The Leadership Pipeline by ctof magazine

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CTO FORUM

Technology for Growth and Governance

April | 07 | 2010 | Rs.50 Volume 05 | Issue 16

CLOUD'S GATHERING CROWD | DATA LOSS PREVENTION | STORAGE POOLING TO THE RESCUE

The

Leadership A QUESTION OF ANSWERS

The Digital Connection PAGE 10

Pipeline

Succession planning holds the key to smooth transitions and sustained growth. Are CIOs working

towards bridging the leadership gap? PAGE 22

Volume 05 | Issue 16

FROM LEFT: V V R BABU, Group CIO, ITC Limited and Senior VP, ITC Infotech, RAJESH UPPAL, CGM and CIO, Maruti India, SUMIT CHOWDHURY, CIO, Reliance Communications

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Virtual Worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Are you thinking Cross Hairs like your CFO?

EDITORIAL RAHUL NEEL MANI | rahul.mani@9dot9.in

When you are gone. Do you have a

successor? What seems like a distant concern can bring the house down.

uccession planning! It’s a word that appears just about everywhere today. Everyone talks about it, but very few CIOs think seriously about the concept, and an even smaller number take up the task of creating the pipeline for leadership for a smooth transition. Most of the CIOs spend a great deal of time and resources on developing their staff's technical capabilities and motivating them to go for certifications, but helping them with financial

modelling or leadership skills takes a backseat. A recently conducted research by the US-based Centre for CIO Leadership concludes that 93 percent of CIOs say they are very well aware of the IT skills and competencies that their organisations need to be successful, yet only 77 percent say they are actively involved with helping their organisations to develop the business skills needed. What is most startling is the fact that only 64 percent

EDITOR’S PICK 22

The Leadership Pipeline

CIOs needs to close the profession’s leadership gap. They should think how their career plans affect the prospects of those around and the future of their companies. Succession planning holds the key.

CIOs indicate they have a plan in place to acquire and grow the right talent in their organisation. We often overlook the fact that absence of a proper succession plan can lead to an ad-hoc, reactionary solution if a CIO leaves the company for whatever reason. This type of a reactionary approach places the entire enterprise at a high risk due to the resulting disruption, lack of direction and loss of institutional knowledge. When are we going to look beyond short-term issues and other pending tasks to take the bull by its horns? To ease the succession planning process, CIOs have to treat it as a part of their ongoing employee development process rather than regard it as just a namesake, annual exercise. This will help potential leaders in acquiring experience and

leadership skills while benefiting the organisation by leading to more satisfied employees. This issue’s cover feature, The Leadership Pipeline, is a collection of expert interviews, success stories and practitioners’ viewpoints. In short, we are pleased to present a “Best Practices” guide on succession planning. Please write to us and tell us if you enjoyed reading this feature as much as we did writing it.

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COVER STORY

22 |Leadership Pipeline.

COLUMN

04 | I BELIEVE: SENSE OF DIRECTION Amrita Gangotra, Director - IT (India & South Asia), Bharti-Airtel on maintaining the balance between being futuristic and delivering fast enough.

Grooming the next-in-line leaders will help prospective candidates test their limits and the management to ensure a smooth transition.

52 | VIEW POINT: CLOUDâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S GATHERING CROWD Microsoft's cloud will soon be up there but it has competition from many players. BY DYLAN PERSAUD

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FEATURES

34 | NEXT HORIZONS: ARE YOU THINKING LIKE YOUR CFO? CIOs should recognise top-of-mind issues for CEOs sitting across the hall. BY GREG BAKER

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10 A QUESTION OF ANSWERS

10 |The Digital Connection “The biggest

mistake that users commit is not updating their profile,” says Hari Krishnan, Country Manager, Linkedin India.

13 | BEST OF BREED: A MANDATE TO PREVENT LEAKS A reality check on the many issues facing DLP.

49 | HIDE TIME: PARVINDER SINGH, VP & HEAD - IT SERVICES, MAX NEW YORK LIFE INSURANCE The active outdoor life of a hands-on chief.

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THE AUTHOR has over 20 years of experience in decision-making positions in the IT departments of businesses.

PHOTO BY SUBHOJIT PAUL

I BELIEVE

BY AMRITA GANGOTRA Director-IT (India & South Asia), Bharti Airtel

Sense of Direction

Speed is of essence, but of little use unless you are headed on the right path. SHOULD we try to understand the customer's current needs â&#x20AC;&#x201C; whether clearly evident or not â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and accordingly design our solutions? Or should we focus on creating a futuristic buffet so that they can cherry pick what they need? There are trade-off choices to be considered with both approaches but one must keep in mind a fundamental truth: while moving fast and keeping pace with the changing market is a basic requirement, moving in the right direction is definitely more critical.

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CURRENT CHALLENGE PERFORMING EXPENSIVE MARKET RESEARCH TO UNDERSTAND CUSTOMER INSIGHTS (CI) AND CREATING ACTIONABLES AROUND THE INFORMATION GATHERED

I believe it is essential to maintain the delicate balance between being futuristic and delivering fast enough before the requirements change in the future. Especially if there is a lot of cost involved in developing products and services that deliver value to the customers and generate revenue for us. Regardless of whether it's the technology function or some other function, as long as we are serving customers, understanding their needs and servicing them quickly is extremely essential. Today, one of the biggest cost items for the leading companies is performing expensive market research to understand Customer Insights (CI) and creating actionables around the information gathered. Across the customer spectrum, from individual users to small-medium business to the large enterprises, the CI program enables the researchers to probe customers with the right questions and make the right decisions in order to gain competitive advantages that are not only effective but sustainable. In a collaborative learning environment, this program is a sterling example of how the right blend of tools can be used to gain powerful, valid insights into customer needs and perceptions. Building a marketing strategy based upon deep customer insights can give a firm a powerful competitive advantage. Unstructured analysis of data is fast gaining currency as an important mechanism to gaining customer insights. This involves elements like recorded customer calls, emails, VOCs from chat sessions and blogs. Unstructured feeds can be complex to analyse and the accuracy of their inferences can be questionable. While there are tools available to parse such data to extract meaningful content, deciding on the right approach to take to analyse the data can make a lot of difference.

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| 21 | 2010 Volum e 05 | | Rs.50 Issue 15

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AN ANTI-TERRORIST Unsafhacker refuses to come out in CYBERCRIM E

e The problem is hisINTER the open and talk about his methods. Why? tools, VIEW well understood only by a few, canPAGEbring down the sites of theAworld's 28 Slipptop ery financial institutions as well. Then again, counter terrorism operations want him out their way. (see interview Unmasking Terror, pgPAGE20) 48 Should government and the private sector collaborate to ward off common enemy? Yes, says the former CIO of the White House. If that question is easily answered, the next one hardly is: what constitutes a national border in the cyber age? (see interview Slippery Slope, pg 48) The choices that CIO/CISO's have to make everyday may not be directly connected with cyberterrorists or the ethical (really?) hacker, but in the muddled waters of information security nothing is straight forward. In some articles, we have carried viewpoints from experts on tough questions, in others, experienced professionals have talked about their approach, but it's up to us to find the pattern and create a credible defence.

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Join more than 300 CIOs on the CTO Forum LinkedIn group for latest news and hot enterprise technology discussions. Share your thoughts, participate in discussions and win prizes for the most valuable contribution. You can join The CTOForum group at: www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2580450

PERSON CLASSIF AL INFORMA TION, IED STRATE CUME THE DO CONNNTS. HOW GIC PLANS, SA EC

TED W FE IS ORLD? PAGE 18

TEAMING UP FOR THE SOCIETY Your editorial on CWB (CIOs Without Borders) is very informative. CWB seems to be a promising platform for a social cause. I really liked the idea and would like to get associated. So far I haven’t been able to find any source providing contact information/directory of CIOs. I believe such a resource would help promote knowledge exchange between CIOs. MANJIT SINGH BIMRA, Dy. General Manager IT, Tractor Engineers Ltd (L&T Group), Mumbai

USEFUL ARTICLES ON SECURITY For the past few months, I have seen a marked difference in the CTO Forum. The judicious blend of articles, opinions and interviews makes for interesting reading. It was really refreshing to read the Security issue. I found the information on social media threats and cloud security useful. I would like to congratulate the team CTO Forum for their efforts. RAJESH MUNJAL, Head IT, Carzonrent, New Delhi

Some of the hot discussions on the group are: Do non technology professionals make better CIO/ CTOs? Do you think CIOs need non-IT business experience? How does it help shape their careers? Over the last two decades or so the business value of IT is increasingly in focus. The earlier "halo" of technologists is no longer accepted. The boundaries of business and technology are blurred - in fact technology is now integrated with business as never before. In this changed scenario it is beneficial if CIOs have an exposure/experience of business. My personal experience in two major IT projects over the last few years has validated this point. Success in IT projects is more about adding business value and change management (users) than technology. My experience of business and other functions has been invaluable in the success of these projects. In the case of CTOs however this may not be as true - the CTO in my view needs to be a specialist in the areas of technology applications, architecture, infrastructure, etc.

—K R Sreenivasan CIO & CQH - Tata Capital Ltd.

“The Security issue looks wonderful, and thanks for the opportunity. I am in the process of lining up more interviews like Theresa Payton's and would make them available regularly.”

CTOF Connect

Advanced analytics, cloud computing and the mobile web will be the technologies to watch out for in the next few years, says Dr. Manish Gupta, Director, IBM Research – India and Chief Technologist, IBM India/SA in an email interaction with CTO Forum.To read the full story go to:

thectoforum.com/ content/analyticswill-createbusiness-value

OPINION

A REWARDING LIFE, ENRICHED BY IT

ANTHONY M. FREED, Editor, Infosec Island, USA. Freed was the guest editor for CTO Forum's Security special.

CIOs must not become cocooned in their islands of technology. “I believe that a great leader steers clear from the role of a ‘hoverer’. The best way to get the most out of your team is to allow them discretion in planning, and implementation.” To read the full story go to:

WRITE TO US: The CTOForum values your feedback. We want to know what you think about the magazine and how to make it a better read for you. Our endeavour continues to be work in progress and your comments will go a long way in making it the preferred publication of the CIO Community. Send your comments, compliments, complaints or questions about the magazine to editor@thectoforum.com AJAY KUMAR DHIR CIO, JSL

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07 APRIL 2010

INTERVIEW INISDE

Enterprise

Dr. Brian Cohen, CTO, iSoft, on how healthcare will benefit from the cloud. Pg 9

ILLUSTRATION BY PC ANOOP

ROUND-UP

SMB Spending Returning to Growth: Full Recovery Not Expected Until 2011 WHILE the impact of the global recession was no surprise, the extent to which small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) were adversely affected was greater than anticipated. As a result, IDC forecasts worldwide SMB spending on IT will increase by 5.5% over the 2010-2014 period. This is considerably lower than previous forecasts. Key findings from IDC's SMB forecast include the following: Worldwide SMB IT spending will grow to nearly $629.3 billion in 2014. Despite the $17.4 billion spending increase expected in 2010, SMB IT spending levels will not return to 2008 levels until 2011. While SMB spending declines affected all categories of hardware, software, and services, the spending

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recovery will vary by technology type. IDC expects SMB spending on PCs and peripherals will grow the fastest, followed closely by packaged software, while systems and storage will be the slowest growing. SMB spending growth will be strongest in Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa, although spending will not recover to pre-recession levels until 2011. The developing markets of AsiaPacific and Latin America will experience growth of more than 7% throughout the period. SMB spending growth in developed regions will be roughly 3-4%. North America, Western Europe, and Japan together represent about 70% of SMB IT spending. Source IDC Report 2010

DATA BRIEFING

96.8% WILL BE THE GROWTH RATE OF TOUCHSCREEN MOBILES WORLDWIDE

E NTE RPRI SE ROUND -UP

THEY VIVEK SAID IT KUNDRA

ILLUSTRATION BY PC ANOOP

The federal government in the US is moving forward with plans to create a “storefront” where government agencies could easily acquire standard, secure cloud computing applications. Vivek Kundra, CIO of the White House feels that making cloud computing solutions easier to obtain will drive standardisation and consolidation in the federal government.

Virtual is Unsafe; Physical is Better. Gartner Outlines Most Common Virtualisation Security Risks THROUGH 2012, 60 percent of virtualised servers will be less secure than the physical servers they replace, according to Gartner, Inc. Gartner has identified some virtualisation security risks with advice on their solutions: Information security isn't initially involved in the virtualisation projects: Survey data indicates that about 40 percent of virtualisation deployment projects were undertaken without involving the security team in the initial architecture and planning stages. A compromise of the virtualisation layer could result in the compromise of all hosted workloads: The virtualisation layer will inevitably contain yet-to-be-discovered vulnerabilities that may be exploitable. Gartner recommends that organisations treat this layer as the most critical x86 platform in the data centre and keep it as thin as possible. The lack of visibility and controls on internal virtual networks created for VM-to-VM communications blinds existing security policy enforcement mechanisms: Most virtualisation platforms include the ability to create software-based virtual networks and switches inside the physical host. Gartner recommends that, organisations require the same type of monitoring they place on physical networks, so that they don't lose visibility and control when workloads and networks are virtualised.

