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Technology for Growth and Governance
January | 07 | 2011 | 50 Volume 06 | Issue 10
Digging out Inefficiencies | Socialising in the Enterprise | Ways to Avoid Screwing Up
What they say about you Page 30
Volume 06 | Issue 10
I believe
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Private Data, Public Domain,
Getting the
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Opportunity
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No holds barred
Clouds Can Lock You in Page 55
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editorial Rahul Neel Mani | rahul.mani@9dot9.in
Code Red in Action:
Disasters need to be dealt with as disasters
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his opinion [more so for its content] may sound a little weird at this time, but I want to narrate a real-life disaster management case that was dealt with wonderfully. Therefore, it deserves mention. I was at the Fortis Hospital in Shalimar Bagh (North Delhi area) attending a medical emergency last week. In less than half an hour of being at the hospital, I saw a few men screaming in the corridors. A fire broke out in an adjacent
editors pick 30
slum. Fire spread like it does. In no time the sky was black. I couldn’t see anything but smoke all over the place. Sunil Kapoor, Zonal Director of Fortis (Sunil joined Fortis in year 2000 as the CIO and then moved on to a business/operations role) was at the helm. Sensing an emergency, Sunil issued a ‘Code Red,’ a message announced over a hospital's public address system (PAS), indicating a fire or other adverse conditions that can cause grave
12 Tech Beviours: What they say about you
Are you always on email or do you forget to charge your phone? Each of your tech behaviours, says something about you. See which behaviour describes you the best.
problems. The Code Red was issued to alert the hospital staff for fighting the emergency, but what I saw the hospital staff doing was beyond belief. The entire support staff sprung into action literally instantaneously. The fire-fighting equipment deployed for the hospital were pulled out. In no time, about 35-40 personnel including Sunil were at the site to extinguish the devilish looking fire. There wasn’t any sign of a fire brigade until then. Three hose pipes (pulled from different directions in the hospitals) were spraying water with an aim to saving human lives. Inside the hospital, an emergency team of doctors and ancillary staff were on alert to tackle the situation (part of the Code Red). Messages were constantly broadcast over the (PAS) updating the emergency response
teams. In less than half an hour, the smoke settled. I peeped out of a window. The fire was almost extinguished. It caused damage but it was not widespread. The disaster management system of a Hospital came in handy in not only saving its own assets but also precious lives outside its ecosystem. The sheer effectiveness of a ‘Plan’ and the proactive approach of the personnel to avert the disaster was what made me exclaim in joy. Disasters seldom strike with a warning. All you need is to remain fully geared up to act upon a disaster management plan, the damage can be minimized. In this case, I saw no casualties/injuries. I wish you a safe year ahead.
The Chief Technology Officer Forum
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january 11 thectoforum.com
C o v e r D e s i g n : AN I L V K|C AR T OO N S B Y H AR S H O MO H AN C H ATTORAJ
Conte nts
30 cover Story
30 | 12 Tech Behaviours: What they say about you.
Are you always on email or do you forget to charge your phone? Each of your tech behaviours, says something about you. See which behaviour describes you the best.
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aD
No holds barred
55 | Clouds can lock you in
Ken Steinhardt, VP, and CTO, EMC, talks about the closed nature of public clouds and future of data migration
20 | Best of Breed: Socialising in the enterprise
20
A look at what brings people and applications together. By cameron sturdevant
48 | tech for governance: How to Sell to the CEO on Change By ken bylsma
48 regulArs
01 | Editorial 10 | Enterprise Roundup
16 A QUESTION OF ANSWERS
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16 | HPC In The Enterprise Eng Lin
Goh, CTO, SGI on the evolution of the company after its takeover by Rackable
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6 | i believe: Private Data, Public Domain, Opportunity Data Mining to create value perception that drives business will occupy the minds of CIOs By k b venkataramanan
47 | hidden tangent: From Smartphone to Superphone The humble mobile gets elevated to a new status By geetaj Channana
60 | view POINT: consumerisation of the enterprise By sameer shelke
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43 | next Horizons: Getting the Right Tablet A quick guide to help you decide for an enterprise tablet By don reisinger
www.thectoforum.com Managing Director: Dr Pramath Raj Sinha Printer & Publisher: Kanak Ghosh Publishing Director: Anuradha Das Mathur Editorial Editor-in-chief: Rahul Neel Mani Executive Editor: Geetaj Channana Resident Editor (West & South): Ashwani Mishra Senior Editor: Harichandan Arakali Assistant Editor: Varun Aggarwal Correspondent: Nipun Sahrawat DEsign Sr. Creative Director: Jayan K Narayanan Art Director: Binesh Sreedharan Associate Art Director: Anil VK Sr. Visualiser: PC Anoop Sr. Designers: Prasanth TR, Anil T, Joffy Jose Anoop Verma, NV Baiju & Chander Dange Designers: Sristi Maurya & Charu Dwivedi Chief Photographer: Subhojit Paul Photographer: Jiten Gandhi
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advisory Panel Ajay Kumar Dhir, CIO, JSL Limited Anil Garg, CIO, Dabur David Briskman, CIO, Ranbaxy Mani Mulki, VP-IS, Godrej Industries Manish Gupta, Director, Enterprise Solutions AMEA, PepsiCo India Foods & Beverages, PepsiCo Raghu Raman, CEO, National Intelligence Grid, Govt. of India S R Mallela, Former CTO, AFL Santrupt Misra, Director, Aditya Birla Group Sushil Prakash, Country Head, Emerging Technology-Business Innovation Group, Tata TeleServices Vijay Sethi, VP-IS, Hero Honda Vishal Salvi, CSO, HDFC Bank Deepak B Phatak, Subharao M Nilekani Chair Professor and Head, KReSIT, IIT - Bombay Vijay Mehra, Former Global CIO, Essar Group Sales & Marketing VP Sales & Marketing: Naveen Chand Singh National Manager-Events and Special Projects: Mahantesh Godi (09880436623) Product Manager: Rachit Kinger (9818860797) GM South: Vinodh K (09740714817) Senior Manager Sales (South): Ashish Kumar Singh GM North: Lalit Arun (09582262959)
GM West: Sachin Mhashilkar (09920348755) Kolkata: Jayanta Bhattacharya (09331829284) Production & Logistics Sr. GM. Operations: Shivshankar M Hiremath Production Executive: Vilas Mhatre Logistics: MP Singh, Mohd. Ansari, Shashi Shekhar Singh OFFICE ADDRESS Published, Printed and Owned by Nine Dot Nine Interactive Pvt Ltd. Published and printed on their behalf by Kanak Ghosh. Published at Bunglow No. 725, Sector - 1, Shirvane, Nerul Navi Mumbai - 400706. Printed at Silver Point Press Pvt Ltd, D-107, TTC Industrial Area, Nerul, Navi Mumbai 400706. Editor: Anuradha Das Mathur For any customer queries and assistance please contact help@9dot9.in
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the author brings more than 17 years of experience in large scale systems design and operation, product development and infrastructure management.
PHOTO BY Jiten Gandhi
I Believe
K B Venkataramanan CIO, Viteos Capital Markets Services Ltd.
Private Data, Public Domain, Opportunity
Mining public-domain data to create the value perception that drives business will increasingly occupy the minds of CIOs there is a fundamental shift happening in the way organisations are looking at data. It is driven by people putting private information in public forums, at all times of the day. The next wave of services oriented organisations will look at mining this data before they start any strategies.
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current challenge creating a knowledge management repository to scale up and how well you are able to collect data from the public domain
Organisations therefore would rather look at effective and differentiated strategy drivers. There will be a significant shift in business strategies from building brick and mortar based organisations to organisations that are small and extremely agile even in the way they structure themselves to deliver value to the marketplace. We are a financial services backoffice organisation that does posttrade processing for clients around the world. When we started about four-and-a-half years back, there was a need for understanding the domain and accumulating a lot of knowledge. We literally had 250-300 people. Back then scalability was all about adding headcount. We then asked 'what can we do to automate what someone else is doing without adding value either to himself or the process/organisation ?' The answer to that question has helped us increase business, and maintain additional capacity, even as the number of people dropped to hardly about a 100 today. Our story for scalability revolves around creating that knowledge repository. This is the crux of it: One, this is about creating a knowledge management repository. Two, how it will work depends on how you are able to collect data from the public domain. Let's go back to the question 'what is innovation' and how does a CIO facilitate it? Today, it's all about creating the value perception that drives the business. People in an organisation necessarily need to see value in what is being presented. The creation of the value will come from how well you're able to mine data and strategise. That's the biggest challenge – how will we get systems that help you mine data from the public domain, not necessarily in private domain. How will we get people to think in ways that allow us to look at all this very differently. – As told to Harichandan Arakali
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the with t set n ries r se iffere es. e ou re a d erienc u n e ti wh ir exp con We nd part re the a o sec IOs sh of C
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How mobile generation is changing the BFsI sector?
The increasing importance of mobile internet and social networking is currently the subject of much public discussion. The new technological possibilities have set in motion a process of change that necessitates a rethinking of existing customer communications. Although the effect of these trends on revenue and margins is not measurable, they impact the sales and advisory processes.
What are / shuld be the attributes of a good CTO ? What are the prerequisites for a CTO role ? CTO should be more creative because CTO is top technical architect of the organisation, he should design and recommend technology for product lines and various applications. His major responsibilities are : 1. CTO is completely in charge of engineering and development 2. CTO suggests the new technology to enhance new technical offerings and focus on external customers too. 3. CTO is responsible to manage vendors with solution to enhance products line and applications. 4. CTO helps to develop technical strategies for top line product, core and satellite applicationsconnects to the business network.
—Kapil Mehrotra AVP - IT Application Development at AVIVA LIfe Insurance, India
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BEYOND THE support. IT can be a profit centre instead of just a cost centre.
“One needs to move away from quantifying the return, but look at qualitative improvement of the business process execution that IT is able to bring out.” To read the full story go to:
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Information is the lifeblood of not just corporations but organised crime terrorism, says Steve Durbin of the Information Security Forum in conversation with Rahul Neel Mani. The ISF’s released its Threat Horizon Report, and Durbin says we may have to give up some individual privacy in return for responsible governance and security.
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Dell to acquire SecureWorks Pg 12
Enterprise
PHOTO IMAGING BY sristi maurya
Round-up
Hotmail Users Find Empty Inboxes on New Year. Company working with impacted users to solve the problem evening saw many Hotmail users missing important mails from their inboxes. In fact many Hotmail users, across the globe, reported that all their important data went missing since the beginning of the New Year. Microsoft defined the problem as not so widespread and said it is working with impacted users to resolve it. Some Microsoft Hotmail users are starting off the New Year scrambling to get back old e-mails, the Daily Mail reported. Microsoft, however, did not give any technical explanation for this unpleasant situation. Many of its users shared the problem through variThe New Year
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ous forums and popular social networking sites. "Got my emails and personal folders back, I know some of us will not trust Hotmail, but this is the case with any online services, and in some cases it's very hard to change our emails because it's related to many things, so what I did, I just create Gmail account and forward copy of my Hotmail to it," commented a Hotmail user on Facebook. Launched in 1996, Hotmail is the most widely used email service in the world and boasts of around 360 million users. It was later acquired by Microsoft for around $400 million.
Data Briefing
294.9% SMARTPHONES GROWTH IN INDIA. —Source: IDC
E nte rpri se Round -up
They Sanjay Said it Jha During an the launch of a slew of new devices at CES, Las Vegas, Sanjay Jha, Chariman and CEO, Motorola Mobility said that the company is set to revolutionise mobile computing.
Cloud Adds Complexity to DR Initiatives. Symantec study reveals gap in expectations versus reality Symantec has announced the India findings of its sixth annual Symantec Disaster Recovery Study. The study demonstrates the growing challenge of managing disparate virtual, physical and cloud resources because of added complexity for organisations protecting and recovering mission critical applications and data. As Indian enterprises increasingly adopt virtualisation, it is having a big impact on their disaster recovery plans. The study highlights that in India nearly 50 percent of data on virtual systems is not regularly backed up and only 10 percent of the data and mission-critical applications in virtual environments is protected by replication. The data also highlights that 70 percent of those surveyed were concerned about data loss as an impact of a disaster. The study indicated that virtualisation led 71 percent to re-evaluate DR plans in 2010; this is up from the 61 percent reported by respondents in 2009. “While Indian enterprises are adopting new technologies such as virtualisation and the cloud to reduce costs, they are currently adding more complexity to their environments and leaving mission critical applications and data unprotected,” said Anand Naik, director, Systems Engineering, Symantec.
