IT Next June 2011 by Manan Mushtaq

it next

JUNE 2011 / ` 75 Volume 02 / Issue 05

VDI: Enterprises have a close watch and set high expectations

Strategy: Best practices in cloud marketing

Boss Talk How to address organisational crisis

05 Big Q

Finding the right CRM solution Pg 49

Play Your Cards Right

Play Your cards Right

K T Rajan, Director-Operations, IS & Projects, Allergan India

New technologies and services complicate data centre decisions Pg 12

volume 02 | Issue 05

Do you Want to Be NEXT!

EDITORIAL

Intelligence at Play The truth is that the IT industry is undergoing a metamorphosis of the kind that will certainly enhance its power and scope. The technologies and tools are constanly evolving. To be in step with this transformation, IT managers have to create the right ecosystem, one that will enable them to navigate the changing environments with ease. New strides in technology has had a cascading effect on all the aspects of life. There is a new sophisitication in the way we live and work. This certainly leads to new challenges for the IT managers’ community. But the challenges are beneficial in the long run, as they provoke the IT managers to shed some of their complacency and come up with better ideas. The concept of ‘intelligence of play’ has often been considered as a revolutionary model for optimum learning and performance. The concept applies to one and all and in this context relates particularly to the IT managers’ making intelligent decisions. Decisions they take could be inspired by any aspect of their lifestyle. It could be linked to their personal development, their leadership style. It could be process related, communication related, or it could have aspects of transactional management, project management, etc. Such is the capriciousness of the changes that are constantly happening in the IT sector that we can’t have any rule of thumb, or any tailor made tools to discover the right solutions. My recent interactions with the IT heads and senior IT managers has given me insight into the strategies that they usually pick up for tackling issues and crises. IT Next’s current cover feature on evolving data centre models is an attempt to understand how IT managers’ go around choosing the best model. There is an indepth analysis of the criteria that they adopt in making decisions that are in keeping with the best financial and security related interests of their organisation. It is amazing to hear their narratives about how they formed their own set of criteria, on the basis of which a decision on the choice of data centre model could be taken. They tracked a sequential pattern to arrive at the right decision and marched ahead at a steady pace.

“IT managers track sequential pattern to make intelligent and right decision” GEETHA NANDIKOTKUR

Blogs To Watch! Benefits of datacenter virtualisation: http://technology.ezinemark. com/benefits-of-datacentervirtualization-7d2e83446fa1. html 4 Reasons to Consider Cloud Storage: http://www.burgesscomputer. com/maine-computer-newsupdates/4-reasons-to-considercloud-storage/ 8 Tips for Choosing a Data Center Solution: http://blogs.smartertools. com/2009/01/13/choosing-adata-center-solution-featuresbenefits-of-colocation/ Data Center: Build and Manage it in House vs. Outsourcing: http://www. financialinvestmentadvisor.org/ financialadvice/data-centerbuild-and-manage-it-in-housevs-outsourcing.html Your views and opinion matter to us. Send your feedback on stories and the magazine at editor@ itnext..in or SMS us at 567678 (type ITNEXT<space>your feedback)

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PLAY YOUR CARDS RIGHT New Technologies and Services complicate datacentre decisions

Page

INSIGHTS

BOSS TALK

INTERVIEW

26 Service Negotiation Here is what and how you negotiate to fetch better returns before deploying cloud computing.

28 Plays the long Game

What is the best way to market a technology that is disruptive and evolving? Read on to know how.

34 VDI falls short of expectations VDI is drawing greater attention from the customers who have set high expectations on the technology and its performance

ITNEXT | J U N E 2 0 1 1

05 Anticipate the issues| V S Parthasarathy, Group CIO, VP-Finance & M&A, Mahindra& Mahindra Ltd.

38 We are the cloud catalyst| Josh Tseng - Technical Director, Riverbed, shares his thoughts about WAN optimisation space.

C OV ER PHOTOGRAPHY: RAD HAKRIS HNA

32 Cloudy Marketing

C OV ER DES IGN/IMAGING: JOF FY JOS E

Microsoftâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Windows Phone 7 has experienced some growing pains in its first few months.

ITNEXT.IN

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

EDITORIAL

Page

Group Editor: R Giridhar Executive Editor: Geetha Nandikotkur Associate Editor: Shashwat DC Tech Correspondent: Jatinder Singh

PLAYS THE LONG GAME | Windows Phone 7 has experienced some growing pains in its first few months, but the company continues pushing the platform.

OPINION

DESIGN Sr Creative Director: Jayan K Narayanan Art Director: Binesh Sreedharan Associate Art Director: Anil VK Sr Visualiser: PC Anoop Sr Designers: Prasanth TR, Anil T, Joffy Jose Anoop Verma, NV Baiju, Vinod Shinde & Chander Dange Designers: Sristi Maurya, Suneesh K, Shigil N & Charu Dwivedi Chief Photographer: Subhojit Paul Photographer: Jiten Gandhi

THE BIG Q

10 BI: Demand for plug and play| Karan Singh, Director,

ACG worldwide.

15-MINUTE MANAGER 41 Cloud Strategy | CIOs who build the right ecosystem will successfully ride this transformative technology wave.

49 Business Case: CRM| How

to ensure customer satisfaction?

CUBE CHAT 54 Take life as it comes |

“Have strong faith in doing new things in a right way ,” says Arun Kumar-Director IT, Global Logic India

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45 Rules to Follow | Policies

and procedures take precedence over the core job in any organisation to ensure professionalism. 47 Powered by 3G | 3G has

caught the attention of the enterprises for the value it brings in as better productivity tool.

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SOFTWARE LICENSING | COVER STORY

MAY 2011 / ` 75 VOLUME 02 / ISSUE 04

CLOUD COMPUTING: Fear is paving way for euphoria in the cloud

STRATEGY: IT managers prefer smaller firms for quick growth

38 BIG Q

INTERVIEW: McAfee’s Sentonas on managing security threats

How to drive server efficiency Pg 49

LICENSED TO GAIN

LICENSED TO GAIN IT managers squeeze the most out of software licensing options using best practices Pg 14

Mahesh Kumar Assistant General Manager- IT Infrastructure, Operations & Support, Maruti Suzuki

Gain

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IMAGING: ANOOP P C

MAY 2011

Vinay Mehta CIO, Escorts Construction Equipment Ltd

IT NEXT THANKS ITS READERS FOR THE WARM RESPONSE

IT managers squeeze the most out of software licensing options using best practices BY N G E E T H A

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We want to know what you think about the magazine, and how we can make it a better read. Your comments will go a long way in making IT NEXT the preferred publication for the community. Send your comments, compliments, complaints or questions about the magazine to editor@itnext.in.

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Vinay Mehta CIO, Escorts Construction Equipment Ltd

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vendors to protect their business interest.

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

This refers to the Data Privacy: Why You Should CareITNEXT.in. This is a subject with less definable clarity. For some people it deals with the security of sensitive personal and financial data. It in fact deals with content of data its use, rights, ownership, access, integrity, legitimacy and security. When data is accessed via web cyber security is missing to a great extend. We have less of legislation for data and whatever is available is insufficient to deal with the present scenario plagued by cyber crimes. JACOB LIVINGSTONE

This refers to the article on How an ISO 27001 can give you an edge. It is a fine article and covers the entire breadth and spread of the standard, in a nutshell. The Indian Government has however done a really funny thing. The IT Act has now been amended and includes ISO 27001 in the law itself. Rules under sections 6A, 43A and 79 of the Information Technology Act have been notified. The Information Technology (Reasonable security practices and procedures and sensitive personal data or information) Rules, 2011 has now come into force. The amended Information Technology Act has brought in the requirement for almost all entities to undergo an ISO 27001 audit. Now that they have used the term ISO 27001 in the law itself; we are going to actually see tremendous deterioration in the certification process. Everyone is going to opt for some certification bodies such as BSI, DNV etc ... are going to cash-in big time. .

READ THIS ISSUE ONLINE http://www.itnext. in/resources/ magazine

DHANANJAY ROKDE

The storage special issue was really insightful. With the emergence of new technologies and increasing data growth, it’s really becoming more and more difficult for IT managers to utilise the storage space efficiently. NEHA MAKKER, Account Manager, Komli

This refers to the article “CIO on demand”. My sincere thanks to the author who has explained the entire theory so well. I am sure there will be many SMEs looking for these type of solutions from ERP

ITNEXT | J U N E 2 0 1 1

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

567678 *Special rates apply

You have brought up the most important topic at this juncture, when there is so much of hoo ha on Cloud computing. With organisations moving into ERP systems for all data management and organising their business processes and decision making, the security of internal databases is of utmost importance. Organisations and Enterprises cannot afford to ignore these issues, I have been researching in this area for well over 20 years and have developed a path-breaking, patented, business tool that will not only ensure 100% security of an organisation’s internal databases, but also enable them to save on operating costs (telecom and interlocational travelling). All this is achieved through an INTRANET completely isolated from the public domain, while facilitating the. the organisations PANKAJ MITRA, Owner, MIDAS Automation & telecommunications —EDITOR (Note: Letters have been edited minimally, for brevity and clarity)

BOSS TALK | V S PARTHASARATHY

MANAGEMENT

The Three R’s of Crisis

n such turbulent times a crisis can start gaping you in the face when you least expect it. An intelligent business must have the power of anticipating the issues, which may crop up suddenly and hamper its operations. In order to remain efficient, a business should also have the checklist for dealing with any crisis. A crisis, which might lead you to take many crucial and decisive decisions, can come up at any point of time. The best thing that one can do is to develop the power of anticipating, so that you are able to construct a plan of action well in advance. It is equally important to have a checklist with regard to possible crises in an environment that one works in. For me, the mantra to address a crisis is: Reboot, Re-invent and Re-ignite. It has three approaches. Firstly, think of the three things you can do when there is a first time crisis and make a checklist with suggested solutions against each. For instance, if a server crashes, my immediate thought would be to find a quick alternative so that my staff of 5000 is not inconvenienced. Secondly, effort has to be made to manage work in failure mode with effective analysis to repose employee confidence in the system; and my third priority would be to take proactive measures to restore the server with proper near site recovery planning; and finally, DR would be another step forward in crisis management.

Nature of crisis Crises can turn out to be extremely chaotic, ongoing and it might occur at a pace where quick response is difficult. Business related crises are uncertain, unpredictable and on the rise. For instance, we may have projected a 15% growth in the business, while the market actually grows by over 20%, leading to an internal crisis with pressure to meet market growth. Market oscillations

“An intelligent business must have the power of anticipating the issues which crop up suddenly and hamper its operations”

SUGGESTION BOX

sometimes are difficult to comprehend and need to be dealt in detail to avoid further pressures. Information security is another area that can potentially lead to a crisis. The freedom that social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc, provide can in some instances result in critical situations. The IT team has a greater role in managing the resultant challenges, which sometimes take the form of a major crisis.

Need of the hour The book talks about the changes that organisations need to imbibe and develop in order to survive and thrive in contemporary volatile business environment. WRITER:JIM COLLINS AND CO-AUTHOR JERRY PORRAS PUBLISHER: PEARSON EDUCATION PRICE: `150

It is imperative to seek lessons from past crisis and develop appropriate skills that will allow us to handle similar situations effectively when they occur again in future. A good deal of communication skills, dialogue and change will be required to solve the problem. Domain knowledge across team heads is critical to work on a solution faster. Three Cs is the antidote: Communicate – in crisp and clear tone; get CustomerFriendly; be Cool – do not panic or explain the scenario and ensure that the problem gets fixed in real time. Author is V S Parthasarathy, Group CIO, VP-Finance & M&A, Mahindra& Mahindra Ltd.

J U N E 2 0 1 1 | ITNEXT

UPDATE

Osama: Killed by Technology TECH TRENDS| Four helicopters ferrying scores of US Navy Seals

landed on the isolated mansion standing just 800 yards from the Pakistan Military Academy on the outskirts of Abbottabad city, the fate of its infamous inhabitant had long been sealed, in fact months in advance. 54-year-old Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden, the leader of the jihadi group, Al-Qaeda and America’s enemy number one might have died in a hail of bullets, but it was path-breaking technology that ensured that he was spotted and cornered..

SS WIRELE

How satisfied are you with your wireless service? (NUMBERS IN %)

NEXT poll reveals that half of the IT Managers are still not satisfied with their wireless service provider

50 40 30 20 10 0

SOURCE:NEXT CONNECT

ITNEXT | J U N E 2 0 1 1

50% Not at all

29% Satisfied

21% Somewhat

Hi-tech gadgetry, from spy satellites to intelligent information software, is what really came handy in killing Osama

TRENDS DEALS PRODUCTS SERVICES PEOPLE

Back in August 2010, CIA operatives tracked a trusted courier of the world’s most wanted terrorist to a compound in Abbottabad in Pakistan. They were surprised to find such a high figure visiting a non-descript place. The second thing that convinced the operatives that something was seriously wrong, was when they found that the compound had no phone service, internet or even televisions, and the main building had few windows. Almost immediately, the spy satellites hovering above had been trained to get familiar with the mansion, picking up the contours. A digital model of the mansion was created and everyone and everything going in or out was profiled. In addition, the more they peered, the more sure they were that they had their man. Finally, when the Seals landed at the mansion, they knew what they were after. Technology had given them the lead, which their enemy number one lacked. In fact, even the news was leaked out on Twitter first by Keith Urbahn, the former chief of staff for Donald Rumsfeld. The tweet said “So I’m told by a reputable person that they have killed Osama Bin Laden. Hot damn.” Almost immediately, the whole network was abuzz with the news. Therefore, when the American President Barrack Obama took to the air, people were agog and expectant over the news. Almost at the same time, people had pinpointed the area on Google Maps to find his location. Long live technology.

I LLUSTRATIO N: BINES H S RE ED HARAN

UPDATE I N D U S T R Y

LED MONITORS

HEAR IT PLAIN

BACK YOUR MEMORIES

Simmtronics Semiconductors has recently launched its LED Monitor portfolio in market globally.Manufatured in Roorkee plant, the products are currently available within different sizes 15.6”, 18.5”, 21.5” .

Hip Street’s new Bluetooth headset comes with noise reduction and echo elimination feature. The HSLITE headset is available in India through its national distributor Global Infonet Distribution at a Price of Rs. 999 only

Steller has launched Phoenix Photo recovery V4.0 software that help users to recover back lost photo, audio and video files from camera cards, mobile phone memory cards and hard drive.

Red Hat launches Cloud Forms TECH TIDINGS| Red Hat

announced a sweeping cloudcomputing initiative that includes a new offering for creating and managing cloud environments, as well as a new platform for developers using open-source technology to build cloud applications. Red Hat’s Boston Summit saw the release of its beta of Red Hat Cloud Forms, a product for creating and managing IAAS (infrastructure as a service) private and hybrid clouds. Red Hat also announced Open Shift, a PAAS (platform as a service) for developers who build on open source. Cloud

Announced IAAs Cloud Form to create and manage hybrid clouds

Forms incorporates both ALM (application lifecycle management) and the ability to create integrated clouds from a range of computing resources with portability across physical,

AROUND THE WORLD

virtual and cloud-computing resources. According to the company, the Cloud Forms enabled organizations to benefit from the elasticity and flexibility of cloud computing while retaining the ability to control and govern their application portfolio on the cloud. Cloud Forms addressed key problems encountered in first-generation cloud products: the cost and complexity of virtual server sprawl, compliance nightmares and security concerns, Che said. ( what is the full name).It also allows users to configure and manage complex multitier applications, rather than manage large virtual servers independently.

QUICK BYTE

Mobile WiMAX Chipset Shipments Surge in 2010 Shipments of mobile Wimax chipsets reached 15 million in 2010, up from 5 million in 2009, according to the 4G Counts Quarterly Report from Maravedis. The 2010 surge in mobile Wimax device and chipset shipments, the total Wimax chipset market is partly the result of the addition of 7.7 million Wimax subscribers during the year. The report says that while the shipments of Wimax devices increased in 2010, the Wimax’ carriers intention to move to LTE will impact the sales going forward.