QUICK BYTE ON ENTERPRISE SOFTWARE MARKET

“Although consumer cloud technologies could dramatically simplify government's ability to acquire common services, it won't work for tasks involving sensitive federal data.” —Vivek Kundra, CIO of White House

China’s enterprise software market is forecast to perform strongly, with an estimated CAGR of 14.6 percent from 2008 to 2013 – the highest growth rate in the world, according to Gartner, Inc. The software market in China is expected to rebound to an annual growth rate of 14.8 percent in 2010. CTO FORUM thectoforum.com

07 APRIL 2010

E NTE RPRI SE ROUND -UP

our strategy for cloud adoption is iSOFT’s Health Studio - a modern Solution Engineering product with service orientation supporting multiple healthcare standards like XML, HL7, CDA, etc. through Viaduct a flexible integration framework. How are Electronic Health Records (EHRs) Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) Personal Health Records (PHRs) Payer-based Health Records (PBHRs) Electronic Prescribing (E-prescribing) Financial/Billing/ Administrative System, Computerised Practitioner Order Entry (CPOE) Systems etc. going to go into the cloud? Many of the above mentioned health information are already available on the net. Publishing these services on cloud, will bring enormous benefits for information availability and broader reach of healthcare services resulting in better healthcare management. There are many other opportunities that the cloud can offer for healthcare, especially in areas like decision support systems, terminology services, medication management, medical knowledge mashups, clinical research, medical networks, etc. The concerns here are whether the hospitals and clinics will be satisfied if their important data is stored offsite. The concept needs to be developed further in countries outside the US. Providing world class solutions along with increased value of the organisation’s goal will be crucial in the Indian market.

Some Cloud for Health.

Dr. Brian Cohen CTO, iSOFT, on how healthcare will benefit from the cloud. PRIVATE health information is still confined to the local networks. Do you think companies will ever migrate it onto the Internet? It is not that straight forward to say that the companies will be fine migrating onto Internet. When it comes to healthcare, unlike other verticals there are several challenges that need to be addressed. It will take some time for the technology to mature and prove it safe to port the sensitive data like medical records on to the cloud. But it will be worthwhile to mix and match the offering with combination of private and public cloud with careful assessment of data sensitivity, security and compliance requirements.

Just like Microsoft’s HealthVault and Google’s Health what are the offerings of iSOFT? Do you have a unique story? iSOFT’s Lorenzo already exists as a huge private cloud network in the NHS, UK and is running through a single data centre. In due course, there will be one copy of Lorenzo running through the entire UK. Meanwhile, eHIS is supporting the armed forces hospitals network in Oman through satellite facilities. Our products are already developed and tested on the modern technologies and methodologies, which can lend itself onto cloud environment. One of the other key initiatives which will support

GLOBAL TRACKER

Revenue in US$ 8.6 Billion

in 2009. 8

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2009

technical server market declined by 11.6%

9.7 Billion

SOURCE: IDC CORPORATION

the high performance computing (HPC)

2008

Factory revenue for

What are the key Security challenges and how can they be overcome? The cloud model demands additional security for the healthcare industry. Data transfer between a local client and a remote server needs to be secured. Data privacy is a huge challenge, especially due to government regulations such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Many countries have policies regarding record-keeping, including the physical location of medical data. In order to make healthcare cloud globally connected, a considerable amount of resources, responsibility and expertise is required to drive standardisation, collaboration and better patient care. Being the leader in Healthcare IT, iSOFT needs to create a consortium to drive these standards along with other partners. —By Rahul Neel Mani

E NTE RPRI SE ROUND -UP

Cyberoam Launches SSL VPN on VMware. Joins the league of select players running separate SSL VPN platforms

CYBEROAM a provider of identitybased Unified Threat Management (UTM) appliances, has announced the integration of its SSL VPN solution on a virtual VMware platform, besides offering it as a dedicated appliance and through an installer on customer machines. With this, Cyberoam is among the players that run separate SSL VPN platforms to provide

greater flexibility to organisations in purchasing solutions that meet their individual security guidelines and infrastructure. Organisations are increasingly demanding flexibility of choice in their solutions to fill the current gaps in the security infrastructure. In this scenario, they find the “virtual appliances” model very attractive because these help in

FACT TICKER

New tech, value creation CIO’s biggest concerns ACCORDING to the recently published Capgemini Global CIO Report, CIOs and companies are facing three major challenges: Dealing with the arrival of new technologies such as cloud that may disrupt CIOs’ efforts to increase industrialisation levels and IT maturity. Increasing the focus of IT usage on value creation for the business while improving

operational performance. Harnessing the usage of information from broader sources like suppliers, customers and social networks. The report shows that a vast majority of CIOs have reached the point where they manage their IT in an industrialised way. These solid foundations have enabled companies to obtain the right IT applications and infrastruc-

achieving greater ROI and optimal utilization of hardware making the business operations more ecofriendly. Cyberoam’s SSL VPN solutions will provide clientless browserbased access to geographicallydistributed networks through common web browsers, with an “in-office” experience for internal applications including Microsoft Outlook, Intranets, web applications, FTP and more. Also, local desktops and laptop can securely traverse existing UTMs/firewalls in the network to access remote data services, without any risk of exposing the confidential information to hackers. These solutions deliver high performance with strong end-point security and granular access control for enterprises, helping them remain compliant with regulatory requirements. Identity-based logs of network access enable organizations to securely extend their networks with complete knowledge of “who is remotely accessing what in their network”. With client-less configuration, they offer high ROI, high performance and secure remote access.

ture to support business processes effectively. A significant number of CIOs are now turning focus towards collaboration with business at strategic and operational levels. How However, the advent of new technologies such as SaaS and the Cloud is currently challenging the IT function’s industrialisation model. Though providing efficient IT systems for the business is difficult enough, operational business process performance does not depend on the efficiency of IT systems

alone. More important is how employees can derive a business benefit by using IT efficiently. Although all managers know that IT usage is critical for operational performance, there is still little or no measure of the value that needs to be delivered. Focus should be on creating value through IT usage. For example, an ERP project does not end when it goes live; the business value that it creates will be enhanced if user-oriented governance, with business and IT indicators, is set up.

GREEN TALK

Cisco Delivers on Its Borderless Networks Vision With Complete Refresh of Fixed-Switching Portfolio Cisco has announced the release of Cisco Borderless Access. This portion of the company's Borderless Networks architecture comprises of products and services that enable secure wired-wireless communications, energy management, and optimised delivery of video. As part of this architecture, Cisco is introducing a new series of fixed-switching product lines – the Cisco Catalyst 3560/3750-X Series and 2960-S Series – that provide a suite of new service offerings, flexible entry-level pricing, and a limited lifetime warranty. This announcement builds on the Cisco Borderless Networks vision introduced in October 2009. The Cisco Borderless Networks architecture, which defines the attributes necessary for supporting distributed and mobile businesses, is designed to connect anyone to anything, anywhere, and anytime – in a secure, reliable and seamless environment. Cisco delivers on this architecture through video, energy management and secure networking services that are embedded across its routing, switching, wireless and security platforms.

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07 APRIL 2010

A QUESTION OF ANSWERS

HARI KRISHNAN

The Digital Connection HARI KRISHNAN | COUNTRY MANAGER, LINKEDIN INDIA

PHOTOS BY : JITEN GANDHI

With more than four million users, India is an evolved market for LinkedIn. Hari Krishnan, Country Manager, LinkedIn India speaks to Rahul Neel Mani about the power of the network and what users should do to leverage it.

LinkedIn was launched as a portal for professionals to network but it has today become more of a job site. What is the roadmap? LinkedIn is a network that allows professionals to manage their entire career. It starts with basic things like finding a job, being productive, hiring people and sharing knowledge with peers. Of late, the job recruitment features have become quite popular due to the recessionary economy. In the past couple of years, there were job cuts in most parts of the world whereas India was creating job opportunities. Certainly, there is a business element for us in promoting jobs on LinkedIn. If you see carefully, we have two business lines: One, we refer to as ‘marketing solutions’ which consists of advertising

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and self-serve products. Second, we refer to as ‘hiring solutions’. Hiring solutions are a suite of products built for recruiters. Average consumers don’t know about them. Our flagship product ‘LinkedIn Recruiter’ is extremely popular in India. We live by a slogan: “LinkedIn works where the professional works.” That means the end users need not come to us every time. LinkedIn will reach out to the users. The integration with Microsoft Outlook, IBM Lotus Notes, iPhone and Palm is a real-world manifestation of this. Indian users are among the most evolved ones. Not many CEOs of Internet companies are able to make bold statements like the ones Indian CEOs make. These users know how to make optimum use of our free products. The level of engagement

which an average Indian LinkedIn user has is far more than that of users from many other countries. There are already well over 4 million Indians using LinkedIn. During November 2009, we announced that LinkedIn is adding 70,000 new users every week. The number is significantly higher today. The challenge for us is to get these users to look into the ‘mirror’ and help them meet their expectations. We don’t have to do much. We have to surface the ideal users and teach the whole universe how to use this platform to their advantage. Will LinkedIn ever promote the most beautiful feature of the site – its groups? Groups are arguably one of our strongest features. LinkedIn hosts

The big mistake: Hari Krishnan, Country Manager, LinkedIn India says that the biggest mistake that the users commit is not completing and updating their profile on LinkedIn.

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A QUESTION OF ANSWERS

HARI KRISHNAN

“Features like video conferencing are interesting but is there a critical mass using it?”

over 500,000 professional groups today. Thousands of such groups are created every day. A 100,000 professionals join these groups every day. In the end, user behaviour decides what product makes sense and what doesn’t. Our responsibility is to guide and constantly educate the users on how to use these groups. Certain groups, based on industry vertical and practices, thrive because of their inclusive nature: they assimilate every one. Certain others thrive because they are closed and specialised. A CMO Group run by Jessie Paul, Chief Marketing Officer of Wipro, is a classic example of how to run a closed group successfully. This group is ‘by invitation’ and it shares the best practices in marketing across the world. Do you empower the users to help them stay focused and keep the nonsense out of these forums and groups? Absolutely! There are multiple stages to it. Basically, our endeavour is to empower professionals. This means, the control should lie with professionals and not with us. We provide a lot of tools to empower the moderators of these groups. Alongside, we also educate users, moderators and the advertisers on best practices. Notwithstanding the fact that malicious intent is the biggest cause of problems, sometimes people do wrong things out of sheer innocence. Education plays a big role to mitigate such risks. We have a product called in-mail, which enables users to reach their third degree connections. It can be misused by people who want to spam. We protect the interests of users and ask them to flag off these users. If we get repeated complaints about a user, he is stripped off his privileges. This is to protect the vast majority of our free users. Over 90 percent of our product development efforts and innovations are targeted at free users. We are committed to protect their interests and privacy.

Is LinkedIn thinking of adding features like video conferencing and chat for better peer networking? Knowing that groups are a large part of our business, we have seriously evaluated real-time conversations. But we do want to keep the platform clutter-free. Without going into the details of product development roadmap of our company, I would say that our endeavour is to always enable the users with better functionalities. One aspect that the product development teams always keep in mind is to not come in the way of people linking up with each other. Features like video conferencing are interesting but is there a critical mass using it? And if it is a corner-case feature, we may still push it out, but if the infrastructure doesn’t support, the user experience is not going to be good and that’s where we draw a line between ‘good-to-have’ and ‘musthave’ features.

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THINGS I BELIEVE IN The control should lie with professionals and not with us. User behaviour decides what product makes sense and what doesn’t. Many Indian CEOs know how to make optimum use of our free products.

What’s the biggest mistake that users commit on their LinkedIn profile? The biggest mistake that users commit is not completing and subsequently updating their profiles. LinkedIn is a highly search-engine optimised site. In more than one ways, the LinkedIn profile is a professional’s online brand. At the same time one must not mistake it for a resume because there are things that you may want to hide from a large part of viewers. But it does give you other functionalities like sharing slides, getting recommendations, creating alumni network, groups etc. The richer you make your profile, the better are your chances of being found. LinkedIn's cornerstone is the unwritten social contract of trust and reputation. My biggest message to Indian users of LinkedIn is to complete their profile. We will use our best technologies and solutions to help you use the platform optimally.

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The Right Fit Choosing the right data de-duplication solution.Pg 15

IMAGING BY BINESH SREEDHARAN

BREED

FEATURE INSIDE

Mandate to Plug Leaks 230% A Is Data Loss Prevention (DLP) really a CIOâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s DATA BRIEFING

INCREASE IN INCIDENCES OF PERSONAL DATA BEING STOLEN AND SOLD ONLINE SINCE 2007.

need and responsibility? Or is it a vendor promoted theme to cash on corporate fear? We conduct a reality check.

BY RAHUL NEEL MANI AND ASHWANI MISHRA

ccording to the findings, released late last year, of a UK-based identity theft database provider, Lucid Intelligence, incidences of personal data being stolen and sold online have soared by 230 percent since 2007. The spurt in data leakage incidences is all the more alarming given that protection of intellectual property,

including employee data and customer records, is all the more critical in the current economic scenario. Survey results have revealed that a vast majority of businesses have taken at least some action towards preventing confidential information from leaking. The need for protection from security breaches has fuelled the demand for a new breed of security tools, many of which fall under the category of software

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popularly known as Data Loss Prevention (DLP) software. A DLP software monitors data that is in use, moving on the network and in storage, in order to prevent its unauthorised use or transmission. However, there has been a lot of debate lately on whether enterprises really need a DLP solution or whether it is just another solution drummed up by the marketing machinery of security providers. Also, should it be the CIO who decides whether to go in for a solution? And, once the need for such a solution is well established, how does one pick the right product as every vendor is claiming that their products are the best?

