering, change management, capacity building, etc. We also need to strengthen some of the character-istics of good governance such as rightsizing of government functions; use of ICT and advance management techniques; sound administration that promotes delegation, ethics, collabo-ration, and participation; ensuring ac-countability; institutional frameworks; etc, which will not only bring in parity that exists between various sections of society but will also help in deliver-ing improved public services to the citizens of our country. n

ICT has not only improved the working condition and decision-making, but has also helped in increasing employment and productivity. It has also brought in transparency and expeditious delivery of services

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Nasscom Leadership summit 2012

Bringing the Leaders Together This time the sessions were around the theme of ‘Hyper-specialization’ in the Indian IT sector


This year’s Nasscom India Leadership Forum (NILF) was special and different as it was celebrating its 20th edition. Nasscom that started with the vision of bringing the IT and services sector together and help them grow and outshine all the verticals in the

country, has very well achieved that in the last 2 decades.As per the latest Nasscom estimates, in 2011-12 aggregate revenue for

the Indian IT-BPO sector is estimated to cross $100 bn. The IT-BPO sector continued to be one of the largest employers in the country directly employ-


C OHandbook 2012

ing around 2.8 mn professionals, with over 230,000 jobs being added in FY12. For FY13, the export rev-enues are expected to grow by 11-14% while the domestic revenues will grow by 13-16%.

Like every year, it witnessed around 1,500 participants from across 30 nations, attending session, networking, etc. It was the usual 3-day conference with back-to-back sessions, but this time the sessions were settled around the theme of ‘Hyper-specialization’ in the Indian IT sector. A new concept was added to the forum was bizz and buzz zone that enabled business discussion and chaupal, a break-out zone for casual networking. It also intro-duced a new concept of Gurukul for founders and entrepreneurs.

Talking about the agenda and speakers, the forum had a multi-cultural, multi-sectorial touch to the sessions and the speakers, right from the industry to science (Pranav Mistry) and entertainment (like Sir Richard Hadlee, former cricketer) to government (Kapil Sibal, union minister for communications, IT and HRD).

CensorshipKapil Sibal inaugurated the session with his keynote, where he touched the hot topic of censorship and clarified that the government has no intentions of practicing censorship of internet. It expected the IT com-panies to respect and abide by the laws defined by the government.

Another key government an-nouncement came from Prithviraj Chavan, CM, Maharashtra. He shared how the state government is working towards encouraging the transparent work culture in the administration. But now the govern-ment is working on project like re-surveying entire rural Maharashtra, which was last done in 1920.

Home Minister, P Chidambaram resonated similar viewpoint in his

(From L-R): Som Mittal, president, Nasscom; Rajendra S Pawar, chairman, Nasscom; and N Chandrasekaran, CEO and MD, TCS

(From L-R): Raghav Bahl, founder and editor, Network18; Rebecca A Fannin, author and writer, Silicon Dragon and Startup Asia; and Kiran Karnik, former president, Nasscom speaking on Chinovation vs Indovation: Competition or Competition?

Shekhar Kapur, actor and director talking on Social Media Making the Nation State Irrelevant: The Rise of Blogistan?


C OHandbook 2012


gies; Carla Zuniga, VP, operations, Allstate Insurance Company; and many more.

While majority of the sessions continued to have a lesser attend-ance than the business lounges and the lobby, a few sessions were house full. With more than 120 speakers on around 45 sessions, some of the knockout sessions were by Marshall Goldsmith, executive coach, where the key takeaway was that leader-ship is a contact sport and that the positive energy originates from within and spreads around.

Another session was by Kumar Mangalam Birla, chairman, Aditya Birla Group in conversation with Aroon Purie, founding chairman and editor-in-chief, The India Today Group on ‘Leading the Millenni-als: New Champions’ need to shed yesterday’s logic. The talk started

The SessionsFitting to the central theme, there were a few parallel session. NIFL 2012 was much more global with global CIOs/CTOs, taking the stage and sharing their business, chal-lenges with the changing times and the roadmap ahead. David Awcock, group head, technology, group technology and operations, Standard Chartered Bank; K Venkatesh Prasad, senior techni-cal leader, open innovation, Ford Motor Company; John Douglas, CIO, Burberry; Larry Kiernan, CTO and head, group IT, Bank of Ireland Group; Paul Coby, IT director, John Lewis; Piyush Singh, senior VP and CIO, Great American Insurance Company; Peter JL Griffiths, execu-tive vice president, technology and development group, CA Technolo-

keynote that the IT sector should look at the domestic issues and work with the government in solv-ing them.

The session by Nandan Nilekani, chairman, UIDAI (Aadhaar) project understood more about the biggest identity project which he defined as social security 2.0. He shared how the department was leveraging the open source and had built its own applications and also is one of the biggest user of Hadoop.

This year, NIFL organized a few master class tutorials on various themes like ‘Building Leadership, Partnership, and Engagement in Your Organization’, which was taken by Marshall Goldsmith, executive coach and author. Another theme was ‘Go-to-market on Web 2.0,’ taken by Andy Mulholland, global CTO, Capgemini.

(From L-R): Pravir Vohra, global CTO, ICICI Bank; Jacob Lamm, executive VP, strategy and corporate development, CA Technologies; Pradeep Gupta, chairman and MD, CyberMedia; Bryan Sartin, director, investigative response, Verizon; Ashishkumar Chauhan, deputy CEO, BSE; on the side lines of leader2leader (L2L) with CyberMedia on Cyberspace: Blue Ocean, Iceberg Risks: ‘Pan-pan’ Call for Skippers—Getting Security on the Boardroom Agenda



C OHandbook 2012

with defining and identifying the millenials as global, open, ethical, and social people, who acknowl-edge the value that individual add to the business than the experience or seniority. Kumar shared that he spends nearly 40% of his time on people topics and tracks 100 people for succession planning based on their performance, values, and lead-ership skills.

Another session was by Deepak Malhotra, professor at Harvard University, who took the example of National Hockey Team in the US to demonstrate how negotiations get ugly due to the lack of trust, and the significance of building it and how important it is to understand the other side of the table.

Pranav Mistry, MIT student and the person behind ‘Sixth Sense’ took another blockbuster session. In his own style and ways he started with talking about the sixth sense and then demonstrated a new patent called Sparsh, which makes the per-son the carrier of data. With the use of cloud and a user interface tech-nology people can drag-and-drop files from one device to another.