JOHN CHAMBERS, CHAIRMAN AND CEO OF CISCO, SHARING HIS DISAPPOINTMENT OVER COMPANY’S FINANCIAL RESULTS

“We have disappointed our investors and we have confused our employees. Bottom line, we have lost some of the credibility and must earn it back.”

J U N E 2 0 1 1 | ITNEXT

UPDATE

Amazon mulls iPad rival Amazon has been working on the ecosystem necessary for Apple-level success.

TECH TRENDS| According to a report

from Taipei-based DigiTimes, Amazon expects sales of the tablet to reach 700,000 to 800,000 units a month during the “peak season,” contributing approximately $3.5 billion to the coffers of notebook manufacturer Quanta. Quanta has received OEM orders from Amazon for a tablet that will “receive full support from Taiwanbased electrophoretic display (EPD) maker E Ink Holdings for supplying touch panel as well as providing its Fringe Field Switching (FFS) technology. It added that Quanta is an OEM partner to Research In Motion for its PlayBook tablet, and Sony, for its

BLOG

Human error biggest cause of outages AlgoSec, a Network security policy management provider, has announced the results of “Network Security Management: Attitudes and Opinions,” a survey of more than 100 information security professionals on why businesses struggle with network security management. Faced with increasingly complex corporate networks, the survey found that the majority of information security professionals believe human error to be the primary reason for network security disruptions. According to the survey, 66 percent of respondents cited human error in the configuration of network devices as the most common cause of outages in the past 12 months, followed by capacity overload (14 percent) and flaws in the gateway product (9 percent). “O. “ting task for any organization.” “The survey suggests that organizations may actually overinvest in extra capacity in fear of network outages, rather than address security management issues that can have the same impact,” said Nimmy Reichenberg, AlgoSec’s VP of Marketing.

GOOGLE TOUTS $64B IN ECONOMIC IMPACT THE NUMBERS ARE BASED ON A COMPLEX FORMULA DEVELOPED by Google’s chief economist Hal Varian.

Google has just released information touting the beneficial impact the search engine giant has had on the U.S. economy - a benefit to the tune of $64 billion in 2010. This $64 billion figure marks an 18% increase from the data Google released last year. According to Google’s calculations, for every $1 a business spends on Google AdWords, they receive an average of $8 in profit 8B

ITNEXT | J U N E 2 0 1 1

PHOTO I MAG ING: BI NESH SRE EDHARAN

NEWS @

planned tablets—currently known officially as “S1” and “S2” and less officially as the wedge and the squashed burrito—and is likely to work with Lenovo on its planned LePad. Amazon has been gradually bringing together components that some say could make it Apple’s first real competitor. In addition to a sales platform that helped its Kindle e-reader line enjoy gangbuster sales — over the last holiday season, the Kindle even managed to knock the seventh Harry Potter book from its bestselling-product-ever perch. Amazon has been working on the ecosystem necessary for Apple-level success.

TECH TRENDS

UPDATE

Cloud service sourcing immature & risky: Gartner

INTERVIEW GANESH JAYADEVAN General Manager, Product Development, Mobile Business Solution, Comviva

provider uses one or more cloud computing technologies within the solution’s overall architecture. Gartner refers to these services as “cloudenabled outsourcing service offerings.” Cloud provider will deliver these services directly or via a service aggregator with pre-engineered and configurable business solutions in a timely and cost-effective manner.

India’s mobile user base reaches 811 mn NEXT CONNECT| Indian mobile service

in India has now reached 67.98% providers have added over 20 mn Mobile Number Portability (MNP), new users by the end of march, helpwhich attracted huge eyeballs last ing country’s mobile subscriber base year, has started gaining some reaching 811.59 mn, up by 20.21 million momentum, finally. The report says from February’s 791.38 million. that the requests for MNP increased the According to the recent data subscribers from 38.33 lakh released by TRAI, Vodafone at the end of February 2011 to INDIA has added 18.06 per cent 64.23 lakh at the end of March. ADDED OVER of new mobile users; while Notably, number portability 17.53 per cent chose Reliance was launched this year Communications and 15.86 keeping in mind the interest of per cent opted for Airtel. consumers who can switch. MILLION SUBSCRIBERS It also said that the over For more telecom related news visit Source: AFCOM http://www.itnext.in/next-connect.html all wireless tele-density

ITNEXT | J U N E 2 0 1 1

NEXT CONNECT: How does a solution like Customer Lifecycle Management enhance operator’s knowledge? JAYADEVAN: Like everything else mobile users in reference to an operator goes through various stages of life. Broadly speaking a customer account goes through the following phases: acquisition, conversion, value-enhancement, retention, and phase-out. While acquisition phase calls for investment, it is the later phase that the operator recoups and then further gains profitability. Knowing the different transactional moves that the business calls for is critical which will have a two-fold benefit: firstly measuring it and secondly by exploiting consumer behaviour, besides accurate positioning of products in the right context. Could you elaborate on its advantages to end consumer? CLM allows an operator to understand at what stage a customer is in and this in turn allows him to deliver real value to the end consumer. Therefore, this is a big departure from sms blasts, annoying pre-recorded calls. How do you think this will help service providers to retain their customers for a longer period?

Its about engagement. You need real-time, contextual-based campaigns to increase the engagement, which will also result in higher consumption and long-term retention. By Jatinder Singh

I LLUSTRATIO N: S HIGIL .N

Gartner’s special report examines key issues facing the future of cloud sourcing.

PHOTO GRAPHY: JAYAN K NARAYANAN

TECH TRENDS | The $820 billion IT services market is changing quickly and dramatically, as cloud computing and off shoring become mainstream, and senior IT managers should take steps to manage inherent risks and unexpected costs during the cloud services revolution, says Gartner. During the next few years, market dynamics will determine whether cloud-enabled outsourcing will be the demise of traditional outsourcing, if it will lead to the convergence of services and products currently marketed “as a service,” or if it will result in next-generation outsourcing. Cloud-driven business and IT services include all types of solutions that are developed, bundled and packaged as outsourcing service offerings for which the business or IT service

OPINION

MONEY WISE KARAN SINGH, DIRECTOR, ACG WORLDWIDE

BI: Demand for Plug-N-Play

he buzzword, consumerisation, is seeping into every aspect of the product lifecycle. While this is a much-used nuance in the Information Technology (IT) product framework, with no concrete definition, the term is weighing on the newer aspects of IT applications.

Constraints to consumerisation

Defining consumerisation What does consumerisation mean and what sense does it make for an application such as Business Intelligence (BI)? Consumerisation usually refers to the process of consumer technology seeping into the workplace, such as instant messaging or workplace technologies becoming widely available, for example, PCs. Sometimes, it bestrides both business and consumer markets such as email.

BI on the bandwagon? Software applications such as BI, though not yet re-positioned or commoditised to appeal to the consumer markets, have been tagged to this idiom, for there is a need to access it in a simpler manner. Experts find that Web 2.0 standards and design patterns have influenced the new harvest of BI products, besides cloud playing its due diligence.

Expectations from BI BI is undergoing a metamorphosis and with it the way companies conduct business, is also changing and so is the expectation from the tool. The primary requisite is that BI tools must be simple, mobile and fun, in order to extend

ITNEXT | J U N E 2 0 1 0

For me, consumerisation of BI would be justified if it becomes as easy as a spreadsheet, with quick implementation process, made simple to use without requiring the help of IT team. Analysts like Gartner emphasize that the ease of use for end-users is the most important selection criterion; it overtakes functionality, when choosing BI tools. Gartner expects that in 2011, BI users would want to be able to just use the technology without the help of a manual, as there would be no inclination to read one. A plug-n-play model is what is expected out of BI, which also determines the degree of product development and design methods.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;For me, consumerisation of BI would be justified if it becomes as easy as a spreadsheet, with quick implementation process, made simple to use without requiring the help of IT teamâ&#x20AC;? its use and value to provide analysis and metrics options after optimisation, besides just the data. BI needs to be interactive and intuitive to be used by CEOs and heads of departments without much effort. The demand for BI tools to render data in various formats based on user need is on the rise, with business users aspiring for it to be made available on their iPad and smartphones.

Cost of BI solutions may be one of the constraints in its way to commoditisation. It is imperative that as enterprise applications mature, there should be a plethora of options available to users and the cost must subsequently drop with volume buying. If BI tools get cheaper with time like an email or spreadsheet, it will become more pervasive. Security of data is another of the concerns around BI. Before you go about looking at BI on the cloud, so that it is accessible whenever and wherever you want it, you would want your data to be absolutely safe. Cloud is a relatively new phenomenon in BI. Another limitation observed is that any effort to make BI user-friendlier is considered as an innovation by the BI providers. This would restrict its commoditisation and wide usage. It is critical to nurture tools to drive consumerisation. For many, BI is pretty boring topic unless some technological play is involved. It has to be made innovative with certain software tools attached to it which displays unique capabilities. The idea is to make BI most sought after solution. Mobile applications could be developed around BI to generate the excitement amongst users.

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COVER STORY | DATA CENTRE MODELS

K T Rajan, Director-Operations, IS & Projects, Allergan India

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Play Your Cards Right BY N G E E T H A

C I MAGING: JOFFY JOSE

PHOTOG RAPHY: RADHAKRI SHNA

New technologies and services complicate data centre decisions hange is inevitable. For years, IT heads and managers have been dealing with the aspects of change management, resilience, performance, response time, resolution time and much more in their endeavour to create best practices and values. They have been leveraging technology and tapping right opportunities to leapfrog the competition. The senior IT managers have been instrumental in creating compelling business differentiation within the organisation by introducing much needed changes and opting for the best technologies. IT Next’s feature on data centre sourcing model is an attempt to provide insights into various models that are in existence. The focus is also on the factors that IT heads consider when they are choosing the best model to match their requirements.

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Flavours of data centre sourcing: The market is awash with myriad models of data centres. We have the captive do-it-yourself model; the hosted model, also known as co-lo; cloud and variants of cloud such as SaaS, PaaS and IaaS; data centre in a box or portable data centres. While there is no one fixed model adjudged as the best, the IT managers have been playing their cards well while making judicious decision to pick the best model. At times they also opt for variants of the existing models, so as to insure better returns on investment. Delving into detail, the Indian market is dominated by the captive data centre, which constitutes 70% of the data centre revenues. The co-lo (co-location), which is a form of hosted data centre model is moving at a fast pace, as customers are placing their assets into the third party location for ease of management. Hybrid hosting model, a complete outsourcing is being duly evaluated, which will gain good footprints in the coming years. Customers have deployed infrastructure as a service in the form of co-lo model, where the service provider will perform the task of maintenance, up gradation, back-up and station customer assets within his premises. Cloud, which is much recommended, is still a nascent technology. It will take another two to three years before the core applications move to cloud model. The data centre footprint is bound to surpass 5 million square feet by 2012 as per Gartner’s report. Gartner endorses that the data centre industry is expected to double its capacity in the next two years. The report also points out that captive and hosted models will grow at comparable rates. IDC projected the third party data centre services to touch $481 million in this year witnessing a CAGR of 34.5% over the last two years. Akash Saxena, Vice President, Offerings Management & Development, Global Technology Services, IBM India & South Asia states some trends with regard to the sizing of the data centre.

“Large business enterprises, such as telcos and banking establishments, have data centres ranging between 10,000 square feet to over 20,000 square feet. The mid-size companies have 3000 to 10000 square feet data centre and SMEs go in for 1500 to 2000 square feet data centre. Customers with less than 10,000 square feet data centre space are upgrading to co-lo model to achieve economies of scale. IT managers have their SLA s in place with average of 3 years to derive maximum benefits. “We

have signed up 3 year SLAs with our hosted service provider to drive value for money. The system provides DR support, backup, technological refresh and few other things at a minimal cost,” says K T Rajan, Director-Opertions & IS-Projects of a pharmaceutical company, Allergan India. Ajay Dhir, CIO, Lanco Infratech Ltd., sees value in offsite equipment model, which gives opportunity to downsize the existing data centre, besides bringing in business agility and increasing the operational efficiency.

CASE STUDY: ALLERGAN INDIA

“Co-location model has reduced the hosting cost by 75%”

he pharmaceutical major Allergan India has opted for a data centre of the co-location model. K T Rajan, Director-Operation, Information Systems & Projects, has been of the opinion that a partial outsourcing of the infrastructure to a third party is in Allergen India’s long term interest. “Since managing the IT infrastructure is not our core expertise, I preferred to go for a co-hosted model, which has resulted in immense cost saving,” says Rajan. Allergan retained its 12 core applications within its 2,500 square feet data centre, while Pacific Net hosts rest of the infrastructure. It is not without a reason that Rajan opted for co-location model. “In the captive model, building a RoI plan for the infrastructure was turning out to be difficult, immediate creation of a DR was impossible, while taking multiple backups of the data in case of failure was tough and investments around manpower was quite high,” he explains.

COST BENEFIT Allergan found the co-location model, which works around Opex framework, to be a very lucrative proposition. Virtualisation of servers is one of the key reasons that inspired the company to go in for this model. The number of servers to be hosted in a third party data centre is far fewer and this results in substantial cost savings. According to Rajan, the co-location model has witnessed a reduction in the hosting cost by almost 75%, as the hosting service provider will provide 24/7 power and cooling with an effective DR plan in place. Besides this, the service provider will also use best practices to provide the infrastructure service. Allergan has placed 8 rack servers on the hosting location and has signed up a three-year SLA with the service provider. Commenting on the cost benefit, Rajan maintains, “In this shared model, per unit rack space will cost Rs 1250

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DATA CENTRE MODELS | COVER STORY

Determining factors While every model has its own challenges and positives, there are certain key elements that determine the data centre model one can opt for. The choice of models boils down to the cost, decision evaluation criteria, and decision tools and of course clear SLAs. Gartner suggested various factors that drive the IT manager’s decision in picking a particular model. For instance, they could consider the direct cost, external annual contract cost and internal administration costs, internal

K T RAJAN,

PHOTOG RAPHY: RAD HAKRIS HNA

Director-OperationsInformation Systems & Projects, Allergan India

per month and my total cost of hosting the servers would be around Rs 15,000 per annum. In case of an in-house operation, the cost would have been substantially higher.” In addition, the up-gradation and technology proofing would have been a difficult task in the conventional model. According to Rajan, the skill lies in working out a good SLA irrespective of the model that one adopts. As part of

annual capital depreciation including licensing and administration cost, indirect costs which are intangible such as flexibility, agility, liability costs and efficiency cost, which will help in making a decision. According to Saji Thoppil, GM-Enterprise Computing, Wipro Ltd., application landscape and the IT services delivered will largely dictate what goes into the data centre of any typical enterprise. “Mainframe, large RISC/Unix, x86/64 blade based systems, data

the SLA, Rajan opines that the agreement should revolve around things like - having clear security offerings, physical location with good power backup facility, redundancy built-in, checking the history of failures of the location, value added services, resilience towards cost and quality spectrum. Rajan points out that on an average the organization spends 20% of the budget towards building infrastructure. The cost of management of this infrastructure is also relatively high. The shared model will lead to a substantial reduction in the management part of the cost.

