CIO 100 2013

Congr atulates The CIO100 Honorees 2013!

Read Their Success Stories Inside

About Wipro Ltd.

Wipro Ltd. (NYSE:WIT) is a leading Information Technology, Consulting and Outsourcing company that delivers solutions to enable its clients do business better. Wipro delivers winning

business outcomes through its deep industry experience and a 360º view of "Business through Technology" - helping clients create successful and adaptive businesses. A company recognized

globally for its comprehensive portfolio of services, a practitioner's approach to delivering innovation, and an organization wide commitment to sustainability, Wipro has a workforce of

140,000 serving clients across 57 countries. For more information, please visit www.wipro.com.

DO BUSINESS BETTERNYSE:WIT | OVER 140,000 EMPLOYEES | 57 COUNTRIES | CONSULTING | SYSTEM INTEGRATION | OUTSOURCING

www.wipro.com

Towards Greater Heights

Wipro congratulates the CIO100 honorees 2013 for successfully differentiating and outperforming the competition through their

innovation, foresight and pragmatism in their application of technology that drove significant value to the business.

CONGRATULATIONS ON DOING BUSINESS BETTER.

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CIO 100 SPECIAL: A LOOK AT INDIA’S TOP IT LEADERS AND MORE

8th ANNUAL AWARDS

They’ve overcome trying conditions, they’ve shown mettle and leadership, they’ve brought business benefits. Meet this year’s most astute Indian IT leaders. Page 52

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VOL/8 | ISSUE/092 S E P T E M B E R 1 5 , 2 0 1 3 | REAL CIO WORLD

Vijay Ramachandran, [email protected]

FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

The four mega trends in enterprise IT this year

are Cloud, Analytics, Mobility, and Enterprise Social

Media. The CIO State of the Enterprise 2013 study

validates this. But, you don’t need to commission a

survey to discover this.

What our research also reveals, interestingly, is that

these trends are leading to a surge in a fifth—Sourcing.

There is currently an acute skillset gap within IT

departments regarding the very same technologies

mentioned above. A gap so fundamental that it dooms

the best of intentions that an organization might have

for these technologies

As near-term business horizons shrunk, multiple projects, fast rollouts, fewer people

and increasing change requests from business have stressed the delivery capabilities of

IT teams. Yet you have annually delivered on average three-and-a-half times the number

of projects than in the pre-slump era.

The other reality is that IT teams bled talent in the five to 15 year experience range between

2009 and 2011. Talent, which in many cases hasn’t been replaced. Not directly, in any case.

So the equation works out to delivering more and more projects in shorter and shorter

timelines with fewer and fewer people in technology domains that internal teams do not

understand well. How does a CIO stay true to the promise to business of scale, of speed,

of responsiveness?

The answer lies in breaching the perimeter. It lies in a greater reliance on third-party IT

than ever before. It means not being a fanatic about where you source IT from—traditional

outsourcing, consult, managed services, the public cloud, body shops—as long as you

respond to the business ask.

The days of “my IT team knows best” are fast coming to a close, as enterprises look to

third-party IT providers to fill in the talent, deadline, and budgetary gaps that now exist.

This is going to be as much about gaining new capabilities, improving organizational

focus and delivery speed, as it will be about reigning in operational cost.

With efficiencies and effectiveness both coming into play, Indian organizations will

get more agnostic about how they source and deliver their IT.

What do you think?

Source AgnosticStaying true to the promise to business of scale, speed, and sharpness lies in breaching the perimeter.

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IDG (International Data Group) company.

Printed and Published by Louis D’Mello on behalf of IDG Media Private Limited, Geetha Building, 49, 3rd Cross, Mission Road, Bangalore - 560 027.

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PUBLISHER, PRESIDENT & CEO Louis D’Mello

E D I TO R I A L

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Vijay Ramachandran MANAGING EDITOR T.M. Arun Kumar EXECUTIVE EDITOR Gunjan Trivedi ASSOCIATE EDITORS Sunil Shah,Yogesh Gupta FEATURES EDITOR Shardha Subramanian SPECIAL CORRESPONDENTS Gopal Kishore, Radhika Nallayam, Shantheri Mallaya PRINCIPAL CORRESPONDENTS Anup Varier, Debarati Roy, Sneha Jha, Varsha Chidambaram SENIOR CORRESPONDENTS Aritra Sarkhel, Eric Ernest, Ershad Kaleebullah, Shubhra Rishi, Shweta Rao SENIOR COPY EDITORS Shreehari Paliath, Vinay Kumaar LEAD DESIGNERS Jinan K.V., Pradeep Gulur, Suresh Nair, Vikas Kapoor SENIOR DESIGNERS Sabrina Naresh, Unnikrishnan A.V.

SA L E S & M A R K E T I N G

PRESIDENT SALES & MARKETING Sudhir Kamath VICE PRESIDENT SALES Sudhir Argula VICE PRESIDENT SPECIAL PROJECTS Parul Singh GM MARKETING Siddharth Singh GENERAL MANAGER SALES Jaideep M. MANAGER-KEYACCOUNTS Runjhun Kulshrestha, Sakshee Bagri MANAGER MARKETING Ajay Chakravarthy MANAGER-SALES SUPPORT Nadira Hyder SR. MARKETING ASSOCIATES Anuradha H. Iyer, Archana Ganapathy, Benjamin Jeevanraj, Rima Biswas, Saurabh Patil MARKETING ASSOCIATE Arjun Punchappady, Cleanne Serrao, Lavneetha Kunjappa, Margarate D’costa, Nikita Oliver, Shwetha M. LEAD DESIGNER Jithesh C.C. SENIOR DESIGNER Laaljith C.K.

O P E R AT I O N S

VICE PRESIDENT HR & OPERATIONS Rupesh Sreedharan FINANCIAL CONTROLLER Sivaramakrishnan T.P. CIO Pavan Mehra SR. MANAGER OPERATIONS Ajay Adhikari, Chetan Acharya, Pooja Chhabra SR. MANAGER ACCOUNTS Sasi Kumar V. SR. MANAGER PRODUCTION T.K. Karunakaran SR. MANAGER IT Satish Apagundi MANAGER OPERATIONS Dinesh P., Tharuna Paul MANAGER CREDIT CONTROL Prachi Gupta SR. ACCOUNTS EXECUTIVE Poornima

5,000

*For more performance information, visit cisco.com/go/ucsbenchmarks. © 2013 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. All third-party products belong to the companies that own them. Cisco, the Cisco logo, and Cisco UCS are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cisco and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. Intel, the Intel logo, Xeon and Xeon Inside are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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SEPTEMBER 15, 2013 | VOL/8 | ISSUE/11

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78 | Happy Customers (Make a Happy Business)CUSTOMER FOCUS IT is now increasing its focus on end-customer satisfaction. Here’s what different award-winning CIOs have done to make this happen.Feature by Radhika Nallayam

84 | Go Green (Responsibly)GREEN IT It's a savior of, both, the environment and the enterprise. How CIO100 winners strategized their green IT initiatives.Feature by Shubhra Rishi

92 | New-Age CIO (Cost Inhibition Officer)COST SAVING Saving costs and driving business growth at the same time is tough. Here's how this year’s CIO100 honorees did it. Feature by Eric Ernest

100 | Datacenters (Gen-Next)DATACENTERS This year’s CIO100 winners have taken advantage of the recent advancements in storage to create datacenters of the future. Feature by Shubhra Rishi

106 | Efficient (and Effective)EFFICIENCY Can it be done better? Ask these award-winning CIOs, and the answer will always be in the affirmative. Feature by Varsha Chidambaram

112 | Advanced Threats (Advanced Treatments)SECURITY It’s a harsh reality that threats are evolving as rapidly as technology itself. Here’s how some CIO100 winners have responded. Feature by Eric Ernest

118 | UC's (New Rules)UC Leaner teams and harder goals have made collaboration a key strategy. A number of CIO100 winners show how it’s done. Feature by Gopal Kishore

52 | CIO 100 COVER STORY | TRIUMPH IN THE FACE OF ADVERSITYIn a year filled with uncertainty, the CIO100 winners stood apart. Here’s a look at the difference true IT leadership can bring. Feature by Team CIO

54 | Cloudy (Raining Benefits)CLOUD In its many avatars, cloud computing has helped this years CIO100 honorees achieve remarkable business benefits.

Feature by Debarati Roy

62 | Intelligence (On Demand) BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE BI has finally arrived. Here’s how five CIO100 2013 winners have used BI and analytics to their business’ advantage. Feature by Anup Varier

70 | Mobility (and its Malleability)MOBILITY It's aiding enterprises in many ways. Here's how some CIOs leveraged mobility to impact business. Feature by Shweta Rao

CIO1002 0 1 3

DEPARTMENTS

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2 | From the Editor-in-Chief Source Agnostic By Vijay Ramachandran

14 | Trendlines Future Tech | Of Bits and Bites Displays | Bathtub-as-a-Display Service 3D Printing | Printing Your Own Car Biology | Into Uncharted Territory Robotics | You Got a Friend in Me Internet | Filled to the Brim Aviation | Planning a Plane Cameras | Insta(nt)gram Popular Science | Safe in the Sea Alternative Energy | Google Gets Wind Power Research | Artificial, ok. Intelligent? By the Numbers | Country: India, Digital IQ: High

26 | Alert Security Faux Pas | Six Security Non-senses

Trend | A New Playground for Hackers

189 | Essential Technology Best Practices | Ten Cloud Tenets Cloud Apps | Hybrid Hosts

192 | Endlines Devices | Double Vision By Lauren Brousell

135 | Saluting ExcellenceEVENT REPORT | CIO 100Year after year, the CIO100 Awards have been recognizing and rejoicing those minds that have made smart use of IT for immense business impact. This year’s edition gathered some of the brightest minds in the Indian IT industry. Here's what you missed. By Team CIO

122 | The Astute 100Meet the CIO100 winners and their bright ideas. By Team CIO

Columns

33 | The Future is Here IT STRATEGY Wearable computing is coming, and combined with augmented reality apps, it could bring some benefits for the enterprise.By Nicholas D. Evans

38 | Why Does IT Exist?THINK TANK The need to serve as a competitive differentiator or a valued service provider or a trusted partner has created an existential crisis for IT. Here’s what exactly IT must strive to do.By Geoff Lazberger


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ADVERTISER INDEX

This index is provided as an additional service. The publisher does not assume any liabilities for errors or omissions.

[Editor's PICKS]

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Fiberlink Software Pvt. Ltd 13

Focus Softnet 89

HCL Infosystems Ltd. 29

HID Global Corporation 7

HP BCS 69

HP EG Converged Infrastructure 5, 34 & 35

HP Networking 10 & 11

HP Software 15

IBM India Pvt. Ltd 57, 61 & 73

Informatica Business Solutions 67

Kaspersky Lab India Pvt. Ltd 30 & 31

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NetAppp India Marketing & Services Pvt. Ltd 18 to 23

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CorrigendumThe case study on the Hindustan Times

(titled The Lead Story), in July 2013

issue was carried inadvertently without

any approval from Mr. Ekhlaque Bari,

Group CIO, HT Media. We sincerely

regret this, and the consequent distress

caused to both Mr. Bari and HT Media.

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D I S P L AY S Waterproofing your iPhone so you can check your e-mail in the shower might be cool chemistry, but it’s old hat by now. Transforming your entire bathtub into a touchscreen, on the other hand, well, that’s another matter entirely.

A Kinect sensor, a projector, and some bath salts (to make the liquid opaque) is all the AquaTop display system needs to turn any tub of water into a virtual screen surface. The Tokyo-based research team at the University of Electro-Communications’ Koike Laboratory points out that typical touchscreens, being disappointingly solid, limit the ways in which a person can interact with a virtual object. Haptic

feedback technology can approximate physical interaction, but there’s nothing like being able to scoop up an “object” and dump it somewhere else, like you can with the AquaTop. The AquaTop display concept makes use of the properties of a liquid medium with a

E D I T E D B Y V I NAY K U M A A R

Bathtub-as-a-Display Service

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F U T U R E T E C H Feel uneasy about the NSA rifling through your communication records? Well, Mr. Privacy, that might be small potatoes if certain research bears out. In the future, small computers embedded in your teeth might create a digital trail of everything your jaw does, from eating to drinking to speaking.

Researchers at the National Taiwan University in Taipei have created a circuit board small enough to implant into dentures. Utilizing an accelerometer, the tiny teeth tech processes jaw movements into data streams, which can then be translated by algorithms into specific actions such as drinking, eating, talking, coughing, or drinking.

In a test of eight patients fitted with the prototype, the technology accurately recorded “oral activities” 94 percent of the time. The current prototype still needs to be powered by an external power source, but researchers hope to create a self-powered version small enough to fit into the crown of a tooth and fitted with a Bluetooth radio that could transmit data wirelessly. The technology might one day be used by dentists to help patients who clench or grind their teeth, so that those behaviors might be altered in order to avoid more intrusive dental work in the future. The sensors might also be used to tattle to your doctor about what you’ve been eating, drinking, or smoking.

While there is an inherent strangeness about having any personal body data digitized—particularly to intimate movements involving your main orifice—it’s not a huge step from volunteering one’s pedometer data into the cloud. There are benefits to having any sort of actions digitized; we just hope they remain secure once they’ve made the jump into such an easily transferable medium.

—By Evan Dashevsky

Of Bits and Bites

whole new vocabulary of gestures, as shown off in a demo video from the research team.

While it’s unlikely that the AquaTop will make it into production as a consumer product—after all, water and electronics rarely get along this well together in real life—the concept makes for a fascinating example of how ordinary household objects could become virtual media. The simplicity of the components means the display could also be incorporated beautifully into interactive art pieces, like the one from ART+COM or Antonin Forneau’s LED Water Light Graffiti installation.

—By Rachel Martin

Morten Illum, VP and GM, HP Networking, HP APJ, believes that SDN has a double advantage. It not only helps create smarter networks for tomorrow’s enterprise, but can also generate signifi cant savings on operations through automation and simplifi cation.

EXECUTIVE VIEWPOINT

MORTEN ILLUM is Vice President and General Manager, HP Networking, HP APJ

In his current role, Illum is responsible for the development and delivery of HP Networking solutions in the region. An 18-year veteran of the IT industry, Illum has held a number of leadership positions since joining HP in 2005.

SMARTER NETWORKINGCONNECTING THE DOTS: TOWARDS

As opposed to the OS layer, there is a belief that networking lags behind where innovation is concerned. What do you think?While many would argue that there has been lot of innovation in the network itself, there has been less impetus in the area where net-works work with applications and the entire IT infrastructure. But with some newer tech-nologies like the cloud and virtualization and technology trends like BYOD, that is chang-ing. It is said that necessity is the mother of innovation. But this time, innovations around SDN are based on the fact that, soon, there will be a market need for a solution like this.

As the cloud becomes more commod-itized, cloud orchestration will require a network that is as virtualized and agile as the cloud itself. With legacy networks, this is a challenge for IT departments. I think it’s going to be a natural evolution from the server and storage virtualization, to the cloud, and then to smarter networks. It’s the natural next step towards true conver-gence and the true cloud.

How can network virtualization and SDN increase fl exibility while keeping costs in check, as well as future-proofi ng IT infra-structure?Cost is a very important factor for CIOs across the world. While IT leaders might deploy other solutions to make the network smarter, costs could spiral out of control.

The way I see it, there are two aspects to this. First: How do CIOs drive costs out of their structures? And second, how do CIOs get a network that can be automated to un-derstand the needs of applications? As IT leaders, it is important for CIOs to ask: Do I really need 10 people to do coding every now and then as against having one person to just manage an automation tool?

Increasingly, I see more CIOs focusing on the application/software layer and it is this application-aware thought process that will lead many organizations to move towards SDN. After all, no matter how great your in-frastructure or how well-coded your applica-tions are, there is only so much that you can deliver with ageing and outdated networks.

Having said that, I don’t want to predict that SDN is going mainstream right now or that it will be so tomorrow. It’s a journey. CIOs are soon going to say that they want to have an open approach to their network. When I speak to CIOs, they tell me that they want solution providers to help them lower costs and make them future-ready. CIOs want to have the choice of deploying SDN-only applications if they want to. Therefore,

they buy OpenFlow switches, so they can be ready for tomorrow because these switches are very much SDN-ready. So despite the technology being in its nascent stage, many CIOs are realizing that they can start looking at the concept of SDN and start experiment-ing with it so that they can be future ready.

How should CIOs decide whether they should adopt SDN?I think that CIOs need to look inside their organizations and decide what their busi-nesses really need. Is there a need for a BYOD solution to handle various devices, or to battle with security threats, or to go cloud? And then depending on where their priorities lie, investigate whether SDN can help them get to their goal.

IT departments have to realize that the move to SDN has to be guided, fi rst and foremost, by organizational needs. Person-ally, I’m scared that SDN might become a big fl uffy word, whereas in reality it is petty

hardcore, it’s not hype. It is not a HP invention but an industry standard; it is the new defi ni-tion of network architecture.

How easy or hard is it to gain unifi ed or uniform visibility into physical and virtual datacenter networks? That is a question I get a lot. Let’s take the case of a medium-sized customer in India that has about a 1,000 switches and will never rip-and-replace everything and move to SDN tomorrow. They might have two or three application on the cloud or virtualized environments and some core apps running the conventional way on standalone serv-ers. That CIO is struggling with the fact that with diverged infrastructure and multiple vendors, moving to SDN could be diffi cult. This is why we created the HP Intelligent

Management Center (IMC) in our software management platform. IMC is a standalone, comprehensive management solution that delivers integrated, modular network man-agement capabilities that meet the needs of advanced, heterogeneous enterprise net-works. IMC can not just manage HP’s legacy equipment but also 4,000 other switches form different vendors. IT departments can also fully manage their SDN and virtualized network using this single tool.

How do you see mainstream enterpris-es migrating to SDN? What form will it take?I think the transformation would be based on applications. But one aspect that I see gen-erating a lot of interest is how SDN can help CIOs tighten security.

The way network security runs today is that there is an IPS somewhere in the net-work, rooted to a network device that takes care of security. This is a very heavy traffi c load arrangement. Because all of the traffi c is being routed from inside the network, it represents a risk when you have less front-end but more back-end security.

I see a lot of CIOs talking about making sure that their enterprise security is cen-tered at a point closest to the threat in this highly virtualized and dynamic environment .

There is an application that has been de-veloped by HP to answer that need. What this application does is it layers the security database and the SDN application controller on the top of the control of the SDN Open-Flow-enabled switch. The controller makes every switch in the environment the intru-sion protection point, meaning that the port itself denies the attack because it can refer to the security database in the SDN control-ler. CIOs can move enterprise security to the edge of the network rather than the center and can now avoid a lot of useless traffi c en-tering the networks.

That’s why the trend I see is that it will be specifi c applications that will drive up the need to adopt SDN rather than CIOs wanting to turn their entire network SDN.

“CIOs need to decide what

their businesses really need. And then, investigate whether SDN can help them get to

their goal.”

HP NETWORKINGCUSTOM SOLUTIONS GROUP

This interview is brought to you by the IDG Custom Solutions Group

in association with

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B I O L O G Y Laparoscopic surgery is not the best thing in the world, but it’s a lot better than old open-torso surgery, and improving all the time as imaging techniques, robotics, and doctors get used to the practice. Now, a breakthrough from Vanderbilt University may carry the principles of laparoscopy to a previously intractable part of the body: The brain.

Cranial blood clots, or intracerebral hemorrhages, typically have a 40 percent mortality rate, often due to how hard it is to get to them and the delicacy of their location. Survivors can often suffer brain damage due to the buildup of pressure inside the skull, which can only be alleviated by “debulking” the clots that prevent blood from draining from the brain.

That procedure has historically been ferociously difficult, but the Vanderbilt University team of engineers and physicians, headed by Professor Robert Webster III and Dr. Kyle Weaver, has a solution in the form of a steerable robotic needle guided by CT scanning technology.

The procedure sounds awfully scary: After locating the blood clot, surgeons would drill through a patient’s skull, insert the robotic needle, and let the robot take over to vacuum up the clot material. But the Vanderbilt team removed 92 percent of clots in simulations, a vast improvement over the 25 to 50 percent averaged in traditional surgery. Future work on the project would incorporate ultrasound imaging and computational models of the deformation of brain tissue to make extraction of the robotic needle easier and to minimize potential damage to the area.

Letting robot needles into your brain might sound too much like The Matrix right now, but the promise of minimally-invasive brain surgery within the next few years is a huge breakthrough for medicine. Philip Swaney, a grad student with the project, says it could “begin saving lives in the very near future”.

—By Rachel Martin

3 D P R I N T I N G We’ve seen some pretty big things come out of 3D printing projects. But a full-sized 3D-printed replica of a car just seems ludicrous.

Ivan Sentch, a classic car enthusiast from New Zealand, is building just that. Since last December, Ivan has been hard at work, putting together a plastic replica of an Aston Martin DB4—the precursor model to James Bond’s famous DB5—made of enough 3D-printed parts that Ivan calls it a “2500-bit jigsaw puzzle.”

To create his replica, Ivan started with a wooden frame on top of which he glued 150 by 150-millimeter 3D-printed tiles. On the design end, Ivan based his virtual DB4 model off of a 3D drawing from TurboSquid, a site that provides stock 3D textures and models, and cut it up into cross sections using Autodesk’s 3DS Max modeling software. Ivan plans to transplant the mechanical bits from a Nissan Skyline GTS25T donor car to make a fully running automobile himself.

Before starting the project, Ivan, a programmer by day, was a self-proclaimed 3D printing newbie. Over the last seven or so months, he taught himself how to 3D-print—which included learning everything from manipulating 3D models in AutoCAD to actually creating his first 3D-printed parts.

Ivan says that he’s printed nearly 72 percent of the car so far, including the hood, trunk, and doors. From the looks of it, he only has some side paneling and the dashboard left to make. He hopes to fabricate the remaining parts of his car using the Solidoodle 2 3D printer.

But don’t expect to see Ivan driving around in a 3D-printed car. He says that his 3D-printed model (known as a “plug”) is really just the framework for future fiberglass bodywork, which will go on top of it.

“This sort of [replica bodywork] project is not uncommon, but people usually get the plug CNC-cut out of foam,” Ivan explains. “I was told to expect $9,574 to $11,967 (about Rs 5.75 lakh to Rs 7.18 lakh) for a CNC cut plug, which nearly killed the project idea, but somehow I had the thought to look into 3D printing as an alternative.” By comparison, Ivan estimates that the materials required to print a complete replica of the car would come to a grand total of $1,795 (about Rs 1.08 lakh).

By the time Ivan finishes his 3D-printed replica, he will have printed a total surface area of 60 square feet using about 64 spools of plastic filament. Even after Ivan has completed his plug, he still has plenty of work ahead of him before he can start laying the first sheet of fiberglass. His next steps include filling in every seam between the 3D printed panels and buffing the whole thing to a glassy finish. You can keep track of Ivan’s project on his blog.

— By Kevin Lee

Printing Your Own Car

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Into Uncharted Territory

5%* 15.2%*

MALICIOUS APPS*Based on new apps discovered by MaaS360 in July 2013

TOP VULNERABILITIES

- Malware- Trojan - Spyware- Potentially Unwanted Applications- Adware- Privacy Threats

COMMON SOURCES

- Unknown sources**- Jailbreak / Rooting- Missing Firmware upgrades- Pirated Apps- Phished sites- Poor Enterprise App design

**Unknown sources is enabled on 35% Corporate devices & 33% Personal Devices (BYOD)

MaaS360 by Fiberlink is a leading Enterprise Mobility Management solution with over 5000 customers globally. Visit us at www.maas360.com

Name TypeiBooks BooksAdobe Reader PDFGoogle SearchCitrix Receiver VirtualizationNumbers Productivity

Name TypeDropbox File-sharingSugarSync File-sharingBoxNet File-sharingFacebook SocialGoogle Drive File-sharingPandora MusicSkyDrive File-sharingAngry Birds GamingHoccer File-sharingNet�ix Movies

TOP BLACKLISTED APPS

Name TypeAdobe Reader PDFLookout SecurityGoogle SearchSkype VoipCitrix Receiver Virtualization

Name TypeDropbox File-sharingFacebook SocialNet-Flix MoviesGoogle+ SocialAngry Birds GamingGoogle Play Movies & TV MoviesGoogle Play Books BooksSugarSync File-sharingGoogle Play Music MusicGoogle+ Hangouts Social

TOP WHITELISTED APPS

For more interesting mobile metrics, scan this.

REPURCUSSIONS OF THE GREAT APP-LOSION

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59

20

35

AVERAGE APPS ON CORPORATE DEVICES AVERAGE APPS ON PERSONAL DEVICES (BYOD)

NEW APPSEVERY WEEK*

35001,000,000+ APPS DISCOVERED

Source: MaaS360 Mobile Metrics. App information was found by analyzing a random sample of approximately 1000 MaaS360customer accounts and 200,000 smartphones and tablets, which include BYOD and corporate-issued devices.

R O B O T I C S Kirobo, a talking robot that also recognizes faces, was launched recently on a cargo transfer vehicle to the International Space Station.

The robot is part of a program that aims to provide companionship using such devices to people living alone, including the elderly.

Kirobo boarded the Kounotori 4 cargo transfer vehicle launched from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Tanegashima Space Center atop an H-IIB launch vehicle, the Kibo Robot Project, which counts Toyota and Robo Garage as two of the project partners, said on its website.

The black and white robot, with red boots, is a little over 13-inches (34 centimeters) tall, and combines speech, voice and face recognition, and other communications functions. Its first task will be to communicate with Koichi Wakata, a Japanese astronaut who joins the robot in November, according to reports. Backup crew member Mirata, who stays back in Japan, has similar capabilities.

“The Kibo robot has a special mission: To help solve the problems brought about by a society that has become more individualized and less communicative,” the project wrote on its website.

Japanese-speaking Kirobo will spend 18 months on the ISS, talking to Wakata.

The project earlier asked people to suggest names for both the robots, and got 2,452 entries from 1,226 people.

—By John Ribeiro

You Got a Friend in Me

AV I A T I O N When it comes to building vehicles, cars are relatively easy. So are boats. You can even make your own model rockets without a hitch. But putting together a plane requires some real aviation design and expertise.

The MakerPlane is an open-source project that’s looking to change all that—along with the aviation industry. Instead of going through all the aeronautical engineering to make sure your plane will fly right, the flight-experienced minds behind MakerPlane propose building a plane from digital plans that you can fabricate using computer-controlled systems like CNC machines and 3D printers.

They’re not joking.They have plans for a 630-pound aircraft with a

wingspan of 32.8 feet, all lifting off the ground with an 80- to 130-horsepower engine. The MakerPlane took 18 months to design, and the team behind it has started to construct the prototypes and parts necessary to test and validate the concept. To build the plane, the team has been cutting out the major parts of the frame out of fiberglass and epoxy materials. MakerPlane uses 3D printers for non-structural components, such as throttle knobs, handles and so on, as well as for tools and jigs to assist with the build process.

But why build it with digital fabrication tools instead of regular ones? The MakerPlane folks say only about 2,000 new aircraft enter the global registry each year, compared to the 6,000 projects that start and ultimately fail. One of the major hurdles is the aforementioned need for aeronautical engineering skills to design and build a plane. Even with those skills, building a single wing rib—the supporting piece of the wing that gives its curved shape and rigidity—could take hours to make by hand. A CNC machine could cut one in as few as two to three minutes.

MakerPlane’s designers hope to have a complete prototype of the plane ready in time to show off at the AirVenture Oshkosh air show in 2014. In 2015, they plan to return to the AirVenture event for the MakerPlane’s first public flight. After they’ve proven the prototype can fly, they plan on releasing the free, downloadable plans for the plane that you can take to your local hackerspace to start building your own.

Ambitious? Yes. Crazy? Maybe. But we’re really interested in seeing this take off.

—By Kevin Lee

Planning a Plane

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2012 2013 Year-on-Year Brazil 46 62 37% India 56 74 31% Vietnam 14 16 22% Russian Federation 56 63 14% Philippines 6 7 12%

Filled to the Brim I N T E R N E T India’s virtual footprint is crowding the Internet. Its online population growth, in terms of unique visitors—in millions—is second only to Brazil’s.

Source: comScore


This Interview is brought to you by IDG Custom Solutions Group

in association with

CREATING A SAFE HAVEn FOR BIG DATAIt’s a treasure trove of information, but for most organizations big data is a huge challenge. HP’s new big data analytics platform can help organizations unleash the power of big data.

EXECUTIVE VIEWPOINT

AMIT CHATTERJEECountry Director, HP Software India

Chatterjee incubated the software business for HP, taking the company to a market-leading position. With over 25 years of experience in the IT industry, Chatterjee is always keen to introduce new businesses, and undertake initiatives to help the company grow.

HP SOFTWARECUSTOM SOLUTIONS GROUP

Today, every enterprise action in the digital world leaves a footprint, be it a simple tweet or data transmitted by machines or sensors. What challenges do enterprises face in con-verting this data into actionable intelligence?The challenges of big data are plenty. But they come down to four key areas: Volume, variety, velocity, and vulnerability. The sheer volume of data is fl ooding systems and challenging legacy database designs. Data needs to be sourced from almost every action an enterprise performs be it from the Web, social media, partners, customers, acquisitions, mergers, or devices on the shop fl oor, to name a few. This data comes in all kinds of formats that span structured, semi-structured, and unstructured.

In addition, the rate and speed of the incoming data challenges traditional database systems. For example, 1 tera-byte of data can be created by an indus-trial machine in an hour. And all this data needs to be protected.

Besides, with the current approaches and technologies, most of this data re-mains “dark data” and cannot be utilized for predictive analytics or safely man-aged. Currently, only a fraction of these digital footprints are being analyzed. Clearly, that is going to reduce the insight organizations can derive.

How can organizations overcome these big data challenges? In order to solve this big data challenge, organizations need massive scalability. They also need a fast way to source information in many formats and integrate it from many places. In addition, there is a need for speed both in the

ability to ingest the data as well as in the ability to analyze that data. And fi nally, organizations need to be able to protect this vast lake of data they are collecting.

How can HP help organizations in their journey towards implementing big data solutions?HP has the depth of approach and the breadth of portfolio that can help organizations unleash the power of big data. We are adding exciting new capabilities to our big data portfolio that span core technology and expertise. It’s a portfolio that organizations can operate themselves or consume the outcome as a service. The choice is theirs.

As part of that, we are creating HA-VEn, a big data analytics platform. It in-tegrates the power of Hadoop—that can catalogue massive volumes of distrib-uted data—with Autonomy Legacy Data Cleanup and Vertica which provides ana-lytics at an extreme scale in real-time.

Besides, it has Logger to collect and unify machine data and IDOL which in-dexes a vast array of human and ma-chine information and uses its patented pattern-matching technology to form a conceptual and contextual understand-ing of all content.

So, when organizations think about big data, they need to create a big data lake, a safe HAVEn.

What significant advantages does HAVEn provide to organizations struggling with big data?HAVEn builds on signifi cant HP IP as-sets which cannot be replicated by any other company. It uses unique, disrup-

tive technologies, and powerful data management and analytics, and in-tegrates solutions for consolidatingbig data.

It’s highly scalable, fast analytics plat-form allows for processing of massive amounts of data. It integrates advanced analytics on big data with powerful con-text driven search across all structured and unstructured data.

It also shifts the performance curve of big data solutions—from cost, value and performance perspectives. It can pro-vide end users with more insight, thus improving the time to value, and at the same time, reduce the cost of the big data system.