Fixing responsiblity “As the primary custodian of data and information, it's the CIO who should decide on the choice of deploying a new DLP solution or using existing solutions,” says Amol Vidwans, former CIO of Mahindra Holidays & Resorts India Limited (Club Mahindra). He adds that though there are many vendors who claim to have the best solution, it is the CIO who needs to study and understand the solutions before short listing one that is in line with the organisation’s security and business needs. Nazir Husain, CISO and VP, Information Security and Technology of US-based Emdeon Business Services, a provider of revenue and payment cycle solutions, has a different opinion on the question of who should initiate the purchase of a DLP solution. He says that only if DLP is mandated by the manager charged with the responsibility of data segregation, should the CIO concern himself with its purchase. “A CIO or IT head in general is usually not the person who is going to be held responsible for breaches related to leakage of business information. This responsibility usually resides with the legal, corporate communications or finance departments. In my opinion one of these departments would be the decision makers to drive a CIO to prioritise a DLP implementation or at least define the need for one,” says Husain. Others in the industry opine that the big issue here is not about who should be responsible for getting a DLP solution. Getting business users to buy the concept that data is crucial to an organisation is key.

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The bigger picture According to Aaron Goldwater, CEO of Canadian software provider, Jurat Software, some of the security vendors sell solutions to users at a price much lower than the competition, but these are usually second grade ones and so the purpose is defeated. “There have been instances where extremely crucial data is not adequately protected or encrypted using such solutions,” he says. He points out that a DLP only works if the company knows where its data is. “Many major global corporations have no idea where their data resides,” he says. Take a recent example of how organisations are often clueless about the location of their data and about who has access to it. The Swiss unit of the global banking giant HSBC revealed last month that details of 24,000 bank customers have been leaked in a major security breach. According to an online statement, Alexandre Zeller, Chief Executive of HSBC Private Bank (Switzerland), admitted that the theft was carried out by an employee of the IT department about three years ago and that the case first came to light only in December last year.

“While DLP is important due to regulatory demands (HIPPA, PCI, IT audit etc.), the vendors hype it because of the huge financial outlay involved” —DANIEL IHONVBERE President/CEO, Tech Prognosis

A DLP report released by research firm Gartner mentioned that enterprises should plan a thorough data loss prevention strategy before talking to vendors. A proper strategy is essential for the technology to be effective, the analyst firm warns. Without a strategy in place, vendors are likely to sway discussions to specific aspects of DLP, it said.

The right approach Today DLP is defined by what a particular solution does. In most cases, the data leak prevention process of the organisation is defined on the basis of the functionality and characteristics of the DLP agent used. Adopting a policy based on the features of a product is not the right way to go, many security practitioners feel. “Ideally it should be the other way around; we must initially identify the data leak vectors and then fix them,” says Visveshwar Subramaniam, Consultant, Information Security at Baker Tilly MKM, UAE. He notes that the majority of the gaps identified would be fixed with the help of a DLP agent; however, there would be gaps which have to be fixed using other controls. “The CIO is definitely the person with the authority to put in place all the controls,” he says. But merely having processes in place does not guarantee the success of a DLP plan. The process needs to be coupled with the right IT tools. Companies can go gung-ho about data classification and handling guidelines but most of the companies today interact with third party vendors where the controls might not be as tight as they are internally. “The right approach to prevent data loss is to have appropriate policies and procedures with regards to data classification and handling as well as tools to enforce them,” says Chetan Sansare, Consultant at Bangalorebased information risk management provider Aujas Networks. The many incidences of lost devices and data breaches make it clear that DLP is very crucial for most businesses. Nonetheless, there is also a lot of vendor-promoted hype surrounding DLP.

Vendor hype or real? Daniel Ihonvbere, President/CEO at Tech Prognosis, a US-based provider of virtual CTO/CIO services for small businesses, says

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that having a good DLP strategy is all about identifying, monitoring and protecting data in use, in motion and at rest. This, he believes, is a huge undertaking because it requires the definition of appropriate use of corporate information (policy creation); the discovery of what needs protection (data discovery); integration with existing systems (tasks such as encryption) and the administration of the process. “As this exercise leads to many changes in IT operations, management has to either commit extra staff (which is almost impossible in small to medium enterprises),

or hire DLP vendors to come in and manage the process,” Ihonvbere says. “So while DLP is important due to regulatory demands (HIPPA, PCI, IT audit etc.), the vendors hype it because of the huge financial outlay involved,” he says. The insider threat may be a serious one, but is it as big as the vendors make it out to be? It appears that some vendors have been playing up the security threat in order to promote the sale of security products like DLP. Nevertheless, it is true that in a business environment where firing of

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employees at short notice is becoming the norm, employees in return would be more inclined by short term gains, which may include compromising organisational data. “There will never be a DLP solution that will detect when an insider is seeking profit by leveraging authorised access to information,” says Norbert Nolin, Senior Manager, Information Security at Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide. The bottom line is fairly simple: even if vendors stress on one technology or product, it is the CIO's role to see the whole picture.

The Right Fit Knowing the features of various data de-duplication solutions will make your choice easier. BY DAVE STROM

s the amount of data stored on our networks increases, it also takes more time to make backup copies of this data. When the time required for these backups extends beyond the overnight period, problems crop up. One solution is to eliminate duplicate data that is backed up. How much can you save? A lot. In some cases, there is a more than a 10-to-1 savings; meaning that 90% of your data is duplicates. Eliminating these redundant files can go a long way towards speeding up the backup process. As the screen shot of Symantec's PureDisk NetBackup shows, more than 95% of the data files have been eliminated as a result of the deduplication process, going from a backup of more than 3GB to about 150MB. De-duplication seems like a simple concept, but picking the right de-duplication product isn't. There are dozens of vendors, including: Acronis.com Backup and Recovery Atempo Time Navigator CA'a ARCserver

Backup Cofio.com AIMStor FalconStor File-interface Deduplication System DataDomain DDX Quantum DXi3500 Sepaton DeltaStor Symantec NetBackup PureDisk There are also a lot of technical issues which need to be understood before taking a purchase decision with regard to a de-duplication product. Here is a checklist and some suggestions as you navigate these waters: First off, where is the software agent that controls the de-duplication process located? Some products put their agents at the source, meaning on each and every server that will be backed up, and others on the actual backup appliance. You need to put it someplace, and, depending on your particular set of servers and circumstances and IT policies, you may prefer one or the other method. Some of the products, like CA's Arcserve Backup, can now work with agents in both locations. Second, how does the de-duplication appliance appear to the backup software app? Some de-duplication boxes appear like a network-attached storage device, while others appear like a storage area

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network drive. Depending on the backup software that you already have, one of these might be more appealing to your situation. Does the de-duplication agent have any granularity with any particular apps or OSs? Some products can examine individual email messages, or database records or files that have changed on a particular virtual machine instance. As more and more shops make use of virtualisation technology, this factor becomes increasingly important, as the size of the virtual disk images can be enormous, yet they contain mostly the same common files for the operating system and underlying applications. This makes these de-duplication products more useful when working with the backup software when the need arises to restore these particular files from inside the virtual images. Do you need special hardware or does the de-duplication function come included as part of the backup software? Quite a few of the usual backup software vendors are moving towards integrating deduplication functionality in their products. For example, enabling data de-duplication functionality on both Symantec's NetBackup 7 and Backup Exec 2010 requires only a single check mark in a pop-up box in one of their control menus. Is de-duplication happening during the live stream of backup data

or does some post-processing occur? This means that the backup could be first staged to a hard drive designed for this purpose, and then the duplicates are later removed. If the former is the case, do you have enough storage capacity to hold all of your backup files, and can you add more storage as your needs grow? Finally, how does the de-duplication product fit into your overall storage resource management picture? Can you examine file ageing reports that show which files haven't been accessed by your users for more than 90 days, for example? Or understand how your storage area networks are using their disk arrays, and perhaps reconfigure them for more optimal usage? Or drill down and see how your particular applications are using your overall storage resources? These and other analyses are valuable if you are going to be able to more effectively manage your storage needs. Dave Strom is a freelance writer living in St. Louis and the former editorin-chief of Network Computing magazine, DigitialLanding.com and Tom's Hardware.com. He has written two books and numerous articles on networking, the Internet and IT security topics. He can be reached at david@ strom.com and his blog can be found at strominator.com.

Virtual World’s Crosshairs CASE STUDY | GODFREY PHILLIPS INDIA

Challange:

Godfrey Phillips India was RUNNING SHORT OF SPACE IN THE DATA CENTRE and looked at virtualisation as the solution, but VENDORS WEREN'T READY TO COMMIT SUPPORT to competitor's products. Grit and sound calculations were called for. BY GEETAJ CHANNANA

hat do you do if your organisation has limited space for a data centre, your applications are increasing, and you have a new ERP – all this when your organisation is diversifying at a fast pace? You Virtualise. This is exactly what S.R Balasubramanian, Executive Vice President, Information Technology and corporate development of Godfrey Phillips has done. When he joined the organisation in 2007, he encountered a new ERP system in Oracle ERP, ageing servers and an ever-increasing demand for new servers. The company also had more than 800 desktops, or nodes, on the network. All these desktops use e-mail with more than 500 desktops using ERP and other applications. Balasubramanian says that they had 30 servers to start with, but the demand slowly grew and reached close to 80 servers. “We could see the pattern two years ago,” says Balasubramanian, “the number of servers was just increasing.” “We decided that virtualisation was the way forward,” says Balasubramanian. Having had experience in implementing virtualisation at his previous organisation, Balasubramanian was confident he could pull it off at Godfrey Phillips too.

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C A S E S T U DY

COMPANY DASHBOARD COMPANY Godfrey Phillips India Limited BUSINESS Cigarettes, Tea, Confectionary, Cosmetics and Retail REVENUE Rs. 2269 Crore CIO S.R Balasubramanian

Godfrey Phillips, the technology team was able to justify their choice with conviction. They simply compared the projected server expenditure with and without virtualisation. While doing the ROI, a simple cost comparison was enough to tip the argument in favour of the virtualisation exercise. “We said look, we cannot give you an ROI, it is difficult in such a case; but, if you do not invest in this technology, we would end up investing a lot more in new servers,” says Balasubramanian.

Confusion galore For virtualising their servers, the company had two options: VMware and Microsoft. They decided on VMware mainly because it provided support for a range of platforms. “We had an option of using either VMware or Microsoft. We chose VMware because it was more open,” says Balasubramanian. The company uses both Microsoft as well as Linux operating systems. After deciding on VMware, the next step was buying

S.R BALASUBRAMANIAN,

Executive Vice President, Information Technology and Corporate Development, Godfrey Phillips India Limited, has saved nearly Rs. 50 lakhs by virtualisation.

RAJESH BAWA,

Senior Manager, IT operations and infrastructures, Godfrey Phillips India Limited, has reduced the need of physical servers by more than 50%.

PHOTOS BY SUBHOJIT PAUL

The implementation of ERP was what set the scene for virtualisation. The organisation had decided to implement Oracle ERP with Real Application Structure (RAC). This requires mirroring of database servers in failsafe mode. Though a good solution, it increases the requirements for servers. Other server demands included application servers, database servers, production servers, proxy servers and domain servers. All or some of these were needed in three different modes – development, testing and production. The original network was a combination of blade and tower servers. Though we could add some blades in the existing chassis, there was not enough space to account for the expansion plans and ERP implementation. “Not only would we have run out of space in the blade chassis, but also the space at the data centre would have been inadequate. So we had to think of another solution,” says Balasubramanian. The first step was creating notes on the requirements. Though at the start it looked like a big investment for

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servers that could be virtualised. “We bought new blades that were quad core and had two quad core CPUs in every blade,” says Balasubramanian. By using virtualisation on these new servers the company was able to divide these servers into many servers. “Each server was converted into eight or more servers,” says Balasubramanian. The implementation was not without challenges, though. A lack of standards and differences in the virtualisation platforms of different vendors complicated the picture. “When we decided to virtualise servers running Microsoft Exchange our partner said that they would not be able to support it,” says Rajesh Bawa, Senior manager, IT operations and infrastructures, Godfrey Phillips. Microsoft technicians told Bawa that they could virtualise the Exchange server using Hyper V, a Microsoft product, but with VMware they were not very sure. Nevertheless, the company decided to go ahead and virtualise their Exchange servers on VMware. “We have virtualised the Exchange machines and we have been stable for the last one and a half years,” says Bawa. The company faced a similar predicament during talks with Oracle. “Oracle officials said that their applications would work on the Oracle virtualisation platform, but they couldn't make any guarantees about it running on VMware,” says Balasubramanian. Although Balasubramanian and his team have taken some risks, they have made sure they have hedged their bets. “With Oracle, for instance, we have decided that we will virtualise it on the development platform but not on the production platform,” says Balasubramanian. The development platform has been chosen because it gives the company a good test environment to check if the solution works as desired. Oracle had not committed itself to to supporting the team at Godfrey Phillips, so they (the team) knew that they were on their own. Production systems were left out of the virtualisation initiative as the company could just not afford a disruption there.