GOING BY THE TREND With so much buzz around cloud, Rajan has gone by the trend and decided to rope in a local cloud vendor to host the company’s email system and Intranet portal on the cloud. This system works around the Opex model. “We pay only for the service we use. The payment turns out to be very minimal as it is based on the amount of terabyte of data we use or emails we use,” he explains. Once the interoperable issues are resolved and the cloud vendors set standards, Allergan India will think of moving its critical applications to cloud.

storage, communication equipments all have specific requirement. The combination of factors including, availability, manageability, security, accessibility and affordability will define the data centre model that can be adopted,” informs Thoppil. Managed service provider, Jyotish Ghosh, Senior Vice-president, Connectivity and Network Services, Sify Technologies observes, “Cost variants will determine the model, for instance, take the case of a data centre in the size between 3000 to 5000 square feet, the real estate cost in the capex model would be around Rs 30,000 per square feet, while it would be Rs 20,000 per square feet in an opex model.” According to Sanjay Lulla, DirectorServices, EMC India & SAARC, the key

60% of the data centre overheads are associated with the IT infrastructure

considerations that the IT managers need to observe before making a choice are, “How much cost avoidance can be achieved for IT applications under consideration? They must also analyse how secure a particular model is for running business applications. Then there is the factor of response time being guaranteed by the service provider and 24/7 availability assurance.” G B Ravichandra, Head-EnterpriseAPJ, APC Schneider says that 60% of the data centre overheads are associated with the infrastructure and IT managers need to scale up to a co-lo or hosted model for better returns. Evaluating economies of scale, smaller functions can be outsourced at lower costs. But it is critical to evaluate aging power, cooling or structure,

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COVER STORY | DATA CENTRE MODELS CASE STUDY: MAHINDRA & MAHINDRA utility costs, compare co-location costs to depreciation cost.

SLAs A lot of would depend upon how well is the IT manager clued into terms and conditions of the service level agreement that is signed with the service provider. The concept holds good for all the models. Sanjeev Kumar, Group CIO, Group President – Business Excellence, Adhunik Group of Industries says, “There are two ways of looking at it from a top-line and bottom-line perspective. It is not a legal document, but a document which has mutual understanding of both parties with regard to the deliverables.” On a broader scale, one has to gauge the service levels around network. This means that one needs to consider factors like resilience and recovery, IT skills, flexibility, security, regulatory constraints and so on. Allergan’s Rajan emphasizes on having a 99.99% infrastructure services by the service provider. “It is important to ensure that access to the service provider is easy. Robust security systems at the physical location where the servers are put up is critical. There should be sufficient power backup and redundancy built in. So one must track the history of the service provider and learn about his ability to achieve a quality spectrum. One must also keep track of the value added services that he would provide.” With licensing cost getting higher on the applications, IT managers are signing up new documents around applications delivery and management, which can drive down the cost. Surajit Sen, Director, Netapp India maintains that the standard SLAs should lay thrust on recovery and response time with price parameters being the key. Some of the key elements to evaluate in an SLA would be to gauge IT skills, operational skills related to specific functions such as database, email, network, virtualisation etc.

“We don’t have immediate plans to shift to other business models from being in captive data centre”

ahindra & Mahindra Ltd. (M&M Ltd.), which is a part of the US $11.1 billion Mahindra Group, has its own data centre to take care of the needs of its current businesses and also to handle the future growth projections. With an objective of leveraging the group synergy, the company has consolidated and housed its infrastructure at a single location, from where it serves all the group companies. “Having invested in the current facility, we are stuck to the existing model and find it difficult to make immediate shift to other business models,” says Vijay S Mahajan, Sr. GM-IT-Infrastructure & Information Security, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. “Given the constraints, there is only so much incremental changes we could bring in to improve efficiencies, while wrestling with issues of power management, cooling and space management,” remarked Mahajan.

Efficient economies of scale is a must in the service provider. With good management skills, audit and vendor management, better terms can be achieved during negotiations.Sumit Mukhija, National Sales Manager, Data Centre, Cisco India & SAARC informs, “Data Center solutions must enable IT organizations to turn computing and storage resources from monolithic systems into a “service-centric” shared pool of resources consisting

VIJAY S MAHAJAN,

Sr GM-IT- Infrastructure & Information Security, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd

standardized components that can be dynamically aggregated, tiered, provisioned, and accessed through an intelligent network.” According to Gartner, data centre capacity with computing and storage growth, power and cooling, service providers capability for rapid provisioning and de-provisioning, peak demands and idle times related cost, business agility responding to changing business demands, effective supply

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DATA CENTRE MODELS | COVER STORY The company decided to have peripheral systems housed in the same data centre to gain cost optimisation and have smooth integration with core ERP systems. However, from the perspective of the trend, Mahajan believes that the hybrid cloud model is gaining prominence; it is throwing up opportunities for large enterprises to enjoy best of both worlds.

PH OTO GRAPHY: JI TEN GANDHI

CHALLENGES & BENEFITS “While we have outsourced the technical operations to a service provider, whose team reports to the GM-corporate IT, we have stringent SLAs to track its adherence,” observes Mahajan. “At our data centre, we host both critical and non-critical operations that are required by the companies in the Mahindra Group,” he adds. The principal challenge that Mahajan and his team face lies in the handling of complex operations of businesses with varied requirements and priorities. The company has made sufficient investments into the existing Data Centre, which was commissioned in 2002. As the businesses kept growing, the company had to go in for a new Green Data Centre in 2007. Considerable investments have been made at both these facilities to ensure optimal efficiency. To make the systems even more efficient, Mahajan is considering further investments in advanced technologies, such as high-density racks, efficient cooling systems and efficient power manage-

ment. There are also plans to deploy virtualisation technologies and reduce overall infrastructure footprint. Mahajan is of the view that the main benefit of the captive model is that it can ensure data security, as the operations get handled in-house and remain under management control.

GOING FORWARD In order to avoid the pitfall of becoming a laggard, M&M will take an aggressive approach in identifying core and noncore businesses. The company will move the core applications to the ‘Private cloud’ infrastructure set-up, and enjoy the group synergy benefits with control over critical systems. “The non-core items will move to the public cloud to experience the benefits of reduced cost, flexibility of operations and faster deliveries, all of which are necessary for efficiency and agility of the business,” maintains Mahajan. Mahajan does not rule out the challenges that any move to cloud must entail. The challenges could have aspects of data security, compliance issues and connectivity across all locations including remote areas. Sounding somewhat sceptical about the pervasiveness of cloud, Mahajan says, “We need to delve deep into the facts to ensure that the cloud becomes productive for us.” However, he is convinced about the fact that cloud makes ‘On Demand’ a reality as all benefits of SaaS exists here as well.

chain process etc., drive the decisions for SLAs.

Going forward Almost every established organisation in the market has a captive data centre irrespective of the size. Each organisation has made an investment between Rs 5 crores to Rs 10 crores on its data centre. But this is the time when various managements are trying to cut costs. This is the phase of driv-

ing down the cost and chose the most suitable model. The key expense that Bhavita Saxena finds is when the infrastructure is down. “A clean ROI may not be possible though the entire business of my organization is dependent on the same. If I could quantify that approximately 300 business person days would get lost, plus the opportunity cost, in case of the infrastructure going down for a day.” There is no sequential pattern in

50% reduction in cost is achievable in the outsourced data centre model

70% of the data centres are still in a captive mode (in-house built)

choosing the data centre model. Those who run captive data centres are looking at small portion of cloud. The current trends shows that the drive is towards co-location model, which gives a feeling to many consumers that the assets are still under their control and better managed. One of the IT managers said, “I release the cheque every month on the assets that are located with a third party and for new acquisitions, I have a track of the usage and investment.” As a trend, Makhija sees, SMEs going in for public cloud services citing key benefits of value for money and access to information with focus on business. He finds large enterprises witnessing tangible benefits in using public clouds, but the use of private and hybrid models are common. However, for IT Managers, it’s critcial to understand the right model and the selection criteria through proper business understanding . According to Makhija, public sector organisations and Government departments like armed forces, educational institutions will use a variety of cloud configurations in future.

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COVER STORY | DATA CENTRE MODELS

INTERVIEW

“I would see 5% migration towards outsourced Data Centre model in this year”

unil Gupta, President & COO of Netmagic Solutions, detects the trend where an increasing number of customers are migrating to the shared data centre model, from the conventional captive one. Which are the most preferred data centre models? It is not a question of which model is best, it has more to do with what is best suited for an organization. The do it yourself, conventional or captive model is much in vogue as of now. However, there is a strong opinion amongst the large enterprises that if they don’t outsource their DC to a third party, their time to market will go for a toss. The infliction point for co-location model had arrived way back in 2008, since then we have many die-hard fans of this model. In the years that followed we saw emergence of new outsourcing models such as SaaS, IaaS, PaaS and of course the cloud, which turned out to be a combination of all the features. What are the trends that you see emerging in this space? For historical reasons, about over 70%

of the data centres are still in a captive mode (in-house built). Segments like BFSI, PSUs Government did not go in for co-location or outsourced model, as they continued to repose faith in a data centre maintained in-house. Going by the statistics, around 70% of the market in revenue is still from the captive data centre market. About 30% of the newer markets are made out of co-lo, cloud, SaaS, PaaS, all of which are different flavours of outsourcing. It is possible that there should be migration away from captive data centres; their market revenue could drop to 65%. What factors would drive the adoption of outsourced model for a data centre? Adoption of the outsourced data centre model will be based on the cost saving factors. For instance, banks perceive the trend, and are already working

“Fixed model with a flat fee and elastic plan on cloud will gain momentum”

SUNIL GUPTA,

President & Chief Operating Officer, Netmagic Solutions.

out ways of looking at co-location, and managed services hosting model. One can easily look at 25% saving in the cost over five years in terms of the management cost. The shared manpower model is also being looked at owing to the lowered TCO around this model, which could be in the tune of over 30%. In case of investment too, customers can easily see a 50% reduction in the outsource model for the data centre of any size. Technologies such as virtualisation have encouraged the customers to opt for outsourcing with minimal requirement of hardware maintenance. Q. As a service provider, do you see the adoption of cloud for a DC? Some of the large enterprises are going in for certain flavours of cloud. SMEs have been primarily deploying SaaS. There are two models, a fixed model, which defines the amount of service used - such as storage, or email transactions or the computing capacity. All this has a flat fee attached to it. With the increase in the usage of computing capacity, the fee too increases month on month. The second is the elastic plan, which depends on the hourly usage with no defined configuration.

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DATA CENTRE MODELS | COVER STORY PORTABLE DATA CENTRE

Packaged into One Data centre-in- a-box is emerging as a model and makings its presence felt in the enterprise and mid-market segments The product is not new to the market as many vendors including Sun Microsystems, HP, Dell, APC, and others have started offering data centre-in-a-box (DiB) for quite some time. The economic downturn has led to the popularity of this product, which assures high RoI and a huge cost saving.

Adoption

I MAGING : PRASANTH T R

he IT manager community continues to juggle with the choice of data centre models, while the vendors have been busy pushing the data centre-in-a-box concept into the customer space. If anything, the vendors are seeing good results. The reason for being bullish comes from the industry analysts’ projection that by 2013, about 34% of business groups will have negligible or nil IT assets. In the long run, the cloud is going to be the answer for everyone, but there will be the interim phase during which portable infrastructure becomes critical. Data centre-in-a-box (DiB) is a solution that condenses all the important solutions and services required for running of a data centre in a single unit. This single packaged

offering also has scalability and modularity features. This has been catching the attention of many IT heads who find it useful for executing assignments from remote locations. While the uptake is slow at this point of time, a substantial long term potential is expected. Some estimates say that DiB presents a $5 billion opportunity in the mid-market space.

34% of business groups will have negligible or nil IT assets by 2013

Akash Saxena, Vice President, Offerings Management & Development, Global Technology Services, IBM India & South Asia says the scalular and modular data centre-in-a-box is gaining momentum and the demand for 5000 square feet DiB is on the rise. As part of its Project Big Green initiative, the vendor launched a “shrink-wrapped” modular data centre that can be standardised for facilities ranging from 5,000 to 20,000 square feet forms. Saxena finds PSUs, defence, manufacturing and telcos showing good interest in such solutions for meeting their remote location needs. Manish Shah, GM-IT, Indus Fila, finds that organisations also prefer DiB as an alternate resource. “Earlier, organisations used to procure a server, software, storage and backup separately, as and when needed. Now, they would rather go for a packaged solution that encompasses all the components and also offers the cost benefits,” says Shah. From an adoption stand point, Shah admits, “If I am sizing my data centre for the first time to consolidate or replace some of my traditional data centre components, I would prefer to go for a DiB.”

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COVER STORY | DATA CENTRE MODELS Saji Thoppil, General Manager Enterprise Cloud Computing, Wipro Ltd., finds that there is a new trend in favour of data centres. “We have done significant work on this and the option can give you benefits of both the worlds, it can give an organization the network proximity and also reduce the expertise required to set-up and operate,” says Thoppil. According to him, there were initial concerns about the usage, but now cloud operators are showing tremendous interest in driving this concept. K T Rajan, Director-Operations-IS & projects, Allergan India, finds the trend catching up amongst the large enterprises, which have multiple project sites and DR prone areas. “For me, DiB combined with windows and other technologies, such as virtualisation and wireless access, will be an ideal tool and mobile data centres are being used in the war zones as well,” remarks Rajan.

DATA CENTRE: IN-HOUSE

IT Heads Held Captive In-house model continues to represent largest chunk of the DC market

IT managers see that customers are often pushed to use the components that are bundled in. It may also lead to a vendor(s) lock in, as these are optimised to use the bundled components. Also, an organisation may end up buying certain tools, utilities or components that they don’t need. They might label it at a lower cost, since it can be unbundled. Benefits from such systems include faster deployment, lesser management hassles and integration of the components. You also get the benefit of having all in one solution with considerable cost savings because of the bundling, etc. The investments for DiB are expected to be in the tune Rs 10 lakhs to Rs 50 lakhs depending upon the configuration. Ajay Dhir, CIO, Lanco Infratech Ltd., opines that DiB, which was launched about five years back was ahead of its time, but it is suitable now for the midsize companies that use such systems in the remote plant locations and for localized DR needs. This could be the future DC model; an ideal choice for companies that intend to set up an internal cloud.

s the data centre services market continues to expand, newer models and solutions automatically come up, and this has the effect of making it difficult for the IT manager fraternity to make a right choice. In fact, the in-house model continues to represent the largest chunk of the data centre market. Analysts at IDC India have projected that the captive data centre services market in the country will touch $1.6 billion in 2011, and this represents a considerable upside from $1.17 billion in 2009. It is said that the captive data centres grow at an average of 1.6x the IT market. IT Next’s study finds most customers continue to retain their traditional data centre model, while

trying out newer options with non-core applications on hybrid hosted, colo or cloud, with flavours of SasS, Paas and IaaS. Many research groups have indicated that 85% of the large enterprises were operating captive data centres in 2010. The BFSI sector leads in the captive data centre space and this trend is expected to further intensify in times to come. The surveys have also revealed that 70% of the market and customers segments have gone in for captive data centre, while the remaining 30% is shared between hosted, co-lo, cloud etc. According to Sunil Gupta, President & Chief Operating Officer, Netmagic Solutions, the data centre service provider sees 75% of the data centre market revenues coming from the captive ones and in this year finds just 5% of this share being taken away by the other models, with captive continuing to dominate the market.

I MAGING : ANIL T

Challenges & benefits

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DATA CENTRE MODELS | COVER STORY As a trend Gupta finds that the captive data centres are prevalent in the dimension of 10,000 square feet on an average. Also, out of the 900 customers that Netmagic has, over 70 to 80% still prefer captive data centre with a 5% adoption to the various other models.

PHOTO GRA PH Y: RADHAKRISHNA

Why Captive The reason for the captive to prevail and its continued existence is that most have been set up about 5 to 6 years back and several up-gradations have been made. The strong perception of the IT managers and the management that in-house DC is more secure, well controlled and managed is hard to remove. While the over heads certainly get higher, there is sense of satisfaction that is noticed amongst the IT heads who manage the data centre well and feel part of it. IT heads are possessive about the critical business applications and would not like to give away these applications to any third party and that is why they might prefer to have them all stationed in-house. The Adhunik Group, an Rs 15,000 crore company, has a traditional data centre with multiple business critical applications running. Sanjeev Kumar, Group CIO, Adhunik Group of Industries has worked out a dual model. “Many vendors are approaching me to completely outsource my data centre to them, but it would take a while before I decide on this issue. As far as I can see, over 70% of the organisations, which continue to operate a captive system are under this dilemma.” Kumar maintains, “While I have outsourced workflow, email and collaboration related applications to Microsoft as part of the SaaS model, I am hesitant to part away with ERP applications, which reside in my in-campus data centre.” The automotive manufacturing enterprise Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd., is having its captive data centre for over a decade now. According to Vijay S Mahajan, Sr. GM-IT Infrastructure & IS, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd., the data centre was set up keeping in view the long-term business growth of all the group companies.