Insta(nt)gramC A M E R A S Hold onto your hats Instagram fans, the camera you’ve been waiting for now has a price tag. Socialmatic, the company, recently posted a photo to its Facebook page detailing the specs and cost of its upcoming retro digital camera. The Socialmatic camera will cost $300 (about Rs 18,000) and begins shipping in early 2014.

If you’ve never heard of it, Socialmatic is a slim, Polaroid-branded digital camera with a built-in printer and onboard photo-filter software. Socialmatic pics can be printed or uploaded to Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. You can also send photos to friends via e-mail and MMS, and the company will also offer its own social network for the camera’s users.

Socialmatic didn’t say exactly when the camera would be available, but the company did say in response to a Facebook user comment that it would start taking pre-orders soon.

It’s not clear if the specs will change before the camera ships, but right now the camera will feature a 14-megapixel front-facing sensor and a 2-megapixel rear-camera for selfies. For storage, you get 4GB onboard as well as an SD-HDC expansion slot. The Socialmatic camera also comes with a 4.3-inch touchscreen, LED flash, stereo speakers, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, and a Zink instant printer for making physical Polaroid printouts. The camera will run a version of Android, but it’s not clear which flavor

of Google’s mobile OS will be used. It’s also unknown if the Socialmatic camera will have full access to the Google Play Store or what kind of RAM and processing capabilities the device will offer.

Although Socialmatic offers Polaroid-style printing capabilities, the new camera adds a digital twist, as each photo can be printed with a comment and will have its own QR code. Other Socialmatic fans can snap the QR code to start following you on the Socialmatic social network. Each photo will come with an adhesive backing so you can paper the world with your gratuitous shots of dinner, skyline views, and house pets.

Socialmatic started out as a concept created by Italy-based ADR Studios in 2012, but quickly morphed into a commercial project, gaining funding and enthusiastic interest from users worldwide.

— By Ian Paul

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P O P U L A R S C I E N C E If you’re feeling a bit nervous after watching Sharknado, Australian scientists from both the University of Western Australia’s Ocean Institute and Shark Attack Mitigation Systems (SAMS) have you covered—literally.

The joint project recently introduced a pair of new wetsuits, two years in the making, to protect surfers from shark attacks.

One suit, “Elude”, uses SAMS Cryptic Technology to protect divers. Working with the relatively recent discovery that sharks are colorblind, the outfit comes patterned with swirling shades of blue designed to emulate the surrounding water, which SAMS claims renders the shark effectively blind during the attack.

On its website, SAMS says that while the shark can still sense you’re around, “It is less likely to attack if the target cannot be seen.”

The other suit, “Diverter”, employs SAMS Warning Technology: while Elude allows you to blend in with

your aquatic surroundings, Diverter relies on standing out to protect surfers. If you watch

the SAMS video, you’ll see sharks get close to the Diverter suit, preparing to attack, before swerving abruptly away.

Diverter features a pattern of bold blue, black, and white stripes, and it serves as a warning for sharks—fish with

similar patterns are often poisonous, so sharks instinctually avoid these patterns

under normal circumstances.Now, shark attacks are exceedingly rare—at

only 100 cases per year, you’re more likely to be killed by a pet dog—but hey, you never know. It’s always better

to be safe than sorry.And remember: if the suit doesn’t work, you need to look

the shark right in the depths of his cold, hellish eyes, scream your favorite Arnold Schwarzenegger one-liner (“I hope you leave enough room for my fist because I’m going to ram it into your stomach and break your goddamn spine!”), and punch that sack of teeth right in the nose. Just don’t blame us if this approach backfires.

—By Hayden Dingman

Safe in the Sea

REAL CIO WORLD | S E P T E M B E R 1 5 , 2 0 1 3 1 7VOL/8 | ISSUE/11

A LT E R N A T I V E E N E R G Y Google continued its aggressive efforts to green its physical operations by announcing that its datacenter in Finland will receive its power from a wind farm in Sweden.

A 10-year deal with Swedish wind farm developer O2 is the fourth long-term agreement—and the first in Europe—made by Google to power its datacenters with renewable energy. O2 is building a wind farm in northern Sweden which will produce 72 megawatts (MW) of energy—all of it going to Google’s Finnish datacenter for 10 years.

Google’s agreement to buy all of the farm’s power cleared the path for financing the project through the investment arm of the German insurance company, Allianz, which will take over management of the facility when it is expected to come online in 2015.

The search giant explained that the deal was made possible by Scandinavia’s integrated electricity market, called Nord Pool. It allowed Google to buy power in one country and use it in another.

Over the last four years, Google has spent more than $1 billion (about Rs 5,900 crore) in renewable energy projects. The company says those investments

Google Gets Wind Power

R E S E A R C H A professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago has found an AI system to be as smart as a four-year-old. Scientists often talk about creating artificial intelligence, but how “intelligent” are these systems really?

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago came up with an answer after giving one of the top artificial intelligence (AI) systems an IQ test.

The MIT-built system, dubbed ConceptNet 4, is as smart as the average four-year-old.

“We’re still very far from programs with common sense and AI that can answer comprehension questions with the skill of a child of eight,” says Robert Sloan, head of computer science at the university.

His goal is research that can help focus attention on the “hard spots” or challenges in AI research.

The university reported that researchers put the AI system through the verbal portions of the Weschsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence Test, a standard IQ assessment for young children. While the system has the average IQ of a young child, unlike most humans, the machine’s scores were uneven across different parts of the test.

For instance, Sloan noted that ConceptNet 4 did very well on a vocabulary test, as well as on its ability to recognize similarities. However, the system did “dramatically worse” than average in its comprehension abilities, which are about answering “why”

questions. According to Sloan, one of the hardest problems in artificial intelligence research is building a computer program that can make good judgment calls based on any situation that might arise. Basically, it’s difficult to program common sense because scientists haven’t yet figured out how to give systems knowledge about things that humans find obvious, like the fact that ice feels cold.

“All of us know a huge number of things,” says Sloan. “As babies, we crawled around and yanked on things and learned that things fall. We yanked on other things and learned that dogs and cats don’t appreciate having their tails pulled.”

—By Sharon Gaudin

Artificial, ok. Intelligent?

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our money.”This latest renewable energy announcement by

Google comes on the heels of its disclosure that it would invest $12 million (about Rs 70.8 crore) in a solar farm in South Africa, which will be capable of providing power for 30,000 homes in that country.

—By John P. Mello Jr.

are not only good for the planet, but also for the company’s bottom line.

“Of course, using renewable energy is good for the environment, but it also makes long-term financial sense,” wrote Global Infrastructure Team Senior Manager Francois Stern in a company blog.

“That’s why,” Stern continued, “in addition to protecting ourselves against future increases in power prices through long-term purchasing for our operations, we also invest in new renewable energy projects that will deliver a return for

work as one team. We, continually push the boundaries of what’s possible to provide ef-fi cient and fl exible IT, so that our customers’ business can go further and faster.

As an organization that continually pushes the boundaries of what’s possible, how do you defi ne successful innovation? Our innovation has always focused on deliv-ering an outstanding customer experience, developing industry-leading products and technology, developing best-in-class part-nerships, and building the best team in the

industry. Our innovation across these areas of business has enabled the company to ac-celerate success for its customers, part-ners, shareholders, and NetApp.

Successful innovation, which is sus-tained over a period of time, has been achieved by organizations that have built innovation into the fabric of their DNA. We’ve built Data ONTAP and more custom-ers trust it than any other storage oper-ating system because it is the key to un-leashing an agile data infrastructure that is intelligent, immortal, and infi nite.

Is innovation about team work or is it more of an individual sport? At its most fundamental level, innovation is fueled and driven by people. It’s critical to constantly increase the ability of our peo-ple to think creatively and use that creativ-ity to collaborate and produce innovation not just in their area of responsibility but across the organization.

Innovation is at the core of our DNA. At NetApp, the way we handle people, pro-cess, and technology has been evolving. We endeavor to think beyond a silo and instead

OF STORAGE INNOVATIONHERALDING A BRAVE NEW WORLD

ANIL VALLURI,PRESIDENT-INDIA & SAARC OPERATIONS, NETAPP MARKETING & SERVICES

EXECUTIVE VIEW POINT

Anil Valluri, President-India and SAARC Operations, NetApp Marketing and Services, talks about innovation and how the latest developments in the data management ecosystem can help CIOs achieve business goals.

Do you believe that an IT function that has traditionally been promoting and rewarding project execution could also encourage innovation? Yes, we’re seeing game-changing technolo-gies transform the ways organizations do business and they also give us the ability to create new products and services that were impossible just a few years ago. While tra-ditionally, the CIO would focus on managing and protecting an organization’s information, build IT systems, and of course manage cost, the CIO now fi nds himself responsible for creating a new competitive advantage while he enables new product and service devel-opment. A CIO needs to understand what the business challenges are and is able to look at the tech portfolio and pull out just what the business needs. Part of that winning mindset is to embrace the unknown and not be afraid to look to the future and see what it can do for the organization.

Innovations in isolation may not gel well with each other and could, in turn, make the landscape more complex. How can this be tackled?In order to build a competitive advantage in this economic environment—and to survive the myriad changes—an organization has to be willing to embrace the trend, be cog-nizant of how to keep the system running, inspire those involved to take on the chal-lenges of new technologies, and be able to experiment. If they cannot, they will end up with something that will not scale and will not be agile.

All organizations looking to build strong innovation should incubate new ideas on a consistent basis and allow for their teams to go ahead and try new things, even make a few mistakes along the way.

Innovation also involves a lot of change management. How can organizations leap over this stumbling block? It goes without saying that innovation in-volves change. And companies who build a successful culture of innovation are all unarguably good at managing change. This results from changes, both disruptive and incremental. At NetApp, we’ve embraced change to create competitive advantage and we continue to remain agile, fl exible, and nimble to thrive in an evolving busi-

ness environment. What is key to suc-cess, however, is to accept the inevitability of change and communicate this across the organization.

There seems to be a shift in focus from infrastructure to software. What are the benefi ts that enterprises can hope to derive from this? Primarily, CIOs need IT to move ever faster to keep pace with the changing needs of busi-ness. To achieve this speed requires an in-frastructure that works without interruption, keeps costs under control, and delivers new services, projects, and capacity rapidly.

We’re seeing a paradigm shift in the IT storage market now. We’re seeing a trans-formation from older, chunky systems into something that’s not only more agile, but

smarter, too. Software is defi nitely at the forefront, making new and existing hard-ware systems more effi cient. We’ve lead by building our clustered storage technology Data ONTAP solution. IT agility is core to Data ONTAP and this enables companies to pool storage resources into clusters and to seamlessly move data sets across clusters to keep applications and operations running non-stop. This separation of software man-agement from the underlying hardware is at the heart of Software Defi ned Storage, and it’s why we are excited about the industry moving in our direction.

What is the value that IT can deliver to organizations with a software-defi ned transformation? The primary benefi ts realized through a software-defi ned transformation are:

Agility: The ability to provide on-demand

storage services, defi ned by service level, provisioned based on policy, and consumed by app owners and development teams through third-party integrations and pro-grammable APIs.

Simplicity: The elimination of data mi-gration. The data is now in a transportable container that is always online and available during IT cycles, including hardware mainte-nance and upgrades.

Effi ciency: Storage services aligned to the requirements of an application over its lifecycle. Whether an application originates to support a department and grows to sup-port a global organization or the role of an existing application is diminishing, storage services can be adjusted without downtime or reconfi guration of the application or the servers it resides on.

At what stage, in an enterprise’s IT journey, will technology buzzwords like SDDC, SDS, and SDN translate into business benefi t? The current business environment re-quires CIOs to innovate and this requires a shift to viewing IT as a service with a dynamic approach to datacenter design. The software-defi ned datacenter (SDDC) addresses this need. In this model, data-center resources—specifi cally compute, network, storage, and security—are defi ned in software in order to free re-sources from their hardware boundar-ies and enable such service-level agility. As a pillar in the SDDC stack, software-defi ned storage (SDS) pools hardware storage resources and allows them to be programmatically defi ned in software. I see SDS as a positive step for all our cus-tomers, and a trend that plays well to our technology strengths.

NETAPPCUSTOM SOLUTIONS GROUP

“We’ve built Data ONTAP and morecustomers trust it than any other

storage OS because it ensures non-

disruptive operations, proven effi ciency and seamless scalability.”

This interview is brought to you by IDG Custom Solutions Group

in association with

PRATAP GHARGEBajaj Electricals

PUSHPINDER SINGHBank of India

RAHUL V. MAHAJANK Raheja Corporate Services

SUNDAR VENKITAKRISHNANCholamandalam MS General Insurance Company

THOMSON THOMASHDFC Standard Life Insurance

VALERIO FERNANDESContinental Automotive Components India

YAGNESH PARIKHICICI Securities

SUNIL SIROHINIIT

TRIDIB BORDOLOIThe Press Trust of India

VENKATESH NATARAJANAshok Leyland

YATENDRA KUMARGokaldas Exports

TARUN PANDEYAditya Birla Financial Services Group

V. BALAJITata Technologies

VINAY A. KHARGONKAR,L&T, Heavy Engineering

YOGESH ZOPEBharat Forge (Kalyani Group of Companies)

SURENDRA SHETTYYES Bank

V.C. KUMANANIDFC

VIJAYEENDRA PUROHITInfosys

YOGESH KAPOORHSBC

SANJEEV PRASADGenpact

SATYAJIT SARKERDTDC Courier & Cargo

SHALABH RAIZADASafexpress

SRINIBASH SAHOODSP BlackRock Investment Managers

SANKARANARAYANAN RAGHAVANAegon Religare Life Insurance

SAYED PEERZADEReliance Entertainment-Digital

SHASHI MOHANPolaris Financial Technology

SRINIVAS TATAEssar Project India

SATISH DASCognizant Technology Solutions

SHAJI ABRAHAMAvantha Power and Infrastructure

SRI KARUMBATIStumpp, Schuele & Somappa Springs

SUDESH AGARWALLandmark Group

SANTOSH SINGHDharampal Satyapal

SHAILESH JOSHIGodrej Industries

SHRIKANT KULKARNIKPIT Technologies

SUBODH DUBEYUsha International

RAJESH CHOPRAEIH

RAMANDEEP SINGH VIRDIInterglobe Aviation (Indigo)

S.T. SATHIAVAGEESWARANHPCL

SANJAY AGGARWALIndia Yamaha Motor

RAJIV SARAFReliance Infrastructure

RAMESH NAGARAJANWipro

SACHIN GOELKPMG

SANJAY MARATHEZensar Technologies

RAKESH MISHRAJindal Steel & Power

RAM KALYAN MEDURYICICI Lombard General Insurance

S. RAMASAMYIndian Oil

SALIL MAHAJANBharti Axa Life Insurance Company

SANJEEV KUMARAdhunik Group of Industries

S. FRANCIS RAJANBIAL

SACHIN JAINEvalueserve.com

SANJAY SARASWATReliance Globalcom

RAJAT SHARMAAtul

RAJEEV MITTALPiaggio Vehicles

RAJEEV AGARWALHindustan Aeronautics

KUMAR HERAMBA NARAYAN NAIKTRL Krosaki Refractories

KAUSHAL KUMAR CHAUDHARYLanco Infratech

KAPIL PALPepsico India

MANKIKAR RAVIKIRANThe Shamrao Vithal Co-Operative Bank

MANOJ SHRIVASTAVASistema Shyam Teleservices

MOHAMMAD WASIMSapientNitro

MONIKA PHARTYAL GAUNIYARenault India

MUKESHKUMAR JAINICI CI Bank

MURALIDHARAN RAMACHANDRANSyntel

N. VARADARAJANMadras Cements

NAGESH ASWARTHA,SPML Infra

NILESH SANGOIMeru Cab Company

PARAKH DAVEFuture Group

V.S. PARTHASARATHYMahindra & Mahindra

A. BALAKRISHNANGeojit BNP Paribas Financial Services

AMIT JAINTata Consultancy Services

ANAND PADMANABHANShiv Nadar University

ANIL KUMAR KAUSHIKBPCL

ANIL NADKARNIThermax

ANIRUDDHA PAULING Vysya Bank

ANJAN DEBThe Great Eastern Shipping Company

ANSHUL DUREJAGreenply Industries

ANTHONY THOMASVodafone India

ATUL KUMARSyndicate Bank

ATUL LUTHRAMatrix Cellular International Services

B. VENKATAKRISHNANMahindra Vehicle Manufacturers

BALJINDER SINGH SABHARWALEXL Service Holdings

BHUPENDRA PANTEWAC Alloys

CHELLA NAMASIVAYAM M.iGATE

BHUSHAN AKERKARHindalco Industries

D. VENKATA RAOGodfrey Phillips India

D.C. SHAHGujarat Mineral Development Corporation

DARSHAN APPAYANNAHappiest Minds Technologies

FARHAN KHANRadico Khaitan

G.S. RAOKSK Energy Ventures

G.S. RAVI KUMARGati

GOPAL RANGARAJReliance Life Sciences

JAYANTHA PRABHUEssar Group

P. JAYAKRISHNANMuthoot Fincorp

KALPANA MANIAREdelweiss Financial Services

KAMAL KARNATAKVarun Beverages

KAMAL MATTASonic Biochem Ext

PAWAN KUMAR NIJHAWANHindustan Zinc

PRASHANT VEER SINGHBharti Infratel

NetApp Congratulates the Winners of CIO100 Awards








SUNIL SIROHINIIT









V.C. KUMANANIDFC


YOGESH KAPOORHSBC

















RAJESH CHOPRAEIH






SACHIN GOELKPMG










RAJAT SHARMAAtul






































G.S. RAVI KUMARGati

















SUNIL SIROHINIIT









V.C. KUMANANIDFC


YOGESH KAPOORHSBC

















RAJESH CHOPRAEIH






SACHIN GOELKPMG










RAJAT SHARMAAtul






































G.S. RAVI KUMARGati

















SUNIL SIROHINIIT









V.C. KUMANANIDFC


YOGESH KAPOORHSBC

















RAJESH CHOPRAEIH






SACHIN GOELKPMG










RAJAT SHARMAAtul






































G.S. RAVI KUMARGati










COMPILED BY SHUBHRA RISHI

STRENGTHEN collaboration with the C-suite. A CIO’s alignment with the C-suite will ensure a stronger vision to drive business growth.

EMBRACE SMAC technologies. Speeding up the adoption of these and other emerging technologies can help organizations transform their businesses.

CHALK OUT a digital roadmap. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a short-term or long-term one.

MAKE an active effort to understand the challenges of your business heads. This will help you get closer to the business.

Best Practices

1

2

3

HHave you recently received tablets or other mobile devices from your organization? Is all your work data now being saved on a cloud? Are you reaching out to your customers through social media more than ever? If your answer is “yes”, you are witnessing a digital wave in your organization.

The fifth annual PwC survey measures the digital IQ of organizations across the world. Digital IQ is the measure of how well companies understand the value of technology and weave it into the fabric of their organization.

Interestingly, 85 percent of Indian organizations are digitally astute, says the report. This is higher than their US and UK counterparts, which touch 54 and 69 percent respectively. It means that Indian companies are way ahead in their adoption of key technologies such as social networks, mobility, analytics, and cloud (SMAC).

One reason Indian companies possess a higher digital IQ is better C-suite alignment. The survey points out that in one-third of Indian enterprises today, the CIO has a strong relationship with other members across the C-suite.

In turn, Indian business leaders are also driving IT efforts. A majority—75 percent—of the respondents agree that the C-suite’s active involvement in IT in strategic initiatives is likely to ensure that there is an organization-wide understanding of the costs needed to implement them.

Country: India, Digital IQ: HighIndian CIOs are riding the digital wave more comfortably than their global peers. Better C-suite collaboration and adoption of key technologies are enabling this.

SOURCE: PwC GLOBAL DIGITAL IQ SURVEY

Levels of Digital Astuteness

80% Indian CIOs

and business leaders share the same vision for

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85%

India UK US

69% 54%

4

alert

IT walks a fine line between balancing security issues and giving people the tools they need to

get the job done. Every day, companies move sensitive data around and IT is in charge of securing that data, but what about the little things that tend to fall through the cracks?

According to several recent surveys, there are a number of things your employees could be inadvertently doing, thereby putting the company’s sensitive data and information at risk.

Sanjib Sahoo, CTO at tradeMONSTER says he thinks about security and customer privacy a lot. A player in the online brokerage portion of the financial industry, his company thrives on data, and as CTO, he puts extra emphasis on data security.

“We have to put measures in place to protect against the loss, misuse, and alteration of customer data and any other data we control. At the

same time, we put a lot of importance on our intellectual property for our technology and platform,” says Sahoo.

This means new employees who might not be fully aware of risks and data policies need training with regards to the balanced culture of concern, awareness, and trust.

A recent survey done by Harris Interactive on behalf of Fiberlink highlights many of the challenges that today’s IT departments are facing. In the survey, 2,064 employees were asked about their mobile behavior. Many of the behaviors below are done in a benign way in an effort to get the job done, but they still could potentially expose sensitive corporate data.

1. Using Cloud Storage ServicesMore than 50 percent of people who

responded to the Fiberlink survey reported uploading sensitive data to cloud services. “Consumer file-sharing and synchronization services

such as Dropbox are appealing to business users because they are accessible and convenient. However, it’s those same attributes that make them a security concern,” says David Lingenfelter, information security

officer at Fiberlink.

2. Opening Documents in Third-party AppsMillennials are twice as likely to use their own phones and tablets for work and while working on the go is great, opening sensitive data in mobile apps such as QuickOffice, Dropbox or Evernote isn’t great for your corporate data security.

ENTERPRISE RISK MANAGEMENT

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Where Doth Thy Data Reside?Advancements in storage and security have created a shift in CIOs’ choice of place for storing sensitive data. They are now choosing to store data away from the company premises.

the percentage decline in the number of organizations opting for on-site servers to

store their sensitive data.14%


Safehouse for Sensitive

11%8%

57%

21%

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On-site servers

Off-site servers

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No centralized

location

Don’t know

“Opening documents in third-party applications presents some unique challenges related to putting corporate data at risk. The first risk is sharing data with third parties, including applications like Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, and Dropbox. While employees may naturally use caution when forwarding e-mails, the ‘Open In’ functionality is much less obvious and they may be leaking data using ‘Open In’ unintentionally. A second dimension exists on the Android platform, where there is an increasing possibility that malware will play a role. Applications that impersonate trusted applications could be the recipient of confidential data when users open documents using the impostor,” says Fiberlink’s Lingenfelter.

3. Sending Company Data over Personal E-mail Addresses Eighty-four percent of respondents reported sending sensitive data via their personal e-mail addresses. “Many times programmers view several security policies such as not being able to use personal email addresses or USB drives as a hindrance to their productivity. Transitioning them to a risk-aware culture, keeping morale high while keeping them motivated and creative is one of the toughest challenges a CIO can face,” says Sahoo.

ENTERPRISE RISK MANAGEMENTalert

4. Using File Transfer AppsYou’ve got to send a coworker a file that’s 40MB but you keep getting an error on your mail program saying the file is too large. That’s a typical scenario that could find employees circumventing policy to get the job done.

5. USB Thumb Drives, Smartphones and TabletsIn a recent survey by Symantec, 62 percent of respondents said that it was acceptable to transfer work documents to personal computers, tablets, or smartphones. The majority of these files, according to Symantec, are never deleted because employees don’t understand the risks involved with keeping them.

Research from Fiberlink sheds some additional (and troubling) light. Fifty-one percent of employees surveyed who have personal smartphones/tablets use these mobile devices for work-related purposes and a third of those who responded said that they have lost a USB drive with confidential information on it.

6. Data and IP TheftSymantec’s survey revealed that half of employees who either left their position or lost their job in the last 12 months kept confidential company data to use with their next employer or business. In a

recent article, Robert Hamilton, director of product marketing at Symantec, said, “Trusted employees are moving, sharing, and exposing sensitive data in order to do their daily jobs. In other instances, they are deliberately taking confidential information to use with their next employer.”

Tackle the Digital Security ChallengeIn these situations, there is no way to ensure that data is removed and/or deleted, and that represents more than a few challenges for IT security and policy makers. One solution, says Lingenfelter, is to prevent data loss through third-party apps. “It makes sense to restrict use of these apps on mobile devices in certain circumstances, depending on your industry or corporate security policies.”

The answer according to Sahoo: “Make employees understand the goals and risks to the company, which in turn will encourage them to act accordingly. “Entrust” not “Enforce” works like a charm. Ignorance is avoided with training, and intentional violations are avoided by creating a culture of trust and respect within the organization.” CIO

Rich Hein is a senior writer for CIO.com. Send feedback

to [email protected]

ON THE US’ SPYING ACTIVITIES ON INDIAN CITIZENS, IN AN INTERVIEW TO ET

“Government is promoting Indian players in the IT field to develop and offer Internet services by having their servers located in India, in order to protect the interests and secrecy of communication of Indian citizens.”


—KAPIL SIBAL, LAW MINISTER & MINISTER OF COMMUNICATIONS AND IT AND LAW AND JUSTICE, GOVERNMENT OF INDIA

REAL CIO WORLD | A U G U S T 1 5 , 2 0 1 3 8 1VOL/8 | ISSUE/10

HCL’s managed services help customers derive value through various IT transformation initiatives including datacenter management, end user computing, mobile device management, and security.

CUSTOMER-CENTRIC MANAGED SERVICES

a decrease in time taken for online transactions that are more directly in the service provider’s control. While its success is dependent on the customer investing in the required IT infrastructure to enable the outcome, it is also imperative that outcomes be clearly defi ned and agreed upon between the service provider and the client.

Is there a noticeable shift towards outcome-based engagements?

Outcome-based engagements are just beginning to be spoken about for standard managed services and it will be some time before it becomes the norm in the industry. The key diffi culty with outcome-based engagements is benchmarking the ‘as-is’ situation. Unless benchmarks are clear, outcome-based models can’t work. Further, the benchmark that is given should also be acceptable to the service provider and hence has to be measurable. Hence, a large-scale shift towards outcome-based engagement is still far-sighted but both client organizations and service providers have started taking steps in this direction.

Now that datacenter infrastructure is largely commoditized, what is the differentiation that you can provide to

the customer? From a managed services standpoint, the service provider can make a lot of difference to IT through automation, proactive management, and balanced-scorecard-based IT management. These are all areas that can directly contribute to increased availability, better reliability and improved productivity. In addition, service providers can also add value through transformation initiatives like mobile device management, security management, managed print services, etc. These are all parts of managed services that has enabled HCL to provide signifi cant business value to its esteemed customers.”

What has been the evolution of the managed service model? Managed services originally began as facilities management,

wherein organizations took skilled resources from IT service providers but the overall management of IT, including parameters of uptime and resolution times, was the responsibility of the internal IT teams. However, over time, the model has evolved wherein the service providers fully manage parts of an organization’s IT based on service level agreements (SLAs), which shows the strength and maturity of the model.

How different is managed services from outsourcing and what are its advantages over the latter?

In total outsourcing, the entire IT is outsourced to a service provider, sometimes along with assets. This leads to the internal IT team of the client often getting a feeling of loss of control, since the service provider manages the entire IT.

However, in managed services, the client still maintains a certain level of control over its IT with the strategic decision-making typically resting with the client. Besides, the internal IT team of the client is deeply engaged in the overall governance, though not in the day-to-day management. This leads to the IT team of the client having a sense of control and adding value at a strategic level.

From a service provider perspective, is an outcome-based engagement a high risk-reward scenario?

An outcome-based model is a sign of strong and evolved partnership with the customer. Of course, it is a high risk-reward model, since the service provider does not have direct control on the core business decisions of the customer. But, at the same time, outcome-based models can also be linked to manageable outcomes such as increase in IT productivity or

SoundboardHCL

CUSTOM SOLUTIONS GROUP

This interview is brought to you by IDG Custom Solutions Group in association with

An outcome-based model is a sign of a strong partnership with the customer. It is a high risk-reward model but it can be linked to manageable outcomes.”

ANAND RAMAKRISHNAN, Business Head-Managed Services, Cloud & Microsoft Services, HCL

“In today’s tough economy, managed services provide CIOs the opportunity and bandwidth to rediscover themselves and add more value to their businesses.”

VIJAY DOGRA, Senior Vice President &India Sales Head, HCL

EXECUTIVE VIEWPOINT

COMBATING BYOD SECURITY THREATSAltaf Halde, Managing Director, Kaspersky Lab, South Asia, says BYOD will push CIOs to look for integrated security solutions that offer a comprehensive console and avoid managing various products from vendors.

ALTAF HALDEManaging Director, Kaspersky Lab, South Asia

Halde has been spearheading the business growth of Kaspersky Lab in India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. He has been instrumental in Kaspersky Lab’s success and its emergence as an industry leader in the South Asia region.

If BYOD exposes the organization to so many security risks, why embrace it at all?In a 2013 study by a leading virtualization platform provider, 73 percent of respon-dents said that in case their IT teams could not assist them in connecting to the enter-prise to work via their preferred devices, they would spend time working out a solu-tion on their own. This could even involve jail-breaking security barriers set by IT. In fact, some of the power users in the com-pany could be so adept at these devices and technology that they could sneak into your networks without the IT team even having any idea about it.

Also, many progressive companies have realized that, the anytime, anywhere access means that employees can be more produc-tive and connected at all times. This has led to many management teams forcing IT to develop a BYOD strategy. These forces will eventually lead the CIO to adopt BYOD. So, it’s better to be geared up for it and chalk out a plan rather than be caught off guard.

KASPERSKY CUSTOM SOLUTIONS GROUP

What are some of the questions that CIOs should ask themselves before trying to chalk a BYOD plan?Like most technologies, BYOD is neither meant for everyone in the enterprise nor is it a one-size-fits-all approach. CIOs need to focus on questions like what profile of employees really need access, what data are they trying to access, and what is the criticality of the data. Apart from this, CIOs would need to figure out key stakehold-ers and how they get affected, along with a complete risk assessment for the busi-ness. CIOs need to be careful about the kind of platforms that are likely to enter their enterprises, what kind of security so-lutions they choose, and how these would blend in with legacy applications in the backend, networks, and new-age devices.

Given that security has largely been a bolt-on function, with new age technologies like cloud, virtualization, and mobility, how important is it for a security solution to seamlessly fit into all these mediums?Business is increasingly adopting new technologies without considering their security implications. Most of the time se-curity practitioners are reacting to change while trying to protect their businesses. They are assessing risk after a particular technology has been adopted.

The core challenge in today’s environ-ment isn’t that there are no tools avail-able, it’s that each individual tool adds to the complexity that IT security teams face when trying to implement their security policies. Integrated security capabilities are required with easy to manage central-ized management system with powerful control tools, in order to have a complete view of the risks across systems and end-points, while at the same time manage costs, increase performance, and lower resource footprint.

What are the biggest security challenges that IT teams face with respect to BYOD?Mainly, BYOD brings in two big chal-lenges. First is the fact that the business now has little or no control over the range of device types and operating systems (OSes) being used, so the task of manag-ing all those different devices could add to management’s woes. Secondly, there’s a greater risk of compromised security on the device (from infected data, attach-ments or apps), which can lead to infec-tions or attacks on the rest of the corpo-rate network.

How does Kaspersky help CIOs keep a tab on their BYOD security measures?We believe that the best security solution will be one that offers a comprehensive console with the security features organi-zations require, so they don’t have to inte-grate or manage different products from different vendors. They would also need high levels of integration and interoper-ability across security for all endpoints, not just mobile.