One of the leader2leader ses-sions that gathered a lot of atten-tion was moderated by Pradeep Gupta, chairman and MD, Cyber-Media co-chaired by Rajendra S Pawar, chairman, Nasscom. Bryan Sartin, director, investigative re-sponse, Verizon; Jacob Lamm, ex-ecutive VP, strategy and corporate development, CA Technologies; Pravir Vohra, global CTO, ICICI Bank; and Ashishkumar Chauhan, deputy CEO, BSE were in the panel. Speaking on the topic of “Cyberspace: Blue Ocean, Iceberg Risks: ‘Pan-pan’ Call for Skippers Getting Security on the Boardroom Agenda”, the panel touched many key points like the significance of trust and security, the present definition of security; is it hygiene or an advantage and the present

Chanda Kochhar, MD and CEO, ICICI Bank in conversation with TN Ninan, chairman and editorial director, Business Standard on Taking Indian Leadership to the World: Crisis Favors the Cautious

Prithviraj Chavan, CM, Maharashtra delivering the closing keynote

Abhishek Bachchan, Bollywood actor, receiving a memento from Som Mittal, president, Nasscom. He delivered the closing keynote on Cross Generational Leadership: Growing up with a Leader

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C-Change 2012


One advantage has the effectiveness to change the face of a tennis game. Simi-larly, a competitive edge can offer a CIO the game-changing advantage. To offer this razor-sharp knowledge, CIOL in collaboration with Dataquest hosted C-Change in Kollam, Kerala.

The Next TrendWith devices and cloud taking the stage by storm, the event would have been totally incom-plete without a mention about them. In the CIOs’ viewpoint, mobility, cloud computing and consumerization of IT were the big buzzwords for 2012. “We all enjoy carrying multiple devices, but let us be conscious that it is just the beginning of a wave and not the end of the story. The wave will lead to consumers demanding for different applications and products,”

Being the ChangeC-Change 2012 promised to bring a lot of change with its power-packed volley of sessions


Arun Gupta, group CTO and customer care associate, Shoppers Stop lights the inaugural lamp marking the commencement of the event

C-Change 2012


C OHandbook 2012

said Vinod Krishnan, country man-ager, emerging products, VMware. “Especially in manufacturing, we are in a better position than the rest of the world to leverage on technol-ogy,” said Sameer Mandal, general manager, IT, Haldia Petrochemicals. Atul Bansal, vice president, IT, India Bulls Real Estate, was upbeat about India’s prospects through the year and remarked that the recessionary trends are all sentimental. “They do cause pressure on budgets,” he conceded, which was vouched for by even Pratap Gharge, executive vice president & CIO, Bajaj Electricals.

On the Cloud WaveIf it’s IT and CIOs, then cloud cannot be far behind. Companies

hesitate to change owing to various reasons ranging from the lack of pressure; or the lack of necessity, etc. However such companies will have to get on the wheels of change because the technology that they are using currently is 30 years old and not enough to sustain the transfor-mation happening in the industry.

As the IT industry is moving from the PC era to cloud era, all compa-nies, irrespective of size, will have to embrace cloud because it makes the job of managing IT very simple.

Next-gen CIOsA coach doesn’t teach but helps one learn, nor does he give answers but only helps with solutions. “Keep in mind that it’s not only about results

and behavior. It forms only the tip of the iceberg, emotions and thoughts form the bigger chunk that lie un-derneath,” pointed Shyam Malhotra, executive director, CyberMedia. He also highlighted points to mentor and guide youngsters, including that of experiencing the route being as important as reaching the destina-tion. Then, building trust which is followed by lessons on utilization of the best skills of subordinates.

An Upright Man’s LessonsTo combat a totally competitive corporate environment, Nitte Santosh Hegde, former justice of the Supreme Court Of India, former solicitor general of India and lokayukta (om-budsman) for Karnataka, donned the

CIOs being welcomed in a traditional manner

A bird’s eye view of the venue

C-Change 2012


center-stage. Justice Hegde said that corporates should not think of cut-ting corners and that indiscriminate growth of the industry had resulted in indiscriminate competition. He added, “Don’t think of this as a pass-ing problem. In the 1950s, I was told in my village that five fingers were enough to count the corrupt. Today, I agree that five fingers are enough, to count the honest people. If corporates practise the unethical, it would only add to the whole problem. Nobody defies ethics by ignorance.”

“Only when it is possible to discharge a job, I take it up. Peo-ple in government offices should decide whether they can discharge

their duties before accepting a job,” he said, insisting that the recognitions he got for his con-tributions to society were more because of others defaulting than his own achievements, which were mere part of his job.

On a Spiritual DriveThe CIOs were taken on a spir-itual drive, under the guidance of spiritual guru Jaggi Vasudev who proclaimed, “Of all the hi-tech gadgets one pos-sesses or aspires for, the human body is the best. Technology is do-ing something the way it would work, otherwise it’s just junk. Philosophy means doing something, but it need not work… isn’t it time to examine what this gadget (body) is?”.

He also said that if success came to one by chance, that person would have the fear of losing and if with the knowledge of it, then the same individual could be

happy. As the human sense organs are outside-bound, one should look within and introspect. Unfortunately, most people were setting impossible condi-tions on themselves, without a clear understanding of their selves.

Political LearningTo teach political lessons was former director of CBI, DR Karthikeyan who gave an account of how his team persevered to crack the most high-profile assassination case in the history of India. But by the end of the sessions it left a trail of learnings for the CIOs to pick up and imbibe. In 1989, The Negotiator was launched and two years later, Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by a suicide bomber. A difficult link to establish? The plot of the novel was similar to the threads of the late PM’s cold-bloodied suicide assassination. In his keynote address on how the Special Investigative Team (SIT) headed by him persevered to crack the most high-profile assas-sination with a foreign hand in India, Karthikeyan redrew the plot. Though he and his team managed to nab the culprits and ensure that they were proven guilty before the court of law, he left a bigger lesson for the CIOs to emulate―surely every risk taken has a reward that awaits.

Three days of power-packed tech-nology sessions coupled with learnings from the likes of dignitaries like Nitte Santosh Hegde, DR Karthikeyan, Jaggi Vasudev, Dilip Chhabria, Sumitra Man-amohan, etc, ensured that the CIOs were packed with many advantages to win the match for the year ahead. n

—Subbarao Hegde, CTO, IT & systems, GMR Group

—Venkat Iyer, CIO, Wockhardt

Taking the audience on a visit to God’s own country

In welcome of King Mahabali


C OHandbook 2012

The Other FaceIf Justice Hegde reminded the CIOs

of a saying in Kannada,—‘Become what you want to become, but become human first’— Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev showed the mirror to the importance of the human body. Alongside, DR Karthikeyan, former director, CBI, picked leaves from the nation’s most high-profile case. Sumitra Manamohan, India’s distinguished woman toastmaster, taking on the role of an expert chaperone, escorted the CIOs around the not-so-familiar lanes of personality grooming. Dilip Chhabria, founder, DC Design, offered a thrilling glimpse of his designs and belief ‘why designers are not born but made’. These were the high-profile facets of the event, but there were other power-packed sessions for the 80 CIOs tucked deep in the backwaters of Kerala.