Quick Byte on security
“We’re innovating across the board as we revolutionise mobile computing with experiences that push the limits of what you thought was possible with your mobile device.” —Sanjay Jha Chariman and CEO, Motorola Mobility
The Android platform is already becoming a target for virus writers. Infosecisland has reported an Android Trojan— Geinimi that has been discovered in some Chinese games. ‘Geinimi’ not only steals personal data from the phone, but even has some botnet-like command and control features. The Chief Technology Officer Forum
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E nte rpri se Round -up
Dell To Acquire SecureWorks
SecureWorks’ Security-as-a-Service solutions expand Dell’s services portfolio with enterprise protection dell has announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire SecureWorks Inc., a globally recognized provider of information-security services. SecureWorks’ industry leading Security-as-a-Service solutions include Managed-Security Services, Security and Risk Consulting Services and Threat Intelligence. The acquisition expands Dell’s global IT-as-a-Service offerings and information security expertise. Organizations of all sizes and across diverse industries – including Global 500 companies, mid-sized businesses, financial services, utilities, healthcare, retail and manufactur-
ing – rely on SecureWorks’ industry-leading security services to reduce risk, improve regulatory compliance and lower costs of managing IT security. The company’s proprietary threat management platform is scalable and integrates easily with client environments. In addition, SecureWorks’ world-class Counter Threat Unit research team helps protect clients across multiple industries from everchanging global IT threats. The acquisition is the latest strategic investment by Dell as it expands its portfolio of enterprise-class IT-as-a-Service solutions. Building its capabilities as a Managed Security
Global Tracker IT spending
Worldwide IT spending is forecast to total $3.6 trillion in 2011, a 5.1 percent increase from 2010, according to Gartner. In 2010, worldwide IT spending totaled $3.4 trillion, up 5.4 percent from 2009 levels.
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$3.6 Trillion
2011
$3.4 Trillion
2010
Services Provider (MSSP) is an important next step in Dell’s strategy to help clients drive better efficiency across the enterprise and dramatically simplify the management of IT infrastructure. Founded in 1999, SecureWorks is headquartered in Atlanta, GA and serves thousands of clients in 70 countries, including more than 15 percent of the Fortune 500. The company has approximately 700 employees and projects Fiscal Year 2010 revenue of more than $120 million. Gartner has positioned SecureWorks in the Leaders quadrant of its “Magic Quadrant for MSSPs, North America” report based on criteria that includes a company’s completeness of vision and ability to execute. Forrester named SecureWorks as one of only two “leaders” cited in The Forrester Wave: Managed Security Services, Q3 2010. SecureWorks was among the companies that received top ratings in several categories: including value proposition, vertical and geographic footprint, and infrastructure and perimeter security. “The frequency and sophistication of attacks on technology infrastructure and malicious attempts to access data, requires reliable, capable and innovative information security,” said Peter Altabef, President, Dell Services. “SecureWorks is a recognized industry leader in information security services and its offerings and expertise will immediately enhance our solutions portfolio. We look forward to welcoming SecureWorks team members – who bring their passion and dedication to serving clients with best-in-class security services – to Dell and our clients.” "Dell’s global scale and relationships with clients provides a tremendous opportunity to rapidly expand SecureWorks’ business," states Michael Cote, CEO and Chairman of SecureWorks. "With Dell’s commitment to our clients, our team and our market, I am confident that SecureWorks will flourish as part of the Dell Services organization and that our clients will continue to be well-served and well-protected by the services on which they rely."
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E nte rpri se Round -up
ILLUSTRATION by ANIL T
India Still No.1 in Off-Shoring. Attractive cost structures in Philippines, and Indonesia create tough competition for India.
Many organisations that choose to move IT services to lower-cost countries are daunted by the task of determining which country (or countries) would best host their operations. Gartner has conducted an analysis of these countries to assess their capabilities and potential as offshore services locations. Gartner has identified the Top 30 countries for globally sourced activities in 2010-11, and found that eight new countries have made
their debut in the Top 30.The leading emerging offshore locations evaluated by Gartner in the Asia/ Pacific region are (in alphabetical order): Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam.“Clients continue to seek a portfolio of offshore countries, and with India again experiencing increasing labour costs and attrition, this is creating opportunities for other offshore locations to target
Fact ticker
Mobile handset market grows 3.6%. According to IDC, the sales reached 40.08 million units in Q3. According to IDC’s India Quarterly Mobile Handsets Tracker, in the third quarter
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of 2010, Nokia had the largest share of 31.5% in terms of units shipped during
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the services needs of more-mature Asian clients,” said Ian Marriott research vice president at Gartner. Gartner elected to focus on emerging countries this year due to the dynamic changes taking place as they move towards developed country status. Gartner excluded the mature countries of Australia, New Zealand and Singapore this year because their maturity has led to little year on year change to their rating. Gartner also included two new countries to this year's analysis - Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. India is already the most successful country amongst the offshore locations. It continues to score very well across all 10 criteria. With the rising Rupee, its cost competitiveness is being challenged, but this is compensated by its strength in other areas. China on the other hand improved its scores for "political and economic environment" from “good” to “very good”, and "culture compatibility" from “fair” to “good”. Contributing to the increased rating for China is its rising global political and economic leverage, especially during the recent global economic crisis. China held a steady positive growth rate spurred by the $583.9 billion stimulus package in 2009. The Shanghai 2010 World Expo has helped to increase cultural awareness within China.
the third quarter of 2010. The Chinese brand G’Five emerged as second largest player in terms of unit shipments market share and Korean handset manufacturer Samsung stood at third position during the quarter. The country’s mobile handsets market recorded a growth of 3.6% to touch 40.08 million units in the third quarter ended September 30, 2010, as compared
to the second quarter ended June 30, 2010, according to IDC India. The year 2010 is expected to end with total mobile handset sales of 155.9 million units. The sales in smartphones category saw a growth of 34.2% quarter on quarter and increase by 294.9% year-on-year and is likely to touch nearly 6 million in calendar 2010.
mobile app
TripAdvisor Launches New iPad App
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ravel site TripAdvisor has announced the launch of its new application for the iPad, available in Apple’s App Store. The free application allows travellers on the go to search for popular hotels, restaurants and attractions, as well as find the cheapest flights, from their iPad. The application is available in 18 languages and 26 countries around the world, giving travelers a localised experience on TripAdvisor. The new TripAdvisor iPad app features a map-based browsing experience that allows travellers to see traveller reviews for hotels, restaurants and attractions and quickly get the lay of the land in their travel destinations. If travellers want to scope out points of interest at their destination of interest, they can simply move the map with the slide of a finger. The app also supports oneclick map-based searches, making it easy to find hot spots in different parts of town. In addition to its map-based functionality, the TripAdvisor iPad app includes a number of other helpful features for travellers on the go, including TripAdvisor’s more than 40 million reviews and opinions for hotels, restaurants, and attractions. “With millions of travellers using TripAdvisor Mobile on a monthly basis, it’s clear that they are finding trusted travel advice that’s indispensible while they’re on the go,” said Mike Putnam, director of mobile product at TripAdvisor.
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A Question of answers
Eng Lin Goh
HPC Enterprise Eng Lin Goh | CTO, SGI.
in the
Eng Lin Goh, CTO, SGI in a conversation with Geetaj Channana on the evolution of the company after its takeover by Rackable, and their contribution to cloud computing and high-performance computing in the enterprise.
What has changed, in the 18 months since Rackable took over SGI? Rackable acquired SGI about a year and a half back and changed the name of the merged company to SGI. What has changed is the addition of the cloud customer base in addition to the HPC (high-performance computing) and visualization customer base. For me as a CTO, who has been with SGI for more
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than 20 years, I have seen the addition of this new customer base on the cloud side. I see a lot of leverage on both sides – cloud and HPC visualization customer base. We are a major supplier to cloud companies such as Amazon. We have shipped hundreds of racks to the Amazon cloud. When you touch the Amazon cloud you are actually going through an SGI system. If you are using a Motorola Droid, you are using
an SGI system in the background. Increasingly, we have morphed into a server-and-storage company. We have now gone in the backend and have diversified. But, we still have the know how of the data work flow of the movie industry, the cloud and HPC. We have now moved one step back into the server and storage side and at the same time diversified to embrace and accommodate the front-end.
P E R S ON ' S N A M E
A Question of answers
Embracing Backend: We have now moved one step back into the server and storage side
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A Question of answers
Eng Lin Goh
You have been talking about one Peta-Flop in a Box, what is that? We always push the envelope and that’s how we differentiate. On the movie industry side, we differentiated ourselves by ensuring the movie frames in our servers move in an uninterrupted way and we can give the reassurance that not a single frame is dropped. For the movie industry, each and every frame is intellectual property. On that end, the I/O and data throughput is taken care of by us. Then on the HPC side, we are trying to move from teraflop, to petaflop to exxaflop. The problem has been space and power. We are working on the power side right now as a long-term effort. But, for space, we are always working on packing more compute power in a single cabinet. So, Peta-flop-in-a-box is a first step to that goal. We do this by using graphics-processing-units or GPUs in a small footprint. But, this is not free lunch – there is a lot of re-programming required to use GPUs instead of CPUs to get more flops in a box. If someone is ready to do that re-programming we are ready to give them peak-peta-flop-ina-box today. What is the kind of customization and programming required and what are its applications? If you take different levels of computing, the traditional level is one CPU core and one piece of memory. When you are writing code it is running on this single core and single piece of memory. The next level is when you need more power from one CPU, you are linking multiple CPUs together under one operating system. Here you want your program to split into various parts to use all the available CPUs. This level of reprogramming is not extreme as you use the Open MP model which allows you to use more CPUs. The next level up becomes more difficult where the CPUs are not under one
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“We are always working on packing more compute power in a single cabinet. So, Petaflop-in-a-box is a first step to that goal. We do this by using graphics-processing-units or GPUs in a small footprint.” operating system, they are essentially a cluster of systems. Here you use the MPI programming model which is a bit harder to do. Here you explicitly split your code to run your code in these clusters. And, the highest level of complexity in the code is that it can not only use this cluster, but use graphics processors in the cluster for computing. Earlier graphics processors were only used for drawing, more and more people are looking at using them for computation also. In the past all this has been ignored in the enterprise space because people were happy doing one processor and one memory. But, now the clock speed has stopped improving, even the enterprise world cannot ignore that now, they have to
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things I Believe in One of the early successes of HPC in the enterprise world is in Data Analytics. e are ready to W give them peakpeta-flop-in-abox today. he niche for T us will be the ability to handle large amounts of data with deep analysis of that data.
climb up that ladder. The applications include predicting climate change in the future. We have examples of people using 10,000 cores for one such simulation for creating earth models. NASA, one of our customers, is using a cluster with 75,000 cores, to help detect planets. In science they already using thousands of cores for a single application. What is Cyclone – your cloud offering? In the cloud services space we start with the lowest level, IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) like Amazon EC2, the next level is Platform as a Service and the highest level is Software as a Service where an applica-
Eng Lin Goh
tion is given as a service. We provide this service for some sectors like Genomics, Engineering Design, Oil and Gas and so on. We have started this business recently and now we have a number of customers that are using our systems. Typically we build a system based on requirement. We do not have a big outlay of hardware behind that is waiting for customers. Since we are building the hardware, anytime we get an order, we build a system for them. Currently our business is at the SaaS level. How do you see HPC evolving to the enterprise? This is something that we have thought of for a number of years now. In order to be a highly successful company we not only have to diversify our feature set, but our market too. Rackable's acquisition of SGI gave us that avenue on the cloud side. The big question is, can we use HPC-class systems in the enterprise? One of the early successes of HPC in the enterprise world is in Data Analytics. We
realize this more and more that one thing that is common between the enterprise and HPC is data handling. The common problem is dealing with massive amounts of data and making sense of it. We have started selling our big memory systems for doing fraud detection in the enterprise world. For instance, Ebay uses our systems for fraud detection in their PayPal system. We have other enterprise customers that are doing the same but prefer not to be named. Our systems are also being using for efficient deep packet analysis of internet traffic. So, as we started niche in the media space before diversifying, similarly we will be starting niche in the enterprise segment also. The niche in this case will be the ability to handle large amounts of data with deep analysis of that data. Probably in telecom companies in India? A certain big telco in the U.S. came to us because their main database server grew very large due to mergers and acquisitions.