Keeping the above in mind, we intro-duced Kaspersky Security for Mobile that combines Kaspersky Lab’s protection technologies and extensive MDM func-tionality in one, tightly integrated solution. By giving administrators greater visibil-ity over mobile devices that access the corporate network, Kaspersky makes it easier for businesses to benefit from rig-orous, multi-layer security and productiv-ity-enhancing management capabilities.

Some of the key features in Kasper-sky Security for Mobile include: Anti-malware, anti-spam, anti-phishing, MDM, containerization, encryption manage-ment, application control, Web control, and several anti-theft features, like re-mote lock, remote find, remote wipe, and remote SIM watch.

If business users and IT were not in good terms earlier, things are about to get more messed up soon. Smart devices

have increased people’s appetite for cus-tomized and effi cient performance and they want to extend the privilege of using their preferred devices, platforms, and apps at the workplace as well. So, what could be the possible harm in letting people do what they love to? Letting them bring in their own devices defi nitely helps employees be con-nected and work from anytime, anywhere. It increases their productivity and improves their agility to respond to changing busi-ness demands faster, not to mention that they are a happier lot now.

Many organizations have asked their IT departments to allow BYOD so that users can have full access to specifi c services, based on user profi le and devices used—without compromising security and adding more staff. Organizations that in the past restricted BYOD due to security and sup-port concerns are today allowing it because they realize that it gives them a competitive advantage. In some cases it actually keeps them in business. But ask the CIO and the IT teams and a whole different dimension to BYOD opens up. IT leaders agree that this new trend has opened up the organization to more security loopholes than ever. Clos-ing the doors to BYOD is no longer an op-tion. But improving the security strategy is.

EVALUATING THE ATTACK VECTORSIn 2012, Kaspersky Lab discovered over 25 times more mobile malware than was identifi ed in the entire six-year period between 2004 and 2010. Traditionally businesses relied on security that protects all endpoints within their corporate network .However, enabling access—to business systems and data, from mobile devices—

means smartphones and tablets will effectively cross through the protective fi rewall. If those devices are infected with viruses or Trojans, that will introduce security issues within the corporate network.

And the list of possible dangers doesn’t stop there. IT departments are constantly struggling to manage devices on various platforms and OSes and their various ver-sions to secure corporate and personal data that resides together on these personal de-vices and unvetted malicious applications from third party vendors. IT departments are now dealing with all these problems alongside the fact that there is only so much control one can exert over an employee’s personal device. Supplementing device-level encryption, controlling the launch of applications, controlling Internet access and dealing with lost or stolen devices are issues that all IT departments are facing everyday. And the task is too colossal and complex for the IT department to manage alone.

This is where a trusted partner to man-age the security vectors around BYOD comes into play. Because of the ever-changing threat scenario, it’s important that CIOs choose a security vendor who is likely to keep enhancing its corporate se-curity offerings and continues to deliver a rapid response to new threats and new at-tack vectors.

KASPERSKY COMES TO THE RESCUEKaspersky Security for Mobile combines Kaspersky Lab’s proven protection technologies and extensive MDM functionality in one tightly integrated solution. The solution provides a consolidated yet simple management console and gives administrators greater visibility and control over mobile devices that access the corporate network. Kaspersky Security for Mobile

This feature is brought to you by IDG Custom Solutions Group

Kaspersky Security for Mobile packs an array of features that help CIOs strengthen the security around their BYOD strategy, giving employees their freedom at work and IT departments

the much needed peace of mind.

makes it easier for businesses to benefi t from rigorous, multilayer security and productivity-enhancing management capabilities.

The solution integrates features like sig-nature-based protection, heuristic analysis (for proactive detection of new threats), Web-assisted protection via the Kasper-sky Security Network (KSN) to respond to emerging threats within minutes instead of hours or days, and Over the Air (OTA) de-livery of anti-malware updates among oth-ers to reduce IT’s worries. CIOs can now set up special containers on each mobile device so that corporate data and applica-tions are totally separated from the users’ personal data and apps. They can detect rooted/jailbroken devices and also manage an application’s access to device resources including SMS, camera, GPS, the network , and the fi le system.

The solutions packs in an array of fea-tures that make security for mobile devices seem like a cakewalk. All of Kaspersky’s prime technologies have been developed by the company’s own in-house experts. This ensures that the code that underpins Kaspersky’s Mobile Security and MDM technologies is integrated and optimized to help preserve the performance of the orga-nization’s devices and systems.

To avail a special three month trial of Kaspersky Mobile Device Management (MDM), mail

[email protected] with IDG CIO 100 Offer as the subject line.

BRIDGING THOSE BYOD WOES

www.kaspersky.co.in/business

ENTERPRISE RISK MANAGEMENTalert

T he capabilities of malware targeting the market-leading Android platform are

mimicking those of Trojans that have wrung profits from Windows PC users for years, a new study shows.

With nearly an 80 percent market share, Android’s mobile dominance parallels Windows’ in the PC world, making Google’s operating system the “mobile world’s equivalent,” Kaspersky Lab says in its latest Threat Evolution report.

The difference between Windows and Android malware is that the latter is evolving much quicker, as criminals borrow from what they learned in targeting PCs since the 1990s.

“The evolution of Android malware has gone much more quickly than the evolution of Windows malware,” says Roel Schouwenberg, a senior researcher for Kaspersky Lab.

The peak in Android malware development so far was Backdoor.AndroidOS.Obad.a, which Kaspersky labeled as the most sophisticated mobile Trojan to date. Capabilities included opening a backdoor for downloading files, stealing information about the phone and its apps, sending SMS messages to premium rate numbers, and spreading malware via Bluetooth.

Obad also reached new heights in its use of encryption and code obfuscation to thwart analysis efforts. In addition, it exploited three previously unknown Android vulnerabilities.

Looking at Obad overall, Kaspersky determined that the Trojan looked more like Windows malware than the typical Android program.

The vast majority of malware written today still targets the much more profitable Windows PC. Nevertheless, the rising number of malicious code samples indicated there is a new generation of developers working hard on breaking into smartphones, which surpassed PCs in shipments in 2011.

In the first half of this year, the number of malicious code samples collected by Kaspersky broke 100,000 for the first time. For all of 2012, the security vendor collected about 76,000 samples.

Nevertheless, infection rates remain very low. For example, in watching Obad over a three-day period in June, Kaspersky found that attempts to install the malware reached only 0.15 percent of all infection tries by programs.

Part of the reason for the low infection rate overall is a paucity of channels for distributing malware. Most infections today occur through downloading malicious code tucked in an app found in an online app store, other than the official Google Play store. The infection rate is expected to rise as other

distribution methods evolve. In addition, Kaspersky is seeing an

increasing number of ads in mobile apps pointing to malicious sites. The

vendor has also found a handful of sites with the popular Blackhole exploit kit, modified to download malware when the visitor is using an Android device.

Another troubling trend is the type of mobile malware discovered in the wild. While Trojans that send SMS messages

to premium numbers account for the majority of smartphone infections, Kaspersky collects more mobile malware with backdoors for connecting to command and control servers. CIO

Antone Gonsalves writes for CSO. Send feedback to

[email protected].

It may be old news now, but hackers are still using news of the royal baby’s birth to entice people into clicking on malicious links, according to researchers at Trend Micro.

When the official announcement was made on June 22, the researchers spotted plenty of spammed messages related to the royal baby birth. In a statement, they described the speed with which this spam hit the Internet as “remarkable”.

These messages appear to be from ScribbleLive, a service that provides real-time engagement platforms.

“The offer, of course, is false, and clicking on links in the email will only trigger multiple redirections that are typical among Blackhole exploit kit (BHEK) spam runs,” the researchers said.

BHEK is a page that cyber-criminals use to determine what software versions are used by a victim so that the page can deliver the “correct” exploit. Generally, people using outdated software are more at risk of being caught by exploits.

Trend Micro described this technique of taking advantage of current affairs as a social engineering lure, adding that they often come in the form of highly publicized events. The researchers gave the Boston Marathon incident and the election of Pope Francis as prime examples

— By Tom Paye

Bab

y’s

Day

Out

A New Playground for Hackers


As mobile computing evolves, two of the most interesting developments now emerging are wearable devices and augmented-reality applications. And if mobile computing has taught

us anything, it's that the old consumer-enterprise technology divide is disappearing. If users buy a device that they can use for business, they will use it for business. With that in mind, I want to review five business scenarios that are compelling for the combination of wearables and AR.

First, though, it seems like a good idea to consider the likelihood of wearables and AR becoming broadly adopted at all. We can't know this, of course, but there's good reason to believe that the trajectory of mobile computing over the past decade will carry over to wearables and AR.

That's because wearables and AR will extend the great computing transformation that has defined the last several decades, in which computing has continually moved closer and closer to the specific point where work gets done. PCs moved computing from the datacenter to the front office and then to users' desktops. The laptop, smartphone and tablet brought computing to our fingertips, wherever they might be.

Wearables take this one step further by making computing devices even more lightweight, portable, unobtrusive, and instantaneous. They open new modes of operation, from continual sensing and measurement to natural language. I don't think it's outrageous to foresee countless enterprise end users embracing these sorts of devices in their search for more efficient business processes, and perhaps even the opportunity to completely reinvent and redesign both business processes and business models.

The Future is Here Wearable computing is coming, and combined with augmented-reality apps, it could bring some benefits for the enterprise.

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Nicholas D. Evans IT STRATEGY


HP India’s Country Manager for CI & Cloud Solutions shares

how its CIO-to-CIO model for converged infrastructure offers

IT leaders a host of features that will benefi t, both, their IT teams

and their businesses.

EXECUTIVE VIEWPOINTEXECUTIVEEXECUTIVEEXECUTIVEEXECUTIVEEXECUTIVEEXECUTIVEEXECUTIVEEXECUTIVE VIEWPOINT

Why should Indian organizations consider converged infrastructure solutions?Organizations want to build environments that help them ren-der services to their end-users while having visibility into the underlying infrastructure components. But, they tend to fol-low a standalone process for infrastructure procurement and this takes away a lot of their time.

Today’s users are well informed and their expectations from technology and services are only increasing by the day. Or-ganizations need to cater to these users with fast, complete, integrated, and automated template-based solutions rather than delivering service the traditional way. This is where con-verged infrastructure can ready the enterprise to serve its cus-tomers, employees, and partners to avail infrastructure require-ments at any point in time, and through any channel. Converged infrastructure creates an environment that is elastic to fl ex up and down based on the business demands.

How does converged infrastructure address the specific issues or concerns around improving efficiencies while reducing TCO?In the past, we used to define administrators based on their

Converged Infrastructure:

The CIO-to-CIO Model

RAMACHANDRAN VISWANATHAN, Country Manager-CI & Cloud Solutions, HP

Ramachandran Viswanathan overlooks cloud solutions sales across India. His team is responsible for private, public, and hybrid cloud solutions sales and also for developing the cloud ecosystem in the country. During his 12-year career at HP, he has spearheaded sales for HP ProLiant servers in India. In his 18 plus years of experience he has held various sales, marketing, business development, and technology positions in the industry.

specializations such as server, storage, and networking. But today, we are talking about a resource pool based on admin-istration needs by providing 360 degree view of their ecosystem which is adding value on their contribution. Customers are looking at one single management tool across their supply layer to deploy hardware or virtual machines.

With a converged infrastructure setup, organizations will only need to train their teams on a single tool which will intercon-nect at the back-end with respective man-agement agents. Combining this with cloud maps (the template for infrastructure pro-visioning), could lead to applications, which would otherwise take days to deploy, to be-ing rolled out in a couple of hours. If we add these gains to TCO calculations, customers can achieve break-even much faster than the traditional investment plan for IT.

What role does converged infrastructure play in enabling the adoption of the latest technologies like the cloud, analytics, and mobility?

Infrastructure is the foundation for most of the latest technologies. It is also probably the most inflexible layer. Mobility is about extending applications or productive tools to employees on mo-bile devices like laptops, smartphones, and tablets. In cloud computing, the ap-plication layer is based on multi-tenan-cy and providing anywhere anytime ac-cess to information.

It is the convergence of servers, stor-age, networks, and management soft-ware that enables cloud-based, shared infrastructure to be managed and deliv-ered as a service. If you have converged infrastructure at your organization sup-porting the cloud, then the basic require-ments for mobility are already in place.

Analytics, on the other hand, is pri-marily about building a data mart and assessing how your IO is utilized. In a converged infrastructure setup, we can utilize traditional IT equipment and bring all of it into a single pool of resources along with the latest hardware that the organization might have invested in. Any application that needs to be deployed-gets the flexibility of this larger pool.

How can one integrate legacy systems with converged infrastructure?Earlier, we had separate tools for infra-structure and operations management. We have now integrated these multiple

tools from HP into a single tool. There is no separate component that you need to buy to provision infrastructure for the application requirements. This is being extended as a modular solution to our customers and we give them the assur-ance of integrating it with their tradi-tional IT. HP announced Cloud System Matrix as one integrated system based on converged infrastructure.

HP was the first to deliver an open solution, and the only one optimized for any workload at any scale—providing the best of both worlds. Moving test and development environments to cloud, ex-panding the cloud to include your pro-duction infrastructure, and delivering

mission critical availability, and optimiza-tion for business applications with open-ness and extensibility are some of the di-rect impacts of implementing HP Cloud System Matrix.

What is so different about HP’s converged infrastructure?HP’s converged infrastructure is com-plete, integrated, and open and we call this the CIO-to-CIO model. It gives customers the fl exibility to retain traditional IT with-out having to spend time from individual stack providers. Our solutions are created with the best in class components and are market leaders in almost every category of products within the convergence layer. It accelerates deployment through automa-tion by providing consistency and reliability as it comes through service catalogues.

It provides ready capacity when business demands with bursting and pay as you use resources. This also comes with the prom-ise of maximum uptime to customers as automation and proactive alerts keep them well informed on the eventualities and al-low proactive actions for maintaining the overall health.

HP Cloud System Matrix Comes with disaster recovery tools that can protect service continuity with automated cost-effective failover to maintain maximum uptime. It is built on OpenStack and this important framework lets our customers expand their application or device to a wide range and differentiate themselves from their competitors.

If an open stack connector is available for the application or a productivity device, then the integration can be easily handled by the organization’s IT team without hav-ing to spend a huge sum for integration or interoperability. HP offers its customers a completely integrated, modular, and open solution that extends heterogeneity, choice, and the confi dence to deliver their infra-structure and applications as they like.

HP ENTERPRISESCUSTOM SOLUTIONS GROUP


in association with

Converged infrastructure and easy manageability helps free up IT’s time and allows it the opportunity to utilize its skills in

areas that will have a direct impact on

the business.”

and monitoring both infrastructure and applications are some of the use cases of Cloud System Matrix.

What impact does converged infrastructure have on the IT process and people layers?There are various studies which suggest that the IT team spends close to 75 percent of their time on operational activities. This leaves them with very little time to engage in innovation. Converged infrastructure, with its ease of management, allows them the opportunity to utilize their skill in core areas that will have a direct impact on their business.

It integrates heterogeneous infrastruc-ture components and provisions infra-structure and applications in minutes for both physical and virtual environments. An extension of self-service infrastructure de-livery model on demand, single governance and security model, automated metering and chargeback, instant scalability with

The market trends are clear. Today's mobile elite typically bring three or more mobile devices to work, and tomorrow's mobile elite may well add one or two wearables to the mix as well.

Meanwhile, AR apps have found early traction on smartphones. Already, we can use such apps to find restaurants, subway stations, hotels, ATMs, Wi-Fi hotspots and more, and we can even augment our driving and take measurements of physical objects. But one reason I've thrown AR apps together with wearable devices is that, when combined, the utility of AR apps will soar, since they can be accessed more rapidly while being less distracting and obtrusive. Markets and Markets predicts that the global augmented reality applications market will grow from $692 million (about Rs 4359 crore) in 2013 to $5 billion (about Rs 31,500 crore) by 2016, a growth curve similar to that of the wearable technology market.

And now to business. The simple fact that wearable devices are hands-free gives them a distinct advantage over smartphones and tablets and, when coupled with AR applications, opens up a number of interesting application scenarios across industries as diverse as retail, financial services, healthcare, transportation, and government. Here are five:

Understanding and navigating the physical environment. As I've already noted, AR apps that help us find things will increase their utility when they are incorporated into wearable devices. As wearables move from the early adopter to the early mainstream in the next few years, businesses should think about how AR apps could help customers find their stores, navigate their large facilities, determine whether a product is in stock, check wait times, report product issues and more.

Providing detailed guidance for complex manual tasks. Intricate manual tasks such as inspection, maintenance and repair within field service can be augmented on smart glasses with heads-up displays of online instruction manuals, graphical guides or other pertinent information. This sort of assistance can be extended even to surgical procedures, not to mention giving nurses and other healthcare providers relevant patient data in real time. Logistics is another area with great potential, as highlighted in Jonny Evans' recent blog, where he sees promise for wearables in delivery operations. In addition, I see potential within large warehouses, where workers need guidance finding, picking, and shipping products from inventory.

Supporting military and intelligence operations. Wearable devices with heads-up displays found early adoption in the

military, where they help shorten the time from intent to action. The US military, as part of its Soldier Centric Imaging via Computational Cameras (SCENICC) initiative, is now exploring AR contact lenses with information such as color imaging and video provided directly to the wearer via the lens. It will be interesting to see when these innovations find their way into the business and consumer worlds.

Enhancing the shopping experience. In retail, AR technology has already made it possible for phones to act like barcode scanners and offer up extra product information, reviews and price comparisons. With wearable devices, AR apps can offer the same kinds of functionality but in a far more convenient manner, so consumers can continue to pick up and handle items while doing their online research hands-free. Retail-focused AR companies have already produced virtual dressing rooms for trying on clothing at home, and it's likely that wearable glasses will simplify that and bring it to the showroom as well.

Facilitating instant information and collaboration. The main consumer scenario is that users will benefit from instant content and collaboration. Wearable devices will make it easier to access news and weather, get updates on flight status, send and reply to messages, dictate e-mail, get on-screen translation, take photos and video clips, and videoconference so they can see what their collaborators are looking at.

The main objection has been that wearable glasses will promote stealth photographing and videotaping, though there is also concern among government agencies, such as the UK Department of Transportation, that wearable glasses will be a distraction when driving. As for the enterprise, the ease of access that wearable devices will provide could be used to enhance existing mobile- and social-enabled applications to improve employees' productivity, information-sharing and collaboration.

What makes wearable devices so compelling for the enterprise is that they represent an elegant, yet powerful, integration platform for end users where the convergence of disruptive trends such as social, mobile, analytics and cloud can all come together to truly revolutionize the end-user experience. Smartphones and tablets helped to start this convergence from the end-user perspective, and wearables will help to bring it even closer to fruition. CIO

Nicholas D. Evans leads the Strategic Innovation Program for Unisys. Send feedback


Nicholas D. Evans IT STRATEGY


As wearables move from the early adopter to the early mainstream, businesses should think about how it could help customers find their stores, check wait times, and more.

This interview is brought to you by IDG Custom Solutions Group in association with Mount10.

ULTRA-SECURE BACKUP AND DISASTER RECOVERYWith news of data snooping by the NSA and PRISM, and unforeseen calamities, Mount10 offers a backup and recovery solution to enterprises worried about the security of their data.

EXECUTIVE VIEWPOINT

VIVEK SAZAWALCEO, MOUNT10 INDIA

With over 20 years of sales and marketing experience in the IT industry, Sazawal currently heads the India business for Mount10. He has previously handled a varied range of products focused on offi ce automation, end-to-end networking, and converged communications.

MOUNT10 INDIACUSTOM SOLUTIONS GROUP

How does Mount10 protect business-critical data from natural and manmade disasters? In the face of natural calamities such as tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, and fl oods, as well as manmade disasters such as political unrest, vandalism, or terrorist attacks, it has become imperative for business leaders to ensure that all critical business data is stored in a secured environment which is readily accessible. MOUNT10’s data storage/backup facility, housed deep inside the Swiss Alps, is an erstwhile bomb-proof military command center that provides a unique and complete protection because, historically, Switzerland has been virtually immune to all of the above threats.

Anything that is connected to the Internet can’t be fully secure. How do you address that concern? At Mount10, it is a standard practice to use the highest level of data encryption (256 AES) right from the moment data leaves the customer premises till it is stored in the mountain. Besides, the encryption key is the only tool that can restore the data and the same is available to none other than the data owner. The system is also designed to have minimal human intervention with ultra-sophisticated hardware and software to perform actions like checking and authenticating the user,

checking the data volume, and carrying out backup seamlessly.

How do you plan to recoup the costs asso-ciated with running servers in an under-ground datacenter? The huge infrastructural costs associ-ated with setting up and managing such a secure facility has been a major issue for SMEs and large enterprises alike. SIAG group, the parent company of MOUNT10 AG, has been in operation for the past two decades and has ensured that all the in-vestments are spread over a large period of time with multi-usage of the mountain facilities. This makes it possible for us to offer data storage/backup services at af-fordable cost with the use of effi cient tech-nology and minimum human intervention.

What lessons have we learnt in BC and DR from the response to natural calamities in India and globally?Many lessons can be learned from the devastations caused by hurricane Sandy in the US, the tsunami in Japan, or the fl ash fl oods in Uttarakhand. Companies can move to managed backup or vaulting services that leverage storage-area network replication technologies as an alternative to tape as it requires long recovery times and is physically diffi cult to

transport. Moreover, in a disaster situation, companies must avoid negotiating last-minute changes to its contracted hot site as this will only delay the recovery.

Can cloud-based data backup and disaster recovery boost business? For an increasing number of mid-sized organizations, DR requirements are be-ing met by the adoption of cloud-based managed services. Using this approach to DR, organizations can not only achieve the security and benefi ts of a private DR facility, but also enjoy the fl exibility to adapt to new trends and cater to evolving business processes.

W hen Bill Clinton successfully ran for US President in 1992, his campaign strategist James Carville summed up their strategy in its totality as this: “It’s the economy, stupid.”

This theme was self-evidently ubiquitous throughout the campaign at every occasion and made the audience aware at each opportunity where they needed to focus—on economic management.

Not dissimilarly, when you look at how IT is ingrained within a large, complex organization, it is obvious to see the core value lies in the information itself. The only reason we need things like firewalls, servers, printers, hard drives, screens, encryption or networks is to either protect, access, print, store, display, encrypt or transmit information. Without the underlying information, we wouldn’t need any of these peripheral devices.

In short, the fundamental information within an organization is way more important than any of the technology used to manage that information. It’s the information, stupid.

However, there are five key areas which will impact the quality and value of business information within an organization which are sometimes under-addressed:

Who is responsible for maintaining it? What is its purpose? How long do we keep it for, and where? How do we protect it? How do we ensure it doesn’t become tainted?

The key purpose of IT within an organization is to enable the business strategy and help the organization become the business it needs to become. This is achieved through both the strategic and tactical use of information, with the ultimate ownership and

Why Does IT Exist? The need to serve as a competitive differentiator or a valued service provider or a trusted partner has created an existential crisis for IT. Here’s what exactly IT must strive to do.

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Geoff Lazberger THINK TANK


responsibility for information residing with the CIO. This is what the ‘I’ in CIO represents—‘Information’.

Addressing each of the areas above can be expressed as per the following: Informational Management: In order for the CIO to help enable the business strategy, the two initial mandatory steps are to firstly create the right IT organizational structure (that is, what IT-related roles are needed to support the business and its strategy) and then ensure the right person is in the right position. Everything else flows from these initial steps. Without these key planks in place, delivering IT value will be difficult, expensive and risky. Informational Purpose: All corporate information should have a purpose, and the ultimate goal is to use this information to enable the business.

This might sound tautological at first blush, however understanding this statement is pertinent to understanding the effect and value of information in the enterprise. I’m afraid I belong to the school of philosophy where “there are no IT projects, only business projects”. If an initiative is proposed which will have no bearing on contributing to the corporate strategy or supporting the business operationally (aka keeping the lights on or scaling existing systems and architecture) then hard questions should be asked about its purpose for existing in the first place. Informational Lifecycle: How long we retain information should be less and less of an issue as disk storage has become cheaper and cheaper, with cloud storage further lessening the need to expand burgeoning corporate server rooms.

But I haven’t come across many organizations in past years that retain corporate records—documents, e-mails, online conversations—for the statutory seven years.

In fact, I’ve generally found most co-workers unable to retrieve an e-mail from more than a couple of months ago as they (or the systems and processes) would have deleted these as part of some monthly purge process.

There are a number of excellent solutions available to effectively optimize and archive e-mails, while still have them retrievable for as many years as you wish. I remain bemused as to why e-mail retention per se is still not being addressed as a serious corporate issue and why it is not monitored as a mandate by company boards from a compliance perspective. Informational Protection: With the availability of file synching tools such as Dropbox readily available in the public domain, a number of businesses will see these as threats rather than opportunities to corporate information.

For instance, locking down the corporate desktop may prevent a user from installing Dropbox and therefore prevent

the synchronisation of files outside the corporate network. Yet this can also impede the cost of convenient access by the user to necessary documentation on devices such as iPads during meetings or when working remotely.

These situations could be an enormous hidden productivity burden to the business. Even with a locked down desktop, if an employee was really intent on stealing information, they could take screenshots and save them into an MS Word document, encrypt and compress this document, then e-mail the file outside the corporate network.

In other words, security should never be seen as a blunt instrument but as a trade-off—safekeeping versus convenience, security versus productivity.

But balance is required. You’d never use an expensive lock to secure an inexpensive asset. Informational Integrity: Keeping data integrous is probably the most under-recognized and yet most critical area.

Once information has been stored, secured, and validated, it can quickly become tainted through inadvertent changes by

users who may have no malicious intent but who also have no formal guidance or governance over their actions.

How many CIOs could honestly say every new employee who joins their organization (whether permanent, part-time or contractor) will be fully trained in core systems usage and information entry before being allowed access to maintain the information contained within the system?

Onboarding of new contractors particularly is usually seen as an expensive luxury and generally consists of being allocated a desk, a login and a phone extension.

The rest is usually up to their good habits learned from other companies in other previous roles, or their ability to ask questions before doing something if they have the mind to do so. And how many outsourcing strategies are currently being planned without the first necessary step being in place: How to backsource again if, and when, the situation requires?

The golden rule is “don’t outsource until you first have a backsource strategy”. All relationships can go sour.

No PowerPoint Necessary So how do you impress upon the executive as to the real value of information? A few years ago, as CIO for a large investment bank with many billion of dollars worth of funds under management, I was invited to an all day offsite planning session with around 11 corporate CEOs.


The key purpose of IT within an organization is to enable the business strategy and help the organization become the business it needs to become.


Secure to the CoreA lack of a comprehensive security solution was bogging down Hindustan

Petroleum. Here’s how Trend Micro helped the company strengthen its security posture and boost productivity.

A s one of India’s largest oil and natural gas companies, Hin-dustan Petroleum (HPCL), hardly needs an introduction. Headquartered in Mumbai, the state-owned fi rm is among

the most respected organizations in the country.But despite its legacy and success, like most public sector com-

panies, its internal IT security framework, about a decade ago, was far from ideal.

All of the company’s data was shielded by a thin layer of anti-virus software. The company lacked a centralized management and monitoring component to keep track of updates and vulner-abilities. As a result, the security team at HPCL endured sleep-less nights. “The solution we had was not comprehensive. It was protecting us only at the client level. But there was no protection at the network level. There were times when, for instance, we could not connect a freshly formatted laptop onto the network without getting infected by a virus. We realized that having AV software on all the clients was not suffi cient. Also, monitoring and patching was not happening effectively,” says M.P. Keshava, chief manager-Information Security and Compliance, HPCL.

Another challenge was that users weren’t able to download security updates directly from the Internet. Worse, many of

POLEPOSITION

Technology Solutions That Build Champions

Security is like oxygen. When it’s there, nobody really acknowledges

it. But for us malware and virus attacks have come down drastically. It’s

practically non-existent.

HPCL’s employees did not have Internet connection at all times. As a result, many user machines were getting outdated when it came to security updates. “There were many instances of PCs getting re-formatted because the AV software did not work properly. When we studied the scenario, we realized that it was mainly because the users were not updating their antivirus software regularly,” says Keshava.

Apart from malware attacks, this was also resulting in productiv-ity losses for HPCL. Its helpdesk team was the busiest team in the company, as it used to receive numerous calls in a day. On top of that, HPCL had an extensively distributed network with multiple locations across the country. Central management and monitoring, thus, became the need of the hour for the company.

TREND MICRO: SECURITY REDEFINED HPCL decided to relook the security measures it had earlier adopted. Along with a antivirus solution, it wanted to implement e-mail scan-ning and Web scanning solutions at the gateway level. As the security team was brooding over the need to spruce up the company’s secu-rity measures, its existing vendor got acquired. “It got us exploring other options in the market. We evaluated multiple solutions and fi nally went in for the one proposed by Trend Micro,” says Keshava.

M.P. KESHAVA, Chief Manager-IS & Compliance, HPCL

Along with Trend Micro’s offi ce scan antivirus suite, HPCL opted for the vendor’s InterScan Mail security and InterScan Web security solu-tions, which provided suffi cient gateway security for the company. For centralized management, HPCL also implemented Trend Micro Con-trol Manager, an enterprise management dashboard, which tracks security performance, reports malware events, and also helps HPCL in setting threat policies, increasing visibility across the enterprise, and improving compliance.

Keshava now has the strong backing of a full-fl edged security sys-tem. Improvements in security infrastructure have naturally fetched multiple advantages for the company. The malware instances in the company have now gone down drastically as all end-points are moni-tored and tracked for updates and upgrades.

The central server at the headquarters downloads updates and upgrades directly from the Trend Micro website on a regular basis. This server then distributes these updates across the various networks of HPCL in various locations in the country. Industrial control systems locations, which have separate networks that are not connected to the central network directly, also get regular updates from the central server. “Internet bandwidth does not get choked as only one server downloads all the updates. More importantly, we are able to effectively monitor the patch updates in each machine,” adds Praveen Yadav, senior offi cer, Informa-tion Security and Compliance, HPCL.

The company now also receives reports on potential vulnerabilities and malware and can proactively take measures to protect its network and users from security threats. Without a full-fl edged security infrastruc-ture, says Keshava, his team would not have been able to effectively handle viruses like Confl icker, a worm targeting the Microsoft windows operating system. “Security is like

oxygen. When it’s there, nobody really acknowledges its presence. Post the implementation, malware and virus attacks have come down drastically. It is practically non-existent,” says Keshava.

Other than tracking vulnerabilities, the solution from Trend Micro also helped the company in tightening its security policies. The pre-mium support contract with Trend Micro helped the company in escalating issues that could not be resolved immediately.

SECURITY FOR PRODUCTIVITY Prior to the implementation, even 24 hours weren’t enough for the help desk to take calls and resolve issue. The central manage-ment console has now brought down service desk calls by more than 60 percent and the chance of getting infected, according to Keshava. There have been visible benefi ts on the productivity front

as well. “Though we have not measured it scientifi cally, we are experiencing immense gain in productivity, as we now hardly see an employee’s machine conking off because of a virus infection. If reduction in help desk calls is a direct measurement of productiv-ity, then I would say that productivity has gone up by 50 percent,” adds Keshava.