Innovating BetterInnovation assumed importance even at the event, as the CIOs delved deep into the interesting kaleidoscope of innovation and the changing industry genomes. Innovation refraining from being a mere theme of ensuring cost-effectiveness also necessitated democratization through knowledge transfer and sharing of ideas. This would ensure that there is no stagnation and better growth opportunities.

Refraining from being the typical jet-skis of the business world, CIOs were brainstorming on the topic of Jugaad Vs Innovation. It further trailed to find what goes on in the mind of a CIO while undertaking an IT project.

Future MantraIf innovation holds the key to better

growth opportunities, even the role of the CIO is expected to go beyond its traditional boundaries. Today, a CIO is no longer the chief information officer, but also needs to don the caps of chief integration/innovation/infrastructure/and intelligence officer. The mantra to achieve this would be to begin with the end in mind, identify cost optimization to pay for innovation, apply design thinking to re-evaluate business models, choose a better disruptive technology, and continue experimenting.

In short, new ideas, new radical ways of thinking, new breakthrough insights, new IT connections, new technology synapses, and new DNA sequences was all that C-Change 2012 was packed with.

pRaTiMa [email protected] (CIOL Bureau)

Sadguru Jaggi Vasudev, founder, Isha Foundation takes the CIOs on a trip of discovering their inner self

Dr N Santosh Hegde, former justice, Supreme Court of India; former solicitor general, India and former lokayukta, Karnataka talks of tackling corruption

DR Karthikeyan, former director, CBI; director general; National Human Rights Com-mission India; special director general, CRPF enchants the audience with the most high-profile case


TechpoinT

It is a common phenomenon in middle class and upper middle class households in Indian society for adoring grandparents and parents to exclaim how clever their children are: “My daughter is so smart—she can operate a computer even though she just turned four” or “my grandson is a whiz

with cellphones and can change the SIM card and he is just four years old” or “my six-year-old niece sent you the email and she has just finished kindergarten.” While this is true, I’ve also noticed the ‘whiz’ children’s inability to interact with their fellow kids in school and their best friends seem to be the gadgets they get. I recently came across the book, The Dumbest Generation by Mark Bauerlein. In this book the author claims technology is actually turning children into helpless dependents and idiots. This made me think.

Twenty years ago, students could do mental arithmetic but today even their parents reach for the calculator on their mobile phones. Simple addition and multiplication is tough for both the parents and their children. Why is this? Are the claims made by the author of The Dumbest Generation true? Is cyber culture turning our children into idiots? What about us, the parents and elders who are responsible for this? Have we be-come so dependent on technology that we become helpless when we are deprived of it?

DependencyI recently watched a man in his early 30s complain for over half an hour that the lift was not working and hence he couldn’t get to the first floor. His son stood along with him and both were punching the elevator buttons and complaining to the harassed man at the reception desk who was trying to reach the maintenance guy on the mo-bile and get him to fix it. The man works as a design engineer for a large MNC. The reception guy finally gave up and kept apologizing for being unable to get the lift to work. But none of them thought of using the stairs. The boy stood by, observing the behavior and finally sat down and played games on his mobile. The father could have easily complained and taken the stairs and thus shown his son that there is an option

The growing cyber culture and our overdependency on technology is likely to turn us into a society of idiots

The Idiot GENERATION?


C OHandbook 2012

if the lift doesn’t work. However he just didn’t think of it until the sweeper used it.

It was perplexing to watch and made me wonder if our depend-ency on technology has become so much that we fail to think straight if it is deprived. This might be an exceptional case, but I used this to highlight what many techies assert. Several techies claim that they don’t feel normal if they don’t check their email every day. However, give them a simple multiplication problem, say ‘89 x 155’ and they cannot do it in their head!

This is the same generation who in college used to look down upon westerners, especially Americans, because they couldn’t do it in their head and relied on calculators! I have heard Indian writers claim that they cannot write without a computer and they need it to think! Jotting down points using a pencil or a paper is something alien to them and many do not remember when they last put a pen or pencil to paper. But their children in school still use pen and paper to write, though they would rather do their homework on the computer and research on the net.

It is true that our dependency on gadgets is increasing which is not necessarily a bad thing. However many are losing their ability to exer-cise their brain and think for them-selves and are becoming dependent on technology. Take for example, the inability to perform basic arithmetic operations or writing a letter instead of using templates that can be cus-tomized for various occasions. This means less use of the brain as we prefer to take the easy ‘customized’ way out. This does not bode well for the future as transmission of skills is lost between generations due to overdependency on technology.

Knowledge I’ve noticed that in engineering courses, especially Mechanical

Engineering, software has replaced T-square and compass. So, engineering drawing problems, especially when new design problems are presented, many students are unable to solve it as they are not aware of an alternative method of using paper and pencil. Several are stumped as the software doesn’t have these functions. So they tried solving it by creating 3D models but failed as they didn’t know the fundamentals which are not taught by the software or their latest books.

Does growing up with comput-ers, Google, and mobile mean we don’t have to think anymore as any information is just a click away? Are we turning into a society of idiots because of our overdependency on technology? This is the second ques-tion that needs to be answered. Goo-gling for information is much easier than actually having to learn it or look it up in a book, read, analyze and verify it the old-fashioned way. While doing it the old way, we think more and information isn’t served up like fast food. At least that is the claim made by those who still do it the old-fashioned way. However, does that make the rest of us idiots, especially the younger ones who haven’t used libraries or spent read-ing and debating a topic after doing the necessary research in school?

Let us examine the facts. When we do an internet search for infor-mation, we are left with multiple and at times contrary information that

can confuse us rather than make it easy for us. So, we have to evaluate the information, take what makes sense and sounds right and leave out the rest. This means we develop the ability to discern truth from falsehoods. So it is not raedy-made knowledge but our ability to get it right after getting information from multiple sources.

While this might be true, this causes a problem in transmission of knowledge. Also, isn’t this how misinformation and disinformation can be spread quickly and easily by vested interests like the American government under George Bush Jr did in their run-up to the attack of Iraq? What about the various hoaxes perpetuated thanks to the net, which falsify information and spread the so-called ‘knowledge’? This is very true but again a discerning mind and a debating society knows the difference. As for children, they will learn from their mistakes like we did with red marks on our essays.