Benefits By and large, the virtualisation exercise achieved the desired objectives. Firstly, the size requirements of new servers at Godfrey Phillips were reduced drastically. Moreover, the company did not have to add new racks in the data centre, nor did they have to look at expanding the data centre. Another important impact was the reduced electricity costs due to lower power consumption on account of the decrease in the number of servers in the data centre. The biggest monetary gains resulted from the decrease in capital expenditure required in buying new servers. “We have 80 servers virtualised on 36

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“We had an option of using either VMware or Microsoft. We chose VMware because it was more open.” S.R BALASUBRAMANIAN Executive Vice President, Information Technology and Corporate Development, Godfrey Phillips India Limited.

physical servers. A rough estimate is that we have been able to save close to Rs. 5 million in server costs alone,” says Bawa. Other than the cost savings, another important benefit was manageability. “Patch management, roll backs and similar issues are much easier to manage,” says Balasubramanian. It is also easy for the technology team to have services and servers available on demand. For instance, some days back, one of the teams in the organisation needed a new set of servers for a new application. Though the IT team did not have the whole set that was required, they were able to allocate a few servers extremely quickly even as new servers were being ordered for the application. “Event though it was a new assignment, we were able to start with a couple of servers. By the time the project moved forward, the required number of servers arrived,” says Balasubramanian. Just as in the case of requirements for new applications, there were surges in demand for applications that were already deployed. This surge was difficult to handle when the company was running physical servers, but the situation changed in the virtualised environment.“For instance, during month-end there is a sudden pressure on ERP, so we increase allocation for it and reduce allocation for an application like BI which places no special demand during that period,” says Balasubramanian.

The way forward The virtualisation exercise may have been successful but it is not the end of the road for Balasubramanian and his team. The team is planning in advance to take steps to ensure that it can gracefully handle the increasing load on its systems. The team is currently evaluating Disaster Recovery solutions. Though they are using VMotion – which is a VMware product that allows virtual machines to be moved from one physical machine to another without much disruption – the need for a proper disaster recovery solution is being felt. The team is also looking at resource management solutions. As the pressure on their virtualised platform grows, the IT team would need to have a good solution that gives them a dashboard to manage all their resources and dynamically allocate them where they are needed the most at any particular time. Balasubramanian says that implementing virtualisation has been a challenging exercise; however, the benefits of flexibility and cost savings clearly outweigh the negative aspects. “Virtualisation is a journey; going forward we will extend its deployment to cover more applications,” says Balasubramanian. —geetaj.channana@9dot9.in

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INSIDE INTERVIEW RAJESH UPPAL

Chief General Manager and CIO, Maruti Suzuki India

HARVEY KOEPPEL

Executive Director, Centre for CIO Leadership

CASE STUDY V V R BABU

ILLUSTRATION BY BINESH SREEDHARAN

Group CIO, ITC Limited and Senior Vice President, ITC Infotech

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The

a dership Pipeline CIOs need to close the professionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s yawning leadership gap. They should think about how their OWN CAREER PLANS AFFECT THE PROSPECTS of those around them and the future of their companies. Succession planning holds the key. By Ashwani Mishra

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Don’t be irreplaceable.” That is the advice offered by Sunil Gujral, EVP, CTO and Business Head for Technical Solutions Group, of Delhi-based Quattro BPO. Gujral must know as he speaks from personal experience. Three months ago, Gujral assumed the additional responsibility of Business Head for one of Quattro BPO's leading business lines called Technical Solutions Group. The group offers services like infrastructure management, desktop management and other related services to SMBs and customers in the US. The job required Gujral to understand the nuances of handling a business – cost of delivery, budget planning and other important business concepts that are essential to managing the operations of a business unit. Though he still retains the position of a CTO, he has effectively designated many of the responsibilities that come with the function to his juniors, and devotes only a small fraction of his time for that role. How did Gujral pull this off without affecting the IT operations? — Gujral created a strong, second-in-command team that stepped in to manage the IT operations within the company. “Don’t assume such a role that the operations of your company depend on you. If you think you can be irreplaceable, it won't do you any good,” he says.

However, when it comes to strategic decision making, it's Gujral who takes the decisions, so the team consults him on that. “In my last two decades of experience in the industry, I have never drawn a detailed succession plan. What I have done, though, is to make myself redundant in the organisation. To do that I have created a second rung of leaders so that I can move up the value chain,” says Gujral. The management showed confidence in the leadership pipeline

and hence Gujral was given the additional responsibility to head a new business line.

SPOTTING TALENT While many CIOs in organisations like Quattro would not have a well-drafted succession plan, the fact that having a plan would make it simpler for CIOs to spread their wings is not lost on them. CIOs do realise that to make themselves available to newer opportunities they need to identify and groom their successors.

COMMENT

A Greener Pasture Within Rajeev Batra, CIO, MTS India on the challenges in retaining talent

Q: Why do CIOs in India fail to successfully create a leadership pipeline? What needs to be done? A: The statement that CIOs in India fail to successfully create a leadership

pipeline isn't true for big IT setups; whereas for small setups it's quite valid. The main challenge in creating a leadership pipeline is to retain top talent. Considering the market conditions for IT, good leaders are handpicked or head hunted by competitors and if such leaders are not given monetary incentives to stay behind they tend to move to greener pastures. Involving high-potential IT personnel in business functions may have yet another effect: these employees may be pulled into business domain and this may result in a lateral movement in the organisation. Each organisation must look at leadership development plans to create and develop talent and then have programmes to keep the employees engaged and also provide them long-term incentives so as to retain them.

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The first step towards such a plan is to create a second line of leaders within the organisation. The IT department needs to be divided into multiple silos like project management, IT operations, business processes, infrastructure, change management, application support, etc, and each of these should have a functional head that reports to the CIO. This makes it easy for CIOs to spot potential leaders within their IT organisation—both who work with and under them. “A CIO must get to know how well they (prospective successors) know the business, and how well they work with their business counterparts, juniors and the management. Finally, one should know whether they have the aptitude, attitude and ability to do more than what they are doing now," says R N Moorthy, Senior General Manager-IT, Jet Airways who is trying to groom a couple of his team members to fit in his role so that they can take over once he decides to move on. Moorthy is giving himself 18 months more for understanding and evaluating their capabilities. The role of information technology in the strategic plans of businesses is more important today than it was ever before, and therefore the importance of appropriate succession planning by CIOs has only grown. Though present day CEOs are more tech savvy than what CEOs used to be in the past, they still depend on CIOs for decision making in terms of technology selection, projects and services that can be offered to the customer and for advice on general issues related to technology. “Succession planning is a complex activity, and obviously highly sensitive in nature with respect to both the business and the individuals involved. It must be carried out in a very careful manner, preferably facilitated by a professional or a trusted advisor to the C-team,” says Bruce Duncil, President of US-based Alderon Consulting.

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INTERVIEW

ERIC CASE

Owner, Case Enterprises, Formerly Head of Information Security, University of Arizona

Better to Stand on Giants Y

ou ask about processes and best practices. I am afraid there are no best practices at this time and any process is ad-hoc at best. Succession planning is not adequately used. I guess I am fine with the lack of a “pipeline.” I am not sure if only one person should be groomed for the “big chair.” What bothers me is the apparent lack of professional mentoring at the top end of the career ladder. I know of a few who do succession planning, but I know more who do not. Maybe it is just that the organisations I worked with happened to be the ones that did not do it. Why is it that we work to assist the new employee grow until he has reached mid-management levels and then stop? “Hey, you are a mid-level manager now; figure it out from here on your own.” I have always worked to make my employees/colleagues the “six million dollar man.” Those with some ambition ran with it; others, fell behind. The questions I would like to ask are: how does any executive identify those that have the talent and skills to become an executive? Once they do, how do they find time to work with them? How do those with executive aspirations self-identify? Is it the paper (MBA, etc.) on the wall? Are we being penny wise and pound-foolish by focusing our professional development/ mentoring efforts on the entry to mid-level staff? Do senior executives mentor junior executives? Where? I, for one, would rather stand on the shoulders of giants than reinvent this wheel.

GETTING INTO THE RIGHT MOULD While grooming potential successors, many CIOs recommend providing new tasks to these candidates so that they can get an opportunity to build on their experience. Assigning them to cross-functional teams would be one way; putting them into job rotations within IT or in other business functions would be another. "When these candidates spend time in different departments playing different roles, their outlook to the job changes and they begin thinking in strategic terms. They then fit in better with the rest of the leader-

ship team,” says Sumit Chowdhury, CIO, Reliance Communications. Another important piece of mentoring is determining whether the prospective successors really wants the job. Although the CIO's position can look attractive from far, the role isn't right for everyone. Many CIOs and industry experts also suggest that there is a need to look at several potential replacements or options, unless one is sure that the next-in-line CIO is committed to taking up the job when it comes by. In simple terms, it means creating a back up to a back up. “If someone is good enough to be con-

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sidered as the next CIO, that person will also be desirable elsewhere,” says Gujral. In other words, the potential CIO candidate might be snapped up by the competition before he or she is promoted.

PUTTING EMERGING LEADERS TO THE TEST Industry experts are unanimous in their belief that when a CIO settles on one or several succession candidates, he or she needs to make the decision public. One way is to start increasing the visibility of the

candidate/s within the company. This could be done by including the candidate/s at meetings and conferences, and exposing them to public-speaking opportunities. This approach helps the chosen successor gain confidence and also provides him a chance to improve his/her skills. There will always be some occasion for the successor-CIO to prove his mettle even as he/she prepares himself for the transition. Moorthy cites an instance when he was on a planned annual leave and a critical

issue of choosing a new system or staying with the existing one cropped up. His second-in-command took up the issue with the board, justified and convinced them on why staying with the existing vendor was the right choice for the company. “Avoid any kind of surprises. Unless you make it clear to everyone within the organisation on the selection of your successor, he or she won't get the respect that is due,” opines Moorthy. CIOs should ensure that the successor candidates get maximum exposure to the

INTERVIEW

The Making of a Leader Rajesh Uppal, Chief General Manager and CIO, Maruti Suzuki India discusses the merits of tapping into your own people and identifies those traits that really matter when spotting a potential leader. Q: Has succession planning found favour with Indian enterprises? Does your company have a structured succession plan in place to groom the next-generation CIO? A: Succession planning has been greatly debated, especially among IT leaders. However, there have not been many instances where a CIO or an IT head has taken the efforts to structurally prepare a succession plan. However, at Maruti, we follow a very trusted structure to create the leader of the future. We have a well defined matrix which the entire organisation follows. In a nut-shell, the matrix involves: Defining competency levels for each job (including that of a CIO). Conducting a rigorous skills assessment. In case of IT, the assessment includes evaluation of both people management skills and technical know-how competency. Creating of systems and processes for regular assessments based on the matrices defined and having mentorship programmes at various levels. Providing regular feedback to the persons who have been groomed. Monitoring and developing leadership qualities. It greatly depends on the mentor how he/she would like to create a leadership pipeline. Some CIOs do it as part of their KRA, some do it out of passion, while a few neglect this aspect.

Q: What qualities and capabilities should a CIO look for in preparing the leaders of tomorrow? A: I would personally pick two qualities as very important ones that we should look for in future leaders. One is the efficiency of the person you wish to groom and the second is the ability of the person to take up a transformational role outside typical comfort zones. Maruti uses HR tools like '360 Degree' to assess these competencies at 'C' level and thus decides whether the person has the potential to lead or not. At other levels, the company has established 'Assessment Centres' to perform this task. Having spent decades in the IT leadership role, I suggest that CIOs take up succession planning as a serious task to avoid the confusion that results from neglecting the function. Q: We see many companies going outside and bringing someone new for a CIO role. They are just not willing to take time to train internally. Do you see this as a huge mistake? A: I am a great advocate of nurturing and promoting in-house talent. In the current circumstances, the technology functions can be outsourced but it is very difficult for an outsider to understand the business processes of a company. An insider can easily align the technology with business and deliver desired results but an outsider cannot. Besides, picking up leaders from an internal pool has a couple of other benefits too. One, they already have a very good bonding with

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company’s business departments as CIOs today have a broader role than handling just the IT function. It's critical for the CIO-designate to have this exposure; he or she will need it upon joining the top management. In addition, CIOs need to play the role of an intensive care unit (ICU) when mentoring their next-in-line command by closely monitoring the successor's progress, at least in the initial stages. Some CIOs suggest that these guys should be given real-life projects that CIO would themselves have handled. In such projects the CIO should become a

other business unit heads, which is a mandatory requirement for a leader. Secondly, by doing so, you motivate the whole workforce of the company and they get a sense of what is in store for them in the future. Q: Succession planning is looked upon as a complex activity. Your views. A: I would not call it a complex job but it does require a great deal of seriousness – much more than what it is currently getting. More than anything else, the process of grooming needs to be institutionalised. Enterprises need to set up competency centres to ensure that the process – from identifying the opportunity to creating successful leaders – works flawlessly. There are simple steps to follow : Identify the person and opportunity Create a grooming plan Measure progress at regular intervals Provide feedback and give room for improvement Last but not the least, we can depend on the HR to assist us with processes and frameworks, but in the end, it’s up to us as to how passionately we use them to groom our successors.

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team member and shadow the prospective successor to see that the ball does not drop. Though there is no doubt that the adoption of a succession plan will provide a vehicle for CIOs to identify talent and groom successors, the implementation of such a plan is fraught with challenges.

I, ME AND MYSELF For many enterprise CIOs, identifying, mentoring, and managing a successor is a long-term project that is put off due to the pressures of short-term issues and other tasks. In other words, most of the enterprises are unprepared for CIO succession. “Yes, succession planning is put off due to the pressures of short-term issues; moreover, the IT department has not been known for developing talent,” says Dr. Tommy Weir, VP, Leadership Solutions of Kenexa, a US-based software provider for a human resources solution. Dr. Weir has held top management positions, taught organisational leadership/management at the graduate and university level, and has an extensive background in leadership development consulting, including Fortune 100 companies. “Unlike general management roles,” Dr. Weir says, “technical functionaries typically do not spend as much time focusing on people issues.” As a result they are often unprepared in having successors in place. “The IT function needs to invest heavily in succession management and people development,” he says. T P Anantheswaran, Senior Vice President, Information Technology, Arshiya International agrees with Dr Weir. “Ninety percent of the CIOs are terrible in succession planning,” he says. But will companies always look at their own employees from which to choose the

COMMENT

Identifying Real Business Skills Attifeh Riazi, Former Global CIO, Ogilvy & Mather on the value of project management skills. CIOs do not think about succession planning, mentoring or development as they should ideally be doing. We spend a great deal of time and resources on staff's technical know-how and certification, but less on developing their strength in business process optimisation, understanding political environments, financial modelling, policy and process direction and leadership. We also tend to promote our smart technical people while putting a lesser value on project managers who may have less technical expertise, but possess a wider perspective on business direction and imperatives.