The AV suite, since the implementation, has evolved to become a complete end-point security solution. Apart from its ability to opti-mize the resource footprint, the solution has helped Keshava stay within the confi nes of the IT budget of the company. As the next step, HPCL has implemented Trend Micro’s Deep Security for its virtualized environment. This works at the hypervisor level and eliminates the need for individual end-point protection clients in each of the guest machines, thus saving both CPU cycles and memory. With the track record of Trend Micro, Keshava’s team is expecting to reap rich benefi ts from this solution. ■

TREND MICROCUSTOM SOLUTIONS GROUP

HPCL is a large enterprise that has partnered with Trend Micro for

its end-to-end security needs: From end points, to mail gateway, Web gateway

and for securing its virtual datacenters. HPCL’s IT team is highly agile and

adaptive to new-age security measures. SUNIL VARGHESE, HEAD-NAMED ACCOUNTS, INDIA, TREND MICRO

HPCL implemented Trend Micro’s enterprise management dashboard, which tracks security performance, reports malware events, and also helps HPCL in setting threat policies, increasing visibility across the enterprise, and improving compliance. The solution from Trend Micro also helped the company in tightening its security policies.

Each of us was pre-allocated a time slot to present to the group. Having championed the idea of IT gaining a seat at the table for a long time, I was chuffed to be invited to present the case for IT and so spent a lot of time preparing my slides and message.

However, things did not go to plan. After around 10 hours of discussion and presentation by each CEO on funds and investments (the business) with everyone going well over their allocated time allowance, the chief CEO of the company told me I was the final presenter though, unfortunately, due to time constraints I could only take 10 minutes for my presentation.

I thought for a few seconds, looked at the dozen or so slides I had spent many days diligently preparing, then looked at the chief CEO and said, “I only need two minutes.”

I closed my computer and then went on to speak directly to the group. I told them that apart from the people who work within the business, the company had two other key assets: The money in the bank, and the information in its systems. Now, I proffered, if we turned both of those assets off for a week, which would hurt the business more?

Immediately, one of the CEOs yelled out to lose e-mail or network access for even five minutes would be disastrous. I smiled and looked at the group of CEOs who were all concurring and nodding anxiously.

The consensus was it would be terrible to lose our information systems even for a very short period. “Well,” I said “I’ve been hearing all day to how we need to implement better governance over funds, greater segregation of duties with investments, better due diligence on acquisitions, etc. But if the information in our systems is even more precious than the money we have in the bank, then why don’t we apply the same care and attention to our IT governance, spending and strategic execution?”

Without exception, every one of the CEOs instantly agreed with me. I was immediately given as much authority as needed to implement whatever governance and IT spend across our systems as I considered necessary (yes, the illusive “blank cheque” model only heard about nowadays in legend).

And not one PowerPoint slide was used in conveying the message. Because, it’s all about information. CIO

Geoff Lazberger is a former CIO with experience in three verticals. Send feedback


The fundamental information within an organization is way more important than any of the technology used to manage that information.


The EMC Transformers Awards seek to identify and

recognize the change being wrought in

Indian enterprises through the smart and

judicious use of IT.

Rewarding Extraordinary

Transformations

3-4 October, 2013 | Grand Hyatt, Mumbai

For more information, turn to page 76-77

AUGUST 2013

The CIO Manufacturing Summit set up an environment which enabled IT leaders to share information, discuss key topics, and identify industry-fi rst strategies. The event helped CIOs discuss

the changing landscape of manufacturing and leverage their domain expertise.

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Partners Associate Partner

Event Report

E very organization has a unique approach to IT. When it comes to the manufacturing industry, the approach is often dictated by the type of products and processes involved.

At the CIO Manufacturing Summit held at Moevenpick Hotel & Spa at Bangalore on 14th of August, leading CIOs from the Indian manufacturing industry discovered practices that have been successfully deployed in their companies and yielded business benefit.

Strengthening Enterprise Backbone with a Robust ERPS Ramasamy executive director (IS) at Indian Oil Corporation Ltd spoke on IOCL’s coveted IT project called Manthan that has helped the oil giant to keep up with Indian economic reforms since a decade.

Ramasamy cited various uncertainties that continue to affect oil pricing at IOCL, very similar to other private oil firms operating in the Indian subcontinent. “We don’t have control on raw material cost neither the price of the final product. And that’s why any change or fluctuation in dollar affects us as an enterprise,” he said.

A decade ago, IOCL had been facing many challenges

GEARING TOWARDS

BETTER IT Leading speakers, CIOs and thought leaders discussed the changing landscape of manufacturing and how technology bolsters growth opportunities within organizations at the CIO Manufacturing Summit held at Bangalore.

By Shweta Rao

including industry deregulation policies leading to lower profit margins due to increased competition. Ramasamy then played a pivotal role in devising the IT project ‘Manthan’ that would help develop an integrated value chain by focusing on customer demands and self sufficiency in oil refining. “We had to reach the ultimate goal of becoming a low cost provider with improved quality, and interestingly we chose to treat IT as a strategic initiative,” he said

IOCL then migrated to SAP R/3 Release 4.0B as a long term strategy to upgrade its business systems. “We began with islands of information in our existing ERP infrastructure where there was a lack of standardized and concurrently updated data.”

Today, IOCL’s SAP connects 70 marketing locations and eight refineries. Manthan has helped IOCL accrue benefits like better communication connectivity across the company. “Business processes and information flow are seamlessly integrated, today. We now have a centralized control along with a decentralized customer response,” said Ramasamy.

Harnessing Emerging TechnologiesCurrent industry challenges in the manufacturing industry require CIOs to constantly check if their employed technologies

Event Report

support revenue growth. They must then assign specific staff members to become subject matter experts in the chosen technologies, pilot and demonstrate benefits and have a well defined roadmap for value realization. Sujay Shivram, associate practice partner, Wipro demonstrated how CIOs can harness emerging technologies to drive growth and reduce operational costs.

Cautioning that not every technology solution will be the right fit for the enterprise and CIOs need to make sure that they get buy-in from the business to show value, he said that the CMO can be the CIOs best friend.

According to Shivram, it is now even harder for the CMO to make the right choices. “The CMO is getting bombarded with technologies that overlap across the continuum of the customer lifecycle and it is our role to help them make sense of this mess and to build digital platforms shaped around their

business rather them buy digital platforms and have to shape their business around the platform,” he said.

Call of the WildMost of us look at nature as the foundation of human well-being. But, Vijay Ramachandran, Editor-in-Chief at IDG Media drew interesting examples from animal behaviour that CIOs can learn from and grow with in their IT endeavours.

“From an organization’s perspective transformation within itself encompasses four things namely communication, motivation, focus and change,” Ramachandran began. He then continued to demonstrate the importance of these transformational requirements through a series of examples drawn from Mother Nature. “Some might say that bees communicate more effectively because they don’t speak as much as humans. Bees do not approach their buy-ins through

S.RamasamyExecutive Director (IS), IOCL

Sujay Shivram Associate Practice Partner, Wipro

Vijay Ramachandran, Editor-in-Chief, IDG Media

Using the virtual appliance model to deploy expert patterns for applications reduce deployment from months to a matter of days.

Business has only two functions - marketing and innovation. So what should a CIO do?

Kashish Karnick, Brand Manager, IBM India South Asia

Bert Cherian, CEO, META

We had to reach the ultimate goal of becoming a low cost pro-vider with improved quality.

CIOs need to make sure that they get buy-in from the business to show value.

Transformation encompasses four things namely communi-cation, motivation, focus and change.

Event ReportEvent Report

a big bang approach, but through one buy-in at a time. Within the board room, it’s also very important to communicate the direction of your ideas to get a buy-in. Bees always make healthy attempts on checking the feasibility of a job before embarking on it and their techniques are impeccable,” he said.

Cheetahs in the wild have long been studied by scientists for their survival instincts, and offer a great deal of derivations for business case studies.

While cheetahs teach us important lessons on agility, the cicadas exhibit extraordinary patience that can only be seen to be believed. These insects only leave their subterranean burrows every 17 years, so they have few natural predators. But the cicadas’ only known strength is their sheer number. Some have observed numbers as high as 1.5 million cicadas per acre. “Patience, gritty determination and no fear of failure, that’s how the cicadas keep going,” concluded Ramachandran.

Expert Integrated SystemsThe changing world of manufacturing demands businesses to improve their advantages to beat their rivals by means of better IT. Kashish Karnick , brand manager at BladeCentre and PureSystems for IBM India South Asia spoke on Expert Integrated Systems (EIS) and how they can influence this change.

“All enterprises face IT issues on a daily basis. But if I had to categorize the top two truly disruptive IT issues; they would be deployment and management,” he said. “When business

users come up with their requirements, they typically need an application or set of applications to make it work. The biggest challenge today is that technology – across the stack within an enterprise – changes every three months!”

IBM today has more than 45 years of experience in virtualization and the computing model we know. “We have more experience in managing IT complexities than anyone else. And that’s where EIS come into play. It is how we convert our valuable experience into something tangible and translate it to business value for our customers and partners,” he said.

The IBM PureSystems is the first in a new family of EIS with built-in expertise that more than 40 years of IBM’s experience has to offer.

IBM’s PureSystems solution aims to attack two very basic IT challenges today namely deployment and management. “The capabilities of using the virtual appliance model to deploy expert patterns for applications reduce deployment from months to a matter of days. While PureSystems’ Single Management console recognize every layer of the infrastructure, as well as the relationships between them. This allows the system to automate most management tasks with ease. That is the value PureSystems brings with it,” he concluded.

Reinventing the CIO RoleWhile change is important, it is notorious for being disruptive and sometimes, all too sudden. Bert Cherian, author of LevelNext, consultant and executive coach spoke on how the manufacturing industry is bound to change in the coming times and why CIOs need to reinvent themselves.

Quoting key findings from Harvard Business Review, Cherian highlighted that enterprise IT as we know it is rapidly becoming obsolete, and the traditional role of the CIO is increasingly irrelevant. “Business has only two functions - marketing and innovation. So what should you do?” he asked the audience. “The focus should be more on the insights and innovation rather than the information. The CIO is now the Chief Innovation Officer who establishes and leads innovation in the company,” he said answering his question.

Cherian brought forth several intriguing examples on how CIOs can draw insights from not only big data analytics but also from other unfamiliar sources. “Disruptive innovation is happening everywhere. For instance, commercial manufacturing has become digital, networked and increasingly open. With technologies such as 3D printing and open source innovation, it is possible for anyone to make products as varied as a 3D Printed Turbine for the aerospace industry to a 3D Printed AR-15 Gun,” he said.

Cherian also stressed that it is time that CIOs start talking to their CMOs. By 2017 the marketing function will spend more on IT than CTOs, he said quoting a Gartner finding. “With payment options rising, multiple devices opening up challenges and opportunities, and marketing going digital, the CIO could be best positioned to lead the way,” he concluded.

MANUFACTURING SUMMIT 2013

“Is it my place or MyPlace?”

“What can you learn from a bee?”

“Deploying an ERP may be similar to Saa-gar Manthan!”

“Can the cleaning of an elevator be auto-mated?”

Helping IT Improve Supply Chain

Unauthorized dealers are probably the biggest bane of the manufacturing industry. Pertisth Mankotia, Head – IT, Sheela Foam spoke about how an IT solution helped more than 4000 dealers across the world

to curb unauthorized selling. “Due to tampering of Unique Product serial number product movement cannot be traced and it was difficult to identify the supply source to unauthorized dealer,” said Mankotia.

According to Mankotia, unauthorized dealers were offering heavy discount on Sleepwell products and converting the customer towards local brands. This resulted in frustrated authorized dealers and a negative brand image. Customer service also took a hit in the

W hile strategy and speedy technology deployment stand important, being a global CIO takes more than just that. V Subramanian, Director-IT (Asia Pacific) at Otis Elevators shared some enriching

insights on doing things differently. Subramanian has been managing a global team spread

across 18 countries successfully by efficiently managing the myriad complexities that come with it. “The biggest change is to miss out on being in a stable office environment. Most of my time is spent at airports,” he says.

Needless to say, the more global your role, the more crucial is the commitment to leadership and connecting to people. “Its not just business dynamics anymore. Each country presents different customer attitudes and business environments.”

Three CIO Strategies to Go Global

process while resulting in an annual loss of about seven percent for the company. “To control Non-Authenticated Product Selling, we introduced RFID Tags in our Mattresses,” said Mankotia, as he explained how the system was implemented. “Now, a mystery customer visits unauthorized dealer shop with RFID reader capturing all unique product serial numbers. This helps us penalize the supply source,” he added.

This has resulted in Sleepwell product not being available with an unauthorized dealer while enabling authorized dealers to retain their margin. The project has helped Sheela Foam

increase the top line by 25 crore and bottom line by 3.75 crore. Apart from cost savings, the authorized

dealers are now motivated to sell more.

How then does one become a bridge that seamlessly connects them? “Three things, have helped me get there.” he says. “They are creating a brand, taking end user feedback seriously and practicing Yoga.”

If an IT strategy has to enable a global expansion, end user viewpoints are very crucial, says Subramaniam. “I ensure I meet end users on every Otis branch visit. For example, I speak to hotel staff at a newly installed elevator in a five star hotel and get their feedback. I also ensure I enlist these feedback points into action item and ensure it’s acted upon in less than a month. People like to see execution, and not just promises from leaders,” he says.

Sheela Foam’s IT head explains how a simple IT solution helped more than 4000 com-pany dealers curb unauthorized selling.

Otis Elevators’ global CIO explains how CIOs can ease into a global role and avoid managerial hiccups.

THE

EXPRESS

Pertish Mankotia,Head-IT, Sheela Foam

V SubramanianDirector - IT (Asia Pacifi c), OTIS Elevators

GREAT IDEA!

Event ReportEvent Report

Integrated Systems Propel New Levels of Responsiveness Combining the fl exibility of a general purpose system, the elasticity of cloud and the simplicity of an appliance, integrated systems can transform the IT lifecycle.

IT leaders increasingly believe that the idea of converged/integrated infrastructure is to simplify datacenter setups and management by minimizing compatibility, integrity and interoperability challenges that exist with traditional

datacenter approaches. As data grows more complex, a simpler approach to managing IT is needed. On the sidelines of the CIO Manufacturing Summit, CIO Magazine along with IBM, spoke to several IT leaders to understand how Integrated systems can fundamentally change the IT lifecycle thus reducing costs, saving time and resources and speeding innovation for their enterprise.

According to Kashish Karnick, brand manager at BladeCentre and PureSystems for IBM India South Asia the complexity of today’s IT systems lifecycle constrains IT’s ability to drive business innovation. “A simpler approach is needed - one that is more streamlined and re-focuses resources and critical insights on creating business value,” he said.

The next phase of transformation is about application portfolio management, which incorporates elasticity and modularity at the infrastructure level. More and more end users

will make capital investments in converged infrastructure designed to lower operational expenses in the datacenter and accelerate the time-to-market needs associated with new IT services. Gopal Rangaraj, VP - IT, Reliance Life Sciences believes that Integrated Systems is now becoming an essential part of the CIO arsenal. “It is like a technology soup brewing up with massive growth in devices, users, virtual machines (VMs), and data occurring in the enterprise. Managing all of this is getting increasingly difficult with most applications working in silos,” he said.

There are seemingly endless possibilities for impedance mismatches when applications are paired with system infrastructure. An expert integrated system not only eliminates the potential for hardware and software component inconsistencies but also offers a highly automated way to deploy and manage deployed assets in a continuously optimized manner. “Being able to have a single view of the IT infrastructure and applications, even in a multi vendor environment is the key to IT efficiency. This is where integrated systems come in,” said V Subramaniam, Director - IT & CIO (Pacific Asia Area), OTIS.

Roundtable

Company: Bharti AirtelBenefits: By using Canon’s

managed print services, Airtel was able to maintain higher print uptime and lower its printing costs signifi cantly.

Being one of the largest mobile operators in the world, Bharti Airtel serves more than 250 million customers in the world. Internally, the company wanted to maximize the convenience of its users with an effi cient printing system with zero paper wastage. For its senior vice president-IT, Meenakshi Vajpai, managing printers from multiple vendors was becoming a huge bottleneck as internal IT staff was dedicating time resolving downtime-related issues. Cost was a major concern due to a lack of print control and accountability. As a result, the company wanted to invest in a solution which would save its organization both time and money. The company chose Canon India, which conducted a

Printing ROI in BoldAs enterprises continuously look to cut costs and improve employee productivity, one way they can do this is by better managing their internal printing function, by outsourcing it.

In today’s tight economy, Indian enterprises are focused on improving office efficiency and productivity. They are also implementing new policies

and technologies to be more environmentally friendly. As a result, organizations are eager to bring down their printing costs and improve document security.

One way to do that is by changing the way organizations consume paper.

However, according to IDC, 10-15 percent of an average organization’s revenue is spent in creating, managing and distributing documents. A large number of organizations are also unable to determine their document costs. Therefore, CIOs need to strategically adopt robust document management strategies and implement the best-in-industry solutions to maximize their benefi ts and improve their overall ROI.

Here are three CIOs from some of the top organizations in India who did just that.

Here are three CIOs from some of the top organizations in India who did just that.

Organizational data, that’s key to success, resides

in documents. Therefore, consolidation is a priority and handing such a huge amount of consolidated data cost effectively is the USP of Canon managed document services.”

K. BHASKHAR, Senior Director, Office Imaging Solutions Division, Canon India

Managed ServicesCanon offers end-to-end solutions around document management services. It helps organizations cut printing costs, enhance ser-viceability and improve their environmental footprint.

THE POLE POSITION

WINNING PARTNERSHIPSWINNING PARTNERSHIPS

rigorous print assessment and fi nally chose Canon MDS, an integrated print and scan management solution suitable for Airtel’s needs. The entire implementation took four months and the solution went live in 2009. Thanks to Canon MDS’ uniFLOW feature, Airtel was able to optimize its print fl eet management, improve service automation and enhance document security.

Company: MindtreeBenefi ts: By implementing Canon MDS solution, Mindtree was

able to ensure high-level document security and keep up its pledge of confi dentiality with its clients.

Mindtree, according to Sudhir Reddy, SVP and CIO, Mindtree, had a fl eet of 60 network printers spread across its different offi ces. But it found it hard to control or track paper usage. Apart from uncollected printouts or faxes left at printers, the company was experiencing high amounts of paper wastage due to unnecessary printing practices. This was contributing signifi cantly to Mindtree’s printing costs. In addition, with its current set of printers and scanners, the company was unable to produce an audit trail or track the company’s print, scan and copy activities.

More importantly, Mindtree wanted to perk up its document-level security to live up to its promise of confi dentiality with its huge customer base and overcome the risk of information leakage.

To do all of that, the company decided to partner with Canon India and implement an optimal solution that would meet Mindtree’s needs of realizing control, and fl exibility. After a brief assessment of its workplace, Canon deployed uniFLOW, a solution that would enable Mindtree to maximize secure printing. Additionally, eCOPY Sharescan Essentials enhanced document security and accountability to a maximum, by allowing only authorized users to pick their printed documents from selected printers.

The solution, says Reddy, allowed prints to be collected from any multifunction printer and this, in turn, increased employee productivity. It also cut paper consumption by a whopping 50 percent by enforcing signifi cant controls over unnecessary printing practices. In turn, there was a 25 percent reduction in printing costs ensuring an impressive $62,000 saving for Mindree every year.

Company: Maruti Suzuki Benefi ts: Leveraging a three-year managed print services

contract with Canon India, Maruti Suzuki aims to cut printing costs and improve the employee-to-device ratio.

Over the years, India’s top car manufacturer has kept its promise of delivering excellence to its customers. Its IT team has kept pace with its business and delivered competitive solutions periodically to enhance operational effectiveness.

In order to utilize the productivity of its IT staff better, Rajesh Uppal, executive director IT and CIO decided to outsource its printing function. But fi rst he needed to get buy-in from Maruti Suzuki’s management. To do that, Uppal explained the entire printing operation and emphasized on the additional cost benefi ts that would come about post the outsourcing of the printing function. Using a numbers appraoch, he was able to convince management to kick off the outsourcing process.

The company started evaluating a number of vendors. It fi nally signed a three-year managed print and services contract with Canon for its state-of-the-art technology and competitive costs. For now, the company plans to install new devices in the car manufacturer’s three large offi ces namely marketing, administration and supply chain, with incremental expansion in other areas. The entire process has helped Maruti Suzuki reduce printing costs and improve imaging effi ciency signifi cantly.

The bigger challenge, Uppal says, however, was convincing its employees. In the past, Uppal has had a great percent success rate in realizing the change management process at Maruti Suzuki. By communicating the benefi ts to the organization of reducing printing costs and improving imaging effi ciency, the resistance to change reduced dramatically. ■

CANON CUSTOM SOLUTIONS GROUP

WINNER ROLL CALL

“Document printing strategy demands a solution that will result in increased security and employee convenience, a robust audit trail and simplifi ed print administration. With Canon MDS, we were able to implement cutting-edge technology that helped restore the health of document workfl ows to deliver greater productivity and reduce cost.”

MEENAKSHI VAJPAI,SVP-IT, Bharti Airtel

"IT energy shouldn’t be spent on printing. This has to become something that is outsourced."

RAJESH UPPALExecutive Director (IT) & CIO, Maruti Suzuki India

"Ensuring the security of our clients’ information is very important to us. We wanted to look for a solution that could ensure this.”

SUDHIR REDDY SVP & CIO, Mindtree

In a year filled with uncertainty, the CIO100 winners stood apart. Here’s a look at the difference true IT leadership can bring.

BY T E A M C I O

TriumphAdversity

(in the Face of )

CIO100

2013


I N S I D E

54 Cloud Computing Onto the Cloud (Making it

Rain Benefits)

62 BI/Analytics Intelligence (On Demand)

70 Mobility Mobility (and Its Malleability)

78 Customer Focus Happy Customers (Make

a Happy Business)

84 Green IT Go Green (with Responsibility)

92 Cost Saving New-Age CIO (Cost Inhibition

Officer)

100 Datacenters Datacenters (The Next

Generation)

106 Efficiency Efficient…(and Effective)

112 Security Advanced Threats (Advanced

Treatments)

118 UC & Collaboration

Collaboration’s (New Mantra)

‘A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men.’

- Plato

T his year, the CIO100 Awards were not merely looking for heroes. This year, the awards looked for the accomplished: Those who stood brave and looked into the eye of a world full of economic gloom, political unrest and negativity.

This year’s winners of the CIO100 Award for astuteness know what it’s like to chase the next level in an environment of doubt, of lean resources, of tired foot soldiers. These challenges, among others, forced them to be more pragmatic than normal and be innovative.

They also turned to new technologies and to existing ones, from which they wrested new benefits. And their companies thank them for it.

How the 100 Were SelectedFive hundred and sixty eight unique organizations filled out nomination forms for the CIO100 Award as well as the eight Special Awards, adding up to an amazing 772 projects. Last year, 491 organizations filed nominations; and in 2011 that number was 399.

From assembling a panel of editors of the international editions of CIO magazine to putting together a distinguished board of academics, analysts and IT industry veterans to identify specific parameters to weigh nominations against—CIO has always attempted to improve the process and the rigor across each iteration of the CIO100.

This year, to reflect a more balanced assessment on where enterprise IT is headed, the impact of business realities in shaping it, and increasingly, the intersection point of business, technology and leadership, CIO enlisted the support of a jury consisting of 32 CIO Hall of Fame members to assess, analyze, evaluate and judge the nominations. (To be part of the CIO Hall of Fame, members must have won a CIO100 Award at least four times). What they brought to bear was a practitioners’ perspective—the understanding of reality, and an appreciation of what innovation can achieve.

After a first round of shortlisting by IDG editors, each project was vetted by two jury members. This process was followed for both the Special Awards and the CIO100. Of course, each Special Award nomination was viewed through the lens of the domain at play.

To eliminate any potential for bias or favor, CIO removed the name of the organization and the CIO from the forms that the jury evaluated.

Once all the jury evaluations were in, CIO normalized the scores, and applied weights to reflect the four critical parameters identified earlier by the advisory board. These are: Business impact, extent of creativity displayed, business process change, and technology innovation.

This stringent process finally culminated in a list of 100 honorees as well as the winners of the Special Awards. All of them have had

significant accomplishments in the innovative use of IT while consistently demonstrating business impact.

To find out more about the achievements of these stalwarts and how they have impacted business, read on.

CHANGE MANAGEMENT COUNCIL

What astute IT leadership looks like The business benefits CIO100 winners bring to the table


CIO100

The cloud just did a cicada. After being obscured in the dark abyss of doubt, uncertainty, and apprehension for some time, cloud computing, just like the cicadas, has finally emerged, wings and all, to fill up the IT world with its buzz.

In the 2013 edition of the CIO Mid Year Review, cloud computing figured as the third technology that will have the most profound effect on CIOs’ role—with 14.7 per-cent of the CIOs holding this view. It also reveals that a good 41 percent of CIOs have completed a private cloud project, 16.7 percent have gone hybrid, and 25.3 percent have gone the public route in the last 12 months. The survey results clearly showcase an upward curve for cloud computing, with the cloud—in its various avatars—top-ping the list of projects that many CIOs had undertaken.

Cloud computing—in its many avatars—has helped this years CIO 100 honorees achieve remarkable business

benefits. Here’s how you can too.

BY D E BA R AT I R OY

Onto the Cloud


(Making it Rain Benefits)

So, what have these ‘cloud conquerors’ been trying to achieve in the last one year? Out of the 13 cloud-centric projects that won the CIO100 award in 2013, almost all have delivered huge cost savings for their respective organizations. Most of them have also helped the CIOs improve their companies’ ability to be more flexible and scalable in meeting changing business demands. These results match the findings of the CIO Cloud Computing Survey 2012, in which 74.4 percent of the CIOs listed scalability-on-demand/flexibility to the

CIO 100 WINNERS IN THIS STORY

FULLERTON INDIA CREDIT COMPANY

KPIT TECHNOLOGIES

MUTHOOT FINCORP

SRL DIAGNOSTICS

Cloud ComputingCIO100


business as one of the primary reasons for adopting cloud—the other top reasons being faster provisioning/better utilization of IT infrastructure capacity (51.3 percent), and reduced cost (42.1 percent).

In a world where speculations and doubts around the benefits and challenges of cloud has driven all at sea, a few CIOs stood out and made a few game-changing decisions for their organizations. They overcame common prejudices, took risks, convinced managements, and broke their heads over complicated SLAs. Ultimately, this is how they made the cloud rain business benefits.

Agile: Handle with CareSince the global recession, two factors have immensely affected CIOs’ lives: Ability to do more with less, and agility to deliver services without a fuss. While businesses are shying away from making huge investments in technology, they still expect IT to help them respond to the needs of dynamic markets. They want systems to be

more agile and flexible in order to adjust to any business demand in the shortest possible time and reduce the time to market for products and services.

For KPIT Technologies, an IT consulting and product engineering firm, saving time literally translated into saving money. The longer the company took to develop and test applications for its clients, the more likely that the clients would be unhappy. This would lead to serious business repercussions.

“Every time a new project was being developed and tested, the allocation of resources like servers and systems would go

P. Jayakrishnan, AVP-IT, Muthoot Fincorp, used cloud computing to consolidate operational data from the company’s 3,500 branches and deployed a BI solution on top of it.

VOL/8 | ISSUE/11

through a long process of approvals, which could take about six to eight weeks’ time,” says Shrikant Kulkarni, SVP and CIO, KPIT Technologies.

Kulkarni conceived a self-service portal (IT-as-a-service) for the over 500 development

and testing servers on a private cloud, which would let internal users provision datacenter services on-the-fly. This portal allows employees to log into the cloud, enter their resource configuration and requirements, and allocate virtual servers to the respective teams.

“With the new portal, we have provisioned over 400 servers on the cloud platform in the last one year—each in less than one hour. The result is higher

productivity of the delivery teams,” Kulkarni says.

The portal was further com-plemented with a robust source level data deduplication-enabled backup solution for the entire cloud setup which has reduced the backup window from 22 hours to six hours. With success-ful DR deployments on the cloud, KPIT Technologies was able to get ISO22301-certified (interna-tional standards for business continuity management).

“The project has improved our credibility among our end-customers. Our clients now know that we are faster, more agile and secure, and that has had a tremendous business impact,” Kulkarni says.

Critics of cloud computing might have their reservations, but any technology that helps a CIO positively impact the experience of the organization’s final customers ought to be the CIO’s best friend.

Like Kulkarni, Radhakrish-na Pillai, CIO of SRL, has also been able to bring about a world of difference for his organiza-tion’s customers through intel-ligent use of cloud.

With 12 reference labs, four centers of excellence, over 212 network laboratories, 19 radiology/imaging centers, over 1,300 collection centers and offering more than 4,000 tests, SRL is one of the largest pathology lab networks in India. Today, SRL conducts more than 100,000 tests in a day. According to Pillai, some of these labs and centers were running disparate applications, making the IT

5 6 S E P T E M B E R 1 5 , 2 0 1 3 | REAL CIO WORLD

Shrikant Kulkarni, SVP and CIO, KPIT Technologies, conceived a self-service portal on a private cloud to let internal users provision datacenter services on the fly.

CIO100 CLOUD COMPUTING

infrastructure at SRL scattered and complicated. Pillai wanted to unite all facilities of SRL under a proprietary laboratory information management system.

“CLIMS Cloud (Centralized Laboratory Information Management System) is a proprietary SRL information system adhering to ISO 27001 standards. We wanted to consolidate all SRL facilities under this master application,” says Pillai.

If it were not for the cloud, Pillai and his team would have had to travel to each of these facilities, some of which are located at remote locations, and manually install and upgrade hardware and software systems to one single console. With the cloud, however, Pillai was able to get all his centers up and running on the new platform with just a single click.

“Resources such as support and monitoring can be set up centrally with minimum dependency on IT technical staff at individual lab locations,” says Pillai.

CLIMS cloud enables labs located in different regions all over India to connect directly to the server for day to day operations—including patient registration, sample collection, interfacing of lab equipment, result reporting (hardcopy/email) to customer, and billing.

“With the application now hosted centrally, all one needs to do is get a remote facility connect to the cloud and start using the application. Even new facilities can be set up at the speed of light minus the associated hassles, which enables SRL to take its services to far more people in far less time,” Pillai says. Not only has the project helped SRL reach out to more customers faster, it has also helped elevate customer experience. CLIMS is now integrated with the ERP, hospital information system,

and CLIMS online application, thereby consolidating organizational and patient information at one central location, making it easily available.

“A patient can now move from one location to another without having to physically carry files or reports, since all records are now available on the cloud to SRL users,” says Pillai.

Money MattersWith the current economical theatricals that businesses have to deal with, yes, money does matter. Businesses have been cautious about every penny they invest, and CIOs have been having a tough time justifying the benefits that every penny invested accrues. So, embarking on projects that involve huge capital investments has become even more difficult. And good-to-have projects are an absolute no-no. For Anoop Handa, EVP and CIO, Fullerton India Credit Company, having



Radhakrishna Pillai, CIO, SRL, united all of the company’s facilities on the cloud and helped SRL reach out to more customers faster.

a disaster recovery (DR) site was not another good-to-have option, but a necessity. Fullerton is a credit company with a network of over 361 branches across the country, serving over a million customers. “Due to the global recession around 2008, a lot of MNCs in the credit business

exited the market. This led to the rapid growth of Fullerton in the last two years,” says Handa.

To ensure proper business continuity and adherence to government mandates for BFSI organizations, having a robust DR model was important for Fullerton. “We needed a DR site for a long time. But the kind of capex involved in building and maintaining a secondary datacenter kept the project getting deferred for long,”

says Handa.Handa also considered co-

hosting, but found that the option, though less expensive than the former, was not exactly as cost-effective and scalable.