ConclusionTechnology is a tool and if used rightly makes things easy and acces-sible to us—things which 20 years ago we wouldn’t have been even dreamt possible. But, if we become overdependent on technology or become naïve enough to think all information obtained using technol-ogy is true, we will become idiots and also raise the ‘idiot generation’. However if we use the same technol-ogy to increase our ability to discern a debate, communicate and teach skills to a larger group of young-sters, then we will be the ‘Expert Generation’. It is up to the Techie Elders to determine. n

Deepa KanDaswamyThe author is the founder-moderator of the

IndianWISE [email protected]

If we use the same technology to increase our ability to discern a debate, communicate and teach skills to a larger group of youngsters, then we will be the ‘Expert Generation’


SPOTLIGHT C OHandbook 2012

Shobha [email protected]

Those who have watched Meryl Streep get under the skin of Margaret Thatcher on screen and felt convinced about it, would see a striking semblance to the portrayed grit and determination in the new-age

women of India too. These women are now looking for-ward to career stickiness more than ever before, despite the odds and hurdles.

So reveals a global research study by Accenture, The Path Forward, released on International Women’s Day, for gaining insight into behaviors and attitudes regard-ing women’s careers. “This year’s study is all the more interesting because factors like economic recession and changing lifestyle preferences have had an impact on the career paths,” says Rekha M Menon, executive director, geographic services, Accenture India.

Flexi Hours—The New MantraOne of the reasons—this largely stems out of the changing behaviors of organizations towards women as highlighted in Dataquest’s cover story of Decem-ber 2012, Second Innings: The Ecosystem’s Getting Ready—the women cite for staying put are mainly suit-able flexi work hours. In fact, according to the survey, 80% (Male–85%; Female–76%) of the respondents in India stayed at their jobs longer than they may have otherwise, because of a flexible work arrangement. In

India, more women (66%) avail flexi work arrangements as compared to men (52%) far more than only 40% (Male–44%; Female–36%) of the respondents in US and 35% (Male–30%; Female–40%) of the respondents in UK who enjoyed some flexible work arrangement.

What is aiding the change is the fact that especially in India, women and men are being given equal opportuni-ties and standing within organizations, as Menon suggests.

The research explores career satisfaction levels, aspi-rations and factors for career advancement. Further, it ex-amines the factors that may hold professionals back from progressing in their careers and seeks to better under-stand the support and programs companies provide that attract, develop and retain high-performing employees.

Tenacious AttitudesAnd, the main findings reveal a tenacity unheard of, that women in India possess. Women in India are more satis-fied with their current job situation—a greater number of women (40%) are satisfied with their current job and are not looking for new job opportunities as compared to men (28%). As far as opportunities taken to move career forward are concerned—in India, women are far more enterprising (Male–54%; Female–76%) and accepted more responsibility or a different role to move their careers forward, while 46% (Male–48%, Female–44%) of the respondents received more education or training.

About half of the respondents in India felt there were barriers for career advancement—52% (Male–54% and Female–50%) of the respondents felt that a lack of opportunity or career path is holding them back in their careers, while about 74% (Male–70%; Female–78%) of the respondents said that they proactively manage their own careers. Some of their counterparts, for example in Indonesia revealed the main drawback to be more familial responsibilities.

Other factors playing prime roles in determining the shelf life of a woman’s career include self-confidence being the biggest contributing factor towards career growth, work-life balance, sacrificing time with family for career success, slowdown in career growth since becoming a parent, etc. Not to be discounted is thus the takeaway that Indian women are no longer willing to be taking a backseat in any field, particularly where it is a question of their careers.

The Iron LadiesWomen in India are now looking forward to career stickiness more than ever before, reveals an Accenture study released on International Women’s Day


news C OHandbook 2012

—Sanjay Manchanda, director, Microsoft Office 365


‘Office 365 is all about business productivity’What does Microsoft Office 365 constitute?It is all about productivity in cloud offering. The office division is all about business productivity. At the core of it is office applications for usage like mail exchange, document management, SharePoint, web conferencing, VoIP, and security offerings providing managing spam. in brief, integrated services hosted by Microsoft as cloud services defines Office 365. We provide multiple offerings based on customer usage and size including ability to buy Office 365 as a subscription.

When was Office 365 launched and how many customers have you acquired?It was launched in June 2011, although we have had cloud productivity services offered for over a year. We have millions of subscriptions worldwide. Unlike the popular

perception that it would be a service adopted by SMBs, we have seen successful in large enterprises too. Since it is an enterprise-class software available on cloud, therefore large enterprises are putting their mail messaging, collaboration, etc, on cloud. Companies like Adhunik or Acme Tele Power, a classic mid-market company, moved 1,500 users who used to have mail services running on-premise, to Office 365.

Is it customizable?Yes, it certainly is, ranging from customers asking for small tweaks. For example, some customers want their company name as the domain name or asking for personal signatures in emails or a certain look and feel on intranet if they are running SharePoint, but since it is a standard set of servers there is a limit to customization, rather it is configurable to service different needs.

How are the Indian CIOs taking to putting their confidential data outside rather than on-premise?Many CIOs and business leaders are looking at the cloud as a way to better and optimize their IT spend. They are concerned about security too. Therefore Office 365 provides security at 8 levels and conforms with multiple international standards

including ISO 27001, FISMA, and Basel in some of the other specifications. Therefore they are very comfortable in choosing Office 365. In fact, one of the CIOs told me that it is not always that the data residing on my data center is secure, a senior executive can walk into the data center and the security will not be able to stop him.

in tarot representsJudgement | rebirth | inner Calling | absolution

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People

‘Opportunity lies in the government and mid-tier’

around 18% to your revenues last year. How do you intend to tap this market?Certainly, the government business has been a big success and we have had marquee wins in the last one year. Some of our key wins include UIDAI, customs, etc. To enlarge this business, we are sub-verticalizing our team into central, state, public sector undertaking, and defense. Also, we

Joining back EMC in a new role, what are your key challenges and strategies to grow EMC business?This time EMC has developed a broad portfolio and we have invested close to $10 bn in acquisitions and R&D. Few years back, we were known as the best network storage company, today we have network, storage, security, workflow management, and big data. So the portfolio is huge and the opportunity lies in the mid-tier, therefore we have to make sure that every team member is able to take across this portfolio to our partners and customers. Therefore the key challenges are—bringing the portfolio together to show value to customers, addressing the mid-tier, and working with the channel partners.

Your government business contributed

are now trying to follow a more mature model. With some state MMPs being rolled out, states are onto their journey of building their own infrastructure and solutions. Hence we thinking about ways to engage with the states.

In order to ensure that we continue doing well in the public sector, we have a dedicated team which is focused on identifying 9-10 deals and going after that. Soon in defense, too, we will start seeing the results.

How are you leveraging the Greenplum acquisition in the Indian context?Greenplum paves the way for big data and analytics in big data. Since wherever you have a large customer base, you want real-time information, which should be integrated with some aspects of social media. Hence from the perspective of real-time analytics,

—Rajesh Janey, president, EMC India


Greenplum analytics plays a critical role and it is relevant for industries that are future oriented. It fits into cloud and big data.