“Organisations look for a packaged solution that encompasses all the components and offers the cost benefits” MANISH SHAH, GM-IT, Indus Fila

“With a full fledged facility in place, it made sense to have the peripheral systems also housed in the data centre, to drive cost optimisation and ensure smooth integration with the core ERP systems,” maintains Mahajan. The two prime considerations for Mahajan were to address the growing connectivity cost, while saving from the outlays on maintenance by outsourcing to the third party, which was capable of taking care of all the assets from one single location.

85%

of the large enterprises were operating captive data centres in 2010

The textile manufacturing Indusfila Group has its own data centre, which is managed by an in-house team. Indusfila’s GM-IT, Manish Shah informs, “The reason for having our own data centre is that it just grew on us, as the requirements kept growing we added more resources and it did not make sense to disturb what was working fine, and change the entire data centre.” Though captive data centres are investment intensive, the IT heads allocate budget to upgrade it continuously to adapt to the changing trends. Shah estimates that about 30% of the total investment will go towards infrastructure and 20% on its upkeep and the rest will be invested on human resources to design and deploy the same. The strong factor which influences the IT heads to retain the captive data centre is to have commitment from the dedicated team. “ A failure from a service provider could attract legal action at the most, but not many of us have the patience and wherewithal to go for legal action, given the current status of the Indian legal system,” remarks Shah. The RoI in a captive model will depend upon the criticality of the IT infrastructure to the organisation. For the typical brick and mortar manufacturing companies, RoI could be as long as five years.

Challenges A lot of planning and research goes into building a data centre with regard to availability, manageability, security, accessibility etc. According to the experts, all this is generally benchmarked, since the process is entirely capex driven. Saji Thoppil, GM-Enterprise cloud computing, Wipro Ltd., opines, “Setting up an in-house future proof data centre involves lot of research that will consume optimal resources for its operations. This is where things go wrong as it has been extremely difficult to predict the trend.” Bhavita Saxena, DGM-ISBS, RFCL Ltd. who has an in-house data centre at investment of Rs 5 crores, finds managing the entire services, manning

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COVER STORY | DATA CENTRE MODELS the centre, ensuring uptime, DR etc., to be a big hassle.

Way Forward Despite the challenges thrown up by the conventional data centre model, where increasing overheads give sleepless nights to the IT heads, such systems are here to stay for quite sometime. Not only that, since the business maturity is also need to be evolved, it’s critical for the IT managers to take the investment decision wisely to make sure things are lined up as they were planned. Sanjay Lulla -Director, Global Services – EMC India and SAARC, sees some transitions happening. “We see customers asking to convert their existing data centres into a virtualised

Strong perception of the IT heads and the management that in-house DC is secure and well controlled is hard to remove environment. They want to re- size the set up based on the adaptability, utilization and manageability factors, so that they can lower the cost of operation. Proper provisioning effort is helping them save almost 35% of the data centre maintenance cost,” says Lulla.

Jyotish Ghosh, Senior Vice-president, Connectivity and Network Services, Sify Technologies, is of the view that ratio between the captive and cloud data centre options will be 10:2. “There is good demand from the customers to seek service providers to build an in-house data centre for them. We recently bagged five contracts from the government to build their data centres,” informs Ghosh. Ajay Dhir, CIO, Lanco Infratech Ltd., had a captive 5000 square feet data centre set up three years ago at an investment of Rs 8 crores. He does not consider this to be a major overhead, as maturity of the model continues to evolve and part of the investment gets traded-off.

DC ON CLOUD

Data Centre will Ascend to Cloud

he buzzword ‘cloud’ is making a big splash in IT market place and it is set to have a discernible effect on the data centre segment. However, there is some amount of scepticism about the extent to which the data centre line of business could be influenced by the cloud. Though the word excites the IT managers, they are conservative about moving everything to cloud given that over 70 to 80% of the customers continue to own an in-house data centre. The market sounds positive and so are the growth numbers; Gartner forecasts indicate that worldwide revenues from cloud could surpass $148 billion by 2014. Vendors and service providers have been putting their best foot forward in wooing the IT managers to deploy cloud services. Some of them have

IMAG ING: ANIL T

The vendors are driving the point that cloud will call for just one-tenth of a typical data centre budget

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DATA CENTRE MODELS | COVER STORY been successful in selling the other flavours of outsourcing model - such as SaaS (software-as- a -service), PaaS (platform-as- a-service) and IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a service), with cloud being the final destination.

Factors driving DC to cloud

PHOTOGRAPHY: MAD ISHE TT Y MANASA

There are several factors, which will make the cloud or its other flavours such as SaaS, PaaS and IaaS most sought after by the customers. The fear of data centre running out of space, power or cooling will be one of the factors, which will pull IT managers towards deployment of cloud based service model. GB Ravichandra, Head-enterprise, APJ, APC Schneider Electric expects 50% of the customers deploying cloud services in some form. According to him, telecom segment is the major prospect for this model. With cloud assuring a 30% saving on power and infrastructure, customers must look at it in a big way. Increased efficiency at reduced loads is also a feature of cloud that is drawing customer attention. Akash Saxena, Vice President, Offerings Management & Development, Global Technology Services, IBM India & South Asia, opines that while the customers are using the pay per use model for some applications, from a pure cloud standpoint, it is still in the test and development stage in terms of adoption, as many continue to explore and investigate. The vendors are driving the point that cloud will call for just one-tenth of a typical data centre budget. So the final price is going to be a fraction of what it costs to run an in-house data centre.

70% ISVs are expected to have made their applications cloud ready by 2012

“Our US based partner is setting up new data centre and cloud option is being evaluated. To begin with mailing solution has been finalised” BHAVITA SAXENA, DGM-ISBS, RFCL Ltd.

Bhavita Saxena, DGM-ISBS, RFCL Ltd., is working out a cloud model for her company. “Our US based partner is setting up new data centre and cloud option is being evaluated. To begin with mailing solution has been finalised on the cloud.” “I see cloud benefiting the small to midsize company and for non-IT company such as ours, it makes sense as it provides flexibility to scale up and down based on the needs,” informs Saxena. K T Rajan, Director-operations & IS/ Projects, Allergan India has partnered with a local cloud service provider and moved some peripheral applications such mailing system, intranet portal on cloud. “This is an opex model, a service we pay as we use,” says Rajan. Manish Shah, GM-IT, Indusfila Ltd., observes that SaaS is gaining popularity with the IT managers in the SME segment. This model allows the IT manager to explore and identify the suitability of the application to the organisation in a progressive form, without many licensing hassles. Applications such as email, EDI, CRM and certain Line of business applications are gaining popularity.

Are you game for cloud? Saji Thoppil, GM-Enterprise Cloud Computing, Wipro Ltd., points out that cloud has a wider spectrum of services making inroads into the Indian market. Howver, Thoppil confirms that it will take a while before large organisations can become fully convinced about the efficacy of the cloud. Sanjay Lulla, Director-global Services, EMC India & SAARC, finds the IT managers’ biggest concern in case of the off-premise model, be it SaaS, cloud, hosted etc., is security. Th e technology provider needs to help them realise maximum efficiency and cost savings. Lulla opines that internal IT applications are a more likely candidates for moving up in the cloud. According to Lulla, by 2012 more than 70 % ISVs would have made their applications cloud ready. They might sell it only as SaaS and there is a clear need for infrastructure providers to align with this change.

Most customers believe that organisations are getting cloud ready, as the demand for computing power and storage continues to grow. Surajit Sen, Director-marketing, Netapp India currently finds 5% adoption for the cloud. “Senior IT managers and CIOs will soon find it compelling to move their core applications to cloud as I see currently 15% of the core applications running on cloud and 80% of applications to be business related,” maintains Sen. RFCL’s Saxena recommends three aspects, which need to be considered to make cloud popular. They include, simplification, so that there is complete clarity on which is the best model to take a plunge; data security through a firm NDA in place; clear RoI to attract captive owners to move to cloud. Shah expects IT to be available on demand, with low to zero expenses.

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5/27/2011 10:03:03 PM

COVER STORY | DATA CENTRE MODELS CO-LOCATION DC

Hosted Model Charms IT Heads

Most industry verticals have gone into this co-lo model so that they can avoid the rigmarole of maintaining their servers. Network Services, Sify Technologies.In this model, a third party manages the infrastructure and there is a three-year agreement. We also have two variants, which consist of the partial outsourcing and completely hosted model.

he hosted model is another flavour of the outsourced model in the data centre segment, which continues to grow and is clearly headed towards a promising future. Existing trends indicate that the world is moving towards hosted data centre model. This is where IT managers envisage great value. The hosted model refers to the situation where the third party hosting service provider performs the administrative tasks related to management of the customer’s assets stored within the data centre. The ownership of the actual system resides with the customer. The customer data centre is hosted in a reliable facility with redundancy built in it.

“The migration from captive to hosted or co-location data centre model is happening at a fast pace and the largest data centres continue to rely on this model,” observes Jyotish Ghosh, Senior Vice-president, Connectivity and

50% cost reduction is achievable in a shared model compared to the captive data centre

Hosted data centre model, also known as co-location model, is quite popular. Almost 50% of the customers have opted for this kind of model. The uptake is high as the IT managers intend to part with their infrastructure to be run by the third party. Most industry verticals have gone into this co-lo model so that they can avoid the rigmarole of maintaining their servers and the associated components. Vijay S Mahajan, Sr. GM-Infrastructure and IS, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd., finds the hosted model to be the ideal, as it converts capex to opex. It is also conducive for ensuring that the TCO is reduced. Mahajan says, “One can subscribe to the rack hosting model here where you pay per rack cost. This rack is of a prescribed KVA and the cost also includes the electricity and bandwidth cost for set parameters.” This model will work out better for the IT heads, as Jyotish confirms that the investment of rack per year would be Rs 6 lakhs with 3KV power plan. According to Saji Thoppil, GM-Enterprise cloud computing, Wipro Ltd., organizations often go for the hosted or the rented model when all the benchmarked parameters are met. But they are not ready for an upfront investment, as they feel that maintaining a data centre is not in the

IMAG ING: SHIG IL N

What’s the take?

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5/27/2011 10:03:24 PM

DATA CENTRE MODELS | COVER STORY

“DiB, which was launched about five years back was ahead of its time, but it is suitable now for the midsize companies.” AJAY DHIR, Chief Information Officer, Lanco Infratech Ltd.

applications. The IT heads have been working out modalities around hosted model, which will drive down the cost. For instance, K T Rajan, DirectorOperations-IS & Projects, Allergan India preferred to host his servers with a third party service provider, Pacific Net, which has been tasked to manage the entire infrastructure. With the servers being virtualised, Rajan sees further drop in operational costs.

Cost factor IT heads are filled with the assurance that the investment is protected in this model where one can witness scalable architecture. There is no fear of technological obsolescence as regular upgrades, as well as the scale-up and scale-down factors are taken care of. Some measure of caution is required before zeroing on this model as Wipro’s Thoppil says, “If not carefully decided, organizations often realize the flexibility of scaling up and down may be limited and the network bandwidth and operational factors might also have limitations.” Manish Shah, GM-IT, Indusfila Ltd., says, “Since the data centre is hosted off premise, ensuring all time connectivity is difficult. For organizations where downtime costs are high, multiple connections and corresponding CPEs call for additional costs. The bandwidth requirements and hence its associated cost, also go up.” While the companies witness almost 75% saving on hosting related cost, choosing the right partner is critical. Netapp’s Director-Marketing, Surajit Sen, finds large industry verticals such as banking, insurance, manufacturing to be experimenting with this model in a big way. “To mention a few, companies like L&T, and banks like Kotak, SBI, ICICI, IDBI etc., have opted for a hosted model with some assets being maintained by the third party. Yahoo, Rediff, Reliance and few other companies have been playing major role in hosting data centres for their customers, as the economies of scale work out well for such organisations. Not only that this also provides them the opportunity to focus on their core

“Many vendors are approaching me to outsource my data centre to them, but it would take a while before I decide on this .” SANJEEV KUMAR, Group CIO, Adhunik Group of Industries

operations without loosing sleep over non-core areas. According to Sunil Gupta, President & COO, Netmagic Solutions, this shared model is gaining momentum, as there is almost 50% cost reduction when compared to the captive data centre investment. ‘For instance, a standard tier III data centre which costs between Rs 50,000 to Rs 70,000 per square feet, in the hosted model it would work out around Rs 35,000 per square feet with redundancy, zero downtime, power, UPS, rack, and physical security component built in,” says Gupta. Another reason for the IT heads to go in for this model is that the technology used in the hybrid-hosted architecture is very straight-forward and uses industry-standard protocols and encryption techniques to maintain ultimate security of all the information that flows through the system.

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PHOTOGRAPHY: DRISH TI

area of their core competency. Organizations, which are spread across various locations, can consider this model, which allows each location to get connected to the hosting service provider. This leads to better interactivity as compared to what we have in an in-house data centre. According to G B Ravichandra, Head-Enterprise-APJ, APC Schneider, customers are seeing increasing advantages in this model as the investment of manpower is negligible and the IT refresh comes automatically every six months. Sanjeev Kumar, Group CIO, Adhunik Group, is betting on hosted data centre model and has partnered with Microsoft. In this case Microsoft will provide hosting services and drive some

5/27/2011 10:03:53 PM

INSIGHT | CLOUD COMPUTING

Cloud Service Negotiations:

BY J O N AT H A N S H AW

Cloud services assure major cost benefits to customers. Here is what and how you negotiate to fetch better returns....

ESSENTIAL FACTORS 26

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4 3 1 5 2 CLOUD COMPUTING | INSIGHT

loud services offer a very credible alternative to traditional IT delivery models, and enterprise uptake is growing dramatically. Benefits can include reduced total cost of ownership, high scalability, rapid solution delivery and simplified management. Conversely, entrusting critical technology components to a third party reduces control and introduces risks that need to be managed. Experience with outsourcing has led to recognized contractual approaches for mitigating risks and maximizing the benefits of third-party delivery. However, service delivery via a shared cloud platform introduces negotiating and contracting nuances, so CIOs should consider these five points:

1. Confirm that terms are negotiable:

While negotiable terms might seem obvious, many large cloud providers— including Google, Microsoft and Amazon—generally preclude changes to their form agreements, arguing that custom terms erode the shared delivery model and value proposition. This doesn’t mean the enterprise shouldn’t utilize the service under a form agreement, but it must understand the associated risks. If service terms are flexible, you’ll want to ensure that these terms supersede any standard or “click-through” agreement and that the agreement cannot be updated unilaterally. If this provision isn’t achieved, your company should seek a right to terminate without liability for materially adverse changes.

2. Ensure that the pricing structure supports cloud benefits:

Cloud services can enable rapid scalability, improved asset utilization, and reduced overall cost, but contract structures may constrain the realization of these benefits. For example, SaaS providers may include minimum seat commitments, or IaaS providers may require instances to be active for a minimum duration.

It’s up to you to ensure that the contract does not limit the enterprise’s ability to control costs under anticipated use patterns. This is in addition to customary software negotiation practices, such as obtaining tiered volume, term discounts, role-based license differentiation and constraining future price changes.

3. Develop SLAs that reflect user experience:

As with any IT service, cloud SLAs should reflect the full service scope. For example, as the cloud provider will be responsible for its Internet connection and infrastructure, availability should not be measured from a monitoring server inside the data center. Candidate SLAs may also include user interface and query performance, timely completion of critical batch jobs and incident response and resolution times. The goal is to develop a limited portfolio of metrics that ensures that a substandard user experience cannot occur without SLA contravention. For each metric, you should eliminate broad exclusions (for example, excluding outages due to “emergency” maintenance, with “emergency” being undefined). Besides, credit failures, enterprise should focus on having robust root-cause analysis and problem remediation.