“That’s when we started to explore the cloud-based, flexible ‘pay-per-use’ operating model. The fact that by then the cloud had almost reached its technology maturity levels helped us decide on it without much doubt,” says Handa.

DR-on-cloud gave Handa the flexibility of increasing the compute capability on a ‘pay-per-use’ basis while ensuring real-time replication and availability of organizational data at an alternate location. The model lets Handa choose a base compute requirement, which can be scaled as and when required on a pay-per-use basis.

“Using the cloud’s flexible, effective, pay-per-use operating model, the company has been able to conserve capital and avoid significant capital investments, and in the process ensured enhanced customer service through business continuity,” Handa says.

The project has delivered an enhanced ability to recover data in the shortest time frame, ensuring resilience and eliminating any negative impact on customer service.

“With cloud, I have managed to cut out the Capex investments required and ended up investing 20 to 25 percent less (over a period of almost three years) than what I would have with conventional methods,”

Anoop Handa, CIO and EVP, Fullerton India Credit Company, set up a DR on the cloud and helped the company conserve capital and avoid significant capital investments.


says Handa. Being in a BFSI environment, Handa had to face the serious challenge of creating legally sound SLAs. This might seem obvious at first, till one reads these statistics. According to the CIO Cloud Computing Survey 2012, an astounding 53.8 percent of CIOs mentioned that they were either clueless or not sure about the company’s legal obligation where cloud computing was concerned.

Handa suggests that for CIOs who have budget constraints and cannot invest on expensive consultants to ratify projects, a wise alternative would be to look inwards and increase collaboration with their legal teams.

“Apart from my homework, I had to constantly work the SLAs out with my legal team to ensure that there was no scope for ambiguity. The effort has paid off,” says Handa.

More than Just the Silver LiningAt the 3,600 branches of Muthoot Fincorp—one of the well known names in the world of gold loan, auto and home loans, micro finance insurance, and advisory service, a legacy distributed application has evolved over the years as a cornerstone of the organization’s business.

This homegrown application, “3 minutes Gold Loan,” was built in the late 90s, when Internet connectivity was not so widespread, and hence was programmed to utilize available connectivity in remote branch locations for recording branch level operations such as issuing loans and collecting repayments.

“The challenge lay in the fact that the application didn’t have native support for consolidating data from all the branches to a single location,” says P. Jayakrishnan, AVP-IT, Muthoot Fincorp. Due to this, various workarounds were being used to get the data to a central location, a process which was slow, time-consuming, and error-prone.

The most straightforward solution to this problem was to replace the branch application with a modern or a core application. “But this approach would be costly, time-consuming, risky, and require human and technology change management in all branches. Also, there were limitations such as intermittent Internet connectivity with the branch IT infrastructures,” says Jayakrishnan.

Jayakrishnan says that with his current application, a broadband line leased at Rs 800 per month per branch suffices for all his needs. “If I had to move to another core banking-like application, I would have to get dedicated MPLS lines at almost Rs 3,200 per month per branch. For more than 3,500 branches, that cost would be huge,” he says.

Jayakrishnan decided to use cloud computing to upgrade the current application to CloudSync, a project aimed at consolidating operational data from Muthoot Fincorp’s 3,500 branches to a central database in the cloud.

The business purpose was to enable the audit, risk management, and finance teams to have a centralized and up-to-date view of the business at any time, as well as build BI and reporting applications in the cloud. The project developed a solution which works in both online and offline modes—the data sync with central database will continue when an Internet connection is available.

“This feature was essential because more than 60 percent of the branches are at remote locations with only intermittent connectivity,” says Jayakrishnan. He built this solution in such a way that the branch level business applications

didn’t have to be modified. For achieving the project’s envisioned end-result, a plug-in was implemented on branch servers for uploading data from the branch level application. The plug-in calculates the delta in each of the database files and sends it to the cloud server without impacting the regular operation of the legacy application.

There was no change management involved at the branch level. The project enabled implementation of advanced BI and reporting services as well as integration of SMS to customers, e-mail features in the cloud without having to modify the existing IT infrastructure or operations.

With a unified view of all the data from the branches at a centralized cloud portal, Muthoot Fincorp can now detect fraudulent transactions better and co-relate them to other branches. One of the cloud-based applications is a spatial mapping application that plots on a country map the location of each of the branches and its associated financial performance.

“Now, to plan the rollout of a new branch in a region, the management only has to see profitability of branches in vicinity and plan the location accordingly,” says Jayakrishnan.

The cloud has for sure taken many a burden off IT decision-makers’ heads. CIO

Debarati Roy is principal correspondent. Send feedback on

this feature to [email protected]

Critics of the cloud might have their reservations, but

any technology that helps CIOs positively impact

customer experience ought to be their best friend.



IBM helped Santam Insurance automatically assess fraud risk and settle

legitimate claims 70 times faster.

“ Gut feel is great for everyday problems. But, it often leads us astray when we’re presented with complex streams of information. We can be blinded by the newest and nearest data point and miss the big picture.”

— Nate Silver, statistician, author and writer for The New York Times

This emphasis on data discovery—the fast and uncomplicated integration and analysis of data coupled with an interactive display—accelerates the trend toward decentralization and user empowerment of business intelligence and analytics, and greatly enables an organization’s ability to perform diagnostic analytics. That’s an imperative in the current economy and a trend that most businesses don’t see changing in the near future.

Gartner observes that most of the activity in the business intelligence and analytics platform market today is coming from organizations that are trying to mature from descriptive to diagnostic analytics. But some market leaders have leapt forward and have already made the transition and are now reaping the rewards. Here are five of the most ingenious ways in which the IT departments at some of India’s largest organizations have used business intelligence and analytics capabilities to help their businesses. Their work helped their companies earn a CIO 100 award.

Business intelligence has been hanging around corporate corridors for some time now. Up until a few years ago, it existed in the clunky and not-so-glamorous form of static management dashboards and report generation. The ideal scenario, however, requires that organizations mature from descriptive report generation to dynamic diagnostic analytics and then develop predictive

Business intelligence has finally arrived. Here’s how five CIO 100 2013 winners have use d BI and analytics to their business’ advantage.

BY A N U P VA R I E R

Intelligence



BHARTI INFRATEL

MERU CABS

USHA INTERNATIONAL

(On Demand)

capabilities which would in turn throw up prescriptive analyses. This is an imperative because business heads are increasingly unwilling to wait months, weeks or even days for the information they want. The only time they need it is now.

According to research firm Gartner, if there was a single market theme from the year gone by, it would be that data discovery became a mainstream architecture.

CIO100Analytics

WIPRO

YES BANK

This feature is brought to you by

Enhanced Customer Service In India’s tightly regulated banking sector there isn’t always enough room for ground-breaking innovation. But that didn’t stop Surendra Shetty, senior president and chief information officer, YES Bank, from enhancing customer experience by enabling the financial organization and its relationship managers with meaningful customer insight.

Initially, when a customer called to avail of one of the many services YES Bank provides, a relationship manager and contact-center staff needed to sift through a plethora of data from different systems to find relevant information about the customer and then try to put it all together and make some sense of it. That’s a lot of time consuming work, by any measure. “While facing the customer, they had to manually log into different systems to provide the customer with the required information and this could take a long time and slow the operational process down,” says Shetty.

In response to the problem, the IT team led by Shetty designed and implemented an in-house platform on existing infrastructure at no additional cost. Called Insights 2 Engage, this platform provides a holistic single interface for the complete spectrum of customer engagements and communications to meet YES Bank’s needs.

Adopted across the organization for accessing customer information, the Insights 2 Engage platform has made customer specific details of nearly 30 bank products with over 160 parameters accessible in less than a second and brought down call waiting


Surendra Shetty, Senior President and CIO, YES Bank, enhanced customer experience by enabling the bank’s relationship managers with meaningful customer insight.

times from over a whopping two minutes to less than 10 seconds.

It has also lead to a dramatic increase in operational efficiency with a daily collective saving in effort of close to 1,750 hours throughout the enterprise.

Improved Decision MakingAs one of the largest IT, consulting, and outsourcing companies in India, Wipro needs to consistently grow its client base without compromising on the service it renders to its existing customers.

To do that, the company’s sales team needed near real-time customer information that would enable timely action while its workforce management group required

better visibility into proposals to manage the manpower life-cycle and the available talent pool.

It is to tackle these multiple challenges that the enterprise analytics solution was deployed at Wipro under the stewardship of its chief information officer, Ramesh Nagarajan. As a business intelligence solution, enterprise analytics uses data visualization and business intelligence tools to create high-end, descriptive, diagnostic, and predictive analytical reports for business functions like the workforce management group, mission quality, finance, and sales departments.

“It’s a comprehensive analytic solution with self-service mechanisms that provide near real-time data, which aids in simulation, prediction, and optimization. It also empowers the business to take better and quicker decisions,” says Nagarajan.

These are disseminated through various modes and the user can view them through e-mails, live dashboards, mobiles, and portals.

“The reports also allow the user to drill down to the level he/she wants and get the required sliced and diced views,” adds Nagarajan.

Thanks to the predictive, descriptive, and diagnostic analytics capabilities, over the last one year, the organization’s sales team saw a considerable increase in deal-win ratio involving key contacts. It also witnessed an increase

Ramesh Nagarajan, CIO, Wipro, deployed a BI solution that uses data visualization and BI tools to create high-end descriptive, diagnostic, and predictive analytical reports.


CIO100 ANALYTICS

in successful conversion of prospects into new customers along with better process compliance.

Live account dashboards delivered by processing multiple channels of demand data—that give workforce management groups, project managers and delivery managers a better visibility on open positions and proposals—has helped in improving on-time fulfillment. Predictive capabilities like the 13-week rolling forecast has also helped reduce overdue demands by 50 percent.

Expanding Geographical ReachUsha International, part of the Siddharth Shriram Group, is a multi-product consumer durable company, has a large spread of sales and service networks across the length and breadth of the country.

“The sales team is always striving for the numbers and covering more and more geographical area while at the same time our service team is working hard to improve upon the service response time and coverage,” says Subodh Dubey, senior vice president-IT, Usha International.

Dubey, with his foresight, ensured that Usha International was an early adopter of advanced business intelligence platforms to support the large sales and service team.

“Though the business intelligence solution had all the capabilities to provide the desired information, it was presented in a tabular form,” he recalls.

In order to give business users more clarity and achieve greater visibility into the insights from the business intelligence platform, Dubey decided to include a geographical representation of the data points. The idea is based on the concept that a picture is better than a thousand words. “We have used GMaps Plugin to provide an interactive map design solution for enterprise dashboards,” he says.

Based on the insight thrown up by this new system the company’s service department has decided to appoint more service partners to tap the untouched areas. This has already resulted in the appointment of around 100 more ASCs across the geographical spread of country. With greater detail available on individual dealer performance in the form of instant performance matrix, the company has also witnessed a sales performance increase of 5 percent within just three months of its launch.

A geographical dashboard highlighting dealer performance has also been created to view the dealer spread across the country and improve the coverage area. “We are not only able to quickly draw the decision out of this but are also able to bridge the gaps between the company’s vision and ground level adoption as well which was not coming out from the tabular form of data,” says Dubey.

Tracking KPIsBharti Infratel is a leading telecom tower infrastructure service provider. With operations that cover over 35,000 towers, its one of the largest tower infrastructure providers in India.

As a service provider to all the major national telecom operators across India, it is imperative that Bharti Infratel is able to keep track of its operational parameters and deliver consistent uptime. “We needed to stay on top of key performance

By combining an existing BI solution with visualization, Subodh Dubey, SVP-IT, Usha International, helped broaden the company’s footprint of service partners to cover the country better.


indicators (KPIs) such as number of outage instances per day, outage minutes per site, sites that meet SLAs, uptime for solar sites, and mean time to repair a site that’s gone down,” says Prashant Veer Singh, chief information officer, Bharti Infratel. This became especially

relevant in a scenario where the business applications were generating close to 20 TB of data every year which could be mined to gain insights into multiple performance parameters.

So, Bharti Infratel’s management decided to implement a business analytics and reporting tool across the organization to support strategic, tactical, and operational business decisions with project Drishti.

Under this project, data from the various business applications were pulled into an operational data source, aggregated, and converted into over 700 daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly business KPIs.

“These KPIs are accessible to Infratel’s business users based on their role via Drishti’s single sign-on (SSO) enabled analysis tool and reporting portal,” says Singh.

The Infratel business performance dashboard—designed for automated information collation, flow, and visual presentation—is provided to senior management at the company.

This helps them monitor and analyze the 34 key performance indicators across all of Bharti Infratel’s functions and perform management accounting and performance analysis that comprises over 200 KPIs—reported in 28 pre-defined formats and disseminated across 158 unique internal users.

“Automation has enabled online analyses of business performance indicators and that’s giving better insights that result in faster decision making,” says Singh.

Business decisions are empowered with a single source of data resulting in competitive advantage over other infrastructure providers in terms of reduction in vendor payment turn around time, revenue assurance, penalty reduction, uptime improvement, energy

Prashant Veer Singh, CIO, Bharti Infratel, used business analytics to monitor 34 key indicators, giving business better insights that result in faster decision making.


CIO100 ANALYTICS

BREAKING NEW GROUND WITH BIG DATA ANALYTICS

INFORMATICA CUSTOM SOLUTIONS GROUP

Big data and analytics are recent buzz-words. However, companies have been

around for centuries. So, why do compa-nies need these technologies?Data is like the new oil. Just as the global industrial economy runs on oil, the infor-mation economy runs on data. However, much like oil needs to be refi ned before it becomes useful, data needs to be refi ned and analyzed for effective decision making, effi cient business operations, and maxi-mum business impact.

But, refi ning and analyzing data for busi-ness impact is easier said than done.

Yes, you’re right. It takes a lot of work to refi ne raw data into something useful. One has to access and ingest, parse and pre-pare, discover and profi le, transform and cleanse, and extract and deliver data of all types. And these have to be done at any time and from anywhere.

Analysis comes only after the data is extracted, prepared, cleansed, etcet-

era. What are the challenges in that and how can they be overcome?One of the biggest challenges is preparing the data for analysis. In fact, 80 percent of a data scientist’s or data analyst’s time is typically spent preparing the data and not in the actual analysis. This problem is both solved and further exacerbated by the re-cent waves of innovation in the analytics space. The last several years have seen the rise of many new analytical comput-ing platforms, ranging from analytics ap-pliances to in-memory databases to agile business intelligence tools to Hadoop. These next-generation analytics solutions have evolved to address an ever growing variety of data and an ever-widening range of analytics problems.

Given this, how can organizations au-tomate the work of data preparation so

that they can get down to the business of analysis and decision making?

You need an information platform that sup-ports all styles of analytics. This platform understands the differences in the under-lying analytical computing platforms and languages. It’s an information platform powered by a virtual data machine (VDM). A VDM is an embeddable data manage-ment engine that separates instructions and specifi cations which map out the busi-ness logic for handling data from underly-ing execution technology. Informatica of-fers the industry’s fi rst and only VDM. It’s called Vibe and it’s the reason our custom-ers can radically simplify data infrastruc-ture to map once and deploy anywhere—in the cloud or on premise; in databases, applications, middleware, or on a Hadoop cluster; in batch, request/response, or real time. With Vibe, change is not the enemy—change is the competitive weapon.

Finally, how does one measure the suc-cess of an analytics program?

It’s all about business impact and the suc-cess of any analytics initiative depends on that. It’s about turning the raw data into actionable insights that drive up revenue, effi ciency, and cost savings. So, organi-zations need to adopt technologies that help data scientists or analysts do the real analysis work instead of wasting their time in cleansing and preparing the data. Here’s where Informatica can add real value to an organization’s big data and analytics initia-tives and make it a success.

For further information contact Informatica at:www.informatica.com/in

[email protected]+91-22-4236 9755


in association with

SANGEETHA PHALGUNAN,COUNTRY MANAGER-INDIA SALES,

INFORMATICA

Phalgunan leads the sales organization for Informatica in India. For the past 15 years, she has taken on leadership positions at global technology organizations and focused on delivering data-centric solutions that help enterprises maximize their return on data and put information potential to work.

Sangeetha Phalgunan, Country Manager-India Sales, Informatica, says CIOs can leverage the power of big data by automating data preparation using Informatica’s Vibe, the industry’s fi rst and only virtual data machine.

EXECUTIVE VIEWPOINT

Informatica offers the industry’s fi rst and only virtual data machine. It’s

called Vibe and it’s the reason our customers

can radically simplify data infrastructure to map once

and deploy anywhere.

efficiency, and more. These factors have proved to be key in Infratel achieving its highest ever uptime in FY 2012-13.

Automated Resource AllocationA service that became synonymous to radio cabs in India, Meru Cabs, wanted to not just maintain its legacy but also explore unchartered territories. And with the right information to back you it becomes easier to achieve this without pumping in too much cash.

Over the last five years, Meru had collected a lot of data on customer demand patterns and cab supply distribution across hours of the day and geography. “We performed extensive analytics on this data and arrived at 20 innovative ideas to be implemented in the system or processes which would increase the trips per cab and maximize the earnings of our drivers, while minimizing the booking cancellations by the company,” says Nilesh Sangoi, CTO, Meru Cabs.

Sangoi and his team then created proof of concepts for each of these ideas and quickly rolled out the ones that held a lot of promise. Their soon-to-free initiative was one such idea. “When we analyzed data, we found that many-a-times we did not accept spot bookings for a particular area as there were no free cabs available but then within 10 minutes a cab would be free after dropping another customer in that area,” says Sangoi.

These were trips that Meru cab drivers were missing out on. Hence, they started offering bids to cabs which would be free in next 10 minutes. This was aided by

their GPS tracking system and an automated estimation of distance and traffic for the given hour. This helped Meru Cabs see an increase of 600 to 800 trips per day.

There was an increase of 17 percent in trips per cab post completion of this optimization project and the company was able to serve many more customers with the same resources, thus helping them improve customer satisfaction. With better algorithms and improved predictability Meru was also able to bring down its cancellations post booking acceptance to less than 0.5 percent. “Thanks to analytics, all of this could be made possible without having to spend anything on increasing consumer demand or cab supply,” says Sangoi. CIO

Anup Varier is principal correspondent. Send feedback on


Using hard data, Nilesh Sangoi, CTO, Meru Cabs, and his team came up with new ideas to increase trips per cab and maximize the earnings of the company’s drivers.

CIO100 ANALYTICS


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To ‘Ind’finity and BeyondHigh competition, policy changes, volatile markets and price margins have prompted India’s public sector companies to undergo a rapid evolution, failing which they might face the worst consequence—losing to competitors. Not surprisingly, one of the IT pioneers in the PSU sector, Indian Oil Corporation (IOCL) has achieved the distinction of being the first public service utility in India to launch customer as well as employee-related services over mobile devices.

S. Ramasamy, executive director (IS) at the oil and gas behemoth, formulated a mobile strategy which primarily targets mobile applications for two of the company’s primary stakeholders: Customers and employees.

Ramasamy’s two-pronged approach to leveraging mobility effectively has achieved higher efficiency, lower operational costs, as well as increased effectiveness of business processes. The first part of the solution is an SMS-based mobile application for customers or dealers. The second involves two smartphone-based applications

Mobile technologies are constantly opening up new avenues for change in the way enterprises operate today. According to Forrester’s Enterprise Mobility Services Report released earlier this year, 71 percent of IT services executives globally have already increased employee use of apps on tab-

Mobility is aiding enterprises in many ways. A few CIO 100 winners share insights about their mobility journey in different areas.

BY S H W E TA R AO

Mobility



CHOLAMANDALAM MS GENERAL INSURANCE

ICICI SECURITIES

(and its Malleability)

lets and smartphones.Mobile devices have begun to

deliver positive ROI across all enterprise functions, be it sales or operations. Now that enter-prises have studied the use of mobile devices and tested the waters of working ‘anywhere anytime’, it looks like some of India’s enterprise IT leaders have already started reaping the benefits of mobility.

INDIAN OIL CORPORATION

SISTEMA SHYAM TELESERVICES

CIO100Mobility

CIO100

called xSPARSH (for customers and dealers) and mPOWER (for sales workforce and employees). Both smartphone apps provide information regarding order status, sales analytics, HR-related data, and employee search.

The SMS-based application is integrated with the company’s ERP system and provides information regarding order status updates. It also enables IOCL’s customers to perform balance enquiry and cancellation of indents. “SMS is available as a standard application even in basic phones. The message format has been designed to be very simple in order to enable easy typing,” says Ramasamy.

Ramasamy has developed the SMS-based app to be economically viable by developing it on a SAP process integration platform and implementing it using business process monitoring (BPM). “Our process allows us to directly use XML or HTTP combination over the Internet to transfer messages from SMS service provider. This has eliminated the need to avail a dedicated service from the service provider to transfer data, thereby tremendously decreasing implementations costs,” says Ramasamy.

On an average, IOCL’s SMS app contributes to 81 percent of sales orders. More than 750 sales officers access real-time business data on their mobile devices today.

“The value of sales order created via paper is Rs 122 crore, compared to Rs 5,421 crore through our SMS-based service,” Ramasamy says. And about 30,000 IOCL dealers monitor sales at their outlets and review past performances through both mPOWER and xSPARSH. “Even if these mobile apps deliver 10 percent savings of each of our 480 field officers’ time, this can translate itself into annual savings of Rs 4.8 crore for a large company like ours,” he adds.

Manoj Shrivastava, Director-IT and Head-Integrated Technology Department, SSTL, has created a video-based app for ads, which is a delight for customers and ad partners.

Customer Satisfaction on the GoAnother case in point is Cholamandalam MS General Insurance, which used mobile technology to reap benefits such as better customer service, employee satisfaction, and reduced operating costs.

Sundar Venkitakrishnan, SVP-IT and Operations at the insurance biggie, launched a mobility solution called Proposal on the Go—targeted towards the company’s health products. “The project was undertaken to empower our salesforce by connecting their mobile devices to our internal IT,” he says.

Proposal on the Go is a mobile app that provides Cholamandalam’s sales managers with real-time proposal generation and also enables them to capture and upload customer information instantly. The sales team now performs sales transactions irrespective of its location, as the personnel can instantly capture customer photographs, scan necessary documental proofs, and present customers with instant acknowledgements through SMS and e-mail—all these through their mobiles.

This hassle-free, seamless service integrated with Cholamandalam’s core insurance application has resulted in immense customer delight, says Venkitakrishnan. “The sales teams have won customer confidence instantly. The app is very intuitive and user-friendly which makes navigation and filling up forms a breeze for customers.”

Today, about 3,000 of Cholamandalam’s sales officers use smartphones and tablets for their sales operations, thereby providing the company with an edge to lead the insurance


vertical. “We have planned a business growth of over 200 percent in the next three years, which will position our retail health LOB to contribute to 25 to 30 percent of total business done at our company,” he says.

Mission-Critical MobilityAnother BFSI giant that used the mobility ingredient in its recipe for success

S. Venkitakrishnan, SVP-IT and Operations, Cholamandalam MS General Insurance, used mobility to allow sales personnel to capture customer data and issue proposals anywhere, anytime.

CIO100 MOBILITYCIO100

VOL/8 | ISSUE/11

is ICICI Securities. Yagnesh Parikh, the company’s CTO, believes that mobile apps effectively simplify the financial trading experience by replacing the need to visit a bank’s branch between specific hours. Among the several IT projects that Parikh

has led at ICICI Securities is the brokerage platform—icicidirect.com—which caters to over 2 million customers.

“Keeping in mind customers’ ever increasing use of smartphones and tablets, we decided to launch our very own application that would integrate with our trading portal. We were one of the first financial services organization in the country to launch such an initiative. The solution showed its impact on business

as customer usage soared within a short span of time,” he says.

The solution, which Parikh’s team built using native code, gives customers the opportunity to trade in the stock markets seamlessly over their smartphones.

“We took into consideration all the three major mobile platforms: Android, iOS, and Windows 8, during the development effort,” says Parikh. “Users can place orders in equity as well as in futures and other options straight from their devices. They can trace order status and even allocate funds from their bank account for trading in either of the segments—cash or margin.”

Parikh made the app available to all ICICI customers free of charge. “Trades placed by the customers and the resulting brokerage are direct income for the company. The mobile app has indeed boosted the end-usage of our trading platform,” he says.

Value-Added MarketingBesides transforming internal processes, mobile devices are also helping organizations change the way consumers engage with digital and traditional media. One of India’s fast-growing telecom service providers, Sistema Shyam Teleservices (SSTL, also popularly known as MTS India) has come up with a mobility project called mAd, which encompasses a paradigm where the entire marketing process is automated to


Yagnesh Parikh, CTO, ICICI Securities, has created an app —across all three major mobile platforms—which lets customers trade on their smartphones.

CIO100 MOBILITY

enable a customer-friendly interface for application consumption and instant customer gratification.

The innovative value-added service mAd allows customers to get free local calls credit by just watching video advertisements prior to making any voice call. “mAd’s USP is that it was designed to execute even on very low end devices as well as smartphones. It was built to succeed,” says Manoj Srivastava, director-IT and head- Integrated Technology Department, SSTL.

mAd creatively supports a revenue generating model in the realm of ‘video advertising on mobile devices’. “Once the application is installed on the customer’s phone, the app prompts for an option to make a free or paid call prior to making any voice call. In the event of choosing a free call, a video advertisement is played, and on its completion, the call gets connected to the party on the other side,” says Srivastava.

A free 60 seconds talktime is then credited to the customer’s account for watching the video ad, and the same is confirmed via SMS within five minutes to one hour, or whenever the customer makes data connectivity. “mAd provides our customers instant gratification for loyalty and automatically creates customer stickiness for long-term revenue sustenance.”

Of course, the customer has an option to consume the free talk time in one session or multiple sessions. “There is a limit of 4 minutes of local call credit which a customer can accrue per day. mAd has built-in checks and balances to ensure that the customer has watched the full advertisement and not partially to avail the free credit,” says Srivastava.

Today, MTS sells mAd as a service to organizations that want their video advertisement to directly reach a targeted customer segment. Through mAd, MTS has facilitated the likes of Coca Cola, Dominos, Killer Jeans, Colgate, and Kellogg’s a clutter-free means to engage with customers in a personalized virtual environment.

mAd’s strategy also pays specific consideration to user-experience. There are

no data transfer charges to the customer for viewing the ads. “Obviously, it’s a free app. The video advertisements are also pushed to handheld devices in the background during network off-peak hours, which ensures a high quality experience,” he explains.

Naturally, mAd attracts customers with low balance as they continue to add talktime to their account by viewing advertisements. While that has happened, Srivastava has also ingeniously cracked the code to revenue generation. “Customer stickiness has improved a lot and we have increased usage even beyond the free quota allocation. On the other hand, we are generating revenue from our ad partners as their ads reach the target customer segments directly,” he says.

Thus, the mAd platform has become a win-win solution for all three parties involved: Customers, the telecom provider, and ad partners. CIO

Shweta Rao is senior correspondent. Send feedback to

[email protected]

At EMC Forum 2013 be awed by the master storyteller, Yossi

Ghinsberg, acclaimed author and motivaltional speaker.

Tales that Inspire, by Yossi Ghinsberg



EMC Forum is an all-expenses-paid program for a qualified audience comprising CIOs/CTOs/Head IT and top IT executives and decision makers. To register, please visit www.emcforum.in


Special Performance by SHAAN

Unveiling EMC vLab-Delivering Demos From The Cloud

EMC Transformers Awards

CIO Roundtable Discussions

Keynote Address By Yossi Ghinsberg, Author & Motivational Speaker

Innovative Tech Showcase

SHOW HIGHLIGHTS

SPONSORS

PARTNERS

EMC Forum 2013 is gearing up to be the biggest tech showcase of the year. It promises to be a storehouse of pathbreaking sessions, cutting-edge technology and usable inputs from global experts.

With a dedicated day for CIOs, i.e. October 3, you can expect to learn how EMC can transform organizations of all sizes by leading IT as service, software-defined storage, and accelerate the ability of

an organization to capitalize on cloud and big data.

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We have seen enough evidence to conclude that CIOs’ relationship with the marketing department has always been strained. In the ‘good’ old days, it wouldn’t have made a great difference to the CIO. But in today’s era of new-age marketing, a whole lot of exciting technologies such as analytics, social media, and big data help businesses know their customers well and get closer to them. Distancing oneself from marketing also means moving away from customers—and that is a major cause for concern.

IT is now increasing its focus on end-customer satisfaction. Here’s

what different award-winning CIOs have done to make this happen.

BY R A D H I K A N A L L AYA M

Happy Customers

(Makes a Happy Business)

Fortunately, there are some pockets where a stronger bond between IT and marketing is forming. A majority of the projects that won this year’s CIO 100 awards were driven by the need to consistently serve customers in a better way. Some of these CIOs walked that extra mile to come up with solutions that enhance customer service. A few others focused on revamping existing systems or creating new channels to reach out to customers, and ensuring a secure and hassle-free experience. But almost all of the projects had the same target: Superior customer service.

Augmented RealtyOne noteworthy example is the augmented reality project headed by Sri Karumbati, CIO at Stumpp, Schuele & Somappa Springs (SSSS). The company’s diversification into infrastructure development required it to look at customer satisfaction from a completely novel perspective.


BENGALURU INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

EDELWEISS FINANCIAL SERVICES

Customer FocusCIO100

GODREJ INDUSTRIES

ING VYSYA BANK

STUMPP, SCHUELE & SOMAPPA SPRINGS


Sri Karumbati, CIO, Stumpp, Schuele & Somappa Springs, used augmented reality to raise customer experience to a whole new level.

It embarked upon a massive project to create 3D prototypes of the company’s offerings, based on virtual/augmented reality.

“Typically, architectural design is presented using still images, walk-through movies, and scale models. These do not provide the cognitive perception of space or the freedom to explore.

They are constrained to what the architect wants to show—highlighting the good and hiding the bad. We took a big leap forward by removing these limitations and providing our stakeholders with complete freedom. Every detail was presented. Not only did this result in accolades from customers, it also brought in the discipline required to achieve perfection,” says Karumbati.

Besides livening up marketing and communication for the company, the project also sped up the process of going from concept to blue print.

Connection through ConsolidationFor Bengaluru International Airport (BIAL), consolidating and re-architecturing various back end applications resulted in new levels of of passenger management efficiency. The Smart Airport Framework project was aimed at creating an enterprise service bus on a Service-Oriented Architecture to enable multiple applications and databases to talk to each other.

BIAL’s earlier ‘point-to-point’ approach between applications increased the complexity of interfacing while consuming the same data. “Now, with the Smart Airport Framework, we have the enterprise service bus for seamless data exchange. Multiple applications now enjoy access to the critical airport operations database,” says S. Francis Rajan, VP-IT, BIAL.

Most importantly, BIAL’s on-time performance—the things most passenger focus on—saw significant improvement.

Transformational ExperienceMost end-user focused projects require tight collaboration among multiple divisions and departments of an organization. This could be an extremely challenging task for the IT team, but is still inevitable in order to achieve the desired results.

“In today’s scenario, where “customer is the king”, extraordinary customer service is the key to any business’ success. Customer experience transformation (CxT) is a strategy that uses business process management to enhance customer experience from any touch-point,” says Shailesh Joshi, VP-Corporate IT, Godrej Industries.

Instead of focusing only on Godrej’s marketing department, the CxT project incorporated inputs from all the domains and departments of the company. It then created a unified decision supporting platform, which addressed all the aspects—right from customer acquisition, retention and cross/up-selling, to lapsed customer win-back.