How big is the big data opportunity?Information is growing at an impossible speed which is all about unstructured data. Simultaneously, it’s difficult to store such data. Therefore we have products that help in storing all of the structured and unstructured data. But the key question is how to put all information together for business and workflow. Greenplum addresses this by putting big data onto storage and then building analytics around it. So, you combine social media and unstructured data and then create something that your customers will value and will accelerate your business.

Anil Valluri Joins as President, NetApp India and SaarcNetApp has appointed Anil Valluri as the president, marketing & services, NetApp India. In this new role, Valluri will handle NetApp sales, marketing, and services operations in India and Saarc region. Prior to this new role, he was with Artiman Ventures and before that at Sun Microsystems as the vice president and managing director.

Avaya Appoints Rajeev Mittal to Lead India and Saarc BusinessAvaya, business communications and services company, has made an announcement about the appointment of Rajeev Mittal as the managing director, India and Saarc. Prior to this new role, Mittal was working as general manager, small & mid-market solutions & partners, Microsoft India.


C OHandbook 2012

INDER KUMAR [email protected]

‘An IT way to plug the leak’Tell us about the 2 softwares that you have introduced.With the product development beginning in September 2010, the product portfolio includes Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) and Energy & Sustainability Management (ESM) Software. The GFS Crane DC, which is a DCIM software. It works for bringing energy efficiency in the data centers, managing the assets, and capacity planning.

For commercial data centers, the second software (GFS Crane SMS) helps in energy billing. It is an enterprise scalable sustainability management system that includes energy tracking and GHG accounting.

How does it work?In a data center, the 2 major power consumers are servers and cooling. The software optimizes the power consumption from servers by identifying where

the power consumption can be reduced from the server. It captures the utilization data of power consumption and then analyzes it, followed by making suggestions.

The second software tells customers on what they should pay for power consumption.

Who are your target customers?Data centers run by companies like manufacturing, telecom, and retail. We also focus on townships, cement, steel, paper, and energy auditors. We also target commercial data centers. Government sector is our key focus area.

What is the cost of the software?

It depends on the number of racks and number of devices that they would like us to monitor. However in some cases it may go as high as $150,000, but in some cases it may also go beyond.

You also said that the software would help companies file environment report.

Would you like to elaborate on that front?They would help companies file the environment by calculating the power consumption, carbon emission, and their utilization; so that the companies can file that data to the BSE.

—Shekhar Dasgupta, founder and CEO, GreenField Software

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IT-BPO sector revenue set to cross $100 bn mark: Nasscom

“Amid global uncertainties and unpredictable

policies, the domestic IT-BPO sector revenue is all set to cross the $100 bn mark in 2011-12,” said Nasscom during the release of its key findings on the Indian IT-BPO sector performance for FY12. The findings were released by Rajendra Pawar, chairman, Nasscom, along with Som Mittal, president, Nasscom, in an event held in New

Mobility issues and sluggish growth may impact growth, but factors including increase in market share and adaption to new technologies may pin up some hope for Indian IT-BPO sector

INDER [email protected]

Delhi on February 8, 2012.The findings laid down

that the aggregate revenue for the sector is estimated to cross $101 bn. Continuing as the bastion for the sector, exports accounted for $69 bn, growing by 16.3% over the last fiscal year.

Talking to Dataquest, Mittal said, “With new mergers and acquisitions, global partnerships and alliances, we can expect thrust to the Indian IT sector. The alliances have

increased from $1.4 bn to $4.5 bn and SMB market has contributed from 10% to 12%. I think we are on track, he added.

The apex body predicts a slowdown in software exports in 2012-13 compared to 2011-12. In FY13, the IT and BPO export revenues are expected to grow at 11-14%, while the domestic revenues are slated to grow by 13-16%, according to its projection. Despite the

headwinds, Indian IT-ITeS sector sustained its growth trajectory and met the revenue guidance given by Nasscom last year.

At the event, Pawar said, “This has been a good year for the industry and was well above our expectations. We have seen a growth of 16.3% and there is further headroom for growth this fiscal given the kind of deals being clinched.”


C OHandbook 2012

CyberMedia, South Asia’s oldest and largest

specialty media group, has embarked on an exercise to offer multiple digital presence for all its media properties including the likes of Dataquest, PC Quest, The DQ Week, DQ Channels, Biospectrum Asia, Biospectrum India, VOICE&DATA, Technology Review India and CIOL among others.

CyberMedia has adopted a state-of-the-art software package retailing for over $1 mn for this purpose and has engaged with a service provider for a period of 3 years. The project aims at monetizing CyberMedia’s content through induction of emerging technology platforms and improvements, so as to offer next-generation features on multiple media including the web, smartphones, tablets, and other digital devices.

TEAM [email protected]

CyberMedia Invests to Enhance Digital PresenceThe portal offers real-time market information about the launch of new products and prices

Post implementation, the sites will offer full interactivity to visitors enabling them to use, comment, recommend, and forward the content, using a variety of social media tools, from any of CyberMedia’s publications. As a part of this exercise, the first implementation was completed at The DQ Week, the leading newspaper for India’s IT channel community with www.dqweek.com, an open information sharing online platform that is going to be extensively powered by India’s IT channel community.

The portal offers real-time market information about the launch of new products and prices, as well as the latest news updates about India’s domestic IT landscape and the entire reseller ecosystem. In addition, it provides a platform for the users to interactively register their own grievances and issues.

It also offers opportunities to IT retailers to feature their retail outlets through picture galleries.

The DQ Week site allows the IT channel community to share their views and analysis with over 1.5 lakh strong channel community base. It would also allow them to leverage the strong brand equity and quality information being provided by the 4 print editions of The DQ Week newspaper (Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, and Chennai) that currently

reaches 40,000 resellers.Announcing the launch

of The DQ Week website as part of CyberMedia’s digital reinvention of its online presence, Prasanto K Roy, chief editor, CyberMedia said that a rollout of all other group brand sites would follow rapidly. “The response has been amazing with a sharp spike in The DQ Week’s page views in the first day itself,” he concluded.

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C OHandbook 2012

Industry

Tata Communications Inks Pact with F1 TechnologyTata Communications has announced a technology partnership with Formula 1 motor racing in Delhi. The agreement would require Tata to provide connectivity to all 20 Formula 1 race locations and also would provide hosting and content delivery services to Formula1.com. “Selling the company as the technology partner for something as complex and high-profile as Formula 1, would be a showcase for its business-to-business customers,” said Vinod Kumar, chief executive, Tata Communications in a news conference.