A Question of answers
Whenever somebody tried to call from their phones, it was taking longer and longer for the connection to be made. A large chunk of the connection time is related to scanning the database for that connection. They are using our servers for this now, to handle that large database and do that deep inspection of data when a call is being made on their networks. What about banks, are they also using it? We are actually of great interest to the financial services industry, not only to BFSI but to high frequency traders too. These people buy fast computers to do massive amounts of trade in a very very short time. They earn their profit from very small variation in the stock price. They do thousands of transaction in a day, that cannot be done manually. They want systems to take decisions very fast at the flutter of variation. We have been very popular with those customers. —geetaj.channana@9dot9.in
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IO Virtualisation: The “Hypervisor” for Your Infrastructure
Illustrations BY anil t
Breed
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Socialising in the 9.4% Enterprise Data Briefing
share of android based smart -phones shipment in q3 2010 in india
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eWEEK Labs Technical Director Cameron Sturdevant looks at what’s bringing people, and applications together in social media platforms.
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tatus update services, sometimes called micro-blogging, took off in 2010. A Pew Research Centre study released last month revealed 8 percent of American adults who use the Internet also use Twitter. Using social media tools in the enterprise pits open sharing against corporate controls. It also opens The Chief Technology Officer Forum
a range of integration questions about how best to connect people and applications in an activity stream that is immediately relevant, secure and collaborative. IT vendors, including Salesforce.com, Socialtext, Socialcast, Yammer and a host of others, have taken notice of the social media explosion by releasing a new wave of social media tools for the enterprise. The
social n e t worki ng
big bang that is the birth of social media platforms includes the initial formation of specifications and integration tools that seek to ease interconnection problems, while maintaining the fast-flowing and lightweight nature of social media interactions. It’s fair to say that business users aren’t looking for another place to search for the information necessary to do their job. IT managers in larger enterprises may encounter multiple social media platforms inside a single organization. What’s the best way to use social collaboration tools with partners? Is there a better way to integrate social media and back-end systems? The answer today is that a tangle of integration tools and a dearth of standards mean that IT managers must pay careful attention to a wide range of integration tools to curtail client creep. To this end, there are some emerging efforts that are worth watching.
B E S T OF B R E E D
IT managers have choices when it comes to 'socializing' the nonhuman elements of a socialmedia platform
Twitter, LinkedIn and other social platforms can share posts and status updates across platforms. The not-so-good news is that specific integration tools that are built to support specific platforms are the norm today. For example, there is a specific Salesforce.com integration that links Salesforce’s Chatter social collaboration tool with Facebook and Twitter. Socialtext provides SocialPoint to inter-operate with Microsoft’s SharePoint intranet software. When it comes to connecting the social puzzle pieces, REST APIs are the mainstay for posting actions such as a status update into another platform’s activity Connecting social systems stream. Emerging tools including the Jonathan Green, vice president of informaAtom programming language and JSON tion technologies at Den-Mat, a dental-care (JavaScript Object Notation) are being conproducts company, implemented Chatter sidered for use in social platforms to share as part of a broader Salesforce.com roll-out. updates. Socialtext is exploring a Twitter“We chose to implement Chatter to supsupported development called Annotaport our new direct-to-consumer product tions to handle payloads that are greater Snap-On Smile and to collaborate quickly than 140 characters. with our vendors, partners and ultimately IT managers have choices when it customers,” he said. comes to 'socializing' the non-human eleGreen implemented Salesforce to replace ments of a social-media platform. Unlike an aging CRM management application classic enterprise process integration, in running on its IBM AS400. The Salesforce which data is taken from one application installation was also integrated with a and given to another, social integration manufacturing component that is still run on takes specific types of events and places premises. Chatter is used to facilitate comthem into an activity stream that will be munication between sales and accounting. read by a person. Green indicated that Chatter adoption has One example of this is the integration been successful enough that he may migrate provided by Cast Iron, which uses templates off an existing intranet and use Chatter to to capture noteworthy events support internal collaboration. from a back-end system (such To connect social media as an SAP inventory managesystems to your vital applicament system) and releases the tions, vendors such as Cast data (such as a ship date) into Iron and a host of others use an activity stream that a salescustom-coded templates and Q-o-Q growth person will read — all in near REST (Representational State of smart phones real time. This bypasses the Transfer) APIs. The good in india in q3, batch-process reporting pronews is that social media cess that traditionally would tools are no strangers to the 2010 have been used to present integration process. On the this information. consumer side, Facebook,
34.2%
People Who Need People Two standards are emerging to manage the tension between widespread participation and the need for corporate data control. To be clear, these specifications are still piping hot from the forge. One specification is ActivityStreams, an effort to enrich data feeds between social platforms by standardizing the format used to exchange information. In the consumer world, this means making it easier for platforms such as Foursquare to exchange status, comments, bookmarks and news with other sites such as Identi.ca. The specification has been unevenly adopted among enterprise social media tools, but it’s useful as an indication of the work needed to ease information sharing between platforms. Another specification, OStatus, is an open specification for distributing status updates between different social networks. The goal is to enable disparate social media hubs to route status updates between users in near real time. As is typical of the social media space, both of these specifications are at version 1.0. Further, some of the security protocols that enable social systems to talk with one another and the back-end systems are also fresh from the oven, including OAuth (tinyurl.com/26y9lh8). Thus, IT managers who lean heavily on standards when making technology decisions could get left behind when it comes to implementing social media projects.
Securing the Socialites As the consumerization of enterprise social collaboration pushes forward, the commercial-grade social platforms distinguish themselves from consumer platforms by wrapping security policies that protect corporate secrets around the activity stream. For IT managers, this means that some of the most basic infrastructure — including the directories that hold authoritative data about employees and The Chief Technology Officer Forum
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B E S T OF B R E E D
social n e t worki ng
contractors — must be in order for a social collaboration project to succeed. In fact, while social media products are pushing productivity with consumer-like crowds, IT basics become even more relevant to success. A clean, well-maintained directory is necessary to support the security underpinnings that control access. Almost as important is directory information, which is essential for populating user profile data. In a nod to the importance of easing employee adoption through simple profile creation, Salesforce.com’s Chatter recently gained the ability to pull in a user’s Facebook profile information.
After ensuring that the IT basics are up to snuff, IT managers who are considering a social media integration project must consider the security technology used by each of the platforms. According to Sean Whiteley, senior vice president of product marketing at Salesforce.com, the Chatter platform explicitly prohibits OpenID as a user authentication method at this time, although he thinks the standard is a good one for consumer and 'prosumer' applications. Conversely, Matt Wilkinson, the vice president of products at Socialcast, said that OpenID is used by Reach, Socialcast’s flagship microblogging tool.
Related to the authentication methods used to govern who and what has access to the activity stream is the question of single sign-on. IT managers should take care to ensure that any social media platform they consider has support for the single sign-on solution already used in the organization. One of the best ways to prevent a social media platform from being orphaned is to ensure that users can easily access the activity stream without being burdened with another set of credentials. SOURCE: eWeek.
IO Virtualisation: The “Hypervisor” for Your Infrastructure IOV does to IO in the infrastructure domain what Hypervisor does to software in the application domain. It is in an explosive technology, but don't treat it as a standalone product. By Ken Oestreich
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ore than ever in 2010, IO Virtualization (IOV) has been showing-up in products, written about, spoken about. Because I’ve had a few years’ experience with this technology, I wanted to give a very brief explanation of the concept, and focus more on why it will be increasingly important. In particular, I want to draw an analogy where you should view IOV as a critical enabling feature of future IT Management … but not as a stand-alone product. Why? It's similar in concept to how the hypervisor is an enabler (but usually not used as a stand-alone product) of data centre management services. This blog is related to my 2009 instalment on Fabric as an IT Enabler.
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v i r t u a l i s at i o n
What is IOV? IO Virtualization is an approach whereby physical IO components such as Network Interface Cards (NICs) Host Bus Adaptors (HBAs) and Keyboard/video/Mouse ports (KVM) are reproduced logically rather OS, Application than physically. In other words, a physical APP APP IO port (Ethernet, Infiniband, PCI, etc.) APP OS OS might logically represent itself to the O/S OS as different configurations. APP APP Clearly this is convenient because it Hypervision APP OS OS (a) eliminates multiple costly IO devices OS that also consume power and installation time. But it’s also convenient Server Hypervisor because IO – and it’s associated addressi/o Virtualisation ing such as IPs, MACs, Worldwide Names, etc. – can be instantly configured with a mouse. Server The other consequence of IOV is that a single physical port means a single i/o Virtualisation I/O (NICs, HBAs) physical cable. In essence, a server’s vNIC vNIC vhba vhba logical IO is consolidated down to a sinCabling netwk netwk netwk netwk gle (physical) converged network which carries data, storage and KVM traffic. virtual Switching So this means that no matter how many Switching logical IO devices you configure for a server, there is still only a single cable out the back. So IOV yields the ideal “wire-once” server environment that’s Network/Storage still infinitely re-configurable. The overall value of IOV becomes clear fast: Fewer physical IO devices to buy, fewer cables to install, zero re-cabling, — Source: K. Oestreich fewer physical ports to buy, and instantly re-configurable IO. In brief, there are a few differing approaches to IO virtualization: 2. The hypervisor used to be the focus, but now it’s merely an enabling feature embedded within higher-level IT management n Existing on-board Ethernet with new IO drivers: (e.g. Egenera) products. Those products leverage the hypervisor to perform tasks n Converged Networking Adapters (e.g. Qlogic, Emulex) such as migration, fail-over and consolidation. You should view IOV n Appliances + high-throughput IO devices (e.g. Xsigo) similarly: it is an enabling feature that will allow for analogous IO n Existing physical IO but with address hardware-based mapping/ consolidation, migration and fail-over. virtualization (e.g. HP VirtualConnect) 3. Where hypervisor implementations and performance used to be hotly-debated, nobody really cares anymore. Today the real *value* Putting IOV in Perspective is not in the hypervisor, but in the management tools surrounding it. You should think of IOV using the following analogy: The way Similarly, IOV should be judged less on how it is implemented, and in which the hypervisor abstracts software in the application more on the management tools and automation which manage it. domain, IOV abstracts IO and networking in the infrastructure Forrester analyst Galen Schreck made a similar observation recently: domain. (However, to be clear, IOV is not a software layer unlike … Aside from benefits like reducing cabling and switch ports, I the hypervisor) think the most interesting aspect of virtualized IO is the ability of This analogy leads to a few more observations: a physical server's personality to be moved to any other server in 1. Where the hypervisor added software portability in the software the data center. In addition to the underlying network technology, domain IOV will do the same for the infrastructure domain. Highthe thing that makes this possible is integrated management of the er-order services like HA and consolidation were made possibly by server and data center fabric. In most cases, this won't be a standthe hypervisor. Similarly, HA, DR and migration can be accomalone product that you acquire (though you can build your own plished with IOV. And what’s more, a hypervisor is not required for solution from InfiniBand and PCI Express products on the marIOV, so you can use IOV with native applications too.
Today's Physical Infrastructure
Differing Implementation Approaches
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over server workload could be a native OS, or a VM host. IOV is agnostic to the workload! Disaster Recovery: expanding on the example above, if an entire domain of servers fails, the entire group of server IO states, networking states, Forecasted etc. can be recovered onto another domain (assumgrowth for IT ing shared/replicated storage). This approach to IO Virtualisation in the IT Management services in 2011, DR is elegant because it fails-over not just workLandscape loads but the entire logical server/environment How might IO virtualization be used as part of the IT according to configuration as well. ecosystem in an integrated manner? gartner Scaling-Out: where a series of server profiles can In much the same way that the hypervisor has be instantly replicated into an instant cluster. Worksince been embedded in tools like VMware’s vCenter, loads, NICs, HBAs, networking addressing and IOV can (and has been) embedded with higher-level storage connections (complete with fabric-based load management tools. balancing) can all be cloned … starting with the IO and networking Taking an example I’m rather familiar with, Egenera’s PAN profiles, made possible through IOV. Manager Software surrounds IOV technology with facilities such In future blogs I’ll dive more deeply into how software-based IOV as integrated with converged fabric networking, server boot control operates as part of the IT management ecosystem, and why it is a and storage connectivity. When used alongside these and other popular approach because of its cross-platform compatibility in a services, IOV enables: heterogeneous data center. Server High Availability: In the case of hardware failure, a server’s infrastructure state (IO addressing, storage naming, network topology and workload) can be re-instantiated on another bare-metal server. This provides a ‘universal’ style of failover that doesn’t require clustering software. And what’s more, the failed—Ken Oestreich is Vice President - Product Marketing at Egenera ket). This capability will most likely be an integrated part of whatever server and network environments you select, but now is the time to begin planning how you'll tie it in with the rest of your system management environment.