CIO100 CUSTOMER FOCUS

Kalpana Maniar, Head-Business Solutions and IT, Edelweiss Financial Services, consolidated multiple trading systems to bring about more customer centricity.


On the front-end, Joshi and his team deployed interactive touchscreen-based self-service kiosks, content-rich mobile apps, and an interactive customer portal to achieve this ‘transformation’ in customer experience. Its unique ‘snagging application’, designed to deliver zero-defect products, garnered humungous interest from customers.

This unaltered focus on customer satisfaction naturally delivered exceptional results for Godrej. There has been a considerable increase in revenue and ‘lead to customer’ conversion rate. Its customer satisfaction shot up to a whopping 99 percent.

Virtual World CustomersThe Indian e-commerce space is witnessing revolutionary changes, with the number of users making online transactions expected to touch 38 million in 2015, according to E&Y. This has, in turn, created the demand for new channels and mediums to make things easy for customers.

As a result, consolidation of portals and platforms—aimed at offering a ‘single-window’ experience—seems to be a top priority for many BFSI companies.

Take Edelweiss Financial Services’ Unified Trading and Servicing Platform, for example. The project consolidated Edelweiss’ multiple trading systems into a common cutting-edge infrastructure.

“We recognize that financial service is not just about returns, but about an entire experience of financial fulfillment that starts with a prospect management process. The primary business goal of the project is to morph business initiatives, with clients as the pivot and client centricity as the theme of business,” says Kalpana Maniar, head-Business Solutions and IT at Edelweiss Financial Services.

The consolidated platform now provides retail clients with a uniform experience across different entities and channels by offering single sign-on and seamless movement across multiple Web properties. The numbers speak louder—Edelweiss’ product development and roll-out time has been reduced by a significant 50 percent; the transaction processing capabilities have gone up by 400 percent and the number of concurrent users—by a massive 250 percent.

On the other hand, secure online transaction probably tops the wish list of any customer. Many companies are therefore starting to beef up their online security.

ING Vysya Bank’s initiative around securing every e-commerce transaction that uses MasterCard SecureCode layer is a niche example. The bank did not want lengthy security/verification procedures to get in the way of user-experience.

“While our net banking customers could shop online, enabling the far more numerous debit card holders to shop online in a safe and user-friendly manner was a challenge. We needed to be mindful of the difference in profile and maturity of these shoppers. If successful, the bank would open up a new revenue stream from over 1

million customers,” says Aniruddha Paul, CIO, ING Vysya Bank.

Innovative use of technology brought down the expected fraud rates of 10-12 percent (industry average) to zero, for the bank. Customer satisfaction naturally saw an upward swing.

By shifting their focus to end-customers, these CIOs have enabled business growth and customer retention rate. Kudos to them. CIO

Radhika Nallayam is special correspondent. Send feedback on


Shailesh Joshi, VP-Corporate IT, Godrej Industries, drove a customer experience transformation project that increased customer satisfaction to a whopping 99 percent.


14 Ways to

Optimize Your New Datacenter

For CIOs building new datacenters, current designs present a unique set of opportunities: A chance to start with a largely clean slate, with fewer decisions to make compared to the highly customized and complex datacenters of the past.

To optimize a datacenter for total cost of ownership (TCO) and agility over the course of its typical 10-15 year lifespan, the following key issues need to be addressed. You may notice that while some are equipment specific, the majority are related to the system design and installation, which have a much greater long-term impact on cost and flexibility.

Right-size DCPI

Standardize

Virtualize

1

2

3

Modular, scalable power and cooling architecture allows you to buy, power, and support only the capacity you need, and then quickly and cost-effectively add capacity when you need it.

The standardization of servers makes management, deployment, and inter-operability easier and cheaper. Today’s energy-efficient blade servers vary widely in performance and power consumption. So, choose carefully based on current and foreseeable needs, as higher performance comes with a power consumption penalty.

Virtualization consolidates apps onto fewer, typically more energy-efficient servers, so it is cost-effective in terms of, both, equipment outlay and power consumption. But, remember that higher density environments need more cooling.

Cool in-row5Row-based cooling is more efficient in high-density datacenters. Shorter air-paths require less fan power, and computer room air conditioning (CRAC) supply and return temperatures can be higher, increasing efficiency and capacity, and preventing dehumidification.

Separate Hot and Cold Air

6Orient racks to create hot-aisles and cold-aisles. Minimizing the mixing of hot and cold air improves energy efficiency, allows more uniform IT inlet temperatures, and eliminates hot spots. Taking it one step further, hot-aisle containment, compared to cold-aisle containment, can save 43 percent in annual cooling system energy cost.

Go Dense4Higher density offers a number of efficiencies; fewer, higher-performing servers save physical space, lower capital expenses, and deliver more computing per watt.

Install Blanking Panels

7Snap-in blanking panels fill voids on rack faces, creating a barrier between hot and cold air. Inexpensive and easy to install, blanking panels save energy by decreasing server inlet temperatures and increasing CRAC return temperatures, helping both run more efficiently.

Coordinate Air Conditioning

Install Efficient Lighting

9

11

If your new datacenter will use multiple AC units, coordinate their work, so as one tries to cool a space, another isn’t dumping hot air into that space, or so that one doesn’t dehumidify while another humidifies.

Choose High-Efficiency IT and Power Equipment

10

New, best-in-class uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems have 70 percent less loss than legacy UPS at typical loads. Blade servers generally have higher efficiency power supplies and share some overhead functions, such as fans. In addition, most new servers have power management features that match power consumption to processing load.

Turning off some or all lights based on time of day or motion, and using more efficient CFL or LED lighting technology, can add up to a 1-3 percent annual energy savings.

Leverage Reference Designs

14Reference designs come with complete floor plans and technical specs for power (UPS), rack, air, management, and service components, all pre-engineered to work together. They simplify the design, build, and operation, and result in lower Capex and Opex costs. Operational costs, particularly energy, are rapidly outpacing capital costs in the datacenter. The good news is that both Capex and Opex costs can be planned for—and optimized—through good design and operational decision making.

Build with Pre-Engineered Subsystems

13

Standardized, pre-engineered, pre -manufactured power and cooling subsystems eliminate the inefficiencies that come with systems not meant to work together. These subsystems allow datacenter designers to shift their thinking from a customized “construction” mentality to a standardized “site integration” mentality.

Economize8 Many air conditioners feature economizer modes, which use outdoor air during colder months of the year, allowing chillers and compressors to be shut off or operated at a reduced capacity. This can translate into savings of over 70 percent in annual cooling energy costs.

Datacenter software management tools provide visibility at the IT level (servers, storage arrays, and network switches) and at the physical infrastructure level (cooling, lighting, and security), giving IT managers hard data to support decision making, such as identifying equipment that is under-utilized and possibly a target for virtualization.

Meter and Monitor12

This feature is brought to you by IDG Custom Solutions Group

in association with

SCHNEIDER ELECTRICCUSTOM SOLUTIONS GROUP

Technologies such as cloud, mobility, and big data might have taken over the buzz that green IT once created, but eco-friendliness was never a passing fad. Rather, it has now been ingrained in the way CIOs man-age efficient IT infrastructures.

Organizations today are taking measures to reduce the energy consumption of IT systems in their large datacenters. They are also craft-ing optimization strategies to lower their carbon

Green IT is a savior of both the environment and the enterprise. Here’s how some CIO 100 winners strategized their green IT initiatives.

BY S H U B H R A R I S H I

Go Green


(with Responsibility)

footprints by investing in technologies such as desktop and datacenter virtu-alization, datacenter power and cooling, printing and paper use management, video conferencing, and collaboration tools among others.

In order to accommodate these technologies, more companies are including green IT solutions in their budget. According to research firm Gartner, India’s spending on green IT and sustainability initiatives will reach $70 billion (about Rs 4.7 lakh crore) in 2015. This proves that green IT and sustainability measures occupy an important position on most businesses’ agendas. However, for CIOs, these initiatives are both a challenge and an opportunity. Here are five extraordinary green IT moves made by Indian CIOs.

Leaving No FootprintThe IT services company iGATE reserves 7 percent of its IT budget for green IT initiatives. Since 2004, it has consistently run a specialized program called iGATE’s

Green ITCIO 100 WINNERS IN THIS STORY

HSBC

iGATE GLOBAL SOLUTIONS

POLARIS FINANCIAL TECHNOLOGY

CIO100

QUATRRO GLOBAL SERVICES

SYNGENE INTERNATIONAL

REAL CIO WORLD | J U LY 1 5 , 2 0 1 3 3 7

Business Efficient Eco System (iBEES) which has extensively focused on green initiatives within the organization. “By 2012, we wanted to concentrate on reducing costs, improving carbon footprint, and salvage renewable energies,” says Chella Namasivayam. M, SVP, iGATE.

Being an ITeS company, iGATE has a number of offshore datacenters (ODC). Therefore, under its ‘virtualization first’ approach, it went on to virtualize nearly 60 percent of the servers in the corporate network and 30 percent of the servers in the customer ODCs in 2012. Today, it has more than 350 virtual servers running across all locations. This approach has paved way for a number of benefits. “From optimizing server hardware, to reducing the turnaround time for provisioning of servers for IT projects, we have effectively minimized our organizational carbon footprint to a large extent,” says Namasivayam.

Adopting telepresence is another move that helped iGATE reduce its carbon footprint substantially. In 2012, the company deployed a high-definition teleconferencing solution across major locations in a span of 45 days. “We are now able to cut down on our travel costs by more than 14 percent on an annual basis,” says Namasivayam. Since the implementation, the company’s adoption of telepresence has increased from a mere 1,064 conference calls in April 2012 to 19,800 calls by March 2013. The whole initiative has brought iGATE a

Chella Namasivayam M., SVP, iGATE, has deployed many effective green IT solutions such as server virtualization, telepresence, and printer regulation at his organization.

VOL/8 | ISSUE/11

generous 22 percent reduction in the carbon footprint per employee.

Saving Environment = Saving CostsPolaris Financial Technology wanted to cut down its Capex through effective use

of servers, and Opex by consuming less power. Since IT systems share a significant chunk of 22 percent of the overall energy consumption at Polaris, the onus was on the company’s CIO Shashi Mohan to implement a robust green IT policy.

The company has now virtualized more than 75 percent of its servers. It’s also able to perform asset disposal of desktops, printers, projectors, and servers for recycling on a quarterly basis. “We have constantly revisited the way we handled retired assets, and

we wanted to employ a proper disposal approach,” says Mohan.

Similarly, R.P. Rath, VP-technology at Quatrro Global Services, says green initiatives bring long-term tangible and intangible benefits. The company has taken various steps towards rolling out green IT projects such as adoption of thin clients, client VDI solutions, server virtualization, storage consolidation, SAN adoption, green datacenter, and power-saving equipment. It’s paying off well and the company has reaped several benefits. “Our overall electricity consumption on IT equipments and services has reduced by about 30 percent,” says Rath.

In the last one year, the company has increased the use of its existing video conferencing system from a mere 600 minutes per month to 8,510 minutes per month. It has also managed to lower its carbon credits by 3,362 tons and saved Rs 6.82 crore on power and travel. “We have monthly power dashboards associated with rewards and recognitions which have helped us enforce our green initiatives and policies more effectively,” Rath adds.

Avoiding the Paper-azziThe folks at HSBC also take their environmental responsibility very seriously. Under the bank’s key sustainability program called Reduce, the company’s primary goal is to ensure that they reduce one ton of CO2 emission per employee by 2020. To fulfill this requirement, HSBC has allocated seven

CIO100 GREEN IT


Ajit Manocha, AVP and CIO, Syngene International, says the investments that can be done with the savings borne by practising green IT is a major driver for employees.


percent of its overall budget specifically to manage green IT projects. In 2012, the company set out on a mission to reduce its overall paper usage. Therefore, the company deployed Managed Print Services (MPS) for all its eight global services centers in India which employ over 17,400 employees. “By providing an interface between our staff’s ID cards system and MPS printers, we are able to ensure authenticated and regulated usage of printers and papers,” says Yogesh Kapoor, head of IT and operations, India, HSBC. In the process, the company has also ensured stronger security measures on confidential data printing and collection of printed pages.

As a result, there has been a 31 percent reduction in the usage of paper, facilitating a cost reduction of Rs 8.6 lakh per month—equivalent to annualized reduction of 138 tons of C02 emission, 208,152 liters of water and 1,711 trees.

Even iGATE’s Namasivayam did something similar to cut down his organization’s paper usage. The company deployed Pcounter, a printer accounting and management suite which provides quota management and security for prints. It drastically cut down the company’s paper consumption from 10 lakh papers per annum to just 1.5 lakh. It also saves iGATE a good Rs 7.2 lakh annually. “We worked with various teams across locations for a buy-in from them in order to overcome the challenge of quota management,” says Namasivayam.

Similarly, Syngene International, a subsidiary of biopharma company Biocon, wanted to encourage the concept of “print only if needed” to its employees. Therefore, it drastically brought down the count of its printers by setting up a common network printer with all security-enabled features required by end-users. In an effort to bolster its green IT initiative, it then moved to a completely virtualized environment where its datacenter, servers, and storage were all consolidated.

“Our company’s operational cost of managing multiple servers and storage platforms has also gone down drastically,” says Ajit Manocha,AVP and CIO, Syngene International. Even the old rack-mount servers were refreshed with blade servers specifically having low-power processors

Yogesh Kapoor, Head-IT Operations, India, HSBC, has saved about 208, 152 liters of water and about 1,711 trees through his green IT initiatives at the bank.

VOL/8 | ISSUE/11

and high-efficiency power supplies. As a result, it reduced the footprint of servers to a ratio of 16:1, thereby maximizing Syngene’s operational efficiency.

As part of its energy-saving initiative, the company also employed a few dedicated

practices of centralizing all heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems with normal load and partial load switching conditions. All labs operating in general shift were directed to close operations at 6.30 pm so that they could switch off all HVAC and lighting systems which would otherwise run on full capacity. Even scientists who needed to work after normal shifts were assigned dedicated labs.

As a result, the company has been able to save 1.5 lakh power units on a monthly basis, which further translates to revenue savings of Rs 14.4 crore annually. “From a process perspective, it was communicated across the organization for the need of energy savings and the expected payback in terms of savings that we can get. The savings were an eye-opener for most of the employees because they realized that savings arising out of these small initiatives can be invested in some other project,” says Manocha.

Keeping IT Going“Smaller awareness initiatives that include all modes of communications such as posters, e-mails, and research reports help promote the benefits of green IT and ROI among employees more effectively,” says Quatrro’s Rath.

The company reviews, monitors, and measures the effectiveness of its green IT solutions by periodically assessing the need to change or customize them. It prioritizes partners and vendors who have a focused approach towards the green movement. This, in turn, has helped them improve their brand and client image and encourage greener IT practices across the organization.

Therefore, initially it may seem enormous, even daunting—the bold task of moving your company’s IT infrastructure lifecycle to a green landscape, but its long-term benefits and payoffs can be alluring enough. CIO

Shubhra Rishi is senior correspondent. Send feedback to [email protected]

CIO100 GREEN IT


R.P. Rath, VP-Technology, Quatrro Global Services, says organizations must spread awareness about green IT among employees through different means of communication.

C

M

Y

CM

MY

CY

CMY

K

Focus CRM (HYD) 22_86x28_26cm Advertisment copy.pdf 1 9/11/13 3:55 PM

IF YOUR ORGANIZATION CURRENTLY USES CLOUD COMPUTING OR IS CONSIDERING ITS USE, WHICHDIRECTION IS IT LIKELY TO TAKE ? (CHOSSE ANY ONE)

SERVICE DELIVERY BLUESOrganizations are turning to web-based applications and the public cloud to increase agility and reduce TCO. On polling delegates at the CIO100 Awards and Symposium 2013 we learnt that service delivery to end-users and customers is getting compromised by speed bumps, security breaches and inadequate user experience.

24% Public Cloud

51% Private cloud

42% Hybrid Cloud

SURGING MOMENTUM

Of Indian organizations have

adopted Cloud Computing to

deliver IT services

SECURITY SCARE

of CIOs are worried that the Public

Cloud is likely to expose customer

information

45%HOW DO YOU VIEW PUBLIC CLOUD/ ON- DEMAND COMPUTING?

71%

48%

47%

40%

40%

36%

36%

34%12.3%

Increases business agility

Helps take advantage of the lates technology

Better support for remote and mobile workers

Reduces total cost of ownership

Reduce infrastructure cost

Convert capital expenditure to operating expenses

Helps to scale IT consumption up or down

Brings in cost variability to IT

59%

Survey - CIO100 2013

WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING WEB-BASED APPLICATIONS CAN YOUR EMPLOYEES ACCESS? 43%ACCOUNTING

CONTENT MANAGEMENT

CRM

EMAIL

ERP

HRMS

PLM

SCM

55%

45%

34%

31%

31%

22%

21%

19%

CUSTOMER CONNECT

Of organizations permit customers

transactions on their public-facing websites

DDOS attacks

Enhancing user experience

Latency response time

Maintaining data security

Outrages/Application downtime

WHAT ARE THE TYPICAL CHALLENGES THAT YOUR TEAM FACES WITH WEB-BASED APPLICATIONS?

68%

66%

31%

26%

22%

IN WHAT TIME FRAME IS YOUR TEAM PLANNING TO RESOLVE THESE ISSUES?

35%In the next 6 months





This Survey is brought to you by IDG Custom Solutions Group

in association with

VOL/8 | ISSUE/093 4 J U LY 1 5 , 2 0 1 3 | REAL CIO WORLD

Venkatesh Natarajan, Special Director-IT, Ashok Leyland, implemented product data management and product lifecycle management solutions to lower costs.

VOL/8 | ISSUE/11

CIO100Cost SavingCIO 100 WINNERS IN THIS STORY

ASHOK LEYLAND

ATUL

ESSAR PROJECTS

REAL CIO WORLD | S E P T E M B E R 1 5 , 2 0 1 3 9 3

GOKALDAS EXPORTS

TATA TECHNOLOGIES

Saving costs and driving business growth at the same time is tough. Some of this year’s CIO 100 honorees were adept at doing this.

BY E R I C E R N E ST

New-Age CIO (Cost Inhibition

Officer)

As You Spend So Shall You BenefitSometimes, saving costs doesn’t necessarily have to stand at odds with spending big. Ashok Leyland realized this sooner rather than later.

The company, the second largest manufacturer of medium and heavy commercial vehicles in India, had implemented a product data management (PDM) system, and at the same time redefined its product lifecycle management (PLM) system.

Ashok Leyland made substantial investments in implementing this project. While such an investment might seem prohibitive to most CIOs, Venkatesh Natarajan, special director-IT, Ashok Leyland, had good reasons to invest to this extent. In addition to making the product release and change management processes at Ashok Leyland more efficient and leaner, this initiative also aimed to lower overall costs.

With this system in place, the company’s R&D team members can collaborate virtually to design their products. This does not only increase the chances of identifying issues early on and fixing them in order to produce better quality products, but also allows the company’s

Controlling costs, by means of having a smaller team or working with lesser resources, has always been among the main pri-orities of CIOs. However, having to control costs in today’s uncertain economic climate, and at the same time meeting the increasing demands from business, put CIOs into a tight spot.

On the other hand, they can’t say no to all project ideas that come their way either. Though this is a daunting task, there are CIOs who have brought about the required savings through an interesting mix of ideas. Here, we look at some of the CIO 100 winners who have carried out such cost-saving projects, and at the same time didn’t compromise on reaping the implementation’s business benefits.

engineers to be more productive. Plus, it has also helped in standardization of parts. Since only one version of the data is available—through a centralized design software’s vault—everyone can access the common parts for designing products, which in turn, helps reduce costs.

COST SAVING

“Today, we are able to spot and rectify errors right at the initial stages, thanks to the virtual system. Earlier, we would have missed some errors, and even if you take 5 percent of the errors leaking through the validation stage, it would still have an adverse effect as we would have to rework the entire manufacturing, engineering and other related processes,” says Natarajan, talking about the significance of the project in making error rectification easier.

Being the only Indian commercial vehicle OEM to have set up such a comprehensive system, Ashok Leyland is now confident that this initiative will go a long way in enabling the organization to meet the challenges from its competition. This further validates the company’s large investments in the project.

Small Expenses, Huge ReturnsThere are times when CIOs become rather shortsighted and resort to knee-jerk cost savings methods in a bid to balance the cost savings and business benefits of a project. This can, however, turn out to be detrimental for business growth in the long term.

One such knee-jerk reaction would be denying approval for projects requiring Capex. But, given the current economy, with possible budget cuts looming, who could blame CIOs for being less inclined to spend on Capex rather than on Opex? And is there a way to circumvent this obstacle?

The answer is yes, if an Indian garment firm’s experience is anything to go by. Gokaldas Exports, which has been in the garments industry for over four decades, was facing a situation where it was losing around Rs 80 crore in fabric wastages every year, amounting to 10 percent of its fabric’s purchase value.

Yatendra Kumar, head-IT at the garments firm, had tested a software solution which provided an answer to the problem at hand: It optimally generates a plan for cutting the fabric—factoring in various parameters related to it—and thereby reduces wastage. However, the snag in vendor negotiations was that the software

Yatendra Kumar, Head-IT, Gokaldas Exports, came up with a clever payment option for his purchase of a software solution that helped reduce fabric wastage at his organization.


CIO100


vendor required an upfront payment of Rs 8 crore for the solution—something Gokaldas couldn’t quite meet.

Kumar suggested an alternative. Instead of paying the cost upfront, Gokaldas would pay the vendor 5 percent of the savings it accrues over the three years that would follow. The vendor rose to the challenge and accepted the deal, as a result of which Gokaldas is now paying the vendor—in quarterly instalments—a total of Rs 7.5 crore over a period of three years.

The software solution, which saved 2 percent of costs on fabric wastage on the very first month of implementation, currently saves about 6 to 7 percent per month for Gokaldas. This totals about a sweet Rs 50 crore per year.

“It’s a win-win situation for both our company and the software vendor. We are not paying anything upfront, and the software vendor still gets a good deal in the process,” says Kumar.

The Gem WithinIf you are in the aerospace, automotive or industrial machinery sector, you know that idle assets cost money. The folks at Tata Technologies, a global engineering services outsourcing provider to the manufacturing industry, understand the importance of asset optimization all too well. With this in mind, they looked to best optimize their global engineering and product development software/hardware inventories.

The Engineering Asset Optimization Management project would use proprietary data gathering techniques to obtain utilization data worldwide, integrate it with their SAP ERP project information, and then use BI and predictive analytics to publish utilization reports on the basis of business units, geography, projects, and other parameters. The inventory, utilization, costing and “what-if” analysis were published to delivery heads globally, thus allowing them to predict project costs, ramp up for new projects, and utilize assets optimally.

The accurate inventory, regular analysis, and planning has given Tata Technologies the ability to ramp up large customer delivery centers much faster, and plan projects around their current global availability. The company’s CIO, V. Balaji says, “With delivery centers stretching across diverse locations such as India, Thailand, UK, Romania, and Detroit, and the high number of cutting-edge product development software and capabilities across CAD, CAE, FEA, PLM, electrical, and embedded, our engineering assets are one of our best-guarded crown jewels. Companies are surprised to find out that their engineering assets

have cumulative inventory costs ranging over five percent and AMC over one percent of their annual revenue. The question to ask then is: Why would you not want to use analytics to maximize value out of those investments?”

“Tata Technologies aims to be the number one partner to the manufacturing industry, with revenue aspirations of reaching $1 billion (about Rs 6,400 crore) in the year 2017. Our ability to reduce customers’ time to develop new products is critical to our mission. Ramping up delivery centers,

V. Balaji, CIO, Tata Technologies, optimized the company’s global engineering and product development software and hardware inventories in order to cut costs.

VOL/8 | ISSUE/11

engineers, and software capabilities rapidly takes out weeks at a critical juncture and helps our customers develop better products. We are also able to plan procurements with our partners better, thereby achieving better partnerships and pricing”, Balaji adds, citing the reasons behind setting up the implementation.

This process has not only helped the company get an accurate license inventory and reduce the risk of non-compliance, but has also given savings of over Rs 3 crore, with more anticipated. The project was implemented in May 2013, with a cost of about Rs 60 lakh.

Jamming the BrakesEssar Projects also found itself in a similar situation, wherein its vehicular fleet was not being used to the optimum levels, and there were even some instances of misuse.

The engineering procurement and construction (EPC) contractor, which earned a revenue of $2 billion (about Rs 12,754 crore) in the last financial year, has a 3,300 strong fleet composed of tankers, earth movers, and various associated vehicles. The annual cost of running this fleet amounted to Rs 500 crore, half of which went for fuel.

But monitoring such a huge fleet manually—looking at equip-ment utilization reports, fuel consumption/pilferage moni-toring—was turning out to be a task prone to inaccuracy. Srini-vas Tata, CIO at Essar Project India, opted to install a system that would remedy this situa-tion for the company, for a sum of Rs 1 crore.

The solution involved the installation of the following tools: GPS trackers on vehicles to keep track of their movement along the prescribed routes, RFID tags on diesel tank inlets and nozzles of the diesel bowser to monitor that diesel was being dispensed only to authorized vehicles, sensors inside diesel tanks to monitor fuel levels and track consumption, and other smart electronics on vehicles to give a comprehensive picture of vehicle use, fuel consumption, vehicle theft, overload under load information, and fuel pilferage.

With such a system in place, the EPC firm has been able to improve its accountability, both in terms of vehicle utilization as well as fuel consumption. Moreover, the scheduled maintenance of vehicles is now monitored online.“When we got a new Rs 600

COST SAVING


Srinivas Tata, CIO, Essar Project India, deployed a comprehensive system encompassing a variety of technologies to save costs by means of streamlining fleet management.

CIO100

crore mining project, I asked the CEO whether he expected to lose 15 to 20 percent worth of diesel, as does happen in this industry. Then I asked whether he would be ok if I could save him 10 percent of the fuel costs. The CEO replied that he would give whatever was needed for this implementation,” says Tata, talking about how essential this implementation was to the company.

Setting up such a comprehensive system will allow Essar Projects to reap savings to the tune of Rs 25 crore from savings in annual fuel consumption, and Rs 12.5 crore in savings from reduction in maintenance and breakdown costs—7.5 percent saving on their overall cost for fleet management.

Now that’s a fabulous saving for any company.

Living a CIO’s DreamIt shouldn’t be hard now to guess that an ideal project for a CIO to implement in this tough economic climate is with low costs and massive returns. This dream did turn into reality here and there for a lucky group. Take the case of the implementation carried out by Rajat Sharma, president-IT, Atul. To solve user productivity issues, he implemented a solution which cost Rs 0.61 crore but gifted in return savings in many multiples.

Atul was using a major company’s ERP system, and Sharma observed that users were getting a not too optimal performance from their systems, especially towards the end of each month when they had to fire many reports, as the production environment was being overloaded with such requests.

In response to this situation, Sharma used an open source data warehouse, which cost nothing, to get the data that was most frequently used from the ERP. Now the data can be accessed by the BI dashboards—for which Sharma implemented an in-house solution—from the data warehouse instead of the live production database. Consequently, users don’t have to see a performance drop when accessing their production environment.The overall cost of the solution is Rs 0.61 crore, including the BI solution’s licensing cost at Rs 0.25 crore, and the notional costs of implementing both the data warehouse and BI

solution at about Rs 0.36 crore. Sharma did all this without hiring external consultants, and saved the company Rs 3.4 crore by carrying out the project in-house.

Following the implementation, Atul has been able to reap a three year TCO saving of about Rs 16 crore, of which Rs 9.8 crore is the amount Atul would have spent if it had chosen a well-known brand’s data warehouse and BI suite.

Additionally, with the better BI solution in place, the improved monitoring of various processes such as the procurement process has resulted in savings amounting to Rs 17.6 crore, with another Rs 6.6 crore saved by virtue of reducing the engineering inventory.

“We had a win-win situation on both sides, in terms of investment as well as in terms of absolute outcome. Money saved is also money earned, so we saved money directly and also by reaping absolute business tangibles,” says Sharma.

With such savings, there is no doubt that Sharma is truly living the CIOs’ dream. CIO

Eric Ernest is a senior corresopndent. Send feedback to eric_

[email protected]

Bollywood singer and artiste extraordinaire – Shaan will

perform live at the EMC Forum Gala awards ceremony.

Be ready to groove to some foot-tapping tunes!

Shaan, Live at EMC Forum



WHAT ARE THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES THAT YOU FACE WITH YOUR CURRENT SERVER INFRASTRUCTURE?

HOW MANY ALERTS YOUR TEAM HANDLE DAILY?

SLOW RECOVERYCIOs are fi nding it diffi cult both to retain talent in their teams as well as recover from outages with minimal business impact. Delegates at the CIO100 Awards and Symposium 2013 observed that maintaining Quality of Service was a struggle even as they chose higher automation and the cloud as a mitigation strategy.

Survey - CIO100 2013

Provisioning new Servers

Upgrading Aging Servers

Migrating to New Serves

Dealing With Server Sprawl

Remote Management

Inadequate Security Integration

Power Comsumption

Cooling Requirement53%

28%

14%

23%

22%

30%

27%

37%

TRUE APPINESS?

Of organizations have outsourced the management

of their application environment.

45%20%

28%

21%

32%

1 - 4 5 - 9 10 - 19 More than 20

WHICF FACTOR IS MOST CRITICAL FOR YOUR TEAM TO PRIORITIZE EVENT HANDLING?

HOW CONSISTENTLY IS YOUR TEAM ABLE TO ENSURE QUALITY OF IT SERVICE?

37%MISSING LINKS

of IT departments do not track either time

spent or cost incurred in delivering a service.

Very Consistently

Somewhat Consitent

Not Consistently

Of CIOs find retaining people and

skill-sets a major challenge still.

65%ATTRITION BLUES

92% Business Impact

13% Time Taken

for Resolution

IS YOUR COMPANY CURRENTLY USING CLOUD COMPUTING SERVICES?

18% No

18% No,

But Considering

56% Yes

47%

52%

1%

This Survey is brought to you by IDG Custom Solutions Group

in association with

As Indian businesses con-tinue to grow, they are deploying huge, complex IT systems to manage the burgeoning magnitude of data. As a result, growing Capex is putting stress on CIOs. They are forced to look at viable options to transfer IT assets from Capex to Opex—datacenter being one of them. Accord-ing to Nasscom, captive datacenters still domi-nate the landscape, but outsourcing is also seen as a growing trend.

This year’s CIO 100 winners have leveraged recent advancements in storage and server technologies to create datacenters of the future. Here and now.

BY S H U B H R A R I S H I

Datacenters

VOL/8 | ISSUE/111 0 0 S E P T E M B E R 1 5 , 2 0 1 3 | REAL CIO WORLD

(The Next Generation)

But it’s easier said than done. Budget constraints in today’s tight economy are forcing CIOs to view their datacenter investments more strategically. Even energy consumption is an additional constraint. According to Gartner, energy-related costs account for approximately 12 percent of overall datacenter expenditure and are the fastest-rising costs in the datacenter. As a result, CIOs are looking at deploying virtualized applications, servers, and infrastructures. This, in turn, is increasing business agility and at the same time, reducing downtime besides curbing carbon footprint of their organizations.

As IT departments embrace these disruptive technologies, organizations develop the ability to boost operational efficiency and control costs, thereby seeing an upward spike in overall profitability. Here’s how five of this year’s CIO 100 awardees made it happen.