Samsung Launches Ultra Notebooks

Global leader in consumer electronics, Samsung has launched its new range of ‘Ultra’ notebooks, with latest processor and multimedia capabilities. The product boasts a slim design profile with an Intel(R) Core i5 processor is available in 13’’ and 14’’ screen sizes, priced at `48, 990 and `54, 390, respectively. The notebooks have 8 GB memory and up to 1 TB storage. “The notebooks are the best in class display and even in terms of battery life, keeping mobility in consideration,” said Ranjit Yadav, country head, mobile and IT, Samsung India to Dataquest.

eClerx Bags MAKE Award 2011eClerx has been announced as the winner of 2011’s Indian Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises (MAKE) award for developing a learning organization. It has been selected by a panel of 1,000 India based Fortune 500 senior executives and global knowledge management/intellectual capital experts. PD Mundhra, co-founder and executive director, eClerx has announced, “This award is a great validation of the commitment and investment in our talent and processes to drive cutting-edge solutions for our clients.”

People

Chandigarh IT Department Appoints Prerne Puri as Secre-tary, ITChandigarh Administration has appointed Prerne Puri as the secretary for the Department of IT. She succeeds VK Singh, who was also heading the finance department as a secretary. Yogesh Kumar, HCS will continue as the director, IT, whereas Dr Divya Bansal has been appointed as the additional director, IT.

Educomp Appoints Ex-CEO of Tulip Telecom as Group CEOEducomp has made an announcement about the appointment of Sanjay Jain as the group chief executive officer with immediate effect. Jain will shoulder the responsibility of growth and profitability of the business, streamlining of operations, and synergies across the business. Prior to this new role, he was heading Tulip Telecom as its CEO.

Volume1: July 31st 2012Volume 2: August 15th 2012Volume 3: August 31st 2012

To know more contact: Arvind Razdan at +91 997 178 2277 or at [email protected]

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Industry

CanvasM Gets Rural Marketing AwardCanvasM Technologies has been acknowledged with the rural marketing award for its nomination of ‘Saral Rozgar’ in the category of the best ‘Innovative Ideas for Rural Development’. CanvasM Technologies is a completely owned VAS subsidiary of Tech Mahindra and Mahindra Group. Jagdish Mitra, chief executive officer, CanvasM received the award at the ceremony organized at Taj Lands End, Mumbai. Saral Rozgar is an initiative for skilled/semi-skilled/blue-collar workforce.

eTechies.in Inaugurates Technical Re-pair Center in OkhlaeTechies.in, one of the organized door-step, online, and phone technical support and repair service for desktops, laptops, printers, and other digital devices, has launched its new technical repair center in Okhla, New Delhi. This repair center is located at A 49, FIEE Industrial Complex, Okhla Phase–2, behind CLAL Chowk. This center has an area of 2,100 sq ft with a state-of-the-art infrastructure and 18 employees and is equipped with a quality control department for testing.

SMART Launches Professional Development Program for Indian TeachersSMART Technologies has launched the SMART professional development program for teachers - India. This

program was inaugurated by Linda Thomas, vice president, products, SMART Technologies. The target of this training program is to aid educators develop technology skills to actively use digital learning tools in their teaching methodology for better learning outcomes. Through this program,

SMART wants to train up to 8,000 teachers in 15 major cities in India in its first phase.

Reliance Globalcom Launches End-to-end Managed Videoconferencing ServicesReliance Globalcom, the global telecommunications services arm of Reliance Communications, has unveiled its end-to-end managed videoconferencing services for the enterprise customers. This suite of services comprises 24x7 reservation-less video bridging and meeting room management, video end-point management, event based temporary upgrades, value-added services, and videoconferencing room rental with access to 2,500+ videoconferencing rooms across the world. It will also be able to access to 190 videoconferencing rooms at Reliance World stores in 100 cities in India and will also provide an end-to-end, easy-to-use service suite including tablets, PCs, room systems, and telepresence systems.

Asus Launches the Eee Pad Transformer Prime in IndiaAnnounced about 4 months ago, Asus has finally launched its much-awaited Eee Pad Transformer Prime in India. The running Android 3.2 Honeycomb is touted as the world’s first quad-core CPU tablet. Powered by a NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core CPU, the tablet sports a 1.2 megapixel front camera and an 8 megapixel rear camera and has 1 GB RAM. It also includes a micro HDMI port and a micro SD card slot. Asus has priced the 64 GB variant at `49,999.


C OHandbook 2012

Fujitsu Launches Affordable NotebooksWith configurations specifically designed for SMB/commercial customers, Fujitsu has launched a range of over 10 notebooks and over 5 of them are available ex-stock in India. Providing outstanding mobility and security, the group has come up with Fujitsu LIFEBOOK notebooks and STYLISTIC tablet PCs. Where its ESPRIMO PCs help reducing energy costs up to 70%; product coming into more power hungry domain is Fujitsu’s CELSIUS workstations. The products are available at a starting price of almost `22,000.

More Awards to Snapdeals.com’s CreditSnapdeal.com has been acknowledged as the ‘Best eRetailer of the Year - Value for deals’ at the India eRetail Awards 2012. In addition, it bagged an award for the ‘Best Advertising Campaign of the Year’ at the awards ceremony on February 21, 2012, as part of the Indian eRetail Congress organized by the Franchise India at Hotel Claridges, Surajkund.

Service Uncle Comes to IndiaService Uncle, which claims to be the world’s first online portal, has made an announcement about the starting of its operations in India. This Australia based portal provides B2C as well as B2B services in any city, across the globe. Initially, Service Uncle is inviting free listings, which can be applied by filling a form, from service providers in India by logging on to www.serviceuncle.com.au.

Industry

Alibaba.com Joins Hands with FICCIAlibaba.com, an e-commerce company with its strategic focus on Gujarat, has made an announcement about its partnership with Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI). With this tie-up, it organized the ‘Breaking the Barriers and Stimulating Growth’ seminar and

workshops to increase awareness about the market potential of technical textiles products, both in the domestic and global markets. First event was organised on February 15 and 16, 2012, in Surat. Alibaba.com also plans to educate participants to leverage the power of the internet to reach the international buyers effectively.

Atos, EMC, and VMware Join Hands to Form Cloud Computing AllianceAtos, EMC Corporation, and VMware have come together to form a strategic alliance for open-cloud computing. In addition, Atos wants to form a new organization, Canopy, to offer more cloud solutions and services specifically for speedy delivery and aid customers in taking the advantage of cloud computing benefits. EMC and VMware also plan to invest alongwith Atos to promote innovation and assist in successful adoption of Canopy’s solutions in the marketplace.