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Case Study | Sap
Digging out Inefficiencies For Singareni Collieries was to integrate and streamline operations at multiple locations for enhanced decision making and business consolidation. challenge:
By Varun Aggarwal
F
or a coal company in India which has an order book much bigger than its production capacity, timely delivery is the key to success. Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL) currently operates 13 opencast and 42 underground mines in four districts. The $1.4 billion company is also one of the largest coal mining companies in the country. While the company has IT set-up in all its branches, the challenge for SCCL was to integrate and streamline operations at multiple locations for enhanced decision making and business consolidation. With either manual or disintegrated systems, there was no central management of information leading to frequent delays in delivery causing financial losses in terms of loss of opportunity. A company that produces 50 million tonnes of coal per annum, integrating all its units and streamlining the processes was perhaps more complex than mining coal.
Integrating Diverse Systems While thinking of deploying an ERP to solve the problem might sound easy, the bigger hurdle that lay ahead of the company was its own 70,000 employees who feared delays in payments with the new system. The change management process had to be kicked in before any formal rollout could take place.
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However, this wasn’t the only challenge that had to be dealt with. “Our distributed IT architecture had made this difficult,” says M. Sathyanarayana, ERP project manager at SCCL. Manual integration of processes for purchasing, sales and distribution, finance, stores, and payroll resulted in duplicated data entry and paperbased processing that wasted time and caused errors.
Project Highlights Key Objectives of the Project rovide integrated view P of operations at various locations Support real-time data capture and processing for supply-chain functions Improve inventory visibility Reduce paperwork and manual processing Streamline payroll process for transferred employees Reduce IT maintenance and other costs
Key Performance Indicator Impact ime to process sales T orders – reduced by 50% Days to close annual accounts – reduced by 50% Time to settle advance payments – reduced by 40% Duration of purchase requisition cycle – reduced by 98% Time to generate coal bills – reduced by 95% Unmanaged spend – reduced by 55%
plus an alert framework within the application, has significantly improved decision making. Integrated materials management has given SCCL better control over stock and inventory. “Timely provisioning of spare parts and other items for maintenance, repair, and operations has increased the availability of essential equipment and made it easier to meet production targets,” Sathyanarayana opined. “We have reduced the overall cycle time for sales order processing from months to days, cut the time for settling advance payments made against sales orders, and increased customer satisfaction,” adds N. V. Rajasekher, superintendent engineer for marketing and movement at SCCL. There has also been a significant decrease in the time needed to close annual accounts. Singareni is the first coal company in India to use an SAP solution–supported balance M. Sathyanarayana, ERP Project Manager at SCCL has moved from a sheet in the first year the new softsegregated infrastructure model to consolidated infrastructure ware was implemented. The company can now manage and control spending at the enterprise level. The new software, which supports 300 to 400 In addition, the company could not process data for items related to material requirements planning, has logistics and financial supply chains in real time. significantly reduced the purchase requisition cycle and Inventory visibility was poor, and distributed haneliminated accounting at individual store locations. dling of payrolls for employees who moved from mine Increased integration has also facilitated better procureto mine led to errors that had to be manually corrected. ment policies, encouraged collaboration with suppliers, To handle these challenges, SCCL chose financial, conand significantly reduced stock-outs at plant locations. In trolling, materials management, quality management, COMPANY DASHBOARD addition, paper consumption related to the accounting payroll, and sales and distribution software in the SAP process has dropped significantly. ERP application. Key to this choice were strong SAP referCompany: “The four SAP modules we’ve added are like the first ences from comparable public sector enterprises in India. Singareni Collieries floor of a building that will help us build many floors in Also important were SAP’s global support infrastructure Company Ltd. the future,” says M. Sathyanarayana, ERP project manand mining-focused functionality. industry: ager at SCCL. One of the first public sector companies in India to Mining “Today, SCCL is a truly integrated enterprise. As we conundertake a large-scale, enterprise resource planning tinue this journey, we hope to leverage other functionalities (ERP) implementation, SCCL rented the hardware it revenue: and develop a robust business intelligence platform that will needed early in the implementation rather than trying to $1.423 billion further enhance decision making.” J. V. Dattatreyulu, Direcpurchase it. This minimized procurement delays that are employees: tor of Operations, Singareni Collieries Company Limited typical in public sector installations. IT employees were 70,000 thoroughly trained on SAP technologies and now maintain the software with little external support. Development Next Step headquarters: of certain applications prior to implementing SAP ERP After reaping the fruits of a successful ERP implemenHyderabad, India facilitated data migration. tation, SCCL is planning to implement SAP’s Man maintenance module which is very useful for the coal mining industry. “We are also planning for certain The Benefits HRM and CRM modules within the next six months or With SAP ERP in place, information is more visible so,” Sathyanarayana. throughout the enterprise and available in real time. This, The Chief Technology Officer Forum
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CO V E R S TOR Y 12 T e c h B e h av i o u r s
What They Really Say What they say About You about you
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CO V E R S TOR Y 12 T e c h B e h av i o u r s
Are you always on email or do you forget to charge your phone? Each of your tech behaviours, says something about you. See which behaviour describes you the best. ur behaviours essentially define who we are. How we choose to conduct ourselves when it comes to interacting with technology speaks volumes about who we are and where our priorities lie. Are you a classic early adopter or a technology Luddite? Are you constantly texting away on a tiny mobile gadget, or do you look to unplug as often as possible? Do you use technology as a way to connect with others, or as a shield to avoid real human interaction? To find out more about what these and many other tech traits communicate to others about who you really are, CIO Insight consulted with Melody Brooke, a Richardson, Texasbased licensed counselor to professionals. The author of the book "Oh Wow, This Changes Everything" (Changes Press/Available now), Brooke is also host of the radio programme, Wake Up Call. CIO Insight asked Brooke to come up with a dozen “tech personal lives, but in our professional lives as well. Based on these findings we ran a small survey with our community in India to see what their tech behaviours are. Here are the results - no pun intended.
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CARTOONS BY HARSHO MOHAN CHATTORAJ
behaviours,” and interpret for us what they say about who we are – not only in our
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CO V E R S TOR Y 12 T e c h B e h av i o u r s
“I'm on a half-dozen or more social network sites every day”
@master: come on, give me the bone, already! #Epicfail
This says: You're determined and ambitious. You gain rewards by building a lifetime of valuable connections. On the troublesome side, however, you may spread yourself too thin.
Are you on practically all the relevant social networking sites? 32% YES
68%
Prince Azariah Head IT Services, ACC
NO
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“I am only on Linked In. I may get back to Facebook soon, since we have a beta project in Holcim to see how we can sell cement using facebook. Why not?”
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SELF ASSESSMENT YES NO
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CO V E R S TOR Y 12 T e c h B e h av i o u r s
“I’m always checking my iPhone when dining with my significant other”
Only if he ever listened to me, would he know that I need BONES, not Spaghetti.
This says: You may be commitment and/or intimacy challenged. In the office, you may detach yourself emotionally from colleagues, ultimately hurting your career. Are you always checking your phone even when you are with your significant other? 40% YES
Subhasish Saha CTO, Apeejay Surrendra Group
60% NO
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“Not required. As I use it primarily for mails and messages and I get alerts for both. I do not keep it on always.”
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SELF ASSESSMENT YES NO
CO V E R S TOR Y 12 T e c h B e h av i o u r s
“I keep every single piece of e-mail I've ever received”
Enough is enough, take all the mail out of the Dog House RIGHT NOW!
This says: You're a pack rat, and maybe even compulsive. On the plus side, you may be perceived as the top “institutional authority” within your organisation – the one who can be depended upon to keep track of everything that's happened over the years. SELF ASSESSMENT YES NO
“If I don't weed out the unwanted ones from the important ones, it will be difficult to manage the emails.”
Do you keep every single email/ SMS that you receive? 16% YES
Lalit Wadhwani CTO, Frameboxx Animation & VFX Ltd.
84% NO
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CO V E R S TOR Y 12 T e c h B e h av i o u r s
“I Google every source I can before buying a tech toy”
If your search is over, the house is on fire!
This says: You make smart, informed decisions. As a manager, you are highly analytical. Do you google every tech application to reach a buying decision? 21% YES
63% Sometimes
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16% NO
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“No, I go by self analysis, reference and proof of concept.” Rajeev Batra CIO, MTS India (Sistema Shyam TeleServices Ltd.)
SELF ASSESSMENT YES NO
CO V E R S TOR Y 12 T e c h B e h av i o u r s
“I do status updates 10 times a day” And he would be using the same phone again at dinner.
This says: You feel “invisible” out there. You could be the kind of manager who's always writing a memo to the “big bosses” simply to justify your existence.
SELF ASSESSMENT YES NO
“There is no time even to do it once a day. Secondly the access to social networking is blocked by our system administrator.”
Do you update your status on social networking sites 10 times a day?
100% NO
Bihag Lalaji VP (Special Projects), Ambuja Cements The Chief Technology Officer Forum
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CO V E R S TOR Y 12 T e c h B e h av i o u r s
“I curse at my computer screen when it freezes up, or the Internet connection is slow”
I am sorry! I did not take the bone. Is it really about the bone?
This says: You feel like you always have to be in control, even of situations that you have no control over. Your employees may feel that you'd be happier if you did all of their jobs for them. Do you find yourself cursing when your system freezes or is slower than expected? 23%
28%
YES
NO
Rajeev Batra CIO, MTS India (Sistema Shyam TeleServices Ltd.)
49% Sometimes
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“Being responsible for all systems and IT -- the curse will come back to haunt us..”
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SELF ASSESSMENT YES NO
CO V E R S TOR Y 12 T e c h B e h av i o u r s
“I'm always texting when I drive”
I wish I could turn his phone into a bone. RIGHT NOW!
This says: You're narcissistic and somewhat reckless. At work, you likely think that the rules don't apply to you. SELF ASSESSMENT YES
“I know it is dangerous, but it is adrenaline.”
Do you text when you drive? 11%
Anil Arora Dy.GM, Raymond Limited
Sometimes
NO
4%
86%
YES
NO
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CO V E R S TOR Y 12 T e c h B e h av i o u r s
“I'll keep a tech device for years. Being 'trendy' means nothing to me”
Hey babe! Know what, I just saw a rotary phone. Guess who has it?
This says: You're thrifty and manage resources well. You're also likely to keep a car for 200,000-plus miles, and are equally nurturing and invested in your personal and professional relationships.
Do you cling to your gadgets beyond its point of usefulness? 25%
9%
YES
Sometimes
“EOL and discard keep us uncluttered with junk.” Lalit Wadhwani CTO, Frameboxx Animation & VFX Ltd.
SELF ASSESSMENT YES NO
67% NO
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CO V E R S TOR Y 12 T e c h B e h av i o u r s
“I never replace a gadget ever. Even if it's beyond the point of usefulness" D o n 't t d o y o u r e e ll m e , t h is w il l a ll y t h in k ever wor k?
This says: You're resistant to change. As a manager, you may be in danger of ignoring important business shifts. SELF ASSESSMENT YES NO
“Yes till it breaks down. It is a way to keep the asset and maximize its return.” J.Ramesh GM- IT, MIRC Electronics Limited
Are you an early adaptor to technology?
39% NO
61% YES
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CO V E R S TOR Y 12 T e c h B e h av i o u r s
“I never remember to charge my mobile devices”
W h y d o y ou h a v e t o t a a lw a y s ke my p h on e ?
This says: You're a classic absent-minded genius, so lost in thinking “big thoughts” that the little things slip by. Do you forget to recharge your mobile devices? 28%
4%
Sometimes
YES
68% NO
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“No, I will die, if I will be disconnected from the world.” Vivek Dharia CIO, KNP Sec. Pvt. Ltd.
SELF ASSESSMENT YES NO
CO V E R S TOR Y 12 T e c h B e h av i o u r s
“I only communicate via Email or text. I don't do phone or face-to-face”
t st bough Y e a h , I ju h is p h o n e s h a r e s inn y .L o t s o f compa now! bones
This says: You're highly efficient. But, that efficiency comes at the price of appearing aloof. SELF ASSESSMENT YES NO
“E-mail - because it is a written document and can be kept as record. We tend to forget phone conversation. Face-to-face is ok but time consuming.”