Virtualization: Keeping IT UpEvalueserve, a global specialist in knowledge processes has a team of more than 2,600 professionals. Its CIO Sachin Jain wanted to improve workforce productivity. Having

DatacentersCIO 100 WINNERS IN THIS STORY

EVALUESERVE

FUTURE GROUP

JINDAL STEEL AND POWER

CIO100

MAHINDRA VEHICLE MANUFACTURERS

MARICO


implemented server virtualization in the past, the company deployed a VDI solution in order to obtain the benefits of centralized and distributed computing. The project had a scale of about 1,300 concurrent users which was further stretched to be able to accommodate 1,500 users. “This initiative has made life easy for our IT team. They no longer spend long hours in office managing physical PCs because they can now manage the setup through a single console with greater control and visibility,” says Jain.

The project has allowed the business to respond faster and the workforce to become more productive. Even security and governance practices in the organization have improved. All the antivirus and patch updates take place on the virtual layer/master image rather than on individual physical machines, in turn, impacting system performance. The audits conducted for end-user systems have become much simpler and consume less time. “Our users no longer wait for IT and compliance approval to shift their systems or profiles if the business demands so. They can work from any seat available on any floor in any of the offices,” says Jain.

Another case in point is the hosted shared desktop (HSD) implementation at Future Group. By moving towards an HSD environment, Future Group’s CIO and CTO, Parakh Dave overcame the challenges of traditional desktop delivery mechanisms along with unpredictable IT costs. “With the help of desktop virtualization, we were able to host end-users’ existing desktops along with their data,” says Dave. The project was deployed for the first time and desktop data and

Sachin Jain, CIO, Evalueserve, deployed a VDI solution and helped business respond faster to market needs and enhanced workforce productivity.

applications were hosted on the datacenter and shared over the company’s network. As a result, the project has not only achieved BYOD-readiness, but also a 100 percent availability of business applications. The productivity of the IT support staff has also gone up by 20 percent.


Outage OutrageOrganizations that rely on datacenters to run business-critical applications face the irregular goliath of downtime. That’s why Jindal Steel and Power’s (JSPL) head-IT&C, Rakesh Mishra, envisaged a two site solution to ensure highest availability of its SAP-based ERP enterprise applications. With its primary datacenter located in Raigarh, Chhattisgarh, the steel major decided to set up a disaster recovery site at Angul, Orissa. In

case of any outage at the primary datacenter, the production servers and applications from the DR site would kick in, with a maximum RPO of 60 minutes and RTO of 30 minutes. “We wanted to avoid single points of failure and ensure a robust business continuity plan,” says Mishra.

The whole project is based on generating better business results by ensuring minimal downtime for JSPL’s enterprise applications. “The project is planned and implemented in such a way that in case of down time at the primary datacenter, immediate actions will ensure that the enterprise application is available to users almost instantly and within a couple of hours,” says Mishra.

Even the six-year-old vehicle manufacturing arm of the Mahindra Group, Mahindra Vehicle Manufacturers wanted to ensure high availability of the facilities supporting its production processes. Its head-IT, AFS Pune Hub, B. Venkatakrishnan says that even a 10-minute downtime used to impact a number of manufacturing processes, namely: Press, body, paint, TCF, engine, final line, and dispatch, which in turn caused huge business loss to the entire production cycle. Therefore, he designed and built a Greenfield plant at Chakan, near Pune, which runs on Ethernet, encompassing data, voice, surveillance, controls, and PLC. “The project is unique in nature and converges onto a common platform to provide a 360-degree view to internal customers on

Rakesh Mishra, Head-IT&C, Angul, Jindal Steel and Power, envisaged a two-site solution and ensured the highest availability of its SAP-based ERP enterprise applications.

CIO100 DATACENTERS

REAL CIO WORLD | S E P T E M B E R 1 5 , 2 0 1 3 1 0 3VOL/8 | ISSUE/11

various critical IT services,” says Venkatakrishnan. The IT Operations Command Center has drastically brought down problem management resolution from 60 minutes to a paltry two minutes. It has also ensured high availability of the manufacturing facility supporting production and reduced downtime from as high as 36 hours to near zero.

Similarly, zero disruption in its core business was what the FMCG major Marico wanted to establish as it planned to revamp the IT infrastructure of its 84 skincare clinics in India. The clinics, which provide customized skin care solutions backed by more than 200 dermatologists, already had a legacy on-premise Point of Sales (POS) solution being used by its sales staff. At that time, the network infrastructure was required only for data synchronization with a cloud-based reporting solution.

The company realized a new POS system is just what it needed. “Our management team evaluated the pros and cons and took a call to insource the development of the new POS system,” says Satish Pai, head-IT infrastructure, Marico. The solution architecture of the new solution was Web-based, which meant that data traffic from the new POS would flow to the company’s datacenter and from the old POS to the cloud software provider datacenter via its MPLS network.

Pai also wanted to ensure that the network enjoyed very high uptime. During prototyping of the new system, Marico’s IT team discovered that the load time and response time of the Webpages were very slow. This meant that the billing transaction at a particular clinic would require around 10-15 minutes. This would lead to high dissatisfaction among customers. “We prototyped a network optimization solution and achieved significant performance gains through it. We then decided to deploy this at all our clinics,” says Pai. This reduced the billing time drastically to around 3 minutes.

As a result of insourcing the development of the POS system, the company now sees cost savings of about Rs 25 lakh annually. “Similarly, at the same cost, the overall connectivity has doubled,” says Pai. Additionally, the new POS system has reduced the service tax and VAT report availability by a week. With the implementation of the new system, the need to monitor data synchronization at all the clinics has also been eliminated. At the clinics, there has been a radical spike in customer appointment confirmations from a mere five percent to an impressive 30 percent.

Currently, even technology trends such as mobility, social media, and cloud, are driving the demand for datacenters. At the same time, CIOs are also focusing on sustainability initiatives to control energy and power costs. They are formulating strategies to optimize their datacenters to bolster agility, growth, and innovation within their organizations. These strategies will redefine datacenters. CIO

Shubhra Rishi is senior correspondent. Send feedback to

[email protected]

B. Venkatakrishnan, Head-IT, AFS Pune Hub, Mahindra Vehicle Manufacturers, built a greenfield plant to provide internal users with a 360-degree view of IT services, reducing downtime from 36 to zero hours.

It hasn’t been a good year for business, and much less for CIOs. Consumer sentiment has weakened and economic conditions look worse, forcing CEOs to turn towards IT to salvage the situation. While IT’s role and impact in bringing in innovation or competitive differentiation is still debatable, there’s one thing everyone agrees that IT does very effectively: Boosting operational efficiency.

And indeed last year, CIOs worked tirelessly to find those hidden gaps of efficiencies and come up with cost-effective ways to plug them. Recently, in our

Can it be done better? Can we improve it further? Ask these award-winning CIOs, and the answer will always be in the affirmative.

BY VA R S H A C H I DA M BA R A M

Efficient… (and Effective)

But extracting efficiencies from processes that have already been squeezed dry requires a fresh wave of thinking. If there is one thing that ties this bunch of CIO 100 winners together, it is their confident optimism and their ability to say “yes, it can be done” even in the worst situations.

And that takes a lot of courage. The courage to challenge conventions, the courage to cause disruptions, and the courage to relentlessly stand up to opposition, backed by the strong belief that “it can be done better.”

Processes have an innate tendency to lull people into comfort. Why fix if it isn’t broken, right? Wrong. These CIOs believe that the pursuit of perfection can never stop. These are companies that are established leaders in their space, and yet, humility and an earnest desire to reinvent and ‘find a better way’ is what sets them apart from others. And their successful attempts to do better have gotten them CIO 100 awards.

EfficiencyCIO100

annual CIO Mid Year Review Survey, we asked CIOs to rank their top three achievements in the last six months. They were improved end-user workforce productivity, improved quality of products and/or processes, and re-engineered core business processes


CONTINENTAL AUTOMOTIVE COMPONENTS

HINDUSTAN AERONAUTICS

HINDUSTAN PETROLEUM

RELIANCE INFRASTRUCTURE

SAFEXPRESS


Towards Greater Efficiency and AccuracyWhile everyone may not agree on one definition of perfection, it is universally agreed that the first step should be eliminating errors. That’s exactly where Shalabh Raizada, VP-IT, Safexpress, started.

One of the largest logistics companies in India, Safexpress ships an average of 275,000 goods a day. Their process of loading and routing shipment was a manual task, usually conducted in the wee hours of the morning.

“The packages were manually counted while loading and unloading a truck and depended on semi-skilled labor to knock off tally marks on a register or pre-printed tally sheets,” says Raizada. This led to short shipments (loading five packages instead of seven), and misrouting (loading packages meant for Bangalore onto a Mangalore-bound truck.)

These grave errors troubled Raizada. “There’s got to be a better way,” believed Raizada, and he eventually forged the solution on the anvil of technology.

He architected a s y s t e m that tags every package with a unique identifier, and equipped his personnel with a bar code scanner to verify the items to be dispatched. So, now, loaders just need to scan every package before loading goods. In case of any short-loading or wrong-loading, the device alerts the loader. Ands bypassing the alert triggers another alert to the supervisor.

As a result, the leap in productivity just by way of reducing errors was phenomenal, not to mention they now need fewer men to do the job. “I’m personally satisfied that the stress levels in the team have substantially gone down now. Staff loading and unloading work more quickly and without the fear of a supervisor yelling at them at 3.45 am.”

Rajeev Agarwal, Head-Corporate IT at Hindustan Aeronautics, found a way to ensure that rejected parts are replaced faster—60 days faster.

Quicker is BetterMost processes inherently suffer from a rigid dependence on steps and dutiful adherence to them. In an effort to be more prudent, many IT leaders end up making those processes tedious and long-winding. They may cover their backs

from a ‘we didn’t miss out anything’ perspective, but lose out in a business environment where shorter business cycles and faster turnaround time are the norm. Striving to fulfill these dynamic needs offers precious opportunities for productivity enhancements, as Rajeev Agarwal, head-Corporate IT at Hindustan Aeronautics, discovered.

Aerospace manufacturing follows very stringent AS9000 standards pertaining to testing and acceptance of materials/parts, and therefore, there is a very high rate

of rejection of items that are outsourced for manufacturing. In Hindustan Aeronautics’ old process, information regarding the reasons behind rejection would travel through multiple loops—taking up to a month—before reaching the vendor, thus resulting in delay of new supplies, delays in projects, and delays in ultimate payment.

Agarwal’s CIO 100-winning project was envisioned to cut avoidable time delays from both sides. He built an intelligent software layer which facilitates visibility of “rejection information” in real-time. The improved response time from vendors has led to a faster and more efficient process, and in turn, a stronger supply chain. The company has reduced replenishment time for reject items by 60 days on an average, and delivery time on an average by 30 days—by pessimistic estimate.

Too Complex? Find a Simpler SolutionTechnology is meant to make life simpler, and that’s what Rajiv Sharaf, CIO, Reliance Infrastructure, showed. His winning project, aptly titled ‘Simplify’, automates the process of capturing work progress for linear road projects at micro level vis-à-vis the actual execution plan.

Every infrastructure project goes through multiple stages of scrutiny. It starts with an invoicing process based on approved quantum of permanent works that calculates price escalations as per changes in commodity prices, and this is constantly updated. Then

CIO100 EFFICIENCY

Shalabh Raizada, VP-IT, Safexpress, architected a system that allows staff loading and unloading trucks to be more efficient and accurate.


there are inspection requests by vendors which then need to be assigned to site engineers. And there are regular progress reports and charts leading up to the final payment documentation.

The multiple steps and the lack of an organized workflow added many a layer of complexity to the entire process. To deal with this, Sharaf designed an automated and digitized workflow that collapsed the number of steps, thereby significantly reducing complexity and introducing transparency.

“The re-engineered process has resulted in saving a good deal of time and money. By simplifying a complex paper-based process, we have successfully plugged financial leakages due to malpractices and enhanced transparency for all stakeholders involved in the business,” says Sharaf.

Building TransparencyIncorporating transparency into processes has always been a tiring task. Some processes work blissfully till someone comes in and starts asking questions. But as businesses get ruthless, any business process that isn’t transparent and fair will fail the scrutiny test. However, IT can fix that, as demonstrated by Valerio Fernandes, GM-IT, Continental Automotive Components (India).

Over the past years, the company had been struggling with a huge amount of documents in its repository: Invoices, purchase orders, vouchers, travel claims, personnel documents, taxation returns, and bills of entry among a whole lot of other things. Keeping aside the problem of managing such a large pool of documents, the company realized the biggest drawback of the existing process was the lack of transparency and communication within its Indian offices and between its Indian and global ones. Sometimes, documents would go missing and nobody would know who was at fault. “These missing documents also led to exponential increase in time to process, as well as errors creeping into the system,” says Fernandes.

To overcome this, he decided to convert all documents into electronic form and integrated them with SAP. This has aided in communication with the entire business ecosystem, including customers, vendors, and colleagues across the world. “Documents can

S.T. Sathiavageswaran, Exec. Director-IS, HPCL, integrated ERP, image process management system, and collaboration tools for faster payment processing.


now be easily traced and identified, leading to a lot of improvement in the overall business process,” he says.

Every process has drawbacks, some that have possibly existed for so long that they are considered unavoidable and something

business has to live with. But does it really have to?Like most PSUs, Hindustan Petroleum maintained records of practically everything that went around in the organization. Purchase orders (PO), bills, payments, goods received notes (GRNs), delivery challans, QC reports, measurement sheets, and actual claim declarations, etcetera—all existed as hard copies. Most of these are required to be sent from one location to another across 100 locations. Despite

the obvious challenges—traceability, timeliness, retention, and retrieval—the process was almost sacrosanct.

But the economy and associated turbulence made S.T. Sathiavaageswaran, executive director-information systems, Hindustan Petroleum, put an end to it. He implemented a solution that uses the power of image process m anagement system to digitize all documents required for payment. This process eliminated the need for physical bills by linking the entire workflow to the ERP so that bills are received and processed electronically, without any physical movement of documents.

“Bills received from the vendors are scanned at the place of receipt and captured in the image process management system,” he says. “And the payment workflow has been configured in with automatic data interchange with ERP. This is carried out electronically without the clutter of paper. Having all required documents available on the click of a button removes inefficiencies.”

It also improved governance. The retention of all relevant payment documents in the repositories, especially for future audits, has removed the burden of storage and retrieval of documents.

Now, who said efficiency wasn’t as glamorous as innovation? CIO

Varsha Chidambaram is principle

correspndent . Send feedback on this feature


CIO100 EFFICIENCY


Rajiv Sharaf, CIO, Reliance Infrastructure, created a system that cut through complexity and increased transparency.

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SecurityCIO 100 WINNERS IN THIS STORY

BHARAT FORGE

COGNIZANT

ESSAR GROUP

Single Point of DefenseIn the face of today’s advanced threat landscape, it makes sense to set up a unified security architecture, especially when you have a group of companies to look after.

That’s exactly what Bharat Forge, the second largest forging company in the world and a constituent of the Kalyani group, did. The project was in response to the need to consolidate the security architecture across all the group companies that fell under the purview of the Kalyani group, without impacting user system performance.

It is interesting to note here that Bharat Forge has been ISO 27001-certified (for Information Security Management System) since 2006. Yet, Yogesh Zope, the group CIO, Bharat Forge, well understood that being proactive with respect to security would eventually pay off.

Another reason for revamping the security system was that the security threats have changed significantly in the last couple of years, and most of the existing security infrastructure at Bharat Forge was not able to counter today’s threat landscape.

The most recent security breach of the New York Times website, caused by the rebellious Syrian Electronic Army, high-lights the ever increasing need to shore up organizational defenses against the myriad security threats existing today.

Protecting against the increasing number and complexity of today’s

It’s a harsh reality that threats are evolving as rapidly as technology itself. Here’s how some CIO 100 winners have responded.

BY E R I C E R N E ST

Advanced Threats (Advanced Treatments)

threat landscape might seem like a daunting task for many CIOs. But some of them were able to build an effective defense land-scape for their organizations’ IT infrastructure, something that helps them be more proactive than reactive.

HINDALCO

JWT

CIO100


Satish Das, CSO and VP, Cognizant Technology Solutions, believes that maintaining logs of security incidents is as important as taking measures to prevent them.

As Zope explains, citing some examples, “We did not have IPS (Intrusion Prevention System) previously. We were using a typical firewall that was limited to perimeter protection. Traditional IDS and firewall systems were not sufficient to address the risks in the areas of traffic enforcement and application protection.”

Given the wide variety of security threats in today’s landscape, Zope decided to go for a best-of-breed solution that leveraged various technologies impacting datacenter, network, and end-points to tackle the menace. All technologies were evaluated based on whether they improved security, increased IT/end-user efficiency, reduced risk, or improved availability.

With the new security system in place, Bharat Forge has been able to effectively implement user segregation by identifying users who wished to access corporate resources and classify them accordingly. As security attacks tend to consume

a good amount of bandwidth, bandwidth controls were also implemented to ensure that specific traffic flows did not consume more bandwidth than required.

Bharat Forge, which invested Rs 1.4 crore to deploy this new security architecture, has assured all its customers and other stakeholders that IT is now geared up to face next-generation threats.

The Logic behind LogsWhile preventing attacks against your

organization does always take top priority, more passive methods such as recording these incident details can prove just as effective in countering threats. So, having a log system in place to record security incidents will allow


SECURITY

you to take corrective measures based on the recorded information. Satish Das, CSO and VP, Cognizant Technology Solutions, can tell you how.

At Cognizant, a leading international IT, consulting, and outsourcing firm, security log management—log correlation and analytics—was a manual process. In addition, there was a lack of integration among the logs from multiple sources such

as firewalls, financial ERP, and individual users, which made incident investigation process rather cumbersome.

With this in mind, Das went about automating the log management and analysis systems to streamline the consolidation process. Consequently, Das set up a security information and event management (SIEM) solution to meet these requirements.

As a result, Das has been able to tremendously improve the security posture of the company. “Thanks to this system, our customers now have more confidence in us, and this in turn improves our reputation, thereby adding to our business value,” says Das.

P o s t - i m p l e m e n t a t i o n of this automated system, Cognizant was able to reassign the employees who were involved with the manual log management process to other business-critical areas.

Beyond Virtual SecurityOf course, when organizations decide to secure themselves, their focus must not be restricted to the virtual front alone, but extend to the physical as well. And IT still has a major role to play in strengthening physical security.

Take the case of Essar Group, a global corporation with interests in steel, energy, infrastructure, and services, for instance. Jayanta Prabhu, the CTO of Essar Group, was looking to set up a contract workforce management system, which would provide a unique

Bhushan Akerkar, CIO, Hindalco, obtained ISO 27001 certification and standardized security policies and processes across the company, leading to increased risk awareness.

CIO100


identification number for each work associate (WA) employed at a particular Essar facility.“At the particular plant in question, there were more than 7,500 contract workers working under different contractors. Apart from the issue of security, there were concerns about pilferage; cases of multiple employment, wherein a worker worked under different contractors and was hired many times within a day to work at the plant; and improper worker profile management, wherein a contractor could hire a person to fill in a quota without the company’s knowing whether the contractee has the right skill set or not,” says Prabhu.

With the workforce management system in place, Essar is now able to monitor the workers’ profiles better, with each worker getting a unique identification number generated through the use of biometrics and RFID technologies. With this authentication mechanism, Essar can now ensure that only authorized workers enter the factory premises—possible from various entry-points. The reporting mechanism, which allows the authorities concerned to know about the movement of workers within the facility, has greatly helped the Indian MNC decrease the security risks that it might have to face.

Moreover, this system helps Essar not only eliminate cases of dual employment, but also allocate the right person for the right job. It has also been able to eliminate instances of listing proxy attendance.

Standardizing for SuccessTo stay ahead in the security realm, it’s always a good idea to have certifications accredited to your company. This is to show that you are doing all that is required, and because a lack of essential certifications can affect your company’s reputation adversely.

This is what Hindalco, one of the world’s largest aluminium companies and a major constituent of the Aditya Birla group, did, with an aim to create a more

security-conscious organization. Bhushan Akerkar, CIO, Hindalco, had his

job cut out for him in having to put in place the required systems to get the company ISO 27001-certified.

“We had to harmonize the systems that were already in place and enforce policies so that the approach to security wouldn’t be haphazard. Earlier, everyone did as they liked, without knowing what the best approach was,” says Akerkar.

The standardization of policies and

Yogesh Zope, Group CIO, Bharat Forge, chose a best-of-breed solution that leveraged various technologies impacting datacenter, network, and end-points to tackle security challenges.

processes across Hindalco has allowed for a more efficient methodology to be put in place to ensure regulatory compliance in areas such as IT governance, information handling, data protection, and privacy.

Akerkar also states that after acquiring this certification, there has been an increased awareness of risk across the business because there are clear definitions of individual roles and responsibilities for information assets and decision-making processes.

“We feel more confident about our data security. We feel there is a method to the madness in the data security approach, and we are able to control data much more efficiently,” says Akerkar.

Complete ComplianceAnother company that was also looking at getting accredited to make its processes more secure was the advertising giant JWT. With this in mind, even they wanted to become ISO 27001-certified.

JWT, the largest advertising and communications agency in India, already had a Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) controls framework in place, but Cyrus Lacka, its systems director,

SECURITY

knew the company couldn’t rest on past laurels alone, especially when it came to security. “We thought that the ISO standard lent a big stamp on the way processes are streamlined, even beyond SOX. As a mandate, WPP (JWT is a WPP company) is SOX-compliant, and therefore, all WPP companies need to be SOX-compliant as well. So, we went one step ahead,” says Lacka.

Lacka went about setting up the necessary infrastructure at JWT for it to get accredited with the ISO 27001 certificate.

“We are being proactive. Our SOX-related policies also become stronger with the ISO standard. So, you could say we are double-compliant. When clients get to know that JWT adheres to policies such as SOX and ISO 27001, they feel reassured that this company takes security seriously,” adds Lacka, explaining how setting up the new system has strengthened JWT.

To ease employees’ transition to the new system as well as change their mindsets, continuous training sessions—both via classrooms and e-mails—on the new policies and processes were held. “It’s important to get user buy-in so that the employees understand that this is a vital implementation for the company,” says Lacka.

Having realized that prevention is better than cure, the aforementioned organizations are confident that their proactive security measures will only help them in the long term. CIO

Eric Ernest is senior correspondent. Send feedback to [email protected]

CIO100

Discuss and debate on upcoming IT issues with your peers at

CIO Roundtables at EMC Forum 2013.

Deliberations with Peers



This Interview is brought to you by IDG Custom Solutions Group

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STAY ON TRACK WITH BSMBusiness is putting more pressure on IT to demonstrate how IT budgets are being spent and to prove the value they deliver. BSM connects stakeholders to services that best meet their needs, and articulates the value of IT services delivered.

EXECUTIVE VIEWPOINT

Sachin ChawlaCountry Manager, BMC Software India

BMCCUSTOM SOLUTIONS GROUP

What does it take to determine the degree of business-IT alignment in an enterprise and to ensure that it is on track?There are a number of ways to determine the same. Often business keeps requesting for services that are critical for it to be able to deliver shareholder value and in today’s age nothing can be delivered without an IT orga-nization; and that’s a given. The question to be answered is, how fast can IT deliver these services with the service levels that delight the business, so that it works as a competitive advantage to businesses. This is the key and speaks volumes about business-IT alignment in an organization.

What impacts do automation have on reduc-ing IT team attrition, organizational downtime while improving agility?That’s an interesting ques-tion because often people in IT organizations see ‘Au-tomation’ as a threat. Hav-ing said that I think the time has come when adopting automation is not a choice anymore but a compulsion if you want to stay agile and competitive. Automation helps IT organizations in a lot of ways. It helps them to deliver services faster to business and make it more competitive, reduce cost by making IT departments more effi cient, improve Service Levels and stay compliant.

In fact, it gives the people doing those mun-dane jobs an opportunity to upgrade their skills and hence grow up the value chain by using these tools.

How can CIOs architect an integrated IT manage-ment platform to operate more effectively? IT organizations have spent years helping their

business counterparts implement ERP sys-tems to simplify, standardize, and automate business processes. Now, it is time for IT to do the same for its own processes. The need for an IT management platform is important because a platform-based approach provides a consistent way of sharing information. IT or-ganizations need to standardize around consis-tent terms, such as ‘services’ and ‘resources.’ It also standardizes the communications and workfl ow between functions. All of these tasks are interrelated. Every IT department needs to understand this and build their own architec-ture map so as to embark this journey.

Where does the role of Business Service Man-agement (BSM) fi t in? BSM takes the IT you have — or will need — and adds the visibility and control of an inte-

grated service manage-ment platform. It manages services, applications, and infrastructure across a broad set of operating en-vironments — from physi-cal infrastructure to virtual infrastructure, and in the cloud. BSM simplifi es, standardizes, and auto-mates your IT processes and supporting tools.

With BSM, you will have the trusted information you need to make better decisions. That means you can meet and exceed your commitments to enable growth, demonstrate fi nancial performance, optimize costs, maintain security, and assure quality and compliance — all at the same time.

How can BMC Software help drive business value in an organization?Information about IT confi gurations and assets is limited and not easily shared. What’s worse,

the information that does exist usually is not mapped to meaningful business information, such as business priority or value supported. This situation makes it diffi cult for IT organi-zations or service providers to scale, respond quickly, meet commitments consistently, uti-lize assets effectively, and provide visibility across operations.

That’s where we come in. BMC has been delivering BSM solutions to thousands of cus-tomers, in every industry and geography, to ad-dress their most critical IT needs. As the BSM pioneer and market leader, BMC offers a low risk, modular approach to implementing BSM.

With BSM, customers from around the world, and in every industry, have been able to deliver services up to 30 percent more effi ciently, deliver new services up to 50 percent faster, re-duce downtime by 75 percent, reduce the cost of compliance by 30 percent, gain more than 95 percent of visibility into IT spend and effectively centralize planning and budget efforts.

IT must be able to constantly

assess services for compliance and plan for future

services.

Leaner teams and harder goals have made collaboration a key strategy. A number of

CIO 100 winners show how it’s done. BY G O PA L K I S H O R E


Collabo ration’s Amit Jain, Head-Infrastructure Services, Internal IT, TCS, and his team, weaved a suite of collaboration solutions that allows TCS to tap its resources more efficiently.


It is interesting to note that most of the winning projects were conceived and deployed within six months, and with a RoI horizon of less than a year. In addition, many organizations were able to use unified collaboration (UC) to propel other IT initiatives such as BYOD and mobility further.

A Collaboration Suite that SuitsSince TCS’ business was continually on the rise and IT had a mandate to enable this growth, the company was in great need of an effective collaboration system. To achieve this, TCS weaved together a suite of immersive collaboration solutions, christened iCollab. This integrated enterprise-class collaboration and knowledge sharing platform enables global virtual communication for the IT services giant. “The modus operandi of usage of existing audiovisual technology for this project is unique and led to the evolution of a new technology itself,” says Amit Jain,

Enterprise communication, once restricted to voice, e-mail, and IM, has now embraced more advanced technolo-gies such as VoIP, and video conferencing, among others. While it’s well-known that each of these systems have helped enterprises reduce costs, improve efficiency, and increase productivity, they have mostly

worked in silos, leading to in-efficient communication and a maze of disjointed tools.

Some of this year’s CIO 100 winners changed that. They were able to realize the full po-tential of these disparate tools by taking them out of their silos and uniting them into a single, coherent, centrally-ad-ministered unified communi-cations and collaboration solu-tion. Here is how they stitched the technologies together to deliver on the promise of ‘more flexible, efficient, cost-effective communication throughout the enterprise’.

CIO100UC & CollaborationCIO 100 WINNERS IN THIS STORY

GEOJIT BNP PARIBAS

INFOSYS

PTI

SYNTEL

TCS

ration’s (New Mantra)

head-infrastructure services, internal IT TCS. The solution enables facility and communications reservations, which encompasses national and international audio and video calls, AV conference facilities, and scheduled and unscheduled webinars among others.

Jain also highlights the crucial role of social networking in enhancing the intellectual capital and leveraging the collective knowledge and experience of over 276,000 employees in 44 countries to deliver best-in-class solutions to clients. The social networking segment lets associates seek information, share ideas and exchange knowledge using facilities to blog, ideate, and manage knowledge bases involving technology areas, processes, people, communities, discussion forums and more, through a conventional and mobile-enabled medium.

“The usage pattern helps us identify experts, champions and gurus in various technologies, domains, and functional areas. The solution has a chronological, timeline-based user interface which allows users to view, filter, and search postings. It lowers travels, board, and lodging costs,” says Jain.

iCollab’s effectiveness also arises from the fact that it has eliminated the need for a specialist domain knowledge expert to physically travel to different locations to conduct training sessions.

Tying IT TogetherAnother IT services major Syntel used UC to extend enterprise mobility and BYOD capabilities beyond the boundaries of the organization. “Syntel has over 3,000 employees working away from office every day. This workforce was disconnected from enterprise collaboration tools, as the only way to access the corporate network was available

through VPN, and it was not recommended to have video collaboration on a VPN,” says M. Ramachandran, CIO, Syntel.

To work around this, Syntel first built an enterprise collaboration framework and policy. Then it looked at leveraging existing platforms to


achieve very tight integration. The ultimate aim of this initiative was to bring cohesiveness to existing platforms and bring the use of these platforms to an optimal level. “We integrated all platforms with each other, and created a cohesive abstraction layer with fully-prepared policy and process framework. Enterprise mobility was a subset of this initiative, under which we made all these features available to our mobile workforce,” he says.

The project has improved customer satisfaction and relationship management, lowered the cost of doing business, and in-creased operational effectiveness.

UC? I SeeThough several companies have attempted to reduce travel costs and enable faster decision-making using video conferencing, many have also faced poor user-adoption. No wonder then that the team at Infosys conducted several road shows to educate staffers by showcasing the virtual meeting rooms, unified desktop video, and video mobility that formed the core of the UC solution at Infosys.

“Video is used primarily to meet various business requirements such as remote learning and training, client meetings, group reviews within workgroups, groups that are involved in the transition of works that happens offshore and executive level meetings between Infosys and client organizations,” says Vijayeendra Purohit, AVP-Corporate Networking, Infosys.

Thanks to this drive, Infosys has seen a huge uptake of the technology, proof of which is the 30,000 video meetings (2 million minutes) that have taken place in the last year.

All Aboard the UC TrainRetail participation in the Indian capital market is lower compared to other emerging markets. Today, the Indian market is driven by foreign and domestic institutions.

It was therefore important for Geojit BNP Paribas, as an intermediary in the retail capital market, to bring more participants to the market. In a bid to attract young investors to

Tridib Bordoloi, CIO, PTI, created a solution that allows reporters to file stories from anywhere, ensuring better collaboration.

UC & COLLABORATIONCIO100


the Indian capital market, Geojit BNP Paribas launched “Flip Social”, India’s first stock trading application suite for Facebook. The app suite includes investment tutorials, a stock market game that gives players a virtual real-time experience of trading in the Indian stock market, and a trading platform. “FLIP is our Web and mobile trading and investment platform. We have customized the application using a specially designed Facebook SDK and custom-built components,” says A. Balakrishnan, CTO, Geojit BNP Paribas Financial Services.

Post its deployment and launch, the company has been adding 30 to 40 new entrants for its virtual portfolio and stock gaming on a daily basis. “We expect 50,000 participants in the virtual portfolio and stock games by the end of the year. Today, cost per lead is Rs 150. Conversion rate in this market is 3 percent and the cost per client acquisition in the traditional route is about Rs 3,000. In a better market condition, this cost may come down. In fact, we are now obtaining 17 percent conversion from the leads generated by the new Facebook application,” he adds.