Deals and Partnerships

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C OHandbook 2012

Mahindra Satyam Acquires vCustomer for $27 mnMahindra Satyam has announced the complete takeover of vCustomer’s international operations for $27 mn. It is the first complete takeover by Mahindra Satyam after joining Mahindra Group. With the aid of this acquisition, Mahindra Satyam has plans to compete in the BPO vertical in a big way.

Western Digital Acquires Viviti TechnologiesWestern Digital Corp (WD) has made a formal announcement about its complete takeover of Viviti Technologies (formerly known as Hitachi Global Storage Technologies), effective from March 8, 2012. WD paid $3.9 bn in cash and its 25 mn shares worth approximately $0.9 bn for this acquisition. Therefore Viviti Technologies now owns 10% of the WD shares outstanding, and it has the authority to put 2 people on the board of directors of WD.

UPM to Outsource Part of its IT Services to HCLUPM and HCL Technologies have announced that they have entered into a 5-year outsourcing frame agreement of IT infrastructure services. As per this agreement, HCL will offer its data center, end-user support, network services, and professional IT services to UPM. And in the future, HCL will also establish a data center in Finland and aid its existing Espoo Delivery Center to provide the services. Almost 250 UPM global employees will be transferred to HCL by the end of August 2012, depending upon the signing of local transfer agreements and customary closing conditions.

Deals and Partnerships

GoDB Tech and Intel Launch ‘Project Darpan’GoDB Tech and Intel have tied-up and launched ‘Project Darpan’. This free, multilingual user interface (UI) initiative will aid in simplifying the computing experience for the common user and aims to catapult the PC usage in India. Darpan user interface will offer graphical access to the internet and aid the consumer in conveniently accessing the Indian content.


Leisure /FLyte C OHandbook 2012

Shyamanuja [email protected]

Recently, Flipkart launched its digital music store. Interestingly, it has decided to have a separate branding for the new store. Called Flyte, the store acts as a digital aggregator of music from different

music publishers. A first-cut look at the site shows that it has really worked on customer experience. Looks and usability wise, it has surely impressed. But what is even more noteworthy is the pricing. The models are interest-ing and on first look, seems quite reasonable. The buyer has the flexibility to buy tracks, albums. The bundling prices too seem attractive.

The trust that it has built as an e-commerce site, the usability that it has built into the store, the innovative pricing models, and the fact that many music publishers do not have their own e-commerce sites (Surprising it may sound, Sony Music India does not have a dedicated website and Universal Music India’s site is not e-com-merce enabled!) of their own means that Flyte should have a smooth take-off.

But a smooth take-off is just a good first step; it is not the end by itself. If it has to make an impact on the way music is sold and distributed, it has to position it-self as a player in the music market, not a good e-com-merce player who happens to sell, among other things, digital music.

Making an ImpactAnd Flipkart knows it too well. In books too, it is not enough to have a smooth website and a good fulfilment

network. One must be seen as part of the books/liter-ary circle. Flipkart is using its funding money (it is the highest funded e-commerce company in India) to make an impact there. In the recently concluded World Book Fair in New Delhi, it had taken a huge stall space but without displaying/selling any book. Instead, it used that space to do book launches and book readings. It was one of the most noticed stalls in the Fair.

It has to do the same in music too—and probably the scale will have to be bigger. Books, like it or not, is still not the kind of mass market, as music is. Also, the Indian books market, even in volumes terms, accounts for a very small share of the global market. Indian music sales, piracy, downloads, is far more ubiquitous. Unlike books, there is no global model to follow—for such high volume. A bigger challenge—and opportunity—is to build a model where it can champion regional music/small publishers and thereby change the market.

For that, it has to first establish its seriousness in music. It has to go some distance there. For example, when I was searching for a song, hum ko tumhara hi aasra, a beautiful song from the 1948 movie Sajan, I did find the track, with the music being credited to “C Ramchandran”. I decided to ignore the typo, though not too many music lovers would be that generous after see-ing the name of their favorite composer being changed. But I got excited seeing that all the songs are available in an album form. But when I clicked on the album, to my horror, I found both C Ramachandra and Laxmikant-Pyarelal being listed as composers. That was shocking. Laxmikant-Pyarelal—in 1948? It took me some time to figure out that the site has combined tracks from two films with the same name—one a 1948 movie and an-other a 1969 movie—to offer as a single album. Which serious music lover will like this?

This is not an isolated example. There are quite a few but I assume they are reproductions of the mis-takes by the original publishers. Though that is not an excuse, but that is understandable. The above example, by the way, is not. In Saregama’s own sites, this mistake is not there.

These are not operational issues but if it has to make a mark as a seller of music, Flyte has to be seen as understanding and appreciating music and the issues of music lovers. n

The Flyte of HopeFlipkart’s Flyte impresses on pricing and usability, but it has to go some distance when it comes to musical sensitivity


Leisure /india design Forum 2012

shobha [email protected]

What can bring together some of the country’s best design minds to hobnob with some global experts, students and professionals alike with great zeal? A design event by design and of course, not for design alone.

Such an event fructified at India’s first international design event, India Design Forum 2012 held from March 2-10 at New Delhi. De-

signers in fields as varied as industrial design, automobiles, fashion, architecture, pub-lishing, and education, were all there breathing and speaking the language of design. Ideas were exchanged and the latest trends and innovations discussed, with the promise to use design to change lives and the world at large for the better.

The event was visualized and finally realized by Rajshree Pathy, founder and director, CoCCA and IDF, whose efforts paid off after 10 years. Workshops, talks, and a 2-day forum with sessions by eminent design specialists made up the event. The event was an eye-opener and a visual delight too as speakers created much awareness about the goings-on in the design world related to every sphere. They even harped upon bringing a deep sense of consciousness about India, its history, traditions and culture and its preservation.

Time Ripe for DesignMost speakers in the opening plenary session reiterated that the time had come for design to ripen as an idea. These included Rajshree Pathy, founder and director, CoCCA and IDF; Atul Punj, chairman of Punj Lloyd; Alex Kuruvilla, managing director, Conde Nast India, who recently launched Architectural Digest; Chandrakant Banerjee, direc-tor general, Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), and Kamal Nath, Minister for Urban Development and the chief guest.

While Atul Punj deliberated that contemporary design practices need to reflect a new narrative, Chandrakant Banerjee, CII said, “Design is the new engine of industrial

Building Brand IndiaIndia’s first international design event, saw some of the best design minds interact actively on the latest ideas


C OHandbook 2012

growth, and where our competitive-ness comes from. Brand India is synonymous with Tata Nano, the Jaipur Foot, the low-cost cataract surgery devices we devised.” He expressed delight that new thinking about design as grassroot innovation was being nurtured, promoted by institutes like the NID in Ahmeda-bad. “A younger demographic, fast rising disposable incomes not only in urban but in rural India has fore-grounded design like never before in India. Design is at the heart of innovation and also helps create new values and markets. Thus de-sign is not viewed as cost but as an investment today,” the chief guest, Kamal Nath highlighted.