For transition-in, you should ensure that provider activities are clearly identified and negotiate SLAs for implementation, configuration and data load.

4. Address operational implications of the shared platform:

Your enterprise should assess the implications of service delivery via a shared platform and proactively address potential operational issues. For example, your contract should ensure that your organization will have acceptable timing for maintenance windows and will receive sufficient notice for serviceaffecting activities. Procedures for managing releases should meet enterprise requirements, with the enterprise being able to remain on the prior version until its own release and testing procedures are completed. Functionality loss (or repackaging as an incre-mental feature) in a release should be contemplated, with mitigations including minimum notice periods, the ability to remain indefinitely on a prior version and termination without liability for materially adverse changes.

5.Focus on transition-in and transition-out:

Deployment and expiration/termination also require careful attention. For transition-in, you should ensure that provider activities are clearly identified and negotiate SLAs for imple-mentation, configuration and data load. If separate professional services for deployment are provided, a cross-default right between deployment and the core cloud services should be obtained. On transition-out, the provider must support migration, including data and schema exporting in an agreedupon format. Periodic data archiving requirements to mitigate operational or contractual issues that jeopardize orderly transition should also be considered. Contracts, no matter how good, will take your enterprise only so far. The best protection is a confirmed ability to easily transition to another provider or solution. CIOs should remember that an uncertain transition position severely compromises the enterprise’s options and leverage in the negotiating process. Dr. Jonathan Shaw is a principal at Pace Harmon, an outsourcing advisory services firm in the US.

J U N E 2 0 1 1 | ITNEXT

INSIGHT | REVIEW

Windows Phone 7

Plays the Long Game Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 has experienced some growing pains in its first few months, but the company continues pushing the platform as a viable one.

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BY N I C H O L AS KO L A KOW S K I

indows Phone 7 represents Microsoft’s next best hope for carving some smartphone market share away from the likes of not only Google Android and the Apple iPhone, but also Research In Motion’s BlackBerry franchise and the Palm devices resurrected under the Hewlett-Packard brand. By some analyst estimates, Microsoft has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into its Windows Phone 7 development and marketing efforts. It recently signed a deal with Nokia that will see the software ported onto the latter’s smartphones—an agreement both companies hope will boost their respective market shares in the long battle against their mutual rivals.

REVIEW | INSIGHT It lets you play games with Xbox live when you are bored with usual stuff

Live titles feature enable you quickly see everything you really care about

One button to bing and get yourself what you are looking for

Microsoft made sure to sign a number of carriers and manufacturing partners to its initial smartphone rollout. It also imposed strict hardware requirements for the devices themselves to ensure a consistent user experience. Despite those efforts, Windows Phone 7 is still experiencing big troupleshoots. It started when a February software update, designed to help with future updates, stalled a small number of users’ smartphones and sparked two days’ worth of drama on Microsoft’s online help forums. In the wake of that mini-incident, Microsoft seemed to take a more cautious note with “NoDo,” its March update. “After careful consultation with the team and our many partners, we have decided to briefly hold the March update in order to ensure the update process meets our standards and those of our customers,” a Microsoft spokesperson wrote in a March 10 email to eWEEK. “As a result, we will plan to begin delivering the update in the latter half of March.”

The “NoDo” update brings in number of things to the proverbial table, including faster app loading and the addition of a cut-and-paste feature. However, for many users, the last week of March ticked by without an update—sparking another round of online protests. Microsoft responded with a pair of

Microsoft made sure to sign up number of carriers and manufacturing partners to its initial smartphone rollout for consistency

Indulge yourself with Apps, games and music superstore. Anytime and anywhere

charts detailing the update status for devices both in the United States and around the world. The chart broke the update path into three categories: Testing: The update is undergoing network and quality tests. Scheduling: Microsoft is scheduling the update for delivery—a process the charts suggest will take “10 days or less.” Delivering: The smartphone could receive the update within the next “several weeks.”

Public frustration Although the substantial majority of Windows Phone 7 devices had reached the delivering stage by early April, some initial slowness for users in the United States—by March 27, no device had reached the “delivering” stage for either the March or February updates—led to another micro-burst of public frustration, this time in the comments section of the Microsoft-owned Channel 9 Website.

J U N E 2 0 1 1 | ITNEXT

INSIGHT | REVIEW Get news and views updates live wherever you go

Your Music and Videos hub for movies, TV, shows and music

Sort, Scan and manage your work with E-Mail featuring outlook mobile

“We know the table would benefit greatly from more detail, and we are hoping to add more to it by working with the operators who own the ‘testing’ phase to get more clarity,” Joe Belfiore, Microsoft’s corporate Vice President and Director of Windows Phone programme management said recently. And therein lies a potential rub: By ceding the “testing” phase of the update process to the “operators”—Microsoft’s carrier partners—the company surrenders control over the upgrade timetable to outside entities whose strategic alliances and concerns may not wholly align with those of Redmond. Those entanglements aside, the minor speed bumps with the first two updates will likely pressure Microsoft to ensure that the software tweaks scheduled for the next few months, including multitasking and a Twitter feature, proceed on schedule. In the meantime, Microsoft seems intent on plowing through the early, more awkward stages of Windows Phone 7’s lifestyle. Microsoft executives

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will likely use onstage to illustrate that viability: Windows Phone Developer Tools being downloaded some 1.5 million times, the Windows Phone developer community boasting 36,000 members, and the Windows Phone 7 ecosystem containing around 11,500 apps. “We recognize the importance of getting great apps on our platform and not artificially inflating the number of

Microsoft is intent on plowing through the early, more awkward stages of windows phone seven lifestyle

The phone with office mobile built in for working on the go lets you complete tasks even when you are not at your desktop

actual apps available to [customers] by listing ‘wallpapers’ as a category—or perhaps allowing competitors’ apps to run on the platform to increase tonnage,” Brandon Watson, Microsoft’s director of developer experience for Windows Phone 7, wrote in the posting. Nonetheless, it remains unclear whether consumers are gravitating toward the Windows Phone 7 platform. New numbers from analytics firm comScore suggest that Microsoft’s share of the smartphone market dipped to 7.7 percent for the three months ending in February, down from 9 percent in November 2010, when the first Windows Phone 7 devices hit store shelves in the United States. In order to change that picture, Microsoft is betting on partnerships with companies like Nokia, a broad array of devices on multiple carriers and quality apps from third-party developers. As emphasized repeatedly by both Microsoft executives and outside analysts, there is a very long game ahead.

INSIGHT | STRATEGY

e h T dy

u o l C keting

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ket a r a m y to a w ing? t v l s o e v b e is the ptive and ow how. t a h W disru d on to kn s i H t a h REIC a t T e y S R E g O nolo KEN BY

PHOTO GRAPHY: JAYAN K NARAYANAN

tech

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STRATEGY | INSIGHT

f all the marketing initiatives, marketing “The Cloud” has all the makings of a real challenge: The concept is new, the technology is disruptive, buyers are skeptical, hype abounds, and the terminology (just what is “cloud”?) is murky. So, when recently asked how do I “market the cloud” this Blog idea arose. For me, marketing is far more than making “buzz” in the market. It’s about matching seller and buyer: First, ensuring that the seller’s product specifically targets one or more needs in the market (and adjusting as-needed), and second, ensuring that the buyers understand the product and its fit-fortheir-purpose (and adjusting the buyer segments as-needed). So, with nascent concept, confused buyers, and evolving definitions, I turn

agility? keeping-up-with-the-Jones’? New business enablement? You have to first ask the business need question, not try to force-feed a solution. Usually the cloud model is compelling on nearly all levels - but the customer first needs to understand - and want to pursue - the opportunity. Good marketers ensure customers self-select into the solution, even if it’s an extremely broad one. Also, an exercise I sometimes pursue is to avoid using the term “cloud” altogether during this phase. Instead, I focus on the attributes of cloud computing, and wait to hear whether they resonate with the customer’s needs. Sometimes they might not. Get clear on definitions - and use lots of adjectives: The next question to ask is: What cloud? Too often marketers of the cloud model don’t modify the noun Cloud with an adjective like Private/

sk A o t s n o i t s Que

PHOTO GRAPHY: PHOTOS .CO M

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How does the cloud provider isolate a company’s data from that of other customers? Who has access to the data, and what controls are placed over them? How are servers in the cloud protected from exposure to the internet? Does the cloud provider comply with external audits and meet security certifications? Will the cloud provider cooperate to investigate possible malfeasance? What happens to the data if the relationship ends?

to basics of new product introduction: (a) understanding customer problems/ opportunities, (b) clearly defining the product/solution, (c) addressing objections, (d) helping customers through the adoption cycle. Focus on specific issues the cloud addresses, not the Cloud itself: Before I recommend “cloud” as a solution, I ask myself what problems will customers really try to solve? They’ve heard “cloud” and it likely interested them, but for what reason? Getting to the need point is critical: It is cost?

internal, Public, Hybrid, etc. causing even more confusion. It’s alphabet soup. Many buyers usually start by thinking the only cloud is the public cloud. Once buyers are clear about the operational cloud model you’re both talking about, you can have a more meaningful marketing action. Know your buyer’s technology maturity, and technology appetite: Different markets, segments and customers will have different technology appetites and be at different technology maturity states. So, as much

as vendors want buyers to take a big step and buy all-new stuff, there has to be a spectrum of offerings to fit buyers at different stages of the maturity curve. (See “It’s A Journey”, below...) Be pragmatic - identify resistance areas and objections: I say pragmatic, because everyone has their own list of objections and concerns. They might be trust/ security/governance issues; economic models to justify the investment; the risk of moving to new operational models; dealing with change management (a change in IT will necessarily impact changes in related orgs); the list goes on. Make sure you’ve listened carefully to all objections, and thought-through responses. I’ve unfortunately seen wonderful products fail - not because they don’t work, but because when it comes to implementation, all of the pot holes and speed bumps haven’t been identified and addressed. Be pragmatic - it’s a Journey: Few buyer segments adopt all-new models - especially cloud - in their entirety on day-1. So marketers need to be prescriptive about where to start, what to do when, and how to help buyers with a roadmap that accelerates them down the path. Most cloud buyers (with the exceptions of folks like service providers) make incremental changes to infrastructure – so marketers have to help recommend the incremental changes (and products/services) they’ll need in the coming years. Educate: Finally, I believe a rising tide lifts all boats. The more the market is educated about cloud computing models - and how to get there - the faster the market will mature. It’s our job to help provide education tools, models and success stories. And to draw distinctions between here-and-now vs. futures vs. vision. The opportunity we have with cloud is also a danger: There is an inordinate amount of hype in the space. So, as we move down the hype cycle, we need to get pragmatic about the value the cloud model offers, the journey customer takes to implement, and the opportunities it creates.

J U N E 2 0 1 1 | ITNEXT

INSIGHT | VIRTUALISATION

VDI Falls Short of Expectation

VDI is drawing greater attention from the customers who have set high expectations on the technology and its performance BY C H R I S P R E I M ES B ERGER

ITNEXT | J U N E 2 0 1 1

VIRTUALISATION | INSIGHT

IL LUSTRATIO N: ANIL T

ry not to roll your eyes at this statement: Virtual desktops for enterprises large and small are now a ready-forprime-time alternative to conventional client/server networks. Yes, you undoubtedly have heard that one before—about every year since 1998, or perhaps even earlier than that. However, thanks to widespread broadband availability, vastly improved networking hardware and software from competing vendors, and the fact that many C-level executives frankly are fed up with upward-spiraling licensing fees, VDIs (virtual desktop infrastructures) in several forms are getting closer looks from more potential users than ever. The idea of deploying processorless terminals connected to a central enterprise computer system goes way back to the dawn of digital IT. The benefits of a virtual desktop system have long been apparent: faster deployment and disconnection of employee desktops as needed, lower licensing costs, less complexity, automatic software updates and security patches, easier and more efficient policy enforcement, and so on. All of these features are gold for most enterprises. Although VDI often can require a nontrivial up-front investment in hardware, software and training, the prices are dropping. Also, the inherent problems that shackled VDI for a long time—latency and security issues— are being solved by improvements as each new generation system becomes available. VDI deployments still have limitations involving the number of users and geographic locations of clients. However, with market demand

Key Virtualisation Security Issues

Oversight. One of the grey areas that virtualization has created is that of server oversight. Who’s ultimately responsible for virtual servers is sometimes up in the air. While physical servers are, as a matter of course, under the direct purview of the data center, it’s not as straightforward for virtual servers. Whether it’s the business unit that uses the server, the closest IT manager to the actual physical server, or a central system admin, someone needs to have clear authority to act and take the responsibility of managing the virtual server.

Maintenance. Flowing out of that oversight confusion is the issue of upkeep and patching. Virtual servers tend to be launched and then their image tucked away, and it may or may not be recreated when patches or configuration changes take place. Taking regular snapshots of a virtual server to keep track of the patches and antivirus reduces risk.

Visibility. One of the risks involved in having significant virtualization is that those network controls that used to segment specific applications off due to reasons of compliance and security often aren’t virtualized.

Source: http://www.sys-con.com

on the rise, it’s a given fact that there is more innovation to come that will solve these issues. A subsector of VDI that is earning the most attention at this time is clientside VDI. It differs from server-based VDI in that each actual client, as well as the server, holds a VDI agent: either a hypervisor-like one or a simpler connector to the server. A big advantage to this is that when an Internet connection is cut off, it doesn’t affect a file in process, as it would with a standard VDI deployment. The user can keep working on the file on the client as usual, and when the connection is restored, the client and server automatically sync up both versions to provide the most recent version of the file.

Kaviza/Citrix Xen Desktop Kaviza, with its VDI-in-a-Box product, was one of the first to provide VDI support for

The benefits from virtual desktop include faster deployment and lower licensing cost, less complexity, automatic software upgrades.

iPads, iPhones and Android smartphones running on a data center hypervisor— Citrix Xen or VMware ESX 4.1. Now, it has a new remote-client version, Kaviza Remote, coming out this month. Citrix XenDesktop is providing the virtual desktop connector, and Kaviza the distribution method. Kaviza VDI-in-a-Box is a plugand-play virtual desktop system that basically anyone can get started to run for a small or midsize business. When Kaviza is running, the virtual desktop runs in its own browsertype window with all the application functionality needed. Little or no latency is apparent, and users can continue to use their local applications as they normally do. With the new client-side version, automatic sync-up will be available if the connectivity is cut off. “One of the biggest differentiators for Kaviza is that we can do all this for about one-third the cost of most of the others, because we plug right into inexpensive servers and you can use any type of existing device as the client,” Krishna Subramanian, Kaviza’s chief operating officer, told eWEEK. Kaviza and Citrix are striving to keep all VDI deployments under $500 per seat.

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INSIGHT | VIRTUALISATION MokaFive MokaFive, which has been trying to put the VDI pieces together at the right time and right place for six years, may finally be at the correct convergence coordinates. “We take the simple idea of ‘How do we allow the end user to use any device he or she wants, and at the same time protect the whole corporation—with no changes, no adds or anything?’” CEO Dale Fuller told eWEEK. The client-side MokaFive v3.0 “lets me, as a corporation, have my entire container of my image safe and secure, controlled by me, from the cloud. However, my users get to execute it locally. “And they get to run it on a Mac, if they want to. Or a Windows machine or a Linux machine. That becomes the interesting thing,” Fuller adds. This is especially gratifying for Fuller, who put in two tenures of employment at Apple and managed its PowerBook PC division for the enterprise at one point. Now Fuller has a product that can go a long way toward getting the Mac OS into the enterprise, albeit by a back door—desktop virtualization. MokaFive is now available for iPads and iPhones, and the Android version isn’t far behind. The company’s MyLivePC can run Windows on iPads (Flash supporters reading this are probably celebrating) and Mac OS on Windows.