Beyond CollaborationContrary to popular belief, a collaboration environment need not necessarily mean a pure-play technology product. In some cases, it can be just a good concoction of technology, people, and process to drive business. The collaboration setup at the Press Trust of India (PTI) is a great example of this.

The PTI has a complex core editorial process with various built-in validations in place. It has four regional editorial hubs in India connected to a central hub at Delhi. Journalists file stories to their respective regional editorial desks, from where the final copies are routed to the central hub. The IT team was tasked with creating a collaborative network to assist the bureau offices to file feeds to their respective regional hubs (manage one way traffic) and also enable traffic from the regional hubs to merge in the national hub (two way flow of traffic).

“Since no technology solution is available off-the-shelf, our internal R&D team was engaged to work out an ‘InterNet’-based solution that will ensure collaboration amongst key stake holders driving business,” says Tridib Bordoloi, CIO, PTI.

This solution allows reporters to file stories securely from anywhere using the ‘InterNet’, thereby ensuring better collaboration. The biggest advantage is that the technology has

made VSAT redundant, as a result, saving huge recurring cost of Rs 45 lakh a year plus AMC charges. It has also improved organizational agility and ensured that business processes operate as a service.

“This business process re-engineering initiative enabled our bureau offices to seamlessly collaborate in order to serve our subscribers better,” Bordoloi adds. CIO

Gopal Kishore is special correspondent. Send feedback on this

feature to [email protected]

Vijayeendra Purohit, AVP-Corporate Networking, Infosys, helped popularize the use of core UC tools. Just in the last year, 30,000 video meetings have taken place.

Astute


The

100Sanjeev Kumar, Group CIO & Group President-Business Excellence, Adhunik Group of Industries

Kumar moved Adhunik’s entire collaboration suite on the cloud in order

to reduce the server footprint on campus. This included eliminating maintenance, increasing uptime, and ensuring better compliance. Adhunik managed to increase user satisfaction and boost productivity by 15-25 percent without capex. Even its TCO is expected to go down by 40-50 percent over the next three years.

Tarun Pandey, Senior Vice President, Aditya Birla Financial Services Group

At ABFSG, the IT Excellence Scorecard and Operational Dashboard helps

provide business stakeholders a comprehensive, 360-degree, yet single-page view on how IT

impacts the business. The system uses self-service analytics and extensive role-based live graphics visualization.

Sankarnarayanan R., Director-IT, Aegon Religare Life Insurance

Raghavan helped Aegon Religare tweak its point of sale credit card swipe

instruments to double up as quote generators. This innovation has made the entire sales process quicker and less time-consuming because the sales personnel now use the same instrument to get a quote. The instrument also enables cross-selling of products to customers.

Venkatesh Natarajan, Special Director-IT, Ashok Leyland

Venkatesh Natarajan implemented a product data management

(PDM) system at Ashok Leyland, and at the same time, redefined its product lifecycle management (PLM) system to bring about better design quality and improve efficiency. With this system in place, the company’s R&D team members can collaborate virtually in designing products, thereby increasing the chances of identifying various manufacturing issues early on, producing better quality products.

Rajat Sharma, President-IT, Atul

To deal with slower response times from the production environment

during month ends, Sharma transferred the data that was most frequently used from the ERP onto a free open source data warehouse. So, whenever a report was requested through the in-house BI dashboard, the information was accessed from the data warehouse instead of the live production database. This helped

users enjoy steady performance even during peak loads.

Shaji Abraham, Head-IT & Corp. Comm., Avantha Power & Infrastructure

Abraham led a business transformation project that virtualized the

company’s storage and servers to set up a private cloud. The company rolled out its SAP on this virtual infrastructure. This has helped the company control the problem of dual payments and eliminate the frequent loss of invoices. Avantha Power has also consolidated its network infrastructure and rolled out video conferencing.

Pratap Gharge, President & CIO, Bajaj Electricals

Gharge built a private cloud and migrated close to 900

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desktops across all its branch offices, godowns, and factories to VDI. This increased the agility in infrastructure provisioning, provided better uptime, and enabled faster support services to the users. The company has also been able to cut down 90 percent of its electricity requirements through VDI.

S. Francis Rajan, VP-IT, Bangalore International Airport

Rajan re-architected BIAL’s IT landscape and implemented

an innovative smart airport framework, on SOA, enabling multiple applications to have real-time data exchange. The smart airport framework helped the company develop an ESB for seamless data exchange. As a result, multiple applications such as baggage handling system, information kiosks, and flight information display systems now have instant access to the critical airport operations database.

Pushpinder Singh, General Manager & CIO, Bank of India

To enhance customer service, Singh enabled the bank’s account

opening and loan application processes on the Internet. The bank has Internet-enabled the deposit account opening and loan application forms. These online forms are integrated with the core banking system, increasing the efficiency in processing requests and accelerating the response time to customers.

Yogesh Zope, Group CIO, Bharat Forge

Bharat Forge revamped its existing security infrastructure by implementing

a best-of-breed solution that used various technologies, all of which were evaluated based on whether they met the conditions of improving security, increasing end-user efficiency, reducing risk or improving availability. Zope has assured all the stakeholders concerned that the Group’s IT can combat all new generation threats.

Anil Kumar Kaushik, GM-IS (Infrastructure & Services), Bharat Petroleum

BPCL wanted to deploy a comprehensive security setup. The company

implemented a security incident event management (SIEM) system. This system provides log management capabilities and deep data analysis and also creates comprehensive customizable reports. The solution helped BPCL comply with IT regulations, and online threat monitoring and remediation, thanks to a state-of-the-art forensic investigation capability. In addition, the solution also reduced operational cost.

Salil Mahajan, VP & Head-IT, Bharti AXA Life Insurance Company

Bharti AXA’s Web-based online life insurance sales system was aimed at

creating an online sales channel, in addition to traditional channels

of selling insurance. Mahajan’s new system allows customers to purchase policies online without any help from intermediaries as they can now make payments and upload all the documents required. The platform contributes to about 8 percent of the company’s sales. The organization now saves roughly 20-25 percent in operating costs for processing an e-policy.

Prashant Veer Singh, CIO, Bharti Infratel

Singh implemented a business analytics and reporting tool at Bharti Infratel

to support strategic, tactical, and operational business decisions with project Drishti. Under this project, data from the various business applications were pulled into an operational data source, aggregated, and converted into over 700 daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly business KPIs. Business decisions are now empowered with a single source of data, resulting in competitive advantage over other infrastructure providers.

S. Venkitakrishnan, SVP-IT and Operations, Cholamandalam MS General Insurance Company

Venkitakrishnan developed a mobile app called Cholamandalam MS General

Insurance’s Proposal On the Go for Android devices, which lets sales personnel capture customer information and issue proposals anywhere, anytime. The app contains information regarding all insurance products, empowering salesmen to present different plans to customers, and at the same time

collect information by capturing photographs of documents. The policy registration is instantaneous, after which customers receive an acknowledgement via SMS and e-mail.

Satish Das, CSO & VP, Cognizant Technology Solutions

At Cognizant, the security log management was a manual process. Also, there was a

lack of integration among the logs obtained from multiple sources ( firewalls, financial ERP systems, and individual users), making incident investigation process cumbersome. Das automated the log management and analysis systems to streamline the consolidation process. A security information and event management (SIEM) solution was set up and it has helped reinforce strict security guidelines at Cognizant.

Valerio Fernandes, GM-IT, Continental Automotive Components

Continental Automotive Components was struggling with huge amounts

of documents—from invoices to travel claims—which needed to be managed. Sometimes, important documents would get lost in transit. Fernandes deployed a document management system that digitized all paper documents and integrated this with SAP. Now documents can be easily accessed and retrieved for scrutiny, verification, and audit purposes. This has resulted in a paperless environment, saved space, time, and effort and prevented documents from going missing.

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Santosh Singh,AVP, Dharampal Satyapal

To improve how it tracked different regulatory compliance status, Dharampal

Satyapal implemented a compliance app. The system sends alerts on the due date, escalates instances of non-compliance in time for preventive action and maintains compliance history, besides storing all the related documents in a repository. The company now has negligible instances of non-compliance, and is saving over 80 percent in terms of time to provide status updates.

Srinibash Sahoo,SVP and Head-Technology, DSP BlackRock

DSP BlackRock Investment Managers required a new MoneyWare Fundware system

that would manage rule-based order routing, multi currency invest-ments, fund accounting, cash flow projections, MIS and Pivot reports. The new system enables seamless order management and settlement, compliance and risk management, comprehensive portfolio modeling, and integrated cash flow and report-ing. This increased overall efficiency, in the process saving time, cost, and effort associated with crucial tasks.

Satyajit Sarker,GM-IT, DTDC Courier and Cargo

The logistics leader carries out as many as 1.6 million transactions

within a matter of hours. DTDC’s old ERP, called CTBS had turned obsolete

and developed many limitations such as OS incompatibility, architecture, data distribution, and consolidation challenges and was unable to handle such large transactions. Sarker and his team build a complete customized ERP in-house, which has solved all problems with the same efficiency as any off-the-shelf ERP.

Kalpana Maniar,Head-Business Solutions and IT, Edelweiss Financial Services

The unified trading and servicing platform at Edelweiss creates a multi-broker,

multi-exchange, and multi-asset class online trading and servicing platform. This platform can support 5,000 concurrent users with multiple levels of redundancies and provide multiple channels available for client transactions such as Web, Exe based and all mobile applications. Post-deployment, the transaction processing capabilities of the company have gone up by 400 percent and is scalable upto 8 times more using the same infrastructure.

Rajesh Chopra,Senior Vice President- Corporate IT, EIH

The Oberoi chain of hotels now pampers its guests with iPads in the rooms. The

project, dubbed Oberoi e’nhance, enables complete control of the electric equipment inside the room, besides letting the occupants experience room facilities and guest service. The tablet is integrated with the hotel’s IT systems as well as the room management systems, thereby having a profound impact on guest service.

Srinivas Tata,CIO, Essar Projects India

Essar Projects was struggling to monitor its 3,300-strong fleet of cranes,

earth movers, and other vehicles. So they set about using GPS, RFID and smart electronics on the vehicles to monitor the vehicle movement, vehicle use, fuel consumption, vehicle/equipment utilization, fuel pilferage and loss. Setting up such a comprehensive system will allow Essar Projects to reap savings to the tune of Rs 25 crore from savings in annual fuel consumption, and Rs 12.5 crore in savings from reduction in maintenance and breakdown costs.

Jayantha Prabhu,CTO , Essar Group

To manage its large contract workforce better, Essar Group needed a contract workforce

management system for its factory locations. Essar automated the earlier manual system and now uses biometrics and RFID technologies to generate a unique identification number for every work associate (WA) employed at its facilities. This system has been able to provide the WAs a secured access to the facility with a unified identity system and simplified authorization process.

Sachin Jain,CIO, Evalueserve.com

By deploying VDI for 13,000 users at Evalueserve, Jain has transformed the way the

organization manages end-user IT setup. Concepts such as work from

home policy and BYOD are now been executed which will help enhance workforce productivity. The IT team no longer spends long hours in office managing physical PCs. Instead, the users can manage them through a single console and boast of better control and visibility.

Bhupendra Pant,Head-IT, EWAC Alloys (A Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Larsen and Toubro)

Pant’s Jobwork Management System helped EWAC Alloys streamline its

business operations. The system captures end-to-end business processes, from RFQs to sales, to collections and outstanding; and helps with project management, document management, knowledge management, e-Approval workflows, and collaboration. The system also generates e-mail and SMS alerts. It has lowered people dependency, improved business turnaround time from 8 weeks to 6.5 weeks, bettered decision-making (deciding the right margin when accepting orders), and enhanced governance and compliance.

Baljinder Singh, Global CIO, EXL Service Holdings

To propel EXL’s rapid business growth with sharpened industry verticals focus and

integrated business solutions, it was imperative to transform technology from being a valued business partner to a strategic catalyst. EXL’s business-technology transformation initiative fueled newer business services, inno-vative products, industry platforms-led

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solutions, SaaS and BPaaS capabili-ties. The enhanced suite of business-technology offerings fostered on hybrid cloud strategy has accelerated speed-to-market-to-delivery for their large-to-mid-market clients.

Parakh Dave,CIO and CTO, Future Group

Future Group upgraded to the latest desktop delivery technology using

a virtualized hosted infrastructure. Dave and his team overcame several challenges to do so. With the successful implementation of hosted shared desktop project, the company is able to ensure 100 percent app availability to the business. It is also anticipating a 30 percent drop in helpdesk-related calls.

G.S. Ravi Kumar,CIO, Gati

Kumar envisaged a cost-effective mobile solution to tally the number of packages

being loaded or unloaded at Gati’s distribution centers. Mainly consisting of a tablet and a wired barcode scanner, the device scans the codes of all packages being sent or received, and alerts employees of discrepancies, if any. The deployment ensured 100 percent accuracy and increased efficiency significantly.

Sanjeev Prasad,SVP, Genpact

Prasad needed to enhance Genpact’s operational effectiveness,

productivity, and promote efficient

management of resources at service delivery units. He implemented work activity metrics, a highly scalable, multi-site, collaborative, and auditable metrics-based system that allows for real-time tracking of agent utilization and provides analytics on agent activity patterns. The solution has allowed management to identify wastage in the operation, before taking a call on bench reduction, team ramp-up or down and in turn, deliver better customer experience.

Balakrishnan A.,CTO, Geojit BNP Paribas Financial Services

Balakrishnan devised an initiative for popularizing investment

products and services among the affluent Gen Y. He deployed a financial app called FLIP Social for Facebook account holders as a part of Geojit BNP Paribas’ integrated stock trading and investment platform. It’s the first transaction-enabled social media application in the retail capital market in India. The app, which serves as an offline brokerage tool, has also improved GBP’s brand image considerably.

Venkata Rao D.,CIO, Godfrey Phillips

Rao realized that the company needed authentic and real-time market data

for a stronger supply chain. So, he deployed an active sales force automation tool which allows its 1,200 sales personnel to retrieve their route plan, sales target, track secondary sales, etcetera. The solution eliminated the need for manual Excel entries. And, it gave

Godfrey Phillips a greater level of retail insight, improved quality, and better speed of decision-making.

Shailesh Joshi,VP-Corporate IT, Godrej Industries

To achieve extraor-dinary customer service, Joshi initiated a cus-tomer experience

transformation (CxT) strategy that uses BPM. The CxT encompasses all departments, which generally brings all sources of static and dynamic data. As a part of the project, the company implemented self-service kiosks, content-rich mobile apps, an innovative snagging app, and an interactive customer portal. This en-hanced sales, customer satisfaction, and repeat business rate for Godrej.

Yatendra Kumar,Head-IT, Gokaldas Exports

Gokaldas Exports was losing about Rs 80 crore in fabric wastage a year. Kumar tested

a software that generates a plan to cut fabric to reduce wastage. But it cost Rs 8 crore upfront. So, he suggested that the vendor be paid 5 percent of the savings Gokuldas made using the software. Gokaldas saves about Rs 50 crore annually using the software.

Anshul Dureja,President-Corporate Operations and Chief Green Officer, Greenply Industries

Dureja enabled barcoding of each and every laminate sheet produced. Each sheet is

assigned a unique serial number

which gets stored in SAP at any given period of time. This also assembles semi-structured and unstructured data across the shop floor. This project helps ascertain the shop floor inventory at any given stage, improves the quality of the dispatches, identifies the correct quality types, and automates the supply chain.

D.C. Shah,GM-IT, Gujarat Mineral Development Corporation

To facilitate better decision-making, GMDC implemented an off-the-shelf

ERP at its corporate house and all its 15 different mining locations. It also created a state-of-the-art datacenter as GMDC did not want to carry forward any legacy systems. Its decision to introduce groupware and a messaging system resulted in better communication and interaction among employees. The project drastically improved productivity and efficiency for GMDC.

Darshan Appayanna,CIO, Happiest Minds Technologies

Appayanna designed a collaborative, lightweight and flexible enterprise

data integration hub (Sparks) that enables the rapid integration of enter-prise apps irrespective of the platform or technology. This hub has reduced the time to generate invoices by automating data exchange across the enterprise systems. It has also helped the company meet all audit require-ments, as well as increase internal customer happiness by providing for smoother communication between delivery and finance teams.


Thomson Thomas, SVP-Business Systems and Technology, HDFC Standard Life

Thomas created a point of sale system—an online e-form, which is integrated with

the company’s underwriting rules engine, replaced the paper proposal form, and reduced the number of stages in policy issuance from 16 to four. The insurer’s salesforce can now close the customer acquisition process—in about 80 percent of cases—during their first meeting.

Bhushan Akerkar, CIO, Hindalco

Due to acquisitions, Hindalco had inherited multiple and

fragmented IT application systems. Compounding matters, Hindalco’s IT setup was decentralized, leading to several operational issues. To align IT with the vision of earning $30 billion (about Rs 1.92 lakh crore) by 2016, Akerkar consolidated the IT infrastructure. The cost reductions have increased the company’s competitiveness. Moreover, it will accommodate a common ERP system across Hindalco, which will boost its operational efficiency.

Rajeev Agarwal, Head-Corporate IT, HAL

Agarwal’s project built an intelligent software layer that has

improved visibility of rejected items in real-time for suppliers on its e-procurement portal page. The faster resolution of rejected items

has resulted in quicker payment to vendor—average payment time has reduced by 20 percent, with average replenishment time for reject items coming down to 60 days. It can now also track the status of payments through the same portal.

S.T. Sathiavageeswaran, Executive Director-Information Systems, HPCL

Sathiavagee-swaran’s solution transformed the account paying process from a

paper-based system to an image-based system. By sending copies of orders and bills without having to physically transfer documents, this system eliminated the need for any document flow across locations, making the accounts payable process faster and more efficient. The project also brings in transparency, facilitates retention of all relevant payment documents in the repositories, especially for audits, and makes the retrieval of documents instantaneous.

Pawan Kumar NijhawanVP-IT, Hindustan Zinc

Nijhawan has deployed an integrated truck management and control

system that controls the movement of trucks. It integrates RFID technology with the weighbridge, boom barriers, and traffic-lights to automatically control trucks and issue alerts. This has resulted in reduction of truck turn-around time within the plant and reduction of congestion at the gate and inside the plant. It has also eliminated of chances of manipulation in weight, thus curbing related malpractices.

Yogesh Kapoor, Head of IT Operations - India, HSBC

HSBC had to deal with a huge amount of paper consumption as a result of the

company’s particular method of processing customer documents. Kapoor introduced digital signature certifications for the first 648 pilots for 5 business processes, resulting in HSBC India’s not only saving more than 169,000 papers a month, but also increasing productivity of agents and reducing annotation and signature errors. It has also provided a robust mechanism to control data leakage risks.

Mukesh Kumar Jain, CTO/Senior General Manager, ICICI Bank

ICICI Bank was looking at new ways of having its customers engage with it. To meet this

need, Jain setup a self-service branch initiative that provided customers the convenience of flexible banking hours and helped the bank target a new customer-base through a cost-effective model. He also launched an online social networking goal-based flexible recurring deposit, (i-Wish), which has resulted in a 50 percent growth online in recurring deposits.

Ram Kalyan Medury,Vice President-Technology, ICICI Lombard

To enhance customer reach and increase customer conversion,

Medury deployed an e-commerce

platform and extended it to devices like tablets and mobiles. It’s an end-to-end online policy issuance portal for customers, which also serves as a full service portal for insurance agents. The portal has reduced the cost of issuance and servicing policies, decreased bounce rates from transaction pages, and increased customer conversions. The platform enjoys more than three million hits a month.

Yagnesh Parikh, CTO, ICICI Securities

Parikh set up an app that lets customers carry out trading on their smartphones

that run on iOS, Android, or Windows Phone. Using the lightweight app, which is tightly integrated with ICICI Securities’ award-winning trade platform icicidirect.com, customers can place trade orders in equity and even allocate funds from their bank accounts. This mobile initiative by ICICI Securities has turned out to be a revenue-booster.

V.C. Kumanan, Senior Director-IT, IDFC

To enhance IDFC’s governance, risk, and compliance framework,

Kumanan went about automating the IT audit process with an in-house developed tool which tracks the entire lifecycle of audits. The Gopalakrishnan committee report issued by RBI was studied, check listed, and a creative portal was used to improve IT services awareness of users. All of this has resulted in enhancing user-experience.

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Chella Namasivayam M., Senior Vice President, iGate

Namasivayam set up a team that outlined an IT strategic governance

framework to ensure IT was aligned to the company’s strategic vision of achieving 30 percent revenue from business outcome contracts and making it to the top spot in the preferred employers’ list in earnings growth by 2017. iGate has released 80 percent of the 145 medium-to-large projects on time under its project management methodology.

Sanjay Aggarwal, Chief Technical Officer, India Yamaha Motor

Aggarwal has designed a Web-based dealer portal for automating

information exchange and collaboration between OEMs and dealers/stockists. This system is integrated with the back-end. About 1,500 users at more than 550 dealerships and stockist across India are using it. This has resulted in almost 100 percent data accuracy, real-time information updates, single point of data entry, and fast responses to market challenges.

S. Ramasamy, Executive Director-IS, IOCL

Ramasamy implemented three different mobile applications to

improve efficiency at IOCL. These include an SMS-based app and xSPARSH for the company’s dealers

and other customers. mPOWER, the employee-focused app, assists employees with all business-related processes. The easy-to-use SMS-based app helps customers with order placement, balance enquiry, status updates, and order modification/cancellation. It’s completely integrated with IOCL’s ERP system.

Vijayeendra Purohit, AVP-Corporate Networking, Infosys

Infosys deployed high availability architecture of Polycom DMA with an enterprise

active directory. The objective was to enable rich video collaboration, reduce operational overheads, and enhance collaboration among business units and customers. It conducted 30,000 video meetings in the last year, which have led to a monthly cost saving of Rs 45 lakh as a result of reduced travel cost and 4.3 million kg of CO2 emissions.

Aniruddha Paul, CIO, ING Vysya Bank

ING Vysya is the industry’s first Issuer Bank in India to implement

a risk-based authentication solution for every e-commerce transaction that uses MasterCard SecureCode layer. This brought down the expected fraud rates of 10-12 percent (industry average) to zero. The solution provides additional security to the bank’s customers. By implementing the industry’s first one-time authorization code for online shopping transactions, the bank has opened up new opportunities.

Ramandeep Singh Virdi, VP-IT, Interglobe Aviation (Indigo)

Virdi deployed a solution that moved each aspect of the cargo engagement such

as booking, delivery, and tracking to a Web-based online environment. The project increased its impact by creating a paperless airway bill processing capability and allowing easy online accessibility for its internal and external stakeholders. The unique custom software solution covered all aspects of its cargo business, right from pre-booking inquiries to sales, deliveries, and invoicing.

Rakesh Mishra Head-IT&C, Angul, Jindal Steel & Power

Mishra and his team designed and implemented a two-site solution to host and run

JSPL’s SAP-based ERP enterprise applications. He set up a disaster recovery (DR) at Angul in Orissa. JSPL has been using SAP ECC Version 6.0, which uses Oracle’s Data Guard technology to replicate the logs of database from primary site to the new DR site, ensuring that the company didn’t have to procure any additional software for the new site.

Rahul Mahajan, VP-IT, K Raheja Corporate Services

K Raheja Corp embarked on implementing supplier relationship

management (SRM) which transformed the traditional paper-

based contracting and purchasing activities into a completely digitized electronic process. It brought suppliers and buyers to an online portal, creating a wholesome collaborative platform. The company saw greater transparency in bid awards, minimum human involvement, improved visibility, and control of key purchasing processes.

Shrikanth Kulkarni, SVP and CIO, KPIT Technologies

Kulkarni conceived a self-service portal for 500-plus development and

testing servers on a private cloud for internal users to enable datacenter services to be provisioned on the fly. This self-service portal allows employees to log into portals, enter their resource configuration and requirements through which the virtual servers gets allocated to respective teams through the same centralized portal.

Sachin Goel,CIO, KPMG

Incidents such as theft / loss of laptops and crashing hard drives result in loss

of IP and data generated over several years. The IT team started working on a possible solution and evaluated various possible solutions, before finalizing Druva inSync, which has features like simple backup, point-in-time restore, and patent-pending data deduplication technology which results in upto 90% savings in storage and network bandwidth. It ensures effortless, invisible, faster, secure and centralized backup, hence improving productivity and lowering cost of operations.

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G.S. Rao, CIO, KSK Energy Ventures

KSK Energy Ventures’ Rao implemented site integration and single sign-on, a

central authentication, and identity management with access control. It built a single sign-on application with UC by integrating application, voice, data, and VC environment designed for collaboration and productivity. The project has contributed to cost savings of nearly 20 percent in travel.

Kaushal Chaudhary SVP-Group IT Head, Lanco Infratech

Chaudhary revamped Lanco’s entire network architecture. He designed

and implemented a dynamic and intelligent network which focuses on enhancing availability and confidentiality within the network. Any user connecting to any network port would connect to a department VLAN and retain the same network access which has been assigned to them. As a result, security incidents have dropped significantly and malware control has also been cut down to almost 40 percent.

Sudesh Agarwal, CIO, Landmark Group

Agarwal implemented a solution in which through a single platform,

multiple programs such as selling gift card at retail outlets and online, gift card-based consumer promotions and corporate sales,

and a soon be launched e-Gift card program can be managed. A real-time MIS makes it easier to track program performanceand an electronic reconciliation takes away the challenges of a paper-based reconciliation system. Operational efficiency, too, has improved.

Vinay Khargonkar, GM, L&T, Heavy Engineering

In order to eliminate certain conflicts in segregation of duties, Larsen &

Toubro Heavy Engineering designed an IT governance framework for trained users to operate IT systems accurately so that no matrix is violated. Access to IT systems is given only to those employees who have gone through specific training and achieved minimum standard by passing internal exams. It is also designed to check that roles given to employees do not violate internal controls of the organization.

N. Varadarajan, AVP-IT, Madras Cements

With a solution called Ramco PerfMon, Varadarajan aimed to create a new

system with marketing performance monitoring capabilities built into it. Ramco PerfMon combines key KPIs related to marketing like sales, realization, growth rate, and outstanding days with the goal-setting process to present on a dashboard. With this system, the benchmarks are superimposed from the goal setting system in the HR module of ERP. The performance data is integrated with Google Maps API and geographical significance is captured.

V.S. Parthasarathy, Group CIO, EVP-Group M&A, Finance & Accounts, Member of Group Executive Board, Mahindra&Mahindra Group

Parthasarathy championed a cloud-based dealer management system to help

the over 174 dealers of M&M sync with the company’s business requirements. This was integrated with SAP through pointers without using traditional middle-ware. The project also included a mini low bandwidth ERP for dealers, which works on any kind of Internet connectivity and enables them to perform their day-to-day CRM, sales and service, etcetera.

B. Venkatakrishnan,Head IT-AFS Pune Hub, Mahindra Vehicle Manufacturers

Venkatkrishnan set up an IT operations command center (IOCC) which would monitor its

business critical systems to ensure maximum operational efficiency. Over 6,000 IP-enabled devices were closely monitored round the clock. The deployment of several low-cost tools and diagnosing applications used within the IOCC helped achieve an uptime of 99.999 percent. The problem management resolution time reduced from 60 minutes to less than two minutes.

Atul Luthra,VP-IT, Matrix Cellular International Services

In a bid to increase the efficiency of its salesforce, Matrix Cellular

issued its employees with Android-based tablets loaded with an app that captures and updates all data pertaining to sales of SIM cards, data cards, forex, and travel insurance. The app has resulted in the reduction of manpower, besides enabling seamless and paperless transactions. The app also enables real-time tracking and automation, validation of captured data, stock requisition, and promoting offers based on customer requirements.

Nilesh Sangoi,SVP and CTO, Meru Cabs

Sangoi and his team performed extensive analytics on the data they had collected

on aspects like customer demand patterns, cab supply distribution, and geography, from their in-house cab dispatch system, and arrived at 20 innovative ideas that would benefit the organization. This has helped maximize its trips per cab per day and improve driver earnings by minimizing the idle time and maximizing the use of available cab resources.

P. Jayakrishnan,AVP-IT, Muthoot Fincorp

P. Jayakrishnan decided to use the cloud to upgrade Muthoot Fincorp’s homegrown legacy

distributed application to CloudSync, a project aimed at consolidating operational data from more than 3,600 branches to a central database on the cloud. The project developed a solution which works in, both, online and offline modes. This has improved recording branch-level operations such as issuing loans and collecting repayments.

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Sunil Sirohi,Vice President, NIIT

Sirohi designed a project to execute orders quickly, accurately, and cost-effectively.

The OrderXpress app he designed automates, simplifies, and accelerates order-to-procure-to-deliver processes for both goods and services. With OrderXpress, NIIT has been able to reduce procurement costs, build collaborative supplier relationships, manage supply bases better, and improve bottomline with innovative offerings.

Kapil Pal, Head-IT, Pepsico

Pepsico decided to centralize its service desk to integrate operations.

Pal implemented automatic call distributor to ensure proper call handling and tracking. The project also put response analysis in place. A 24x7 remote support was made available to everyone including secondary sales-support. It also implemented CFAs across many locations, apart from Pepsico locations, plants, and warehouses.

Rajeev Mittal,Head-IT/IS, Piaggio Vehicles

Mittal implement-ed an integrated dealer manage-ment and learning management

system to cater to the specific needs of Piaggio’s two-wheeler dealers. This system provides dealers with 2D drawings of a cross-section of a vehicle’s spares for technicians and purchase team at dealer locations.

This helps dealers service vehicles or replace parts as well as create a shop-ping cart while ordering spares from a dealer’s location.

Shashi Mohan,CTO and EVP, Polaris Financial Technology

To reduce its carbon footprint, Polaris virtualized 75 percent of its servers, which has,

in turn, reduced datacenter power consumption. Mohan introduced the process of performing a force power shutdown of 7,000 desktops across the company’s several locations. The video conferencing system implemented has reduced carbon emission by 3,362 tons.

Farhan Khan,AVP-IT, Radico Khaitan

To overhaul Radico Khaitan’s Excel-based budget and planning process, Khan implemented

an intelligent and transparent budgeting dashboard which gives the company access to error-free, historical data. The new system aims to bring in at least 5 percent efficiency to the budgeting side. This has also helped it strengthen operations at its factories across the country and manage the respective state tax structures better.

Sayed Peerzade,VP-Technology, Reliance Entertainment-Digital

Post the merger of the seven digital entities at Reliance Entertainment, it became neces-

sary to consolidate the technol-

ogy infrastructure into one single platform. Peerzade implemented a hybrid cloud. He acquired a private cloud on an opex model and moved his core systems, storage, security, and specialized network equipment to a third-party datacenter. His efforts have helped bring down monthly IT expenditure from Rs 70 lakh to Rs 14 lakh.

Dr. Sanjay Saraswat,CIO, Reliance Globalcom

Saraswat wanted to improve the topline by quickly identifying strand-ed bandwidth and

to achieve better efficiency in the payment and reconciliation process. The project added an automated network reconciliation capability for business teams to get an accurate and on-demand view of available network capacity. Vendor payment automation introduced a significant amount of efficiency.

Rajiv Sharaf,SVP and CIO, Reliance Infrastructure

Sharaf implement-ed a Web-based solution that cap-tures a project’s

plan from Primavera. The solution allows vendors to submit project pro-gress reports which is then tracked to map the actual work executed at the site