How do you prefer to communicate? 18%
30%
Phone
Face-toFace
Kazim Merchant ACM IT, CMIFPE Ltd
53% E-mail
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CO V E R S TOR Y 12 T e c h B e h av i o u r s
“I'm always Googling myself”
Mirror the wa mirror on the du ll, who is mb them aest of ll?
This says: You're insecure about what people are saying about you. It's OK to be mindful of your public persona – so long as you don't allow this to overwhelm you. Do you often find googling yourself? 35% Sometimes
28% YES NO
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SELF ASSESSMENT
Prince Azariah Head IT Services, ACC
YES
“To show someone that I am being quoted on Internet.”
NO
Bihag Lalaji Vice President (Special Projects), Ambuja Cements
37%
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“Why would you do that, you narcissist.”
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I
Ways to Avoid Screwing Up Learning from mistakes and looking
at IT projects through the eyes of the business will greatly reduce failure. Here are some mistakes to avoid. By Malcolm Slovin
nformation technology has been a part of our lives for almost four decades. While we’ve seen dramatic decreases in cost and increases in capabilities, we are still faced with fragmented architectures, failed investments and consistently delayed projects. What have we learned from our successes and what have we learned from our mistakes? How can your organisation better structure its processes for developing and updating information technology strategy? Those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it, said George Santayana, many years before the development of technology strategy. With that in mind, here are some of the most common mistakes that wise CIOs and IT managers can learn from:
Mistake 1: Identifying new technology and trying to develop ways to apply it to your organisation Experience shows us that projects succeed or fail based on their alignment with business requirements. Many times organisations have tried to “back-end” technology plans by attempting to match them with elusive prospective business gains. Hardware and software vendors are notorious The Chief Technology Officer Forum
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N E X T H OR I Z O N s
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in their encouragement of this. While technology often presents opportunities for altering business capabilities, linkages must be carefully analysed and pilot business metrics defined.
Mistake 2: Assuming that project costs include hardware and/or software only Many projects run over-budget as a result of incomplete estimation. Ensure that any proposed project includes all the costs through project implementation and maintenance, including those that are both direct and indirect. Estimates of project cost range from 7-10 times the cost of the software or hardware alone. Typical project costs often include supporting system and application software and hardware as well as training. Don’t forget software maintenance (frequently 15 percent of product cost) as well as the human costs of implementing new programs. A frequently forgotten cost is the loss of productivity during the learning curve of system implementation.
Mistake 3: Considering only the technological implications of proposed initiatives The IT implementation landscape is littered with failed projects that underestimated the impact of technology projects on organisational processes, metrics, reporting structures, customer perceptions and employee morale. Technology is best considered a component of the strategic triumvirate – the other two being process and culture. Attempting to implement a new technology without considering the implications for supporting mechanisms often dooms an initiative to failure.
Mistake 4: Not identifying and implementing risk-mitigation plans New projects, like new relationships, often begin with rosy scenarios only minimally infused with cognisance of potential risks. While this enthusiasm can help drive the momentum of project success, it often does not prepare the organisation for
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New projects, like new relationships, often begin with rosy scenarios only minimally infused with cognizance of potential risks. the risks likely to be encountered along a project route. A good project implementation plan should try to identify the risks to project success; making sure to include non-technical risks such as vendor viability, process target resistance, and potential changes to organisational strategic variables such as competitive pressures and reduction of resources.
Mistake 5: Not learning from (and continuing to fund) poorly performing projects Many organisations have two kinds of metrics: stringent metrics about project outcome expectations that precede project funding and project efficiency metrics that commence after project funding. Without active efforts to compare expected to actual business results, the organisation’s project selection process remains stagnant. Almost all project selection methodologies can benefit from post-project audits that improve future selection efforts by actively incorporating lessons learned. This helps the organisation prune efficient but not effective projects as it improves future project selections. It’s crucial that this effort be managed in a fault-free environment. Blame-gaming discourages frank assessments and attributions of project success.
15% of product cost is the cost of software maintenance
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Mistake 6: Inadequate communication with business staff Technicians often have a limited view of communication targets to include only other technicians and organisational management. It’s often necessary to appeal to a wider audience in order to build support (and minimise resistance) for the new project. Often
forgotten constituencies include functional management, functional staff and indirectly impacted staff. Business-directed communication should include the expected business results of the project, impact matrices including schedule of expected changes for all relevant stakeholders, and summary project status. Communications should be targeted for each stakeholder class with technical jargon kept to a minimum for all but technical audiences.
Mistake 7: Failing to integrate new systems, processes and technologies with existing investments Print off a comprehensive systems and software list from any fairly large organisation and you will see a hodge podge of architectures, languages, databases and telecommunication protocols. This is most likely the result of development efforts undertaken at different points in time when different generations of technologies were available. While it is impossible to perfectly anticipate the future, a modular architecture that provides flexible integration of these systems together with an adaptable growth path for future technologies is crucial. This architecture should be updated on a regular basis as new architectural tools and technologies become available.
Mistake 8: Inadequate documentation and knowledge management There are often two kinds of project documentation: business focused pre-funding documentation and technically focused post funding documentation. Technology strategy would be improved by reworking both types. Project nomination documentation
p r oj e c t s
should include measurable business metrics that can be audited and updated based upon results. Post-funding documentation should include detailed records of all changes to processes, related applications, and databases so that those people not actively involved in the project are able to easily track the sources of failures that may occur long after project implementation is complete. Technology strategy knowledge often leaves an organisation in the head (or the files) of the person in charge of a specific project selection or implementation.
Mistake 9: Over-centralisation of IT functions As organisations have recognised the value of technology, many have restructured around the CIO function, providing large budgets and even larger expectations to technology managers. While this creates an opportunity for standardisation and synergy, a centralised IT function is often focused more on efficiency than corporate effectiveness. Any central IT function must have active outreach programs to business groups to constantly improve the project selection, requirements identification, project metric determination and project management functions.
Mistake 10: Enabling ‘rogue’ IT projects through over-decentralisation of the IT function Organisations whose centralised IT functions are not meeting the needs of the
N E X T H OR I Z O N S
14.9%
and plan for process and culbusiness areas often find ture changes needed for projthemselves with "unofficial" ect success? Is your architectechnology (i.e., shadow IT, ture modular to enable flexible rogue projects and, now, growth? Can new projects take stealth cloud) efforts funded growth of advantage of data and applicaand managed by their busiworldwide tions that preceded them? ness areas. While such projenterprise Improve project manects are more likely to achieve agement to better serve their business metrics, they social software your business areas. Assess can suffer from lack of integrarevenues requirements analysis and tion with other efforts. Costs, project communication efforts both human and systems, for to see how they can better such rogue projects are often serve the business areas. Check business duplicative. Rogue IT organisations are line satisfaction with central IT. Identify often a valuable aid in improving an organrogue projects that may be symptomatic of isation’s technology health by focusing larger problems. attention on ways that technology business Improving your organisation’s approachservice can be improved. es for alignment, integration and project management can significantly improve the A Framework for Improvement success of your information technology Learning lessons from these common IT efforts. Simple ways to begin are in the promistakes is vital to avoiding future miscesses and metrics that surround project steps. Here are three specific things that selection and assessment. Begin post projevery CIO and IT manager can do right ect audits to improve knowledge managenow to make their IT strategy more effecment and documentation. Include in every tive and more efficient: project nomination and/or implementation Assess and improve your project alignplan sections for risk mitigation and project ment processes. Do you have postre-use (mandated inclusion of previous project audits and an experienced-based, project tools and or results). Identify your business metric centric project selection organisation’s own lessons learned and structure? Do you know which investments ensure that they are incorporated in your have led to your biggest (and smallest) busimetrics and processes. ness gains? What have you learned about This article does not touch on all common selecting projects? How have you applied IT mistakes and certainly does not include this knowledge? all possible remedies. However, constantly Check the integration of technology in assessing the relationship between technolyour organisation. Do you anticipate ogy, process and culture is the key to learning from and avoiding IT mistakes. Review the effectiveness of IT as seen through the eyes of the business and through the existence of rogue projects for a leaner, more effective IT strategy.
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Improving your organisation’s approaches for alignment, integration and project management can significantly improve the success of your information technology efforts. Simple ways to begin are in the processes and metrics that surround project selection and assessment
— Malcolm Slovin is vice president for EM&I, which offers innovative solutions in the areas of strategy, governance and engineering. To see more articles on this or any topic affecting IT today, please visit www.cioupdate.com, a premier destination site for CIOs, CTOs, and IT executives from around the world.
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ta b l e t s
Getting the Right Tablet
T
Our guide should help you narrow your choices when you introduce tablets to your enterprise. By Don Reisinger
he tablet market is dominated by a handful of devices. Chief among them, of course, is the Apple iPad. But, through early 2011, several more companies will join the fray in an attempt to capitalize on that space and steal some market share away from Apple. Whether or not those products will be successful is anyone’s guess at this point. If anything is clear, it’s that the tablet market, at least for the foreseeable future, will be the one to watch.
Companies today are realizing that providing employees with tablets isn’t such an outlandish idea. Not only do slates provide outstanding mobility, but they can deliver on hopes for cost-savings and improving productivity compared with convention notebooks, for some users. Read on to find out important features of tablets that are available and will be available soon. This should help you narrow your choices down when you finally decide to bring tablets into your operation. — This article was first published at www.cioinsight.com.
Features
Apple iPad
Samsung Galaxy Tab
HP Slate 500
Cisco Cius
RIM PlayBook
Operating system
iOS 4
Android 2.2
Windows 7
Android
Blackberry Tablet OS
Connectivity
Wi-Fi only in some models, Wi-Fi and 3G in more expensive models. Available on Verizon and AT&T in the U.S. Indian carriers yet to announce plans.
Wi-Fi, and 3G available on all major carriers in the U.S.
Wi-Fi-only
Expected to have both Wi-Fi and 3G capabilities built-in
Wi-Fi only out-of-the-box, with 3G and potentially 4G to be made available over time.
Office editing
Yes, through native application or with the help of third-party programs.
Comes with ThinkFree Office Mobile to edit Office documents
Boasts support for a full version of Office, thanks to Windows 7
Likely will have Office document editing through the help of third-party application, as in the Galaxy Tab
Productivity
A mixed bag. The 3G capabilities help, but the device is decidedly consumer- focused when apps are factored in
Features multitasking, which should help, but Android still has some design flaws and quirks that might hold employees up
Features a full version of Windows 7, providing employees with the same OS environment they’re used to
The Cius will likely run Android 3.0. At this point, little is known about the mobile OS, and IT staff should evaluate it before deploying
Features a new, unproven operating system. IT staff should evaluate it prior to deploying
Integration with existing infrastructure
Simple functionality: back up contents to PCs, able to access network
Simple functionality: back up contents to PCs, able to access network
Windows 7 turns it into any other PC in the office, giving it equal functionality
Can be integrated into Cisco products to double as a videoconferencing tool and other options
Will connect to BlackBerry Enterprise Server and will likely operate as any BlackBerry smartphone.
The PlayBook will be shipping with Office editing capabilities
Full details are currently unknown, but will likely feature most (if not all) controls found on BlackBerry smartphones.
IT Control
Full administrative control, including access to programmes and allowed content
Remote wipe is available, but remote application management is still lacking
Full control that IT staff employs on Windows PCs in their operations
Unknown. Will likely offer more IT control than existing Android-based devices
Business apps availability
Several, thanks to App Store. However, beware of many more consumer-focused apps
Android Market is so far, designed for smartphones, leaving the Galaxy Tab out
Ability to install standard Windows programs on device, thanks to Windows 7
Will likely feature apps designed for tablets, and made available through Android Market
Multi-tasking
Yes, but it was only recently implemented
Yes
Yes
Will have multi-tasking
Will have multi-tasking
Security concerns
Phishing and network attacks are possible, but Windows-focused malware cannot hurt it
Phishing and network attacks are possible. Concerns are also arising over security of Android apps
Can be targeted by Windowsfocused malware. Phishing and network attacks are also possible
Phishing and network security will be a concern. However, OS-based issues are unknown
Phishing and network security will be a concern. However, OS-based issues are unknown.
Price
Starts at $499, in the U.S.
Starts at $399, depending on data plan, in the U.S.
Starts at $799, in the U.S.