Virtual Computer Virtual Computer calls its clientside hypervisor Distributed Desktop Virtualisation. “We’re working on a deal now with Lenovo that will have our hypervisor running on a whole different class of machine—everything from laptops to desktops,” CEO Dan McCall told eWEEK.

What is Virtualisation? Virtualisation software is a special type of software that allows a business to set up a virtual machine or virtual network in their organization. All your computers can use the same physical resource through a guest operating system, which the virtualisation software creates.

Why Virtualisation? It allows consolidation of servers and increase operational efficiency It conserves energy and turns office or business into a “green” business It’s easier to manage several virtual machines than several real machines You can reduce your backup and recovery time Testing software configurations are more streamlined You can use old software applications that may not be compatible with new operating systems by setting up a virtual machine just for them You can run cross-platform applications easier and more efficiently Source: http://thecloudguytim.wordpress.com

“Taking laptops aside—because that’s a different segment of the market [since they are not ‘tethered’ machines]—there’s actual overlap between the high end of the thin-client line and the low end of the desktop line, with the low end of desktops probably getting more performance than thin clients,” he adds. Virtual computer gives users some choices within deployments, which could include a mix of desktops, laptops and other mobile devices. “We try not to get too religious about how you want to run virtualization,” McCall said. “We allow you to lay down our product, NxTop, at the base layer for all these devices—which are all essentially personal computers. Then you make the choice about whether

Kaviza VDI-in-a-Box is a plug-andplay virtual desktop system that basically anyone can get started to run for a small or midsize business. 36

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you want to run your workload in the data center on VMware ESX or a Citrix XenServer environment, or run your virtual machine locally. That’s really the innovation we’re providing to this market right now,” he adds. Virtual Computer’s NxTop 3.1 RC1 will be available for download April 19.

XenClient Citrix obtained XenClient as a result of its $500 million acquisition of XenSource in 2007. XenClient is a high-performance hypervisor (not open source) that runs directly on the client device hardware. It partitions resources of the virtual machine, enabling multiple operating systems to run side by side in complete isolation. XenClient does not stand alone on the client. It needs to work in tandem with Citrix Receiver and Synchronizer for XenClient in order for the central management to work. XenClient was developed to work with the hardware virtualisation in Intel’s vPro platform, which enables better security and provides direct access to the full graphics capabilities of the device.

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JOSH TSENG | INTERVIEW

“CLOUD FUELS DEPLOYMENT OF WAN” With the advent of cloud, organisations are increasingly looking at how to optimise their WAN infrastructure. In conversation with Varun Aggarwal, Josh Tseng - Technical Director, Riverbed, shares his thoughts on the growth opoortunity in WAN optimisation space.

What are the key trends that you see in WAN optimisation? WAN optimisation is one of the fastest growing markets in IT and Riverbed is a leader in the market. Now it’s a major market projected by IDC and many other analysts, which is growing at a significant rate. The estimated market for WAN optimisation is in tune of over a billion dollars which is going to grow further. This is a technology adopted by many companies, and 80 out of 100 top companies are our customers. There is ample scope to drive major innovations. What kind of innovation can we expect to see in this space? The enterprise environment is very diverse. Every application works in a different way and thus WAN optimisation is incomplete without a tighter integration with these applications. What is key for WAN optimisation is to become more aware at

layer 7 of the TCP/IP protocol. The app level intelligence is the area where there is lot of scope in terms of innovation. Riverbed is ready to invest on developers, deploy more engineers and set up test facilities to make application integration possible.

What are the new developments in the cloud computing space? We have a number of products for the cloud. Currently we are working with Amazon for our Riverbed Cloud Steelhead. The product is purpose-built for public cloud computing environments. We released the product for Amazon and going forward we will target other cloud providers. One of the major challenges with cloud computing is sending and receiving large volumes of data, which puts tremendous pressure on the bandwidth requirements. For this, we’ve come out with Riverbed Whitewater,a deduplication solution for cloud storage. It helps in providing

optimisation and deduplication to minimise data transfer bandwidth and storage capacity needed. The solution is granular made available to the customers . The de-duplication comes with data chunks as small as 100 bytes. As it can recognise byte level repetitive patterns, it enables you to transfer the least amount of data to the cloud, saving both bandwidth as well as cloud storage costs.

How much do you think has cloud computing affected WAN optimisation market? While cloud computing has fueled the growth of WAN optimisation, the reverse holds true as well. For example, our products are considered by many of our customers as a pre-requisite for moving to the cloud. We have customers telling Microsoft, Amazon and Google that they will not move to the cloud unless these companies have Riverbed in their data centre. And this includes several fortune 500 companies. Our leading custom-

J U N E 2 0 1 1 | ITNEXT

INTERVIEW | JOSH TSENG ers are already adopting cloud computing. With more enterprises moving to cloud model, they realise the importance of WAN optimisation which helps them navigate faster.

Amazon’s N. Virginia data centre suffered a cyber attack recently, that resulted in customers losing the data. What kind of impact would this incident have on cloud computing? Amazon has to learn its lessons and build robust internal resource I think cloud is still evolving and a lot needs to be done to build right processes. However, what happened to Amazon could have happened to any private data centre. That was an unfortunate event. Amazon needs to spend time with IT professionals and put in place the right processes,to minimize the risks. They also have to put in place new data centres and improve redundancy for risk management. Risks have to be covered. Such an incident will enable you to learn new lessons. Some enterprises will never go for external data centre because of sensitive data. For eg. banks are least likely to move into (public) cloud. What measures can enterprises take to prevent data loss over cloud? The cloud service provider is responsible for protecting the primary data on the cloud. But as far as secondary data or the backup and archival data is concerned, enterprises need to deploy solutions like Riverbed Whitewater for cloud storage. With least amount of data redundancy, organisations would have higher budgets to have mirror images of their data with different cloud providers. Therefore, even in case of the failure of data center, the

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data is intact with another cloud provider.

“WAN optimisation solutions enable companies to transact faster and drive effiency”

Are SMBs and enterprises both looking at cloud? Adoption of cloud is rampant in the US with technological innovations happening in a big way. Many fortune 500 companies are moving into cloud and testing Riverbed with it. Many of them are also doing pilots. Showing the increased growth in the cloud adoption, analysts say that Amazon’s revenues from cloud would exceed its retail revenues in just a couple of years. What are Riverbed’s focus areas? We would be looking at expanding our layer 7 capabilities, ie. tighter

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

integration with enterprise applications. We are also positioning ourselves as catalysts for those who want to move into cloud. WAN optimisation solutions enable organisations to run business faster and more efficiently, saving time and cutting the cost of IT infrastructure. There is a continued need for WAN optimisation in India and Riverbed is best suited to meet the needs of the enterprises. We are also making sure that we offer most advanced capabilities to our customers. We roll out largest number of software updates compared to our competitors at any given time.

15MINUTE MANAGER

TRAINING EDUCATION WORKPLACE COMPENSATION WORKFORCE TRENDS SKILLS DEVELOPMENT PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT

SONY XPERIA: REVIEW PAGE 44

Cloud Strategy THIS PAGE How to improve your time management skills? PAGE 42 Rules to follow PAGE 45 Training Calendar PAGE 46

BY ROGE R C A M R AS S A N D S U H E L B I DA N

IL LUSTRATIO N: S HI GIL N

sing cloud, you now have the potential to expand your responsibilities into broad shared services and, ultimately, into architecting the entire business structure. To make that happen, you must be proactive in adopting cloud, although timing remains the biggest challenge. To navigate these uncertainties, you will need to adopt a sense-and-respond approach by establishing an incubator model within your IT organisation that senses demand and links to emerging capabilities on the supply side. A number of forces are now converging to accelerate the adoption of external services based in the cloud. For example, there’s the web and the growing adoption of open standards and utility platforms for more practical sharing of resources and facilities. Against this backdrop, as CIO you can take one of two approaches in re-inventing your IT environment. You can manage the whole of shared services (including IT, finance, procurement and HR). Or, you can focus on transforming the business as a whole as a ‘business architect’ or ‘chief optimization officer’ -- helping the CEO fashion streamlined

STRATEGY

CLOUD STRATEGY CIOs who build the right ecosystem will successfully ride this transformative technology. J U N E 2 0 1 1 | ITNEXT

15-MINUTE MANAGER

ITNEXT | J U N E 2 0 1 1

TIPS & TRICKS

HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR TIME MANAGEMENT SKILLS?

WHAT IT TAKES?

Prioritizing what needs to be done is especially important. Without it, you may work very hard, but you won’t be achieving the results you desire because what you are working on is not of strategic importance. Most people have a “todo” list of some sort. The problem with many of these lists is they are just a collection of things that need to get done. rhyme

1. Make Lists: Write down as much as you can. If you don’t carry a planner or notebook, start writing it. Personally, I’ve always preferred a small, simple, white-lined notebook because you aren’t restricted by the various boxes and lines of the average planner. 2. Make Use of Down Time: Using walking, driving, showering, or otherwise “dead” times to plan. Think about what your goals are for that day or the next. Which goals are most important? Prioritization is the key. 3. Reward Yourself: Whenever you accomplish something, especially the important things, make sure to take the time to reward yourself. 4. Concentrate on One Thing: The human mind works more efficiently when it is focused. As we’ve seen before multitasking is actually a disadvantage to productivity. Focus on one thing and get it done. 5. Avoid Procrastination at All Costs: When trying to be more productive and trying to save time, procrastination should be avoided like nothing else. . 6. Set Personal Deadlines: Nobody likes deadlines. They cause stress, aggravation, worry, and, more stress. Be realistic but demanding of yourself.

Focus on your strategy and set your eyes firm on your goal before hitting it hard

7. Delegate Responsibilities: It is not uncommon for people to take on more than they can handle. Source: dumblittleman.com

PHOTO GRAPHY: PHOTOS .CO M

organisations that exploit the tools of digital business and consider their impact on strategy, structure and process. It’s a huge opportunity for the CIO who can grasp it. CIOs are at the heart of the business because you are the gateway for innovation. Initially, cloud will primarily affect your IT organisation; but cloud’s impact will race from infrastructure to software, then envelope an organisation’s business process and its key valuecreating elements. Agility and flexibility are two of the key values of Wipro Consulting’s vision for the 21st Century Virtual Corporation. The adoption of these attributes assumes the externalization of all non-core related activities to utility operators. Cloud provides the perfect platform for such development. Using private/public cloud-based models to provide the majority of business processes, we can imagine a virtual corporation that does little more than develop brand, define product and orchestrate external alliances. Sound familiar? That’s exactly what CocaCola, Dell and Cisco have been doing for years. Cloud providers fall into roughly four groupings: 1. Consumer-based utilities such as Google and Amazon, who, with surplus compute power, are looking for new sources of shareholder value; 2. Traditional IT vendors such as IBM, HP, Microsoft and AT&T; 3. Service integrators, who are going to orchestrate this new environment; and 4. Niche players, who see many new opportunities in areas such as security and service brokerage. In our experience, few companies demonstrate a comprehensive cloud response to internal IT needs even at basic compute, storage and desktop levels. CIOs are concerned about security, technical integration, acceptable service levels and data protection regulation. With the exception of a few well-published success stories, most CIOs merely see cloud as a means of converting CAPEX (associated with fixed IT assets) into

15-MINUTE MANAGER

“Mitigating the risks arising from the human aspect of the people -process technology triangle is vital” Maya Vishwanathan, Chief Manager, CIBIL

“An enterprise must be up-todate with the latest techniques adopted by hackers” — Kamalakar NS, COO, Tangent Solutions

OPEX (pay as you go). Current cloud expenditure remains minimal. We recently surveyed CIOs about their IT expenses on cloud-related services. Only 20 percent reported that they allocated more than 10 percent of their budget to cloud. Almost half have designated less than 2%.* What will change your mind about adopting

cloud? Ramped-up deployment of business initiatives topped the list of drivers in our informal survey. CIOs we surveyed are also intrigued by the conversion of IT capital expenditures to operational expenses. They embrace infinite scalability for storage and computing as well as IT agility. Collaboration ability is seen as an asset,

The challenge confronting IT suppliers and corporate IT customers is how to make a smooth transition into virtual environment

3 MUST HAVE GADGETS THIS SEASON Motorola’s Xoom Tablet: The Motorola Xoom is the tablet most likely to give Apple’s iPad a run for its money. It won’t hit the market until March, but the Xoom will be the first tablet running Google’s Honeycomb operating system -- the forthcoming version of the Android OS that’s made explicitly for tablet-style devices. Samsung 8000 LED TV: It’s hard to get impressed by televisions these days -- until you see Samsung’s 8000 Series LED TV, that is. The screen is stunning, and the bezel around the viewing area has been reduced to almost nothing, just 1.5 inches. It’s like smooth, seamless glass. Celestron SkyProdigy 130: After just receiving my new Orion telescope for Christmas, I was a little depressed when I laid eyes on this new beauty. The Celestron SkyProdigy 130 takes the guesswork out of stargazing by autocalibrating the view finder. Source: Foxnews.com

as are the large-scale benefits achieved by combining cloud with mobility. Most CIOs expect cloud penetration to rise to 40 to 50% within the next five years.** The challenge confronting IT suppliers and corporate IT customers alike is how to make a smooth transition into the new ‘virtual’ environment and prove tangible benefits. We recommend an adaptive approach based on a sense-and-respond philosophy that originated with Stephen Parry in his book Sense and Respond. It includes the creation of business analyst teams who stimulate and capture demand as it arises. We define this approach as a ‘cloud incubator’ that can sense and respond to interest both at the demand (business customer) and supply (cloud vendor) extremes. We also see a proactive but carefully measured cloud strategy that includes:

J U N E 2 0 1 1 | ITNEXT

15-MINUTE MANAGER REVIEW

SONY ERICSSON XPERIA YOUR NEXT PLAY STATION

A smartphone and portable gaming console combined? That’s great news for the gamers! However, if you look at the device capabilities individually, it is hard to feel the excitement. The phone doesn’t feel very powerful, is quite bulky and has a disappointing camera. The gaming console experience is good, but wouldn’t make us give up the PlayStation Portable just yet. The price tag of Rs 32,000 may just have tilted the verdict against the Xperia Play, at least as far as the price vs. performance ratio is concerned. PROS: Gaming console capabilities are fun, Good display, Comfortable gaming pad, with good button placement, On-screen keyboard is comfortable, Android 2.3 preinstalled; no pushing and shoving for future upgrades CONS: Extremely bulky form factor, Smartphone interface feels sluggish, Bad battery lifeThis is one phone that had the rumor mill running in overdrive, right from the form factor to the specifications. LOOK AND FEEL: Agreed, the Play attempts to add a gaming console control panel to the smartphone, but the end result is disappointingly bulky. . FEATURE: What the Play puts on the table is the best possible modern day example of convergence of gadgets- the smartphone and the portable gaming console. The Xperia Play comes with Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) pre-installed. Good thing, since this negates the need to literally stand in line for a possible future upgrade of the OS. SPECIFICATIONS: Network: Quad band GSM + 3G capable; Display: 4.0-inches with 480x854 resolution, LED backlit LCD type; OS: Android 2.3 (Gingerbread); SoC: Qualcomm MSM8522; RAM: 512MB; Memory Expansion: microSD (up to 32GB); Battery: 1500 mAh; Weight: 175g

Price- Rs 32,000 Rating: 7.00 Contact: 1800111800

virtualising servers and data centers in anticipation of computing and storage “on demand” through new vendor arrangements; and testing public cloud services in non-core IT areas, such as general office and support processes. This cloud strategy requires a tactical approach in which you apply three distinct layers that test and refine a broad range of new cloud tactics in a rapidly developing environment and establish a stable future operating pattern. These layers are: 1. Business Engagement — providing skills, methods and tools to enable business customers to assess, quantify and prioritize cloud-based service opportunities. 2. Solutions Architecting — offering multi-disciplinary teams who can transpose business requirements into cloud services by testing and validating new operating models. 3. Industrialization — scaling up the new Cloud-based operating models into full-fledged service platforms. Smart CIOs will meet this historic challenge head on, building now. Those who will succeed are those who effectively apply the sense-andrespond approach and construct the right ecosystem for their cloud transformation. —* Between October and December last year (2010) we surveyed more than 50 CIOs and IT Directors, almost 90% of them from global organizations about their IT expenses on cloud-related services. Only 20% reported that they allocated more than 10 percent of their budget to cloud. Almost half have designated less than 2 percent. ** The challenge confronting IT suppliers and corporate IT customers alike is how to make a smooth transition into the new ‘virtual’ environment and prove tangible benefits. —About the Authors Roger Camrass is Senior Practice Partner for Business Transformation at Wipro Consulting Services, Europe, and the author of “Atomic: Reforming the Business Landscape Into the New Structures of Tomorrow.” Suhel Bidan, is Senior Manager, Wipro Consulting’s Business Transformation Practice, Europe. Source: CIO Insight

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15-MINUTE MANAGER

INFORMATION SECURITY

RULES TO FOLLOW Although it is a disheartening job, the importance of policies and procedures canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be undermined BY AL EX A N D E R H A M E R STO N E

PHOTO IMAGI NG: S HI GIL N

olicy writing can be a daunting task, and one for which many are not overly enthused. However, policies and procedures are an integral part of any information security programme. Not only do they provide direction and accountability, many specific policy elements are a requirement of specific laws, regulations, and/or standards. In this multipart series, I will work to help you become comfortable writing policies and their associated procedures.