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INTERVIEW

There’s a Time to Bring in New Perspectives Harvey Koeppel, Executive Director, Centre for CIO Leadership & Former CIO, Global Consumer Group, Citigroup on critical points to keep in mind while doing succession planning

Q: How important is it for a CIO to create a Leadership Pipeline in an organisation? A: A business-savvy CIO must ensure that a leadership pipeline is in place. Based upon primary research recently conducted by the Centre for CIO Leadership, 93% of CIOs report that they are well aware of the IT skills and competencies that their organisations need to be successful, yet only 77% said that they are actively involved with helping their organisations to develop the business and IT skills needed, while an even smaller 64% of CIOs indicated that they have a plan in place to acquire and grow the right talent. For a good CIO to be a great CIO, he or she needs to understand the business, be able to map business strategies into IT plans (including human capital needed), build the right organisation and ensure that it is sustainable.

The leadership pipeline is critical to the individual's personal success, to the success of the IT organisation and ultimately has significant impact on enterprise performance. Q: What are the critical points to keep in mind while doing succession planning in an organisation? A: Succession planning needs to begin with a clear understanding of both the business strategy as well as the enterprise culture. There should be a yearning for innovation and an appetite for taking and managing risk which are key components for driving innovation. Once these aspects are understood and clearly articulated, organisational

models can be developed to closely align with business strategies and objectives. Reviewing and creating an inventory of the current bench strength is the next critical step. Those results can then be compared with the established role models and a gap analysis can be performed which compares demands with current supply. High potential performers can be identified from this process and individual development plans can be put into place to ensure that the best people are properly groomed and given appropriate opportunities for advancement in the organisation. Managing turnover, especially within your top talent pool, is crucial. If the gap between skills possessed and those required is too big, fresh blood may be needed to fill the particular position. Same could be the case when it is simply time to bring in new perspectives.

next CIO? This is another key issue that may come up at the time a company starts scouting for the next CIO – whether to promote an existing employee, or go out and find fresh blood. A case in point: A few months back, Anantheswaran was heading the IT function at Mumbai International Airport Ltd. (MIAL). At MIAL, there was clearly a second in command when Anantheswaran decided to move to a new role outside. “However, the management took a decision to hire someone from outside as they believed that the guy was not yet ready to take the CIO responsibility,” he says. Transparency, again, is not always possible. Moorthy from Jet Airways adds that if the organisational culture is such that it does not permit a CIO to reveal the succession plan to the team (because the choice of the next CIO rests solely with the management) then the CIO will be unable to be transparent in his actions. Another important issue raised is that some CIOs are not inclined to allow their successors from meeting the senior management. “Some CIOs do not give visibility to their second rung of leaders. Then these potential successors neither get enough visibility with the top management, not do they get an opportunity to realise their capabilities,” says Anantheswaran. These factors force the top management to look at people outside the organisation for taking up the CIO responsibility. Dr. Weir says that CIOs need to understand that success comes through people and not processes and strategies. Once, they (CIOs) realise that their competitive advantage is in the quality of their team, they will invest in people. “Until they figure this out, nothing will change. Unfortunately, this will be a hard lesson to learn as it is not natural in the IT field,” he says.

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A Culture Issue

INTERVIEW

John Costa, Head of Information Systems at Chaucer Syndicates UK in an interaction with Rahul Neel Mani on the importance of culture in grooming the next leaders, taking lessons from military and on IT organisations receiving stepmotherly treatment.

Q: Why do you think succession planning or creating a leadership pipeline is not a widely popular exercise? Is it okay not to have one? What are the drawbacks? A: The very fact that we are talking about succession shows that there is something that can be interpreted as wealth. Typically, succession implies that someone has put in efforts over a period of time and has very “tangible” assets that are worth keeping alive – for the next “generations”. As for businesses not wanting to promote succession planning – they are pretty short sighted. A considerable amount of businesses (definitely in Western Europe) suffer from “shot-termism”. They think it is pretty pointless to put a lot of effort into the exercise. They are happy to leave the business as someone else’s problem. If you are a shortterm person, you will undoubtedly attract the same type of individuals, and succession is about the long term. Also, one should not confuse succession with the ability to blindly promote the predecessor's agenda, as it will most likely bring disastrous consequences to a business in the long run – a business needs to utilise different strategies to address new challenges. Leaving a position of strategic value without a succession plan will lead to instability and could potentially put a business or division at sea.

“Creating the right culture where people believe they are serving a worthy cause is tricky. The military can teach a lesson. During crisis, they can change leadership on the fly – without the group losing focus.” JOHN COSTA

Head of Information Systems at Chaucer Syndicates, UK

Q: There needs to be a corporate culture for creating 'next-in-line' leaders to promote talent and reduce the risk of sudden jerks if the top leadership leaves. Agree/ Disagree? A: Absolutely agree. Creating the right culture where people believe that they are serving a worthy cause is tricky and I believe that not many have managed it. Such a culture would have employees committed to the company for reasons other than purely monetary ones. The military can teach business a lesson or two in this field. During crisis, they can change leadership on the fly – without the group losing focus. Q: There is a general sentiment in many companies that the top management is pre-occupied with the sales and marketing teams while the technology teams get only step-motherly treatment. Who will promote their interests? Does the CEO need to intervene? Or do CIOs need to assert themselves in the boardroom? A: Yes I have to agree with the step-child analogy in a non-IT/IS service industry. This argument has been around probably from the 70’s. The CIO can assert himself/ herself much as he/she likes but if the environment if not receptive and does not promote professionalism, governance and excellence in all disciplines that contribute to the strategic stance of a business, then it will becomes a pointless effort.

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The Wind in Their Wings

OPINION

High potentials are happy to soar to new heights. GOOD EMPLOYERS RECOGNISE MERIT and provide the necessary lift. By Neisha Lobo

hat drives the leadership pipeline in the best places to work? Hewitt Associates, one of the world’s leading HR consulting firms, has extensively researched this question over the years through its ‘Best Employers’ and ‘Top Companies for Leaders’ studies. The results, as well as our deep understanding of what drives employee engagement, has thrown up some interesting insights. From an employer perspective, two key priorities for organisations today are: i) How can we accelerate the development of highpotential leaders to enable them to manage businesses early on? ii) ‘How can we build a robust leadership pipeline that ensures

business continuity and smooth transitions as incumbent leaders move into new roles within the organisation or choose to exit the organisation? For the majority of employees, the single biggest engagement driver is the career opportunities available to them. Employee aspirations are constantly on the rise, and most organisations find it challenging to keep up with and manage these aspirations. Successful organisations look at both these perspectives and proactively manage them. They understand that there is a great opportunity here – with high-potential employees looking for development and advancement opportunities early on, complementing their own need for leaders who can take on the reins of business in a short span of time.

Career management and succession planning need to go hand in hand. As organisations define growth paths and facilitate the movement of employees across roles, they also need robust succession planning for filling up the resulting vacancies. Hewitt Best Employers (hereafter referred to as The Best as opposed to employers that fall outside this bracket called The Rest) are able to successfully manage their employee aspirations while at the same time ensure business continuity and success. Here are some insights from the Hewitt Best Employers India Study 2009: CEOs at The Best take personal ownership of Leadership and Talent Development – they not only recognise the leadership quality as the single biggest driver of organisational suc-

PHOTO: PHOTOS.COM

cess, but also own the agenda of grooming leaders from within the organisation. Leaders are primarily groomed from within the organisation - 73 percent of leadership positions at The Best are filled internally compared to 53 percent at The Rest. These organisations invest in assessing the potential of employees through regular talent reviews, and provide specific development interventions to the high potentials who are groomed to take on larger roles. A ready talent pipeline is ensured through a formal succession planning process - 96 percent of The Best have a formal defined succession planning process as compared to only 64 percent of The Rest. Critical roles would have at least potential successors identified.

Talent Pipeline for Future Success 83% 75%

75%

73% 50%

52%

53%

Leadership development is primarily though developmental and rotational assignments at The Best as against classroom-based training programs at The Rest. Best Employers create “accelerated” development plans for high potentials and successor candidates that provide unique career opportunities and exposure to other leaders. These include cross business “stretch” assignments to help prepare high potentials and use action learning as a key development vehicle and a way to foster company innovation. They also enlist current leaders in developing the next generation (i.e. “leaders building leaders”) The Best establish a variety of metrics to hold leaders accountable for developing future leaders. They track the actions that leaders take to develop others using individual Leader Scorecards. Two-to-three years after the role has been filled with a chosen successor, organisations measure effectiveness of the successor selection process and determine whether their assessment of that candidate’s capabilities was correct. As with any other system, the intended results are shaped by flawless execution. Critical success factors for building a strong leadership pipeline include the extent to which organisations engage with employees to understand their career aspirations, the development of the capability in managers to accurately assess employee potential, and an open and transparent communication across the organisation on the rationale for career movements. —Neisha Lobo is Head – Leadership Development, India and Middle East, Hewitt Associates.

CEO

Senior Middle Management Management

Front-line Management

Asia Pacific Top Companies All Other Asia Pacific Companies SOURCE: HEWITT – TOP COMPANIES FOR LEADERS 2009

The data quoted above is from the Hewitt Best Employers in India 2009 study. This is the largest employee and people practice research conducted in India with over 230 Companies participating in the 2009 study.

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CASE STUDY

Providing Exposure is Important V V R Babu, Group CIO, ITC Limited and Senior Vice President, ITC Infotech on the need for an effective succession planning process.

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oday, succession planning for all key positions has become an established practice in large organisations. As organisations increasingly use information and communication technologies to differentiate themselves in the competitive marketplace, the role of the CIO has only grown in importance. Hence, an effective planning process is needed to identify and create the next pipeline of IT leaders in tune with the organisation’s priorities and requirements. Traditionally, in end-user organisations, the MIS function had end-to-end responsibility of not only managing the IT infrastructure (back office), but also of identifying and designing IT solutions for business needs (front office). With the increasing complexity of IT infrastructure, a large part of MIS resources’ time and effort in these end-user organisations is being spent on managing back office activities thereby leading to a possible dilution of focus on implementing new business valueadding IT initiatives. So as to have adequate focus on all activities that the IT department can possibly enable, the IT team in ITC has been divided on the lines of front office and back office functions of a services industry like hotels. The IT front office (demandside IT) engages in customer facing activities and is staffed with people adept at business understanding and client servicing skills. The IT back office (supply-side IT), comprising IT infrastructure support and

“An effective planning process is needed to identify and create the next pipeline of IT leaders” V V R BABU

Group CIO, ITC Limited and Senior Vice President, ITC Infotech

ERP application support resources are hardcore technology specialists. Demand-side IT resources are domain savvy business process experts responsible for delivery of IT services to ITC’s businesses while supply-side IT resources are responsible for developing, deploying and maintaining IT services and solutions on 24x7x365 basis. ITC’s IT team is 600 plus strong catering

to 11 businesses of ITC that range from FMCG to hospitality, from printing and packaging to paperboard manufacture and from retailing to agri-businesses. The ratio of demand side IT team vis-à-vis the supplyside IT team is approximately 1:2. The demand-side IT team in a business is lead by the Divisional CIO. To assume the role of a Divisional CIO in ITC, it is important that the prospective candidate should have sound business knowledge of all our business processes and at the same time he or she should be able to leverage emerging IT trends and technologies for business advantage. As the Group CIO of ITC, I am the apex coordinating point for the IT organisation. Along with the HR team, the Group CIO creates the career progression chart for every IT resource deployed in ITC. We ensure that all employees in the IT organisation get exposed to various facets of ICT technologies. Based on employees' individual performances, future goals are set. The HR team facilitates the process through setting up of necessary frameworks, standards and provides inputs on development of individuals through internal and external training programmes. Having a wholly owned IT subsidiary in ITC Infotech India Limited gives ITC access to a large IT talent pool and this makes us very different from other end-user organisations. This extensive talent pool allows for resource fungibility between in-house ITC IT projects and assignments for global customers – both offshore in India and onshore abroad. This helps us better retain IT resources while keeping the pool up-to-date on the latest technological developments. —Ashwani Mishra

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INTERVIEW

Succession planning at Reliance Communication (RCOM): We have tried to groom our next level of leaders and rotate them around different positions within our IT team. The aim of this exercise is to make them better leaders capable of taking on multiple roles rather than having them focus only on their core area of expertise.