Other speakers and eminent per-sonalities who lit up the event were Kiran Nadar, chairperson, Kiran Nadar Museum of art, India chairing the session on Indian contemporary art; German designer Birgit Lohm-ann who, together with her husband Massimo Mini, founded Designboom,

the first online magazine on design and architecture; Dilip Chhabria, automobile designer and founder of DC Designs; Amitabh Kant, the CEO and MD, Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor Development Corporation talking on urbanization happening in India, etc.

Technology-wise, other inter-esting sessions included the one on Science and Design, where the speaker Adam Bly, chairman/CEO of Seed Media Group and editor-in-chief and founder of Seed Magazine, spoke of the correlation of science and design. Bly believes that both science and design are cohesive, but also thinks that the role of art and design in recent times has real-ly been about popularizing science. He also gave several examples of how technology and design can be joined, as he spoke.

Paola Antonelli, senior curator in the department of architecture and design, Museum of Modern Art in New York, reviewed the new movements within the design world. The power of design as a tool for communication too was high on Antonelli’s agenda. Citing several projects, her talk also highlighted the relationship between science and technology and design.

“Dealing with reality is what design is about,” Antonelli said speaking of humanitarian design; Nicholas Negroponte’s conten-tious one laptop per child project; and another effort by the group Phillips Design to make a smoke-

less indoor wood stove. (Each year 1.6 mn people die from smoke inhalation from traditional wood stoves.). She concluded, “I think that India is uniquely positioned to be at the forefront of this revo-lution between high technology and low technology.”

In the session on Ethics of Creativity, Jan Chipchase, executive creative director, global insights at frog, spoke on how to bring insights into design. He emphasized that the best place to interact with people are those spaces where people spend a lot of time and which hold a lot of importance for them. The most important part is hiring a local team, and staying within the com-munity to foster relationships which would later give insights into the community. He then spoke of the ethics of designing in new media. He ended the talk saying Uberrima Fides, which means “to design with utmost faith”.

Exciting FutureWhere the future of design educa-tion in India is headed, was the premise moderated by Dr Naman Ahuja, associate professor for ancient art and architecture at JNU alongwith Tim Marshall, provost, The New School, USA and Prady-umna Vyas, director, NID. Building on the importance of ethics, he said that in future designers should move from being just designers to being citizen designers. While Marshall spoke of ingraining the ‘transdis-ciplinary’ aspect in the emerging curriculum, Vyas spoke of materials shaping minds and minds shaping products, and how India has been successfully doing it with emphasis on it in the curriculum too.

Overall, the future for design in India seems pretty bright, being in the good hands of some enterprising design minds and it may not be long before India rises to be a global design hub. n

Dr Naman Ahuja, associate professor for ancient art and architecture at JNU (middle) alongwith Tim Marshall (L), prov-ost, The New School, USA and Pradyumna Vyas (R), director, NID

Jan Chipchase, executive creative direc-tor, global insights, frog, spoke of how to bring insights into design

(L-R)- Adam Bly, Rajshree Pathy, Alex Kuruvilla, Minister Kamal Nath, AtulPunj, and Chandrajit Banerjee


Is the CIO Losing out?

In an issue called CIO Handbook, the headline sounds like an anti-thesis. The fact that my column is called AfterThought does not make it any better. But this is a question, and has a context.Here is what I mean.These days, no discussion in any CIO forum—

notwithstanding whether it is about cloud or BI or BYOD—that does not invariably get into the CIO’s role and how it is changing. The general consensus in the CIO Community is that it is a business role, not a technology role, though few are comfortable with the idea of giving away control on the IT budget.

And most large enterprises—SMBs have a different story, though—have come to accept this. The fact that ‘a CIO is a business executive’ is a thought that is no more restricted to the CIOs, fueled only by vendors, journalists, and analysts. This is what the other business executives too have started realizing.

That is good news. Or is it?Any business executive is responsible for a function:

Be it a business line, a horizontal function or part thereof. And he/she is responsible for translating the organization’s strategy to actions in his/her realm of work. For the rest of the enterprise—that is beyond the IT department—that function for IT/CIO is implementing technology.

The problem is that rarely anyone other than the IT guys believe that the CIO has any right to be called an innovator. Any individual may be an innovator, including an IT guy but the position itself does not give this tag to anyone. Just because IT can help in accelerating a few things does not make an IT guy more likely to innovate.

But this debate, on the face of it, is at best theoretical. Well, it was. Till all this social media, internet, collaboration and all came in. And IT made a claim that it is the harbinger of that change while many others saw it as the gatekeeper at best.

Till the time IT department was full of geeks, at least others sought their opinion on matters technical. That gave them some power, that was more than what their jobs gave them. But thanks to reforms in the IT department, the IT department is like any other—full of ‘managers’ who can get things done more ‘efficiently’, we love to ape the West—and who at best, may have a little more knowledge in technology than the general users but not more. That too, in the area of data centers or virtualization, not when it comes to Facebook and Twitter!

The consumerization of technology that is becoming so pervasive too is a manifestation of this ‘less techie’ IT departments. But that is a different issue. To return to my original point, the IT department is seen as a business department that knows how to efficiently do IT and in the best cases, how to make the business efficient through IT.

Unfortunately, for the CIOs, this wave—internet, social media and so on—are being seen as tools to know the customer better, connect with him better, and provide him with better goods and services. They are not about efficiency. IT—which in the last 10 years has grown completely on the business efficiency paradigm—is being seen as the last place to expect customer orientation.

Does that mean that IT is actually losing out? Despite sounding so devilish above, I do not agree. Not because I believe a position would give a CIO some power. That era is gone. But based on my knowledge of the IT guys, I would say that they are smart enough to figure this out and change to be on top of things.

The message is: Be a business manager or a techie. At the end of it, it is you Mr Aggarwal or Mr Sharma who matter. It is not your position as CIO or VP, technology or any other C level one.

Now, isn’t that too old a thought?

Afterthought

Shyamanuja DasThe author is Editor of Dataquest [email protected]

Virtualizationis as easy as 1.

Avaya Virtual Enterprise Network Architecture (VENA)provides everything you need to create an enterprise wide private cloud infrastructure,built on open standards. With the touch of a button, you can provision next-generationapplications, easily giving your users access to the tools they need, anywhere andeverywhere. Your network will be more powerful and scalable, with dramatically improvedperformance and reliability. To learn how Avaya can help bring your business into the collaborative age, visit avaya.com/vena.

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RNI No. 40432/82DL(S)17/3159/2012-14

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March 31st 2012 Issue