Before we get started, there are a few things that are important to know. Policy sets are different in each environment. With information security, the number of policies as well as the breadth of each policy will vary depending on the complexity of the environment as well as the sensitivity and criticality of the information. There are other factors that will affect information security policy development as well. For example, it is common that some of the elements of an Acceptable Use Policy will already

be covered in basic HR policies and employee handbooks. It is essential that different departments work together to ensure that policies work in concert and do not contradict each other. It is also essential to determine the audience for any given policy. For most users, the Acceptable Use Policy will determine the rules for their access. Network Security Policies, Access Control Policies, and System Access Logging and Maintenance Policies will have IT departments as their audience. It is also important to note that certain policies may be confidential according to an asset classification program. A Network Security Policy delineating requirements for protections such as connection restrictions or intrusion protection and detection may be valuable for an attacker. It is vital to consider business need to know when distributing policies. The Differences Between Policies, Procedures, and Standards. It is important to understand the differences between a policy, procedure, and standard, and the functions of each. Policies delineate the laws for an

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15-MINUTE MANAGER

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organization. Procedures and standards describe how to implement policies. A simple analogy is that of a red light. The policy, or law, requires that drivers come to a complete stop at any and all red lights. The procedure, however, will describe how toÂ operate the brake, operate the clutch, etc. The standard would describe what types of brakes and tyres are appropriate. An exception process would describe the circumstances under which the policy may be violated--in this example, an emergency vehicle. Knowing which policies are necessary in your environment can be a challenge. Most organizations will have at least some formalized policies. Many of these are in response to legal requirements (HR policies) or specific incidents. After someone leaves their laptop in the car trunk for 6 hours on a 100 degree day, a policy on the care of equipment is generally issued. With policies and procedures, it is essential to be proactive rather than reactive.Â In the case of the melted laptop, it would be far better to have instituted a policy regarding equipment care prior to the incident. That may be a simplistic scenario where the company is out a thousand dollars for a laptop, but it illustrates a point. This proactive posture becomes far more important when applied to more complex situations. What if, instead of being out a thousand dollars for a laptop, you were instead out tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines after a cardholder data breach? Or worse, in the case of HIPAA, you find yourself with tremendous legal bills or in jail. (I am aware that is an extreme case, but it is illustrative of my point.) As far as information security, every organization will have a unique set of foundational policies. Although there will be many that are common to all organizations, the unique qualities of each organisation call for custom policies. How then, do we determine what basic policies we need? I have found that one of the simplest ways to determine which policies are essential is to look

15-MINUTE MANAGER at all applicable regulations, laws, standards, and contracts and perform a gap assessment. For example, if you are subject to the PCI DSS, a good way to start is to take a copy of the standard and identify every place where a policy or procedure is required. PCI requires a policy on visitors to your facilities. As such, part of being compliant with PCI will be developing a visitor policy per the specific requirements of the standard. An important caveat: having a policy in place does not equal compliance.

Careful readers will note that I slipped in mention of another document, the visitor log. In many cases, documentation leads to more documents. In this case, you will also likely need to develop training and awareness programs. As you move through the standard or regulation identifying where documentation is necessary, keep a list of what policies address which sections. At the conclusion of the gap assessment of the applicable regulations and

compliances, you will have a firm understanding of which policy and related documentation are necessary. Keep in mind that in addition, it is important to review contractual obligations. These contractual obligations generally exist between you and your clients, vendors, and other service providers. Involving your legal department is always recommended. —Cross-posted from SecureState

3G TECHNOLOGY

PHOTO IMAGI NG: S HI GIL N

BY M A N I S H S I N H A ,

espite the constraints the ICT industry faced owing to the economic downturn, there have been significant innovations around the technologies that it offered. One such evolution is 3G, an acronym for Third Generation and is a technology for mobile services. The idea that the acronym resonates is to provide high-speed data rates and faster mobile connectivity. This of course, has a cascading effect on the overall organisational performance across the industry segments. The features that 3G provides and the value it brings to the table has caught everyone’s attention and particularly with certain key verticals like banking, corporate, SMB, logistics, services industry, automobile etc. Most industry observers opine that the transition from 2G to 3G would be phenomenal as the customers bet on the performance and speed that the technology provides. Analysts like Gartner observed that in 2010, 3G technologies both CDMA 2000 and WCDMA absorbed major chunk of the GSM subscribers into its fold. It is said that the Indian market is enveloped with 15-20% of the 3G enabled handsets, which indicates that the customers are ready to subscribe to 3G.

J U N E 2 0 1 1 | ITNEXT

15-MINUTE MANAGER Why the rush? The great start witnessed for 3G is obviously about the value it brings to the business and in particular to the IT heads. 3G would enable them to create systematic implementation and procedure manuals for infrastructure, software and other departmental activities and streamline the communication process among team members. It is imperative for the enterprises to plan and organize themselves to leverage the 3G benefits. Well, what does it offer? It means more transmission rate with enhanced capabilities that calls for lean investments on 3G enabled phone or other devices such as PDA/Laptop etc. The logic goes that 3G enabled devices will experience increased efficiency and lower the operational expense related to bandwidth cost. 3G services will offer better services, including broadband Internet access, interactive gaming and faster movie downloads, video clips and other multimedia features like video conferencing, mobile TV etc. With regard to the speed, 3G capability enhances up to 2 MB/Sec, which provides exciting gaming experience.

Key 3G takeaways The mobile TV applications where user

3G could be a threat to video conferencing companies who provide video conferencing solutions in big rooms could watch favourite channels come with features like parental controls as kids could be free to watch every channel on the mobile phone itself that they cannot watch at home. The critical factor is to reduce operating cost in terms of the physical movement of trainers, . Segment like banking will be benefited as it could operate its branches within the radius of 35 -50 KM and same time entries could be reflected to that bank’s branch which is configured and later on, merged with central server, resulting in the reduction in the delay in record updates. Logistic and Couriers Company could use these technologies to create more reliability of service for their customers as in case the consignee is not available at home. The delivery boy could take the photograph of the consignee’s home and upload it on the server. This would add the reliability

Numbers to Watch 41 m users will use 3G by the end of 2011 26 million of India’s 563 million mobile phone subscribers have handsets that are 3G enabled Indians who use 3G handsets outnumber the entire population of Australia by about five million, Belgium by 16 million, Denmark by 21 million, the Netherlands by 10 million and Switzerland by 19 million Indian GSM subscriber base rose to 580.66 million in April representing a 11m increase on the previous month Airtel has maintained pole position among Indian mobile operators by adding 2.41 million users, increasing its total user base to 164.6 m customers mongst 3G, Airtel leads the pack yet again, with 3 million subscribers folA lowed by Tata Docomo with 1.5 million users and Idea Cellular, Vodafone, BSNL each having a million customers apiece Source: COAI, Estimates from Research Reports

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feature as part of the service, which is possible with this technology. Online movie selling players are availing the benefits of 3G who have the option of providing multiple downloading options. From an IT manager’s standpoint, it could be a boon or bane in case of facilitating a DR site. For instance, the technology can ease the IT manager’s job to get data uploaded or moved to a safe location with the help of high-speed connection. While, it can have negative effects, when the phone is connected to computer and being used to transfer data, with no record as who is the end user, particularly when there are no UTM features in place. Corporate could extend their application range to be deployed for their VPN users, as Data cards enabled with 3G would have more support for heavy application such as CRM, ERP etc. Adoption of 3G in comparison to wimax could be a challenge as it has a requirement of 3G enable mobile phone, which could pose new challenges for manufacturing companies. However, these companies could tie up with other OEM device vendors to get their applications installed for their products, which could be a better handshake for the businesses. The most vital aspect is that it will enable smooth electoral process reducing fake and proxy voting as 3G technology enables finger print accuracy with an online device, which will detect the flaw. The key element is to select the effective service provider who has the capability to deliver the services and has a streamlined the process. Manish Sinha,, Head-IT, On Dot Couriers

THE BIG

CRM

CUSTOMER IS KING EXPERT PANEL

PERTISTH MANKOTIA, HEAD-IT, SHEEL AFOAM PV T. LTD.

THE SITUATION...

CUT IT FROM HERE

“How will praveen achieve customer satisfaction?” The motto of every business is to derive customer satisfaction and that is not easily achievable. Most business heads are prone to fret over the issue of attaining maximum customer satisfaction from the products or services that they bring to the market. The desire to meet optimum customer satisfaction has a cascading effect on the IT department and in particular on the senior personnel. There is the mandate to deploy suitable solutions, which ensure accurate tracking of services and compliance with high standards. Praveen Sinha, a senior IT manager of a large garment manufacturing company faces a dilemma. Despite the best supply chain system, dealer management systems, ERP system, immense customisation to tools and solutions, having customer-focused vision, the management is not really convinced about the mechanism to drive customer satisfaction. After much deliberation with Your responses count. Log on to www.itnext.in/bigQ to submit your replies. The best entry will be published in the next print edition.

SEBASTIAN JOSEPH, PRESIDENTTECHNOLOGY & FMS, MUDRA

HIL AL KHAN, HEAD-CORPORATE IT, HONDA MOTOR INDIA PV T. LTD.

the colleagues and peer group, Praveen thought about initiating certain CRM strategies, which might answer his concerns. While there are no budget constraints, Praveen’s dilemma is to convince the management about the investments around CRM, based on the theory of increasing customer retention, if the organisation was ready to pay for such intangible benefits that CRM brings in. The other concerns that Praveen has are related to the aspect of the ease with which it is possible to calculate RoI. Always been used to addressing the response time, real time information, cost savings, immediate access to order status and consignment status, Praveen finds it slightly strange to gauge customer satisfaction using technology. There are several queries in his mind with regard to technical support, and if the cost of the system will be passed onto customers. Praveen is splitting his hair over what kind of solutions could be used in the CRM space, which will give better analytics and dashboards. The solutions should also integrate with social media on the internet and create new ways of interaction with customers.

J U N E 2 0 1 1 | ITNEXT

THE BIG Q

THE BIG QUESTIONS... DO YOU THINK CRM IS THE SOLUTION FOR PRAVEEN IN THE CURRENT SCENARIO

AND WHAT ARE THE FUNCTIONALITIES THAT HE NEEDS TO LOOK AT? WHETHER IT SHOULD BE CLOUD MODEL, STRAIGHT LICENSING OR OUTSOURCED MODEL ETC.

WHAT KIND OF INVESTMENTS WOULD PRAVEEN NEED TO BUDGET FOR AND HOW DOES HE NEED TO WORK OUT THE ROI? PLEASE ALSO ELABORATE ON THE BUSINESS BENEFITS THAT CRM WOULD BRING IN.

HERE ARE THE ANSWERS... ‘CRM SHOULD MEET BUSINESS GOALS FIRST ANSWER

PERTISTH MANKOTIA Head-IT, Sheelafoam Pvt. Ltd. About me: Developed and implemented home grown ERP “Greatplus”. Responsible for the digitisation of the enterprise. Been with the Group Sleepwell) since 1995 .

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CRM can be of help. However, Praveen first needs to decide upon the objective behind deploying CRM. He needs to work out a CRM solution, which can cater to his business problems. The basic functionalities, which Praveen should look for in any CRM are: 1. Provide sales history, sales trends and market trends 2. Sales achievements & performances of the existing customers 3. Understand customer history 4. Provide product literature, training literature, etc to the sales team 5. Log & Track customer complaints and feedbacks 6. Potential customer details and conversion ratio 7. Help sales team to plan their tour route, customer visit schedule and their complete documentation. Depending upon the requirement Praveen should select the model. Cloud or straight licensing or outsourcing - either of them can be good to begin with. He can go for a pilot with 4 – 5 sales team members in order to test the product deliverables and to find out whether the business objectives are met. If they fulfil the company’s requirement, then he can move further with full implementation.

SECOND ANSWER According to me, investment should not be the only criteria while selecting any CRM solution. A solution should be judged on its deliverables meeting the business objectives and values. Based on the above pilot, that will not cost much; Praveen can work out the real benefits along with the sales team, which were listed during the initiation of the project. If the objectives are met and if they bring ease for the sales team, improve their productivity, I think it will create its own demand. If the pilot is not successful, then the exercise has to be repeated. I know this will take long time, but the outcome will be very useful and everlasting. As a system implementer, we should not consider much on which kind of model we should go for i.e. cloud, straight licensing, outsourcing, etc., as our major focus should be on the creating a solution or products that delivers value. The model should be selected based on the ease of maintenance and use. CRM should ultimately result in: 1. Bringing Speed to the business 2.Documentation part should be taken care of by CRM 3. Information sharing and its faster retrieval, on an anytime - anywhere basis 4. Information should be with the system, so that it can be accessed, even if the concerned individual is not around. 5. CRM must help in maintaining communication with the existing customers.

THE BIG Q

CARRYING OUT A POC IS CRITICAL FIRST ANSWER Before jumping into deployment conclusions I recommend that Praveen carry out a detailed need analysis. What are the current pain areas? How is he expecting the system to address and resolve these pain areas? This exercise must be carried out with the need of end-users (marketing, sales, manufacturing, etc.), who would be the beneficiaries, in mind. Praveen should only be a facilitator. This would provide a basic understanding of the requirements. Once the requirements are in place, Praveen can start looking at various offering available in the market. He can consider the various open source options that might be available. Having short listed solutions, it is advisable to carry out a Proof of Concept (POC) to ensure that the functionalities are fully met, so that we don’t have to discover new surprises during deployment. Open source, cloud, licensed or in-house developed model will solely depend on the functionality, short listed options and success of the POC.

SEBASTIAN JOSEPH President-Technology &FM, Mudra Communications

SECOND ANSWER The requirement analysis output will automatically provide the ROI base. Capture the user pain areas in one column. Against each of these pain areas, ask the user to explain the business impact. Probe in detail till you are able to convert these into monetary terms. At the end of this exercise you will arrive at the total “notional” value. Compare this with the total project cost. Since this is a green field project Praveen could look at a cloud option. Apart from providing greater flexibility it could help Praveen to get the project initiated at a very low entry cost without any Capex. One can write volumes on the theoretical business benefits. Praveen should concentrate on the Requirement Analysis and ROI table. Praveen should first address the existing pain areas. Once these are resolved he could then repeat this exercise to address new pain areas and resolve them. He should keep in mind that IT needs to be aligned to business and not vice-versa. The sole objective of IT is to strengthen the business.

About me:He considers himself to be an open source evangelist. He has been in the IT industry for more than 30 years.