What qualities should the next-in-line CIO have? Sumit Chowdhury, CIO, Reliance Communications and CEO, Reliance Tech Services discusses this and other issues. We have been following this process for the last two years and have identified a few potential CIO candidates within our team. When we realised that our IT team was becoming a profit centre we decided to start a new company called Reliance Tech Services (RTS). I have been managing a dual role, one as the CIO for Reliance Communications and the other as the CEO for RTS. We decided that we should keep a deadline for searching within the enterprise for meeting the replacement. We planned to either find someone within a year, or recruit someone from outside who will focus on services that RTS offers to RCOM. We did this by hiring an external person who directly reports into me. It has been

“Most companies outside India have a structured succession plan in place” SUMIT CHOWDHURY

CIO, Reliance Communications and CEO, Reliance Tech Services

four months now... four months of a lot of learning for everyone in the team! We are now close to declaring one of the shortlisted candidates as the CIO of RCOM. Skills to look at while choosing the next-in-line CIO: The candidate should definitely have all the skills that the incumbent possesses or all the skills that the incumbent has, minus the skill that is not required from the incumbent. In addition, the person should have skills that the incumbent lacks. In other words, the next in line CIO should be better than his predecessor. For the CIO's role I was looking at someone who had handled tight delivery management responsibilities in the past, and one who has worked for large application development and delivery contracts. Impediments in succession planning: The attrition rates in the Indian market are high and this has been one of the reasons why companies have not invested their time and effort in succession planning. If you notice, there are deadlines placed on the tenure that a CEO can hold office. For the CIO, there is no such deadline and hence planning is not considered as important. If the CIO were to say that he would work for three to five years only, we could see an increase in the adoption of CIO succession planning. —Ashwani Mishra

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PHOTO BY JITEN GANDHI

n CIO succession planning within Indian companies: Most companies in India are not good in long-term succession planning. Those few companies who have undertaken this exercise have limited it to the CEO level. Moreover, the top management only worries about it when the CEO is about to retire. Planning happens when the company is serious about it and stipulates a deadline for formulating the plan. You will see most Indian companies plan for succession only when there is a deadline ahead of them. This is not the case in companies outside India where most companies have a succession plan in place.

The Right Mix

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FEATURE INSIDE

Reinventing IT Project Management Knowledge work projects require a new framework Pg 36

T Are You Thinking Like Your CFO? The most common questions that your CFO is likely to ask about new IT projects. BY GREG BAKER

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hese are extraordinary times given what businesses have dealt with the last couple of years and most CFOs still wear a look of anxiety on their faces. The good news is about two-thirds of the CFOs I talk to believe business prospects are better now than last quarter. To be effective in 2010, CIOs should recognise top-of-mind issues for CFOs sitting across the hall. From my own experience, and drawing on conversations I’ve had with many others, the three most common questions CFOs are asking today about new IT projects are: The immediate impact on cash flow; The level of fixed cost being added; and How convincingly it will help grow sales. Let’s take them one at a time...

Cash Flow The reason companies stop growing is not because they are unprofitable, it’s because they run out of cash. One of the CFO’s most fundamental jobs is to prevent cash flow issues from impeding the business and slowing it down. Even though the credit crisis has settled down, it’s still really hard to borrow money so CFOs are keeping their arms out and protecting bank lines. CFOs get paid to worry about unhealthy cash positions that can choke your growth options.

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This is precisely why many CFOs keep poking in to approve ever smaller investments and asking about their cash flow implications. Generally speaking, you should expect CFOs to remain cautious with cash outlays in 2010. Before signing off on the next project, anticipate them asking to see leasing or outsourcing options. This shifts upfront cash outlays to a service provider and protects cash needed to grow on the road ahead. Cash Flow Tip for CIOs: Demonstrate how technology projects impact cash flow for the next 24 months. Explore and include financing options that avoid a “big hit” and use smaller monthly payments instead.

Fixed Costs By now, most businesses have reduced headcount and trimmed discretionary spend like travel and training. These reductions typically came with great pain and sacrifice, so the last thing a CFO will endorse is costs they don’t really truly understand creeping back into the business. This is especially true as the board-level pressure to perform gets dialled even higher in 2010. CFOs, as a result, will keep on dissecting new staffing and project requests this year and challenging thoughts on how fast they’ll pay back. IT leaders should expect a continuation of long lead times and extra approval layers before getting CFO sign-off. The simple reason driving this is all the cost-cutting pain of the past two years was endured on a promise of better profit margins when sales finally recovered. So, in the CFO’s mind, keeping your fixed costs low means a correspondingly lower monthly sales target to reach break-even. Once that key hurdle is cleared, every extra sales dollar drops profit exponentially since all the fixed expenses are covered. From an IT perspective, this means any investment layering on new recurring expenses like software licenses or maintenance fees gets less favourable odds for approval. A green light depends on the CFO either seeing a very short payback (typically in the current year’s operating cycle) or feeling convinced new staffing or recurring expense can’t be off-loaded to a vendor. Whenever possible, CFOs want things converted to variable expenses that flex with

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Building CIO – CFO Relations

t a roundtable gathering of CIOs in Monterrey, Mexico, the focus was on how to improve the working relationship with the CEO, CFO and other members of executive management. According to a blog post by Gartner employees Militza Basualdo/Executive Partner and José A. Ruggero/GVP, the presentation included a focus on understanding the priorities of CFOs (e.g., financial results, risk mitigation and early warnings on problems

caused by the other two), as well as the expectations CFOs have of their CIOs. It concluded with recommendations on how CIOs and CFOs can work together to optimise the enterprise’s costs, some of which were: 1. Share each other’s performance metrics and seek areas of commonality. 2. Engage a third party to conduct a 360-degree evaluation of the CIO’s leadership. 3. Make strategy planning a continual, inclusive exercise

sales volume or level of services consumed. Good ways to “pay as you go” include remote IT asset management services or procuring new servers and storage from a vendor as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Fixed Cost Tip for CIOs: Socialise your investment plans earlier in the planning cycle and take a hard gut-check on any new staffing requests. Ask your vendor base for variable priced options to augment staffing and equipment needs based on actual usage in a monthly fee.

Growing Sales Given the unpredictable ride we’ve all taken over the past couple of years, CFOs crave better sales data and business intelligence to funnel investment dollars toward sales improvement efforts. CFOs are demanding to know what products are moving and which customers are most profitable as they decide where to invest. You’ll see the CFO walking over to the CIO’s office much more this year to discuss how IT can increase its customer-centric focus. As we gear up for growth in 2010, many businesses are not expecting double-digit sales gains, but everyone is aiming to outperform competitors and grow market share. Taking market share means customer-facing IT investments—projects like CRM or portal applications that directly tie

(do not be a spectator). 4. Improve communication with other executives. Express IT budgets in business terms (Run/Grow/Transform) and financial terms (e.g., fixed vs. variable, operating vs. capital costs). 5. Make an effort to understand others. Invest time in getting to know each of the executives, their goals and their concerns. 6. Earn the trust of others by avoiding surprises and formalising agreements.

into sales—are going to top a CFO’s priority list today while other “business efficiency” projects stay parked in neutral as good ideas for the future. Sales Impact Tip for CIOs: Map for your CFO how a technology investment can directly or indirectly serve your customers better. Prioritize projects that touch customers and put your best staff on them while outsourcing other work to vendors you judge as reputable and financially sound. Doing business as usual went out the window—or should have—last year. My advice to any CIO in 2010 is to step beyond traditional thinking and embrace new ways of delivering core support to the organisation. Your strategy should aim for a “triple crown” of minimizing cash outlay, reducing fixed costs and refocusing overworked IT staff on sales growth. You’ll not only get their attention, but also their checkbook. Greg Baker is the chief financial officer for Logicalis, an international provider of integrated information and communications technology solutions and services, where he oversees finance, accounting, treasury and strategic planning. Prior to joining Logicalis, Mr. Baker held key finance positions with Thomson Reuters, a Tier-1 automotive supplier, private equity firm Talon LLC, and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

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P R OJ E C T M A N AG E M E N T

Reinventing IT Project Management - Peter Drucker Style

Knowledge work projects require a radically different framework where acceleration is key. BY JACK BERGSTRAND

eter Drucker was the most influential management thinker of the 20th Century for good reason and those reasons have become even clearer in 2010. Drucker consistently pointed out the need for business leaders to reinvent their enterprises by systematically improving their knowledge work (organisational) productivity. It's clear that the next generation of project management will need to be at the heart of this reinvention because projects are the only true mechanism for sustainable change. Knowledge work (work that uses ideas, expertise, information and relationships to achieve tasks) is the central ingredient to today's enterprises and enterprise projects. Unfortunately, the interdependence and changing nature of this work does not respond well to the scientific management methods that helped companies successfully manage projects over the past century. The implication of this for large organisations and society overall is huge. According to the Project Management Institute, $12 trillion—nearly 20 percent of the world’s GDP—is invested in projects. And with this work, systematically improving productivity within and across organisations is the most common bottleneck. This bottleneck causes high enterprise project failure rates, which, for large enterprise technology projects, is as high as 70 percent according to Standish Group research. Managers involved with changing large organisations consistently run into the "knowledge work" problems. It's usually not the technology that fails; it's the interaction between the technology and the organisation itself. I saw this often when I worked as an employee

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for more than 20 years in large organisations; among other jobs I ran the Coca-Cola Company’s global information technology function and was CFO of Coca-Cola Beverages Ltd. While Peter Drucker didn't focus his writing specifically on technology projects, there is nothing in large enterprises that exposes the function and dysfunction of "knowledge work productivity" more than such projects, given their everchanging inter and intra-organisational complications.

The Nature of Knowledge Work Traditional project management was designed for what Peter Drucker termed "manual work" and is based on the scientific management principles developed by Frederick Taylor in the early 1900's. This type of work like the work required for building an assembly line―was and is visible, specialised and stable. Knowledge work on the other hand is invisible, holistic, and ever changing. Unlike manual workers who mainly use their hands and backs to get work done, knowledge workers use their situational knowledge to accomplish goals in dynamic environments. Knowledge work needs to be managed differently than manual work because there are so many ways for it to go off track. A few common examples of unproductive knowledge work include: 1.Too many meetings that produce too few decisions and actions. 2.Competing internal priorities with no mechanism for resolution. 3.Studies that are completed and put on the shelf. 4.Projects that get started but are never finished. 5.Projects that get started but are not finished on time. 6.Projects that never get started but get talked about every year.

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7.High executive turnover that causes frequent direction changes. To productively manage the often invisible and ever changing nature of knowledge work projects better, Drucker advised executives to take a more holistic approach, understanding that large projects, like business itself, is more of a social science. He emphasised our need to remove unproductive work and restructure work as part of an overall system. In this light he believed that knowledge should be organised through teams, with clarity around who is in charge at what time, for what reason, and for how long.

Acceleration is the New Quality The next frontier of project management, in line with Drucker's thinking, requires that we deliver improvements with greater speed to compete globally. In the 21st Century, large firms won’t threaten smaller companies nearly as much as fast companies will threaten slower ones. Does it take your large company a couple of weeks to set up a meeting with key people because their calendars are so busy or because they won’t be in the office for awhile? And even then, is it difficult to get contentious tradeoffs made and decisions acted upon? If so, you are either in trouble or headed towards it. The role of acceleration is to knowledge work projects what quality control is to manual work projects because knowledge work changes so rapidly. With knowledge work, acceleration doesn’t imply that the efforts can be shoddy or sloppy. Rather, it means that work needs to be facilitated in real time. It requires ongoing prototyping in the field versus striving for perfection in the office. In today's knowledge age, it is important to turn knowledge into application fast. For knowledge work projects to be managed more productively, a holistic underlying system is needed. It must get everyone on the same page and properly sequence and accelerate Where-Why-WhatWhen-How-Who. Managers often are clear on many of these things at an individual level. But, collectively, it's very common to have different individual views that don’t add up to a shared enterprise picture. With large enterprise projects, this results in unproductive work and high failure rates. Using a purely objective approach based on scientific management principles to manage the fluid and invisible nature of knowledge work does not work well in practice. When knowledge work is managed like manual work, it tends to get over-engineered, with overly complex governance structures and project designs. Knowledge work productivity often benefits from a “just-in-time” mindset versus the “just-in-case” approach. With manual work, taking more time to prepare often improves results and reduces risk because the work won’t change while you’re preparing. In case of knowledge work, “just in time” is less risky and more productive.

Exchange Complexity for Complication Where traditional project management benefits from being very specialised and mechanised, effective enterprise knowledge work projects require a more holistic and socialised approach. It requires a minor amount of initial complexity at the front end to avoid an unworkable amount of complication later on. This difference between complexity and complication is more than semantic. Grandmasters in chess, for example, are successful because they apply a certain amount of cognitive complexity up

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front. By doing this they can view large chunks of the chessboard, whereas amateurs see a mass of individual pieces. In practice, this makes the game much more complicated for less skilled players and makes novices less successful when they play. A key difference between complexity and complication is that complexity has a coherent architecture and can be effectively managed. In contrast, complication is largely random and therefore becomes unmanageable over time. Large enterprises and large enterprise projects regularly struggle, not because they are too complex, but because they are too complicated.

Velocity is the Bottom Line In the late 1990s, I was interviewed for Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates’ book, Business at the Speed of Thought. In his book, Gates emphasises that the past was about reengineering but the future depends on velocity. With knowledge work, velocity is at the heart of the productivity opportunity. Sustainable success is not simply driven by urgency, because you can urgently go in the wrong direction. Knowledge work productivity is not about speed or direction. Similar to velocity, it is a function of speed and direction. Peter Drucker wrote that the three dimensions of an economic task were to make the present business effective, identify and real-

Knowledge work productivity is not about speed or direction. SIMILAR TO VELOCITY, IT IS A FUNCTION OF SPEED AND DIRECTION ize its potential, and make it into a different business for a different future. In our changing economy, this needs to be accelerated. The four-part knowledge work productivity mantra based on the social sciences requires that companies manage their projects tied to four fundamental questions. If you can't clearly articulate the answer to these questions, within and across your organisational silos, your project will have no chance of being accelerated. Where do we intend to go and Why? What needs to happen when? How can those things best get done? Who is going to be responsible for which tasks? The knowledge work productivity management system is to enterprise projects what competition is to capitalism. It breathes life into it, creates order out of chaos, and improves enterprise velocity. Drucker wrote that doing this was essential to economic tasks. It is also essential to enterprise reinvention and our long term economic prosperity. Jack Bergstrand is the author of Reinvent Your Enterprise, and founder of Brand Velocity. Prior to this, he was CIO of The Coca-Cola Company and CFO of Coca-Cola Beverages Ltd.