Unknown
Unknown
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BlackBerry App World will feature apps designed specifically for the tablet
hiddentangent Geetaj ChannanA geetaj.channana@9dot9.in
The author is Executive Editor, CTO Forum
From Smartphone to Superphone The humble mobile gets elevated to a new status When mobile phones were first launched, who would have thought that one day, the small hand-helds would be as or more powerful than the computer, play videos like your television or serve emails to you like your laptop? The way the cellphone has transformed and taken over our lives is a marvel in itself. As was evident at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the mobile phone is the centre of the world, and more than half of all technology coverage is around mobility – be it phones or tablets. But, what really takes the cake is the latest offering by Motorola – the Motorola Atrix. It really stretches the boundaries of what a mobile phone can accomplish. Powered by Google Android 2.2, a dual core processor, 1GB RAM and 4G network capability, it has more firepower than some netbooks. But, the hardware is not the only differentiator – it is the way the Atrix changes its form that is most exciting, both for the individual as well as the enterprise. Straight out of the Transformers movie, the phone can transform into a PC, a netbook or a television. Starting with netbooks, the phone can be attached to a netbook docking station – which is essentially a dumb-terminal-netbook. It is an LCD screen, track-pad, USB ports and a battery with a built-in dock for the phone. As soon as you dock the
phone in, it launches its own version of bare-bones Linux. Besides other basic multimedia utilities it has a Flash enabled Firefox browser that can be used to access any of the numerous web-applications. While in this web-top view, you still have full control of the phone and can use it in a separate window on this operating system – it can be used to make calls or access applications on the phone. So, if you want to send SMS or play games on your phone while connected, you can easily do it while it is docked. And, all this is done without losing your session on the mobile phone – so if you were loading a video on the phone it will still keep loading when you dock it. And, when you un-dock it, you can still access the tabs that you had opened in the browser in the web-top view. How cool is that? For the enterprise, it comes with a beautiful hidden surprise. This docked netbook also includes Citrix connectivity to connect to a virtual desktop on your enterprise Citrix server. So, if the user wants to do processor-intensive content creation, they can connect directly to a Microsoft Windows environment hosted on your enterprise server. Imagine the flexibility and the security options that it gives to the CIO. Now you have a device that can serve as a netbook for regular tasks or an extremely capable phone when it is not connected.
But, the Atrix is something else too – it is a mini media centre. Using another dock – called the HD dock, you can connect it to a Television or a Keyboard/ Mouse/ Monitor to convert it into a media center or a PC. While the PC has a similar interface as the netbook, the media centre gets even more interesting. As soon as you switch to this view the system that loads up on the TV shows large icons that can be viewed from a 10 ft. distance. This dock can then be operated by using an infra-red remote control that is already provided. Now, you can watch all the videos/ photos on the phone or listen to music already stored, from your couch. You can switch to the full web-top view to access the full-blown operating system. While in the web-top view on the TV, the phone can be used as a track pad with left and right buttons, and the phone’s keyboard can be used as a keyboard to type on. Phew, isn’t that a bit much? Not really, Google the Lenovo Ideapad U1 for more hybrid goodness. The Chief Technology Officer Forum
The way the cellphone has transformed and taken over our lives is a marvel in itself.
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change
5
POINTS
Bottom line: It’s a whole lot easier for you to give them what they want. ROI: Faster time to revenue
Illustration BY Binesh sreedharan
costs: Lower costs of acquisition and implementation Reseponse: Increased responsiveness to business changes Performance: Predictable performance and lower risk
How to Sell to the CEO on
Converged Infrastructure In this article, we look at why converged infrastructure may make sense for your organisation; and provide some guidance on how to sell your decision in-house to the business folks. By Ken Bylsma
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ture also puts you in a position of strength if you subsequently decide to move select systems into a public cloud and need to negotiate terms with a cloud provider. Having a cloud in your own data centre, you’ll already know what you need, and how it works. The primary risk associated with implementing converged infrastructure is doing things in the same old piecemeal way. Sprawl can happen much faster with virtual servers than with physical servers. Instead of thinking about adding a new server for language you find, in fact, that everyone a new application, think adding capacity, on both sides of the business/IT divide has even better think shared capacity. Instead been talking about the same thing. of thinking three-year life cycle, think onCEOs and CFOs who have been reading demand. Instead of thinking that business about the financial merits of cloud computguy who was just in my office is out of his ing in their trade magazines are already half freakin’ mind, think self-provisioning (withsold on a converged infrastructure. Finance in guidelines that you establish, of course). types are naturally attracted to the idea of You have to think differently or you cloud computing because they recognize won’t realise all the benefits of converged economies of scale in the cloud model. They infrastructure. look at cloud and see shared resources, There is more to a functioning converged on-demand provisioning, and the ability to infrastructure than innovative technology. re-deploy capacity somewhere else as needs To truly align IT with business, everyone, change. It sounds like pay-as-you-go, and it including IT, has to understand the busiis music to their ears. ness requirements. CommuYou can use the same list of nication between IT and the benefits to support implementbusiness side, as a result has to ing a converged infrastructure be much better than it has been that your CEO has read about in the past. for cloud computing. For time of it In fact, communication example: departments is within the IT department has Faster time to revenue – the to be better than it is in most advantage of on demand provispent in putting IT departments. Implementsioning of compute capacity, in out fires ing a converged infrastructure your data centre. requires breaking through Lower costs of acquisition and the feudal dynasties that have implementation – the result of grown up around the server, a simplified and standardised storage, and networking specialities that infrastructure. exist in most IT departments. A key step in Increased responsiveness to business converging the technologies is converging changes – an easier to manage infrastructhe competing cultures into a single wellture frees up your time and makes it easier coordinated team. to give them what they want. Predictable performance and lower risk – systems that are designed to work together —Ken Bylsma is the director of HP Storage & run better and break less. Software Solutions at Logicalis, an international
Most IT departments spend
70 percent of their time putting out fires and only about 30 percent responding to the needs of their business users. You might think, “There must be a better way.”
If you could get your servers, storage and network assets working effectively together under one operating management system behind a single pane of glass, your entire IT infrastructure (as well as your IT staff) could be humming along. Load balancing would be automated, downtime would be minimised and your team would spend less of its time holding the data centre together by sheer force of will. Pitching your CEO or CFO on a common modular infrastructure of virtualised compute, memory, storage and network resources, however, ain’t gonna cut it. Few CEOs and CFOs will respond enthusiastically today when you sing the praises of “a common, wired-once, virtual I/O network.” The so-called “converged infrastructure” has these attributes, but outside of the IT department, converged infrastructure tends to sound like another request for money for some trendy new technology. CEOs and CFOs have their own parameters that every request for funds for technology has to meet, which, if you translate it out of their arcane financial jargon, comes down to “What’s the bottom line?” This article looks at how you can articulate the business case for a phased approach to implementing a converged infrastructure in terms that CEOs and CFOs can understand and appreciate. The bottom line for the business side: It’s a whole lot easier for you to give them what they want.
Crossing the great business/IT divide CEOs and CFOs have been talking about their vision of aligning IT with the overarching business goals of their organisations for as long as IT professionals have been talking about their vision of “utility computing,” a.k.a converged infrastructure. In translating their respective visions into a common
70%
provider of integrated information and com-
Position of Strength
munications technology solutions and services,
You can add that a converged infrastructure can be implemented incrementally as your budget and resources allow. With virtualisation, which saves your CFO lots of money, you’ve already done most of the work. Experience with a converged infrastruc-
where he is responsible for building solutions around HP Storage and Software products. To see more articles on this or any topic affecting IT today, please visit www.cioupdate.com, a premier destination site for CIOs, CTOs, and IT executives from around the world.
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sales calls
Top 10 Ways To Avoid Annoying Sales Calls The wise CIO knows how to fend off pesky sales calls without really giving offence. S/he also knows that a vendor avoided today might be the one needed tomorrow.
I
was in the lobby of a client in Houston, cooling my heels waiting for an appointment, and then I noticed the pattern of phone calls coming into the receptionist: “No, I’m sorry, our CIO [insert name] is in a meeting. Leave your name, number and why you want to talk with him and I will be sure he gets it.” Every couple minutes it was the same routine – and this is a mid-sized private business. Go figure the volume of hungry sellers pounding on doors of CIOs at Fortune 2000 companies. Especially in the closing days in December as the rush to meet quota kicks into frenetic gear. So consider this our holiday gift to you: 10 proven ways to snuff out the calls that get through and you don't want to take but somehow find yourself cellphone-tocellphone with a salesperson. Some are silly, some are cranky, you won’t like them all, but you will find a few tips to help you make quicker work of nuisance calls: “How did you hear about me?” That is how consultant Chris Spivey quickly separates the sales wheat from the chaff. “I ask how they got my name and contact info. That usually qualifies them out pretty quickly. If it's from a list, well ... If it's from a mutual contact, I'll take the call.” “Be clear with the annoyance,” advised Chris Westfall, a sales trainer. Don’t hem, don’t haw, because you don’t want to be entered as a "maybe" in the CRM log, which will only trigger follow-up calls in a few weeks. “Let them know in no uncertain terms that you are not interested, and why. Take the time to have a professional conversation. Other-
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By Robert McGarvey
wise, that bulldog will keep barking at your door until you answer.” No calls, email only. That is the policy of many CIOs who said they short circuit sales call with a fast, “Sorry, I don’t take calls. Please email me about what you are selling. If I am interested I will be in touch. No need to follow up by phone.” “I’m broke.” Bang the tin cup, suggested Alain Raynaud, CEO of Foundrs.com, which helps link up tech start-ups with cofounders. He elaborated: “The #1 best way to get rid of a call is to say ‘sorry, your product looks great, but we have no money.’” “Oops, gotta go, my CEO is on the other line.” OK, it’s a lie (and everyone knows it) but it’s a to-the-point way to justify instantly hanging up.
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Talk in a foreign language, urged comedian Jim Dailakis, who added that this ploy definitely helps him make sales calls shorter. Typically, the sales rep just hangs up in a huff. Don’t know any languages? No big deal. “Make one up,” said Dailakis. Klingon anyone? Ask for something they do not sell, suggested Adam Kruse, an estate agent who personally puts in time working the phones. If it’s a PC sales rep, tell him you’re switching to Apple – can he line you up with a good deal on Macs? The rep probably will hang up on you. Final Jeopardy. Turn the tables and ask the caller to sum up, in 60 seconds, what your company does. Tell him you will hang up if he does not nail the summation. Expect most callers – working off leads sheets – to fail miserably because they haven't done their homework. For the passive-aggressive among us: “Say, ‘sorry, I need to put you on hold’” – and leave the caller there. If they call back, repeat.
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Cut to the chase, advised Alan Canton, an insurance rep who comes by his counsel from years of personally working the phones. “I make these sales calls each day. The best way for a CIO to deal with them is to stop the caller from speaking, take control by saying: 'You have 30 seconds to pitch me on why we need to talk further.’” “If it is something the exec wants he/she will say ‘Let's get together.’ If not, he/she says ‘Thanks, but we are well represented with the vendor we have’ and hangs up without being rude and causing illwill. A good CIO knows that the vendor that is dismissed today may be one vitally needed tomorrow.’” —Robert McGarvey – As a busy freelance writer for more than 30 years, Rob McGarvey has written over 1500 articles for many leading publications from Reader's Digest to Playboy and from the NY Times to Harvard Business Review. —To see more articles on this or any topic affecting IT today, please visit www.cioupdate.com, a premier destination site for CIOs, CTOs, and IT executives from around the world.
It's Time for Information Governance
While the case for 'Information Governance' is yet to be universally made, understanding it and learning how to sell the story will be increasingly important in the coming days and years. By Barclay Blair
I
n a recent study on information governance, the Economist Intelligence Unit found that the single biggest worldwide challenge to successful adoption of information governance (IG) is the difficulty of identifying its benefits and costs. In other words, the difficulty of understanding and making the case for IG. Since I will be writing a series of articles on IG, I am going to use my first few columns to help readers address this problem. There is no magic formula, no perfect argument for information governance. But, there are many reasons why IG makes sense today and will make even more sense in the future.
Defining IG IG is a relatively recent term for a set of activities that have been around for a long time. I like the term because it’s simple. It places the emphasis of the activity (i.e., governance) on the thing we want to act on (i.e., information). The simplicity of this phrase, however, belies the complexity of a field that borrows ideas and practices from a variety of specialities and packages them together to address a difficult problem in a holistic manner. For example, IG is not synonymous with corporate governance, but it incorporates elements of corporate governance (some have called IG 'GRC for information' i.e., gover-
nance, risk management, and compliance for information). The same goes for information protection, records management, compliance, and so on. Some of the other fields that are part of information governance include: Information Management IT Governance Privacy Knowledge Management Enterprise Content Management and Document Management Enterprise Risk Management Storage, Archiving, and Business Continuity E-Discovery. The Chief Technology Officer Forum
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I n f o r m at i o n G o v e r n a n c e
The Economist defines IG as the “strategically created enterprise-wide frameworks that define how information is controlled, accessed and used,” and the mechanisms that enforce those frameworks. AIIM International defines it as “the establishment of enterprise-wide policies and procedures and the execution and enforcement of these to control and manage information as an enterprise resource.” These definitions are pretty similar and they illustrate two important points: First, IG is about building a foundation of rules in the form of policies, procedures and practices that guide information management across an enterprise. Second, IG requires enforcement in the form of technology and human-focused programs to be successful. IG rules themselves don’t solve any problems and in fact can create problems if they are not properly enforced. At the highest level, IG is, quite simply, about managing information better.
Telling the IG story “At first sight, legal compliance would seem to be the major driver for taking better control of emails. However ... ROI from efficiency improvement is a genuine justification.” – AIIM Industry Watch: Email Management, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly To be successful with IG, you must learn to tell the IG story. More correctly, you must learn to tell IG stories as different audiences need to hear different versions of the IG story. At a large financial services company I worked with for many years, the chief IG evangelist understood this implicitly. I tagged along with her to many meetings and listened to her tell the IG story. There was one story for the lawyers who were going to have to defend the company’s practices in court. There was another story for the corporate chiefs who were going to have to pay for it. And yet another story for the heads of business units and departments who were going to have to live with the IG program everyday in the real world. In Made to Stick”Dan and Chip Heath argue that storytelling is a critical skill for anyone wanting their ideas heard, remembered, and acted upon. According to them, “stories have the amazing dual power to
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illustration by pc anoop
So how exactly should we define IG?
The Economist defines IG as the “strategically created enterprisewide frameworks that define how information is controlled, accessed and used,” and the mechanisms that enforce those frameworks. simulate and to inspire” because they provide a simple, concrete way for others to understand your ideas. The ability to tell stories is so important in the IG world because of its complexity and breadth. Despite this complexity, I believe that there are only two basic “plots” to the IG story: The first is the “faster, better, cheaper” plot. In other words, IG can help organisations make decisions/create products/go to market/etc. faster. It can also make business processes more efficient (i.e., better), and enable the organisation to lower the costs of many business processes (i.e., cheaper). Steve Bailey, author of Managing the Crowd: Rethinking Records Management for the Web 2.0 World convincingly argues in his work that the information management community hasn’t done a good job of putting hard numbers behind the “faster, better, cheaper” story. I agree. Aside from some near-apocryphal statistics that are frequently used, to my knowledge, the economic case has not been universally made. However, IG professionals can make solid
economic arguments that are specific to their organisations. I have helped many of my clients do this. Some arguments have been financially dramatic (increase profit $300 million over 3 years), some strategically profound (competitive advantage in our market for 2 years), and some have been very practical (cut email costs). The second basic plot of the IG story is “fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD).” This story focuses on the risk side of IG. This has been a relatively easy story to tell in the past few years, with many massive business failures, data breaches and high profile court cases tied to IG shortfalls. A note of caution about this plot: don’t overuse it. Many in the IG field are guilty of over-relying on the “sky is falling” argument to make their point. I have seen too many presentations in too many dimly lit conference rooms where the IG story starts with the same few slides detailing eye-popping court judgements, executives going to jail, and so on. This story can be effective, but it loses is power if it’s overused.
I n f o r m at i o n G o v e r n a n c e
Both IG plots have merit. In fact, a recent survey of the Global 1000 conducted by the Compliance, Governance and Oversight Council found that enterprises expect to “reduce legal risk and enable compliance” as well as “increase IT efficiency and ensure routine data disposal,” as a result of the IG projects they are undertaking now.
Start in the right place “Organisations become overwhelmed when they start recognising the many risks inherent in information mismanagement. ‘Trying to address them all at once can feel like trying to boil the ocean.’” – “The Future of Enterprise Information Governance,” Economist Intelligence Unit Some time ago, I had a client with over 10,000 poorly indexed, improperly stored, and nearly undocumented backup tapes. The metaphorical weight of these tapes around the neck of the poor folks trying to implement an IG programme at the company was massive. How could they even begin
to think about “easy” things like policy development when they had the problem of 10,000 legacy backup tapes to deal with? Many organisations are in this position. They have so much unmanaged information in their environment that it effectively paralyses them. It doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, organisations should focus first on building the foundation for their program (policies, procedures, etc.), implementing those foundations (tools, training, etc.) and only then cleaning up their environment. This isn’t the only way to approach IG, but it is a useful framework for organisations that are stuck. This approach encourages organisations to build the “new world” of their IG program, and then bring old content into that world over time. This is a conceptual model since, in the real world, these things often happen simultaneously, in a different order, and faster or more slowly than we like. In my next few columns, I’ll be providing several ideas on how you can make
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the case for IG at your organisation. I will focus on the value that managing information can provide, and the way in which it can reduce risk associated with information mismanagement. —Barclay T. Blair is a consultant to Fortune 500 companies, software and hardware vendors, and government institutions, and is an author, speaker, and internationally recognised authority on a broad range information governance issues. He is the founder and principal of ViaLumina Group, Ltd. His blog, http://www. barclaytblair.com, is highly regarded in the information governance community. Barclay is the award-winning author of several books, including Information Nation., and is currently writing Information Governance for Dummies. Barclay is a faculty member of CGOC. —To see more articles on this or any topic affecting IT today, please visit www.cioupdate. com, a premier destination site for CIOs, CTOs, and IT executives from around the world.
Business IT Alignment: A Never-ending Chase Business-IT alignment is mandate that goes way beyond the CIO's job. It includes the CEO and even the board. By Sumit D Chowdhury
I
nformation Technology (IT) had traditionally been considered as a 'support' unit and was not necessarily included in the 'core' business. It could have been driven by the fact that IT had emerged as a business enabler relatively recently and organisations were still figuring out its true potential. However, we have come a long way and the key challenge today is not the 'alignment' but the overall 'integration' of IT into business. Business IT alignment has conventionally been viewed as the CIO's job but it is as much, if not more, the responsibility of the boardroom and the leadership team of the company. Thankfully, businesses are realising that fast. For example, data centres are the
heart of telecom companies and form a critical cog of their entire business engine. Data centres are therefore not only a priority for the IT department but that for the entire organisation. No business plans of telecom service providers could be developed without taking data centres into account. Today, the role of IT is not restricted only to the smooth running of operations but goes far beyond into every aspect of the business – productivity, efficiency, revenue generation, and cost control, among others. IT cuts across all the key constituents of a business and also works as a binding force in many ways. The leadership at the top (CEO/Chairman) has to set the right The Chief Technology Officer Forum
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goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) of all the CXOs of the company and align them towards the business objectives. The duty of the CXOs is to turn these business objectives into departmental priorities. It is critical that the CIO is part of the discussion and has a clear view to the organisational strategy and roadmap. Without an understanding of the business direction, it will be impossible for the CIO to set an effective departmental goal. Another typical problem faced by a CIO is the lack of an executable business plan. Organisational business plan and annual operating plan (AOP) typically deal with the revenue and profit targets across geography and across product lines. Sometimes profitability across product lines cannot be determined due to common and shared infrastructure in the company and in proportioning the cost of this shared infrastructure across the products. In most instances, the AOP outlines the 'what' and does not articulate the 'how.' The plan does not identify what has to change in the business to be able to achieve the goal. It is left to each next level leader to articulate. The second problem that the CIO faces is the lack of a longer term AOP for Year 2 and Year 3. The ability of the CIO to influence plans and results in these years is more certain than his/her ability to impact the results of the current year. Let us take an example: The business sets an AOP of adding 10 million new customers a year and thus leading to annual growth rate of 10 percent. To achieve this target the business need to increase the distribution and marketing. They need to help the distributors get productive very fast and enable them with information about products and services such that they can be effective in front of the customer. The relationship of the company with the distributor also has to be improved so they need to calculate and pay out the commissions quickly. The annual operating plan does not articulate any of the above details. An alternate plan of getting new customers without adding distributors would be to launch products faster, to respond to market changes faster. They need to target customers directly and attract them differentially. All of these would require a high degree of automation if the company wants to expand their business with keeping their cost increase at minimal. Here comes IT into the picture. There has to be an agile and nimble IT plan that can support this robust growth. It would include automation for distribution enrolment, marketing, commission calculation and payout, and process streamlining. The IT plan should also encompass faster enablement of channel, spending and effectiveness analysis, customer segmentation and target marketing, scaling of hardware and software resources selectively or centrally. CIOs who achieve alignment typically do so by establishing a set of well-planned process improvement programs that systematically address obstacles and go beyond executive level conversation to permeate the entire IT organisation and its culture. They therefore need to see consider themselves as business leaders and not just technology heads and should be equally concerned with the overall busi-
photo by photos.com
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The IT plan should also encompass faster enablement of channel, spending and effectiveness analysis, customer segmentation and target marketing, scaling of hardware and software resources selectively.
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ness in terms of revenue, profitability, share price, and dividends. They should therefore create a strong business benefits realisation team, which comprises of resources with business consulting backgrounds and an ability to understand strategy, and translate that into process, people and technology. The CIO also needs to define an IT strategy that is in sync with the business strategy. The first task would be to take the AOP and break the business strategy into IT goals and map it into a set of programs and projects that need to be executed. The Year 1 AOP should be used to drive tactical plans and Year 2 and 3 AOPs should be used to drive strategic changes. Longer term strategic goals (those beyond year 3) should also form part of the overall IT plan. The next critical task is the successful execution of the plan through tracking of projects in terms of timeliness, quality, and effectiveness. No plans are complete unless they are executed seamlessly. At the end, the success of any business lies in its ability to integrate diverse constituents and operate holistically. IT is a key constitute of any business and is increasingly taking a centre-stage. It is paramount for businesses to recogni e this and make IT an integral part of their strategy and future direction. There are no two ways about it. —The author is Vice President and Partner at IBM. He is also the former CEO of Reliance Tech Services and former CIO of Reliance Communications.
K e n S t e i n hardt
NO HOLDS BARRE D
DOSSIER Company: EMC Established: 1979 founded by: Richard J. Egan and Roger Marino products: Storage, security, virtualization, information governance etc.
Clouds Can LOCK You In Ken Steinhardt, VP, and CTO, EMC, talks about the closed nature of public clouds and how eventually data migration would get non-disruptive. Steinhardt spoke in an interview with Varun Agarwal.
What do you think 2011 would be about? What kind of evolution do you see in virtualisation technologies going forward? To me cloud is the next logical evolution of virtualisation. The first wave of virtualisation to me is when people virtualised in those four traditional tiers of IT infrastructure – Storage, Network, Server, and operating system. To me cloud is nothing more than virtualised infrastructure and at the same time, I don’t want to know what the server is, what the network is, what the storage is. I just want to know if there is a place I can run my applications and store my information and have pre defined service level. However, virtualisation has been there since the mainframe era and the flexibility and the barriers to change today is so different and so much lesser than they were back then. The barriers to change back then were that the applications and databases tended to be unique to individual server platforms , they could never run on anyone else’s load. But today through standardisation, software and the interconnects, the barriers to change are nowhere near what they were back then, so it’s a lot easier to get from one place to another. I will give you a bold prediction — in over the next couple of years, some of the storage virtualisation technologies are going to see the ability for non disruptive migration of data from any major vendor to any other major vendor without having to shut down anything. So you will see the ability to federate multiple heterogeneous devices- servers, storage, networks — where people will be able to replace the infrastructure components individually without shutting down the oth-
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K e n S t e i n hardt
ers. This will be a fairly revolutionary breakthrough. Historically people have had major issue with migration sometimes driven by the fact that they have to disrupt production environment to be able to make changes. I personally believe the greatest single either enabler or obstacle towards cloud infrastructure is security. What I think a lot of people miss sometimes is the security from all perspective. Organisation looks at it as I have to protect my data either in terms of importance or compliance reasons, my own organisation, my data, maintain it and have it total secure. Individuals feel it the same way, no less important to them whether they are storing family photos or personal information, so the security need to play the both ends so whether it be the aspect of authorisation, authentication, encryption of the data, information management security becomes a key component.