CRM Market Share of the top CRM vendors

CRM 50

Software as a Service (SaaS) continued to drive the market representing nearly 20 percent of total CRM software market revenue. (nos.in %)

39.6

4.9

Amdocs

6.4 Microsoft

10.6 Salesforce. com

16.1 Oracle

22.5 SAP

Others SOURCE: GARTNER

J U N E 2 0 1 1 | ITNEXT

THE BIG Q

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;MAPPING CUSTOMER DATA IS VITAL FIRST ANSWER

HILAL KHAN Head-Corporate IT, Honda Motor India Pvt. Ltd. About me: Responsible for driving business growth through corporate information technology planning and strategy. In the past, he has worked with Honda Siel Cars India Ltd., and at Global IT Options Ltd, where he was a Senior Consultant.

The most crucial objective for any organisation is to know the customer. No industry is an exception to this rule. For the segment that Praveen is concerned, it is imperative to understand the potential customers, absorb their complete profile in terms of spending habits, style, colour and needs. CRM would be an ideal solution in this case, as it is capable of capturing basic data of the customers and mapping the design SKUs. Praveen should go in for solutions, which will enable him to generate potentialities that enhance customer expectations, and also keep in mind the competition scenario. Based on the information, suitable campaigns can be undertaken to meet customer satisfaction and use the tool to gauge the levels of satisfaction. As far as the deployment of the CRM model goes, whether it is cloud, straight licenses or outsourced one, it completely depends upon how cash rich the company is. A zero debt company will have more room to manoeuvre.

SECOND ANSWER There is no rule of thumb with regard to the investments that any CRM system might entail. Besides, it is also necessary that while deploying tailor made CRM solutions, the importance is given to ensure that the system is scalable and robust. Praveen needs to have a clearly defined matrix to gauge the potential for a return on investment. The tool should also be used to influence the customer in behavioural patterns, style, making the right choice, watching the trend, choosing appropriate colour and so on and so forth.

NOTES NOTES

MORE RESOURCES

ITNEXT | J U N E 2 0 1 1

SLA Best Practices: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk869/tk769/technologies_white_paper09186a008011e783.shtml What about SLAs?: http://www.itbusinessedge.com/cm/blogs/all/saas-bpo-convergence-what-aboutslas/?cs=38590

CUBE CHAT | ARUN KUMAR

Take Life as it Comes “Have strong faith in doing new things in a right way, without worrying about anything ,” says Arun Kumar-Director IT, Global Logic India BY JATIN D E R S I N G H

S MY SUCESS

MANTRA Being open to new thoughts and constant learning

ITNEXT | J U N E 2 0 1 1

uccess is a journey, not a destination,” the famous quote by author and novelist Ben Sweetland, has been the mantra of life for Arun Kumar--Director - IT, GlobalLogic India. With over thirteen years of experience in the IT domain, Kumar believes in taking step by step approach to perfection. He is a fun loving person who likes to spend most of his time with family and friends. For him, it’s the smart work that creates a difference whereas hype almost never works. “One must be able to smartly understand the need of the hour rather than just trying to work harder,” he says. Having a great passion towards technology he keeps a close tab on latest technology trends to ensure that he can use the benefits for the organisation. For him a successful manager

should have the quality of emotional intelligence as well as feet firm on the ground. This technocrat’s greatest moment of life came when he got married with the person whom he loved so much. “My life changed from being a technocrat to a balanced technocrat. I am sure you understand,” he laughs. Talking about the business challenges, he advises that an IT Manager should know the right technology demands and emphasises on creating an IT Infrastructure that should align with the future business challenges of an entity. He however cautions that it’s crucial for the management to create the right working environment which works as a catalyst and enable people to work in a team to achieve the organization goal and have a feeling of personal success during the way. But what about the negative vibes that may stop you acting positively?

CUBE CHAT

FACT FILE NAME ARUN KUMAR CURRENT DESIGN AT I O N DIRECTOR - IT CURRENT ROLE LEADING A GLOBA L I T TEAM (TAKING C A R E OF CORPORATE I T INFRASTRUCTUR E )

PHOTO GRAPHY: SAMEER

Change is the only thing which is constant and one need to be ready to accept and learn from it While he considers himself fortunate to handle many exciting assignments in his professional career, he recalls that the most challenging assignment till date was the assignment in his first company Globalogic where he got to learn the different facets and processes of merging IT infrastructure and policies of the company. At present, he is working upon an exciting assignment to move his organisation from an inhouse messaging and collaboration tool to cloud based Google Apps. “My simple advise for achieving your goals is to share the space with right set of people. I do believe that people around you make a big difference to your life. Hence i choose my surroundings with caution,” he shares. So is that a secret formula of success for him? “ My success mantra is having a strong

faith in doing new things and trying and retrying till one gets to the goal, however, at times, i know that things just do not work even after all the hardwork. That’s when we need to remember that it will pass soon. One should always take life as it comes,” he says. Why not? Afterall, change is the only thing which is constant and one need to be ready to accept and learn from it. In the current business landscape, where the competition is fierce and everyone constantly eye the top position, has he ever got tempted by the top seat of CIO? “I am tempted by great work which can really stretch myself and where i can put all my imagination, hardwork and knowledge to get the job done. CIO/CTO is one of those designation which brings this challenge,” he admits candidly.

EXPERTISE HANDLING IT DEPARTMENT OF A M I D TO L ARGE SIZE C O M PA N Y; IT INTEGRATION ( M & A ) , ISO27001, SECUR I T Y, CLOUD COMPUTI N G, VIRTUALIZATIO N , I T STRATEGY AND BUDGETING, IT OPERATIONS, DATACENTER PL A N N I N G. AWARDS NEXT 100 -IND I A’ S FUTURE CIO AWA R D. GLOBALOGIC LEADERSHIP EXCELLENCE AWA R D – ABOVE & BEYO N D ( AWARDED BY MAN TAS INDIA) – NOV 20 0 5 FAVORITE QUOTE “NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE” FAVORITE BOOK SEVEN HABITS O F HIGHLY EFFECTI V E PEOPLE, EMOTIO N A L INTELLIGENCE.

AJPURNI E L 2 0 1 1 | ITNEXT

UPDATE

INDULGE

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

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

ITNEXT | J U N E 2 0 1 1

UPDATE

OPEN DEBATE

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

Does working for a small organisation add value to your CV?

VISHAL BISHT, CEO, MARKSMAN TECHNOLOGIES I think it’s more to do with passion of an individual that determines which organisation would be better. It is critical to work for a smaller group to gain experience which will eventually result in the larger groups hiring the person. For me, it’s the exuberance and innovation that matters most. Given a choice, I would rather prefer to work with a team of two passionate people than doing mundane things in an organised set up. Since the learning with start ups are huge, it definitely adds value to the CV and enables to take up responsibilities.

CHIRAG SRIVASTVA, HEAD, MOBILITY CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE, CSC, INDIA I started my career with a smaller organisation and had opportunities to learn and apply the learning in my career moves. However, when I moved to a bigger organisation, I realised that the opportunities, the learnings, the challenges and the risks were of higher magnitude than those in smaller organisations. I would like to add that it’s always better to work with a larger organization during initial stages as that will give you functional understanding.

RAJESH AGGARWAL, IT MANAGER, JINDAL PIPES While one may need to forego the fortune of having a good salary package, convenient working environment and steady growth opportunities in a traditional set up, it’s the job role and responsibilities that drive the aspirations to work in a young organisation. The new age enterprises can also nurture managers to become successful entrepreneurs in future. However, one need not to forget that the success depends upon individual skills, have the appetite to become successful and the way one drives innovation in life.

Old Wine in a New Bottle Handy tips for first generation entrepreneurs AUTHOR: KEN BLANCHARD AND SHELDON BOWLES PRICE: INR 150

If somebody would tell you the secret formula of becoming rich in a short span, in all probability you will take it for a small consulting fee. Big Bucks, the book, claim to be speaking about that formula, though without the right ingredients. Written by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles, the book puts up simple business rules in a 200 pages advisory for those who want to become a millionaire overnight. Big Bucks, a story of Len, a young man searching for the secret of moneymaking and his adventurous journey with Rabbi Silver, Father Murphy, Pastor Edwards and the moneymakers from their congregations. There is a reference to a business parable to demonstrate how to overcome three challenges -- the test of joy, the test of purpose and the test of creativity to achieve financial success. I would have rated this book far better had the author projected this as a road map to become an efficient entrepreneur.

IT NEXT VERDICT As the author says, the world is full of people looking for ways and schemes to make money, Big Bucks certainly falls under that attempt.

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

ITNEXT | J U N E 2 0 1 1

Not impressive for serious readers. STAR VALUE:

MY LOG

SHASHWAT DC Associate Editor, IT Next

ILLU STR ATION: B INESH SR EEDHAR AN

How to waste billions? Microsoft might have paid a handsome dowry for Skype, but this doesn’t guarantee the union

ITNEXT | J U N E 2 0 1 1

3 ESSENTIAL

READS

JOSH TSENG | INTERVIEW

ITNEXT | J U N E 2 0 1 1

J U N E 2 0 1 1 | ITNEXT

Organisations are looking at the way they can optimise the WAN, says Josh Tseng of Riverbed Pg 38 15-MINUTE MANAGER at all applicable regulations, laws, standards, and contracts and perform a gap assessment. For example, if you are subject to the PCI DSS, a good way to start is to take a copy of the standard and identify every place where a policy or procedure is required. PCI requires a policy on visitors to your facilities. As such, part of being compliant with PCI will be developing a visitor policy per the specific requirements of the standard. An important caveat: having a policy in place does not equal compliance.

Why the rush?

The great start witnessed for 3G is obviously about the value it brings to the business and in particular to the IT heads. 3G would enable them to create systematic implementation and procedure manuals for infrastructure, software and other departmental activities and streamline the communication process among team members. It is imperative for the enterprises to plan and organize themselves to leverage the 3G benefits. Well, what does it offer? It means more transmission rate with enhanced capabilities that calls for lean investments on 3G enabled phone or other devices such as PDA/Laptop etc. The logic goes that 3G enabled devices will experience increased efficiency and lower the operational expense related to bandwidth cost. 3G services will offer better services, including broadband Internet access, interactive gaming and faster movie downloads, video clips and other multimedia features like video conferencing, mobile TV etc. With regard to the speed, 3G capability enhances up to 2 MB/Sec, which provides exciting gaming experience.

—Cross-posted from SecureState

3G TECHNOLOGY

3G has caught enterprises’ attention because of the value it brings in as a better productivity tool BY MANISH SINHA,

Key 3G takeaways The mobile TV applications where user

Numbers to Watch 41 m users will use 3G by the end of 2011 26 million of India’s 563 million mobile phone subscribers have handsets that are 3G enabled Indians who use 3G handsets outnumber the entire population of Australia by about ﬁve million, Belgium by 16 million, Denmark by 21 million, the Netherlands by 10 million and Switzerland by 19 million Indian GSM subscriber base rose to 580.66 million in April representing a 11m increase on the previous month Airtel has maintained pole position among Indian mobile operators by adding 2.41 million users, increasing its total user base to 164.6 m customers Amongst 3G, Airtel leads the pack yet again, with 3 million subscribers followed by Tata Docomo with 1.5 million users and Idea Cellular, Vodafone, BSNL each having a million customers apiece Source: COAI, Estimates from Research Reports

Enterprises are banking upon 3G technology to improve their efficiencies Pg 47 CUBE CHAT | ARUN KUMAR

CUBE CHAT

Take Life as it Comes

FAC T F I L E NAME ARUN KUMAR C U R R E N T D ES I G N AT I O N D I R EC TO R - I T CURRENT ROLE L E A D I N G A G LO BA L I T T E A M ( TA K I N G C A R E O F C O R P O R AT E I T I N F R AST R U C T U R E )

“Have strong faith in doing new things in a right way, without worrying about anything ,” says Arun Kumar-Director IT, Global Logic India

Change is the only thing which is constant and one need to be ready to accept and learn from it

BY JATINDER SINGH

S MY SUCESS

MANTRA Being open to new thoughts and constant learning

ITNEXT | J U N E 2 0 1 1

PHOTO GRA PH Y: SA ME ER

Let’s visit a few of these horrible goof-ups and what it cost the companies. The one that tops the list is indisputably the fancy marriage between AOL and Time Warner. In 2001, print giant Time Warner acquired online major AOL for a whopping $111 billion. Things went completely downhill from there until finally, in 2009, Time Warner washed its hands of AOL, writing off billions. Before Facebook became popular there was MySpace. News Corporation hedged its bet on social networking and bought out the company for $580m in 2005. Sadly for them, Facebook was nimble and fast and captured the whole market, displacing MySpace. These days, the social networking company is on the block waiting for a new buyer.AOL was also involved in yet another horrendous M&A deal. In 2008, it acquired social media company Bebo, for a sum of $850m. Just two years later, AOL sold out for just $10m. In yet another instance, before YouTube, there was Broadcast.com – a site similar to YouTube. At the height of the dotcom hysteria in 1999, Yahoo bought out Broadcast.com for $5.7 billion. Sadly for them, since broadband had not yet gone mainstream, Broadcast.com could not capture the same ground as YouTube and Yahoo lost out on most, if not all, of its multi-billion dollar investment.

PH OTO I MAGI NG: SH I GI L N

Apparently when Santa – he of the popular “Santa Banta” fame – came to know that Microsoft had shelled out $8.5 billion for Skype, he was flabbergasted. “Arre. Why did they waste so much money – they could have downloaded it for free,” he jokingly chided. Well, not only Santa but a lot of people across the length and breadth of the globe questioned Microsoft’s latest move into the internet voice and videocalling domain. The case with Skype is a bit unusual. Founded in 2003, the company was acquired by eBay in 2005 for $2.6 billion. After a wide array of things went awry, eBay sold out 70% of its stake to a consortium of investors in 2010. Microsoft then stepped in this year, deciding to buy out the struggling behemoth for the aforementioned mammoth sum. Mergers and acquisitions are often like eating caviar – you either like it or you don’t. But either way, it is a costly, and oftentimes a ghastly, proposition. History is littered with instances of how even the best of companies got it completely wrong, splurging billions and losing even more by the time the divorce was settled. Back in 1999 KPMG – on assessing some 700 expensive mergers from 1996-99 – postulated that four out of every five deals failed miserably. These numbers have more or less stayed the same even after a decade.

While he considers himself fortunate to handle many exciting assignments in his professional career, he recalls that the most challenging assignment till date was the assignment in his first company Globalogic where he got to learn the different facets and processes of merging IT infrastructure and policies of the company. At present, he is working upon an exciting assignment to move his organisation from an inhouse messaging and collaboration tool to cloud based Google Apps. “My simple advise for achieving your goals is to share the space with right set of people. I do believe that people around you make a big difference to your life. Hence i choose my surroundings with caution,” he shares. So is that a secret formula of success for him? “ My success mantra is having a strong

EX P E RT I S E HANDLING IT D E PA RT M E N T O F A M I D TO L A R G E S I Z E C O M PA N Y; I T I N T EG R AT I O N ( M & A ) , I S O 2 7 0 0 1 , S EC U R I T Y, C LO U D C O M P U T I N G, V I RT UA L I Z AT I O N , I T ST R AT EG Y A N D B U D G E T I N G, I T O P E R AT I O N S , DATAC E N T E R P L A N N I N G. AWA R D S N EX T 1 0 0 - I N D I A’ S F U T U R E C I O AWA R D. G LO BA LO G I C LEADERSHIP EXC E L L E N C E AWA R D – A B OV E & B E YO N D ( AWA R D E D BY M A N TAS I N D I A ) – N OV 2 0 0 5 FAVO R I T E Q U OT E “ N OT H I N G I S IMPOSSIBLE” FAVO R I T E B O O K S E V E N H A B I TS O F H I G H LY E F F EC T I V E P EO P L E , E M OT I O N A L INTELLIGENCE.

AJPURNI E L 2 0 1 1 | ITNEXT

Innovate everyday to grow, says Arun Kumar, Director IT, Global Logic, India Pg 54