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07 APRIL 2010

Storage Pooling to the Rescue Gaurav Pradhan, Chief Technical Officer at Logikal Consulting (Pty) Limited and Executive Member of ICT and Infrastructure Committee at South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry spoke to Rahul Neel Mani about storage virtualisation and how companies can leverage this technology. Excerpts: 38

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According to you has the virtualisation industry evolved as it was originally envisioned? Virtualisation, as we know it today, is being implemented in a form different from the one IBM intended when it started virtualisation way back in 1960s. The main need for virtualisation then was to get the best out of the underutilised mammoth Mainframe computers. In todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s technology infrastructure, even at peak hours, the average usage of any serverâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hardware is not more than 30-40 percent. Hence, running a single operating system for supporting few applications on such a high configuration hardware is a waste. The technology that helps us best to address this issue is virtualisation. Specifically answering your question here, yes virtualisation has evolved from its original vision and has even gone beyond. I can say it has surpassed the boundaries of hardware virtualisation and reached the stage of service virtualisation. The only thing which surprises me and many others is what is it that has made companies halt their research in

G A U R AV P R A D H A N

this field for a very long time. This mystery needs to be resolved.

DOSSIER NAME: Gaurav Pradhan DESIGNATION: Chief Technical Officer at Logikal Consulting (Pty) Limited and Executive Member of ICT and Infrastructure Committee at South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry. PREVIOUS JOB ROLE: Program ManagerHead of PMO / Enterprise Architect at Passanger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA)

What are those essential steps that a CIO needs to be careful about when investing in virtualisation technology? When it comes to investing in any technology solution, the first thing any CIO should check on is to find out how futuristic the solution is and how long will it last in today’s enterprise. It is absolutely correct that in storage virtualisation when you invest in purchasing hardware, it rapidly moves towards obsolescence because vendors use the best technology available at that point in time to design their products. However, by the time the product reaches the end user, much of its value is eroded and upgrading may be essential. Hence, a CIO should always be aware of the product's expandability. CIOs, before zeroing in on one technology, should always look at their current and future roadmaps. Thin provisioning, storage pooling and storage virtualisation are proven techniques to help customers increase utilisation to upwards of 90%. How can CIOs best use this? What do you suggest? In any organisation, average storage utilisation (excluding personal data like music, movie, pictures, etc.) will not be more than 30 to 35 percent. That means 65 to 70 percent disk space is not utilised, which is a huge amount at an organisation level. Thin provisioning helps us to utilise this space effectively by allowing different systems to use and share pooled storage. The other advantage is ease of administration. In the broader picture, both translate into cost saving. There are a few storage vendors who have developed “pay as you go” revenue model. This helps many enterprises to reduce the capital expenditure on storage. Also thin provisioning is a mechanism that applies to large-scale cen-

tralised computer disk storage systems, SANs and storage virtualisation systems. Thin provisioning allows space to be easily allocated to servers, on a justenough and just-in-time basis. To application servers, the virtual disk appears, performs and works just like a locally attached disk. The difference is that the actual physical disk capacity is drawn from the storage pool automatically over the SAN on an as-needed basis, therefore ensuring optimal disk space utilisation. Applications never have to run out of space. Once it is set up, thin provisioning is a completely automated process, providing "as needed" capacity without human intervention. I will suggest implementing thin provisioning in order to save more money, for reducing server downtime and for increasing the available disk space. Thin provisioning is fast and very easy to manage. Thin provisioning is one way that we are able to deliver very high utilisation and ease of administration – two of the key benefits that are leading businesses to virtual infrastructures. The ability to have different systems use and share pooled storage, and the ease with which additional physical storage can be added without disrupting the support applications, makes thin provisioning even more useful. This is yet another benefit of storage virtualisation. Who would you say are the leaders in virtualisation industry at this point?

“Implement thin provisioning in order to save more money, to reduce server downtime and to increase the available disk space.”

NO HOLDS BARRE D

Every vendor has some advantages and some disadvantages over others, so it is difficult to name one as the leader. I would go for the vendor which best suits my requirements. Though today FC SAN is the most popular storage solution because of its speed, iSCSI is poised to take over in the future. The biggest advantage with iSCSI is that it allows us to utilise our current infrastructure very effectively and efficiently. Also, with the introduction of 10GBPS NICs, it can further leverage the advantage of FC. We can safely say that iSCSI will be the future of storage virtualisation. If there are no money constraints, EMC would come on top as the best vendor with Sun Microsoft and VMware close behind. What does the future look like for storage virtualisation? What should CIOs expect? Storage virtualisation will grow further alongside server virtualisation. CIOs can expect reduction in hardware, implementation and administration costs. With introduction of “pay as you go” model, it will help enterprises to save a lot of capex upfront. Lately iPad virtualisation is also in talks? What do you think about it? iPad came up with a plan to bridge the gap between an iPhone and its laptops (Macbook, Macbook pro). Like VMware Fusion, which is a desktop virtualisation solution for Macintosh, there should be some virtualisation solution for iPad, which will enhance its application compatibility. Many CIOs told me that it has no use in business environments and it's more like a toy but the fact is they can’t see the future and lack innovation. iPad is actually a paradigm shift. It can be a boon to many industries and I can see it playing an excellent role in many industries. Our own organisation Timetunnel has already included it into its 360 degree virtualisation and Green IT designs.

CTO FORUM thectoforum.com

07 APRIL 2010

EVENT REPORT

S O U T H A S I A C I O SUMMIT

SAARC The New Normal History was made when 68 CIOs crossed borders and converged at THE FIRST SOUTH ASIA CIO SUMMIT. This two-day event in Sri Lanka during March 19-21 was just a beginning and holds the potential of growing into a massive and powerful platform for CIOs in the region. GOLD PARTNERS

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S O U T H A S I A C I O SUMMIT

EVENT REPORT

HISTORIC MOMENT Delegates from across the subcontinent coming together on a common platform. The 1st South Asia CIO Summit in Colombo during 19-21 Marchwas attended by 68 delegates from India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal

RUSH FOR REGISTRATION: Delegates registering before the openning of the South Asia CIO Summit in Colombo

CIO TO CEO: Amit Kumar, CEO, Kasper Consulting speaking on the topic of Changing Face of the CIO:Rise of the Business Strategist

f we were to describe this momentous event in one word, that one word would be ‘exemplary’. That's because there has never been a time when CIOs from South Asia have come together to share their challenges and thoughts. With an overarching theme of “Leadership Beyond Boundaries”, the congregation of a large number of CIOs reiterated the fact that cross-border learning is not only the call of the hour but also helpful in many ways. A majority of CIOs expected the event to be a platform to learn from the experiences of each other. It was decided that the group would meet more than just once in a year. During her

RISE ABOVE THE NORMAL: Vijay Mehra, Advisory Board member of CTO Forum and former Global CIO of Essar Group, talking on the topic of Changing Role of CIO while Anuradha Das Mathur looks on

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07 APRIL 2010

EVENT REPORT

S O U T H A S I A C I O SUMMIT

A ROUND OF INTRODUCTION: The first session of the event was used as an ice-breaker. Delegates introduced themseleves and got acquainted with each other.

“The Summit provided a platform for senior IT leaders from organisations across South Asia to learn, share and debate on THE CURRENT CHALLENGES THAT ENTERPRISES ARE FACED WITH. Events such as these create a great learning platform.” RAMESH SHANMUGANATHAN

Executive VP & Group CIO, John Keells Holdings, Sri Lanka

welcome address, Anuradha Das Mathur, Co-founder and Director of 9.9 Media, emphasised the fact that such a platform was the need of the hour. “We are overwhelmed by the response. Hopefully, this group will grow bigger, better and stronger,” said Mathur.

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“The event was a great initiative to bring the practitioners together. THERE WAS GENUINE, PRACTICAL AND LIVELY INTERACTION ON REAL ISSUES. I look forward to more summits of this kind as they would help us widen our horizon and grow in strength.” SHAFQUAT HAIDER

Director, Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FBCCI) Bangladesh

Are CIOs heading towards the Boardroom? The one big question everyone is talking about is whether CIOs are walking the pathway which takes them into the boardroom. Are CIOs thinking like a Business Strategist? Vijay Mehra, Former

Global CIO of Essar and Amit Kumar, Founder and CEO of Kasper Consulting shared their thoughts on how CIOs can climb up the ladder in their session on “Changing Face of CIO – Rise of the Business Strategist” “Traditionally, CIOs have been considered

S O U T H A S I A C I O SUMMIT

EVENT REPORT

“As industry leaders, we always felt a need to DISCUSS PRACTICAL OPPORTUNITIES AND SHARE INSIGHTS. An open discussion on such topics is very useful and will take us all to the next level. The 1st South Asia CIO Summit was a step in that direction.” LARRY ADAMS

Chief Operations Officer, Network Communications (Pvt.) Ltd. Sri Lanka

MORNING TREAT: Santhosh Babu, Managing Director of Organisation Development Alternatives (ODA) taking a leadership workshop with the delegates

as good resources to manage technology, vendors, risks and align IT with business. But that’s not enough to grow to the next level. CIOs have to become more ‘business number’ oriented. They need to reach out to the customers and most importantly, look out for job rotation opportunities to get a better hang of other areas in their enterprises,” said Kumar. Vijay Mehra, while quoting a Harvard Study, said that since the time human being is born the brain processes patterns to do certain things in a certain fashion. “Similarly, if CIOs have grown up doing certain things, it is extremely difficult for them to come out of those comfort zones. To become CEOs, CIOs have to come out of those comfort zones and take a commanding position,” said Mehra.

Unleashing the Leader in You

CAN I DO IT? CIOs volunteered to do various exercises during Santhosh Babu's workshopsession. The delegates learnt some interesting lessons during the session.

CIOs are considered a part of ‘top management’ – but are not yet on corporate boards. They seldom lead businesses or move across functions. How can the CIO emerge as a business leader? What are the skills that CIOs will need to find a place in the boardroom? To answer these questions, Santhosh Babu, Managing Director of Organisation Development Alternatives, took a workshop session with the delegates. While Babu made the CIOs work hard to demonstrate their management skills, the subtle message was that systems influence human behaviour. “The biggest challenge facing organisations today is about the

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07 APRIL 2010

EVENT REPORT

S O U T H A S I A C I O SUMMIT

OPTIMISE TO SAVE: A panel discussion on Optimised IT infrastructure in progress

SECURITY: A BIG CONCERN Panel discusses the importance of infosec in today's malware-ridden world

EXPERIENCESHARING: A delegate from Bangladesh sharing his observations during a session

“The summit was a great place to network and share knowledge. WE ARE ALL PROUD TO BE PART OF THIS HISTORICAL SUMMIT. It can become a big platform where CIOs can unite, share, grow and deliver.”

inability of teams to work together to solve a problem. The biggest impediment in this is the structure of an organisation and our inability to overcome those structures to move ahead,” said Babu.

BIJAY SHAKYA, Manager-IT, Chaudhary Group, Nepal

Are You Communicating Enough?

“It was great to be amidst a large group of CIOs from the SAARC region. It was a unique initiative that promoted CROSS-BOUNDARY COLLABORATION, LEARNING, EXPERIENCE SHARING AND NETWORKING.”

In today’s difficult economic circumstances, showing the value of IT is more important than ever. Manoj Arora, Global CIO of Bilcare said that creating or improving the business value of IT requires good management of people, processes and technology. “CIOs need to emphasise on creating a vision for business. IT is incidental and will always be a means to an end,” said Arora. Larry Adams, CTO & COO, Network

SANJIV KUMAR, CIO, Polygenta Technologies, India

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S O U T H A S I A C I O SUMMIT

EVENT REPORT

Communications Pvt. Ltd., Adams Group, Sri Lanka suggested that CTOs/CIOs behave like entrepreneurs. “When the economy breaks down, it is entrepreneurs who rise up to the occasion and not the business conglomerates. Speak the language that a businessman understands and half the battle is won,” said Adams.

Technologies to Help Shape Business

LIGHTER MOMENTS: Larry Adams, CTO & COO Network Communications Pvt. Ltd. Adams Group Sri Lanka (right) with Anuradha Das Mathur, Co-founder & Director, 9.9 Media during evening cocktails and dinner

In a session on virtualisation, S.R. Balasubramanian, Executive VP IT, Godfrey Philips India explained how adoption of server virtualisation has saved his company nearly Rs. 50 lakh. Ganesan Arumugam, Director – Partners, VMware told CIOs about the benefits of desktop and data centre virtualisation. Prosenjit Bhattacharjee of Cisco demonstrated how Cisco can help enterprises in adopting virtual infrastructure. Rod Grigson, Director Marketing, Novell, APAC provided a perspective on how IT optimisation can lower operational costs. Speaking during the session ‘Securing Enterprises - Securing Peace of Mind’, Kapil Awasthi, Security Consultant, Check Point Software Technologies said that 2,500,000,000 information security incidents takes place every day, or an equivalent of 30,000 security events per second. Awasthi demonstrated a recent Check Point innovation wherein a USB Flash Drive with applications residing on it could work as a secure hard disk. “This could possibly be the best defence against data theft,” he said. The last session of the Summit was “Enterprise Collaboration: Key to Entering the Future Zone”. The session, chaired by Vijay Mehra, was also addressed by eminent speakers from IBM and Cisco Systems. Raja Lakshmipathy, Collaboration Specialist, Cisco Systems, Sri Lanka questioned the delegates whether collaboration was just a technology or something beyond it. “Organisations need to empower their employees with the right set of collaboration tools so that they can harness their true potential,” said Lakshmipathy. Gaurav Garg, Websphere Commerce Leader, IBM India also shared IBM’s vision in collaborative technologies during the session.