the appropriate solution for them, they didn’t have the flexibility to make it easy to move out of cloud. These are the kinds of things where non disruptive movement of data between heterogeneous devices becomes a key. EMC has been on acquisition spree for quite a while. What would be the technologies or companies you would be looking at? We have pretty consistently stuck to the ones that are close to where our core competencies are. I don’t believe we will stray from that in future acquisitions. Virtually all the major acquisitions we have made for fairly extended period fell into one of the four categories: security, document management, information management and virtualisation. Then we tended to look for the company to be the prime integrator within
“Once you're in the cloud, it can get difficult to get out of it. I believe there will be people that will need to go in both directions and transition from traditional infrastructure to cloud has to be easy.” Do you also see public clouds being neutral completely wherein you can shift your data from one cloud to another? Great point. This has become a huge obstacle today. A particular public cloud infrastructure can be very much of a lock in today, which can be a problem. What the industry needs there is some standardisation, which from a cloud perspective there are some discussion going on in some various bodies now but there is no technology today to standardise making that seamless for customers yet. Once you're in the cloud, it can get difficult to get out of it. I believe there will be people that will need to go in both directions and transition from traditional infrastructure to cloud has to be easy. There will be some that will realise may be the cloud infrastructure wasn’t at that point in time
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that category so for security it was RSA, for document management it was Documentum, for virtualisation a lot of it was driven by VMware. Now we realised to advance the category and we went to the consumer space with Iomega and with Mozy in cloud space. That evolved to be our new plan. These are really new interesting categories where we must play. All our acquisitions methodically pretty much revolve around these, I can’t think of any significant exception into those primary categories plus the two which is basically cloud and consumer. Any specific technology EMC has or would really be bullish about? There are a couple of technologies right now that we're really bullish about. First is the concept called fully automated storage tearing(FAST) which is the ability for the storage system instead of having to be a spe-
cific tier i.e. high end or mid tier, the ability to typically have different class or tiers of storage technology (each with a different associated with it) all co exist on one system at the same time. The vast majority of applications have a very wide skew between the number of I/Os that run on a particular volume and the number of volumes. This is what we found, is usually it's the tiny number of volume generates a majority of I/Os, there is usually a large number of volumes that generate with very little I/Os then there is something in the middle. So logically if you can move just a little bit of the hot ones that were hot up to flash drives to almost everything else to lowest cost drives, we bring massive reduction to space, power, cooling cost complexities but you actually improve the performance. Historically those two things have been diametrically opposed — I want higher performance that means I am probably spending more money for more expensive type of device I want to reduce my cost I compromise my performance and service level. This is being able to do both at the same time so the customers that have been deploying these technology had it in the market for about a year now could basically have consistently been saying massive reduction in cost space power cooling by configuration are actually shrinking or my performance is improving while I do this. The other is de-duplication. I believe that virtually all environments at source, at target would benefit over the next time especially over the next few years with de-duplication. Up until now if we were to save the same PowerPoint file, systems were designed to do what they were asked to do, i.e. every single instance of it, every single copy I store, is taking up unnecessary additional space. So being able to go into de-duplication becomes key. Now we have been massively acquiring de-duplication intellectual capital for EMC like Avamar and Data Domain most recently. The couple of other of basic ones that are becoming pretty common in the industry, but I will mention them and just because they are becoming common doesn’t mean they are any less important – thin provisioning, the premise of thin provisioning has a very basic value proposition: one its unbelievably easier and faster to provision and other, is direct impact on capex.
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Miles to Go... Asmita Junnarkar
A wife, a mother, a CIO, a consultant, an entrepreneur and a lot more is how you can define Asmita Junnarkar. Born and brought up in Mumbai, married in Ahmedabad, and lived in Baroda & Ahmedabad, Junnarkar is a woman of strong will who is determined to /.create a mark wherever she was. Junnarkar completed her BSc in Mathematics and Statistics from Mumbai University post which she joined SPJIMR, Mumbai for an MBA in Operations Management. Soon after her MBA she joined an IT consultancy company called Hinditron Consultancy in 1983 working on Mainframe systems at that time. Junnarkar left her job soon as she got married in 1984 and moved to Baroda. With a penchant to keep working, she switched sides from a consultancy to in-house IT and started working with Dinesh Suitings in their EDP Department, also switching from Mainframes to Mini Computers.. Again, two years later she left the job as she was expecting her first baby. Later she moved to Ahmedabad and it was difficult for her to start working again with small kids. At the time there weren’t many IT companies in Ahmedabad either and trying to get a job with flexible timings was even more difficult. Teaming up with her husband, she started her own IT company—Applications Software Group, from home. They started serving local customers with some basic IT needs. As she strove for excellence, the company grabbed some all India contracts within a couple of years. The technology
Education: Junnarkar completed her entire education from Mumbai. She did her BSc in Mathematics and Statistics from Mumbai University post which she joined SPJIMR, Mumbai for an MBA in Operations Management Entrepreneurial: when not enough opportunities were available in Ahemdabad, Junnarkar teamed up with her husband and started her own IT
company—Applications Software Group, from home. The company is still running and taken care by her husband. Family: A geographical spread but strongly bonded family. Her husband in Ahmedabad, son studying in US and only her daughter staying with her in Mumbai, Junnarkar tries to bring everyone together as often as possible.
transformed from Mini to Micro and all applications were developed on Personal Computers. The lure of a large playing field continued to attract her, and when TCS opened its first office in Ahmedabad in The Chief Technology Officer Forum
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PHOTOs BY Alpesh Dholakia & Jiten Gandhi
CIO, Voltas Ltd
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t 1995, she grabbed the opportunity to launch her career with a global brand and joined TCS in January 1996. The entrepreneurial venture, entrusted to her husband, continues operating in Ahmedabad. Since January 1996 Junnarkar has managed multiple large engagements in TCS. Technology platforms kept changing every two years and it was an interesting challenge keeping up with the speed of change. Junnarkar says, ‘MBA background helped me to understand the business challenges and relate with the customers.’ She became regional delivery head of TCS in December 2004. Within 3 years Junnarkar grew TCS’s strength in Gujarat from 250 to 1500 employees and changed the business mix from majority domestic to majority overseas through innovative service delivery platforms such as shared services. In 2008, she joined Voltas as a CIO, switching the sides of the table again. Since then, she has focused on strategic IT Roadmap and bringing IT closer to the business. Junnarkar is managing multiple teams, engaged in various technology initiatives such as mobility solutions, Decision Support Systems and Virtualization. She is also managing multiple partners for maintaining and expanding the technology footprint on SAP & .net platforms. She believes in empowering the teams for day-to-day operations while personally focusing on reviews and risk mitigation. However, achieving all this wasn’t easy with Junnarkar as she had to travel across the world for work while with TCS. Maintaining the right balance between work and family was the biggest challenge, which she evidently succeeded in doing. Junnarkar believes that if women are able to manage the right balance between family and work, then sky is the limit. With her 23 years old son, who’s doing his MS in US and her 19 years
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Snap Shot Philosophy in life: Can be summed up in her favourite lines of Robert Frost: The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep. Good Leader: One who takes people along and has a vision. A vision of reaching a place, people haven’t thought of in the past. Outlook at Workplace: Lage Raho! Keep trying till you succeed. An outlook that helps her keep going… Hobbies: Junnarkar loves travelling. She prefers to see new places each time, meet new people and see the world from their eyes.
daughter who’s currently studying Mass Media in Mumbai, life has been quite fulfilling for Junnarkar. As an IT leader, her aim is always to motivate and inspire her team to not only work hard but also to enjoy the work. Junnarkar says, ‘I always looking for new challenges, bigger the challenge, bigger the opportunity it will open up.’
Author: Ross Anderson
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“Security needs to take an engineering approach�
Two Books on Security Strategy
These are two brilliant books that no one tasked with security should ignore – the first is an advocate of a structured-engineering approach and the second is a comprehensive how-to. Security Engineering: A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems by Ross Anderson is arguably the best information security book ever written. Anderson's premise is that security technology needs to take a structured engineering approach to systems design, with detailed requirements and specifications from start-up to development and implementation; just as those designing buildings and bridges do. Without a deeply embedded structured approach to security systems design, Anderson argued that we find ourselves in the situation we are in today, with applications and operating systems full of bugs, vulnerabilities and other serious security flaws. As good as Security Engineering is, it was not written to be a detailed information security design guide. That vacuum has been filled by an incredibly important and valuable new book Security Strategy: From Requirements to Reality. Security Strategy is one of the first
books that shows how to perform a comprehensive information security assessment and design, from section, development and deployment of a security strategy best suited to a specific organisation. The book's focus is on the planning, requirements and execution needed to ensure that formal and comprehensive information security elements are built into systems, applications and processes. Authors Bill Stackpole and Eric Oksendahl each have over 25 years in the industry and the book reflects their vast expertise. Oksendahl spent time at Boeing, one of the most security aware organisations, with Stackpole spending a decade at Microsoft. While Microsoft is chided for creating more insecurity than security, it is worth noting that no organisation in the world has spent more on training its staff and developers on security than Microsoft. Complete with checklists of the physical security requirements that organisations should consider when
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Ben Rothke is a Senior Security Consultant at BT Global Services. He is an accomplished security professional with passionate and innovative futureoriented vision, focusing on developing security and risk management as both an internal asset as well as a competitive advantage.
evaluating or designing facilities, the book provides the insight needed to enable an organisation to achieve the operational efficiencies, cost reductions, and brand enhancements that are possible when an effective security strategy is put into action. Security Strategy: From Requirements to Reality is an incredibly valuable book that advances the state of information security. For organisations that are looking to get serious about information security, and those that want to go from good to great, the book is an invaluable guide that lays the groundwork on how to develop a first-rate information security infrastructure. Taking a look at its table of contents shows the many fine points in which the book goes into each particular point, showing how it can be properly designed and deployed for effective security controls. My only peeve with the book is that it lacked a CD-ROM or website from which to download the many tables and matrices the book is built on. The Chief Technology Officer Forum
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VIEWPOINT Sameer Shelke | sameer.shelke@aujas.com
Consumerisation of the Enterprise
I recently read an article “John Sculley on Steve Jobs,” which as the name suggests was an interview transcript of John Sculley the former CEO of Apple. John Sculley talks about “The Steve Job’s Methodology” on how to build great products, he says Job’s always looked at things from the perspective of what the user experience is going to be. He didn’t believe in asking consumers what they want, but rather built beautiful products which people ended up wanting. Similar to what Henry Ford had said about consumer views on the car, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” 0How is this changing the 'Enterprise' behaviour? The way people in an Enterprise looked at end-user technology is different from how individuals in their capacity as consumers looked at it. I guess that’s why end-user technologies such as laptops or operating systems had enterprise range products and consumer range products. Enterprises used to determine what specific laptop or mobile product models could be used for corporate IT services.
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Apple, I think, is changing this – consumerization of the enterprise is happening. I was involved in an Information risk management framework transformation project for a service provider in Japan. While the Management, IT, Business and Security teams had their own requirements and expectations from the project, the end-users hoped the project would enable use of the iPhone for business communication and email (Only one specific mobile device was allowed to be used for company email). Incidentally the transformation of the risk framework did allow iPhone-like devices to be used by modifying the process and control framework. Several organizations are now allowing or thinking of ways they can let the users choose the end-user technologies to access IT services in a secure form. The advent of the iPad or the tablet phenomenon would only make it impossible for companies to stay away from this change. It’s not just Apple, but other companies and technologies are also driving this change. We now see interesting ads from
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illustration BY PC Anoop
Consumerisation of the enterprise is foregone conclusion rganizations need to change their risk mitigation practices to encompass a range of 'consumer' devices.
About the author: Sameer Shelke is the Co-founder, COO and CTO at Aujas Networks Pvt. Ltd. He has handled cross functional areas such as technology development & management, business management, P&L management, people management etc.
“Enterprise” technology firms such as RIM getting more consumer friendly (“Blackberry Boys”) or the younger generation doing special behavioural changes to get “their first android.” Apple released the iPad on April 3; it sold 1 million units by May 3. Analysts predict close to 8 million iPad’s will sell in 2010. Rumours are that the iPad 2.0 would be released soon with a prediction of selling 6 million units a month! Now consider this in the context that the iPad is available for sale in only select countries and other tablets are also making their mark. Mobile applications are expected to touch sales of $35 billion by 2014, and Gartner has predicted a 10 percent drop in their PC sales forecast for 2011 mostly on account of the increased interest in tablets. Hence I am of the opinion that consumerization of the enterprise is a foregone conclusion and organizations need to modify their risk management postures to allow for a range of 'consumer' devices and applications to be used within the enterprise. “Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature’s inexorable imperative.” – H. G. Wells.