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07 APRIL 2010

EVENT REPORT

V I R T U A L I S AT I O N & C LO U D

Event

Wings to the Cloud What’s virtualisation doing to make the cloud journey easy? CTO Forum and VMware jointly organised a Roundtable Discussion for a select group of CIOs in Mumbai to deliberate on this issue.

Stephen Herrod, CTO, VMware (left) and Rahul Neel Mani, Editor CTO Forum during the Q&A session

Anirban Sarkar, Head of Recruitment and Business development at Reliance HR Services, asking a question to Herrod

A group of senior CIOs listening intently to the presentation

irtualisation, as a technology of the future, is making tremendous strides in the enterprise area. It not only allows the creation of efficient, manageable and dynamic data centre infrastructures, but also gives CIOs the ability to manage the total cost of ownership. Future developments in virtualisation prom-

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ise to be impressive and ground-breaking. In fact, most technology experts view virtualisation as the first step towards adoption of cloud computing. CTO Forum and VMware jointly organised a roundtable discussion for a select group of CIOs in Mumbai on this topical technology trend. The event was addressed by none other than VMware CTO, Stephen

Herrod, who explained how virtual data centres can recover from a disaster even before users realise that a disaster has occured. Herrod explained to the CIOs how VMware is working hard to adapt certain protocols for delivering an enriched user experience virtually over a standard network to its virtual desktop product set. Herrod talked about PC over IP (PCoIP) – VMware’s desk-

V I R T U A L I S AT I O N & C LO U D

top virtualisation effort – and how it aims to improve the degraded user experience when it comes to viewing full motion video, intense multi-media presentations or high resolution graphics. Herrod also spoke to CIOs about the possibility of implementing disaster recovery as a last minute exercise where businesses move all their servers from an existing facility to a backup site, even though it may be miles away. Herrod talked about a concept called long distance VMotion, where a running virtual machine is transferred off one physical server and taken to another over a long distance without causing any business continuity issues. “In the future, virtualisation will make the process of interaction of people with technology more refined, and, above all, lead to better efficiency on all levels,” said Herrod. During the freewheeling discussions with Herrod, Arun Gupta, Group CIO, K Raheja Corp, stressed that there are still many hurdles when it comes to interoperability of applications in a virtualised environment. “In reality, there are hardly any applications that can work on interoperable virtual platforms,” he said. Gupta also said that Shoppers Stop implemented virtualisation way back in 2006 but the company is facing challenges in terms of application performances as it rarely scales up over time. “Is VMware doing something to help the CIOs achieve the desired application performance?” asked Gupta. In response to the question, Herrod said, “Software changes are the reason that affect application performance. VMware prescribes the best practices which help CIOs in better application management and to address the interoperability issues,” said Herrod.

EVENT REPORT

Sunil Rawlani, CIO, HDFC Standard Life in discussion with T M Srinivasan, Country Manager, VMware India during the event

After Event - Delegates used the opportunity to network with their peers

Participants were thoroughly engaged in the discussion on virtualisation and cloud computing

Arun K. Gupta, Group CIO, K Raheja Corp. asking a question to Stephen Herrod

Anirban Sarkar, Head of Recruitment and Business Development at Reliance HR Services enquired about VMware’s efforts to address the security issue especially in the context of the public cloud environment – a situation that raises much concern among users.

“Security is and will remain a major concern and hence VMware has built encryption on the machine itself,” replied Herrod. The event was attended by 15 distinguished CIOs representing a cross section of industry verticals.

CTO FORUM thectoforum.com

07 APRIL 2010

Author: Jack Mitchell

HIDE TIME | BOOK REVIEW

“Work is a 4-letter word, and the way you spell it is P-L-A-Y.”

Hug Your Way to Higher Heights Most

times someone you know deserves a good hug. So why hold it back? THE ACT of hugging is becoming common world-wide. The Latinos have always been very comfortable with this form of greeting. In America, for many years, educationalist and self-help author Leo Buscaglia has emphasised the positive value of human touch: he used to end his speeches by hugging audience members. In India, we have our ‘Hugging Saint’: Mata Amritanandamayi Devi, the spiritual leader from Kerala who travels the world preaching unconditional love. Now Jack Mitchell brings the hug into the work environment with his book Hug Your People: the proven way to hire, inspire, and recognize your team and achieve remarkable results. Mitchell is the CEO of Mitchells/ Richards/Marshs, a high-end men’s and women’s clothier in northeastern USA, and the key to the success of his family business is the hug. As Mitchell explains, “Of course a ‘hug’ can be a bear hug, but more often it’s a metaphor for what we do. We think of a hug as any positive act

or gesture or deed that personalises a relationship and creates a ‘Wow, these people really care about me’ feeling.” Mitchell and his entire team use this approach with their customers, as explained in his first book Hug Your Customers, and with their own employees, as explained in this book. Their positive and people-centric approach can be broken down into five simple but powerful principles: Be NICE to people: aim to please; personalize relationships (caring, compassion, cooperativeness, consistency); be humble; and ... hire nice people! TRUST people: be truthful and transparent; have expectations and standards, not rules and regulations; and give freedom with responsibility. Instill PRIDE in them: make people feel part of the business and its successes; make the workplace an extension of home; and be involved in the community. INCLUDE them: seek input from everyone and include them in the

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ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Ranjani Iyer Mohanty is a writer and business/academic editor, based in Delhi. She has also contributed to the International Herald Tribune (IHT/NYT), the Wall Street Journal, and the Mint. Details are available on LinkedIn: http:// in.linkedin.com/ in/ranjaniiyermohanty

decision-making. RECOGNIZE them: financially and in other ways; give enduring rewards throughout the year. Now some may rightfully say that the literal hug may be inappropriate in some business and cultural environments, such as in an Indian office and particularly between men and women or between different levels of employees. However, the metaphorical hug is appropriate anywhere. Mitchell has shown over the years that being nice is not for wimps. Being nice can lead to real success, substantial profits and a reputed business. Most of his customers are repeat ones and his employees stay for years. And what’s more, this hugging philosophy can make work more fun. As Mitchell says, “Work is a 4-letter word, and the way you spell it is P-L-A-Y.” Now the thought foremost in my head is ... how do I get a job with Mitchells/Richards/ Marshs? —Ranjani Iyer Mohanty

HIDE TIME | CIO PROFILE

IT’s Fix-it-yourself Off-Roader PARVINDER SINGH

just before the examination when students of his age would lock themselves up in their rooms for last-minute revisions, Parvinder Singh would walk out of his home to play a game of football or hockey. Singh's planning with regard to the number of hours to study and what to study every day happened months before the examination. What was important to him was sticking to that. Affecting a show of being immersed in studies by actions such as locking oneself up didn't count. This quality – being true to oneself – is at the center of Singh's approach to work. It's helped him during new challenges and in the face of adversity. Challenges were aplenty, and came as soon as he started his career working as a network administrator. While in college, Singh's favourite subject was computer programming; he would work tirelessly on his skills to try and steal a march over the professor. After graduating, though, Singh had to switch to hardware and networking domains. His formal training in college proved to be of little use. “Books are books.. very theoratical. I had to learn almost everything on the job,” says Singh. ON DAYS

ONE FOR A GOOD LAUGH: Outside office hours, Singh seeks every opportunity to double up in laughter. Many of his favourite movies are comedy ones. His all-time favourite is the cult classic Jane bhi do Yaro, a story of two friends, who start off setting up their own photo studio, but are lead on a trail of corruption and murder, and amidst plenty of hilarious mix-ups, bring the culprits to book. GET SET GO: When it comes to English movies, Singh likes action-packed ones. His

favourite in this category is Cliffhanger. HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS: Singh is a family man and, on weekends, likes to spend as much time as possible at home with his wife, Rupinder and kids – an elder daughter Ashmeet Kaur and a younger son Manprabh Singh. His wife, who loves cooking, has been a big pillar of support for him, Singh says. His daughter is fond of drawing while his son shares his father's passion – cycling.

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07 APRIL 2010

PHOTOS BY SUBHOJIT PAUL

Vice President & Head - IT Services, Max NewYork Life

HIDE TIME | CIO PROFILE

Snap Shot Singh's never-say-die spirit was to come to his aid time and again as he moved up the corporate ladder. Being a hands-on guy in IT administration, he had learnt to fix all things and, as he tackled technology and management issues, he carried with him this attitude of going to great lengths to find a solution. He is aware that this has both a positive and a negative side: “you learn a lot of things as you try to find the root cause and evaluate alternate paths to overcome it, but there's also the danger of this exercise taking up too much of your time.” Given the passion with which Singh likes to work, it's understandable that he has changed very few jobs (his stint at his previous employer, Polaris Software Lab, lasted ten years). Leaving after such a long tenure, what was the feeling like? Singh says that he shared such a strong emotional bond with the company, it made him sad to leave; at the same time he felt that he had served his role and was ready for bigger challenges. But the most important thing on his mind was to ensure that he left his previous employer with the systems in very good condition. “If I don't do that, then what sort of a legacy would I be leaving?” When Singh took over the reins of Max New York Life's IT services department as the company's Vice President & Head - IT Services, the insurance industry was booming. The company was expanding – within a short span, the number of offices increased from 100 to 600 plus – and Singh and his team had to see that they could ensure reliable, cost-effective connectivity and that it was set up in the shortest possible time. “In the insurance segment, the customer is very demanding,” Singh says. But then that's yet another challenge that Singh is only too happy to take on. —Aditya Kelekar

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Man on wheels. On weekends, Singh likes to take to the hills to devote time for his other passion, mountain biking! Pedalling his way through wooded territories sure refreshes him, but guess what part of the sport helps him destress himself? It's again (no surprise), the focus the sport demands. A wrong move and he could be tumbling downhill. “When I'm mountain biking my mind is totally cut off from everything else,” he says. Always connected. He takes his Blackberry with him on all trips. Not as if he had an option, given his role. "I am available 24x7 to my company," he said. Careful planning has helped see to it that emergency calls are few and far. Marooned on an island. We ask Singh that were he to find himself alone on an island and be allowed possession of only one object, what would it be? “My Blackberry,” he says. Well, does he expect to have network out there?

VIEWPOINT DYLAN PERSAUD | dylan@eval-source.com

ILLUSTRATION BY PC ANOOP

Cloud’s Gathering Crowd Vendors who

innovate in their cloud offerings will lead the pack THE ADVENT of cloud computing has most vendors scrambling to offer their services on an on-demand basis, which is great for consumers. Finally the consumer has some choice without heavy upfront capital expenditure. There are service companies which offer professional services within the cloud, vendors that offer SaaS and vendors that offer both. The combination vendors that offer a platform, applications, typical IT services, integration and hosted and professional services are poised to capture more of the market a lot quicker than the traditional vendors that just offer software. Microsoft has announced that with the release of Office 2010, it will extend its cloud offerings. The possibility to have other MS products such as email, CRM, and SharePoint through the cloud remain a distinct possibility. The reason for this is that DaaS (desktop as a service) is not far behind. Imagine an SMB that can get

DaaS for multiple users with full MS Office Integration and with CRM and SharePoint capabilities and even a Dynamics ERP thrown in – it would lower IT purchase costs and adminsitration costs significantly. A pretty compelling argument! Threats to this models already exist from other vendors like Salesforce, Zoho and Google that are offering additional applications around the CRM and rapidly turning it into a new landscape with endless customer choice. Other vendors have stepped up their game and even acquired software to offer a similar breadth of features. Google recently bought Doc Verse which allows users to collaborate, edit and share Word, Excel and PowerPoint in real time mode over the web. Since the release of Chrome as a browser, Google has served notice to the market that a Chrome OS is on the way. This means Google will now offer an OS, browser, email, analytics,

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ABOUT DYLAN PERSAUD: MD of Eval Source, Canada, Dylan is also a business analyst and project manager with expertise in disciplines such as ERM, Retail, Supply Chain, social media and enterprise systems. He has consulted for Indigo, Nike, Sears, GM, Ford, IBM, IDC and others.

blogging platform, communication features (in the form of Google Messenger) and applications in the form of Google Docs (which is now fully compatible with MS Office due to the acquisition of Doc Verse.) It seems that other vendors have caught on to this and are following the leaders. IBM has fortified its commitment to the cloud by offering Lotus Live iNotes and also IBM Lotus Symphony which happens to be free (a decent MS Office substitute). Additional vendors are entering this marketplace such as little known player Evermore Software – a Chinese company in Wuxi province. This vendor offers an Office-like suite to rival MS Office for half the price of Office but with similar look and feel, and is even starting to offer this in the cloud. As the demand for cloud-based applications increases, new vendors will challenge the traditional and big players. The ones who innovate will stay ahead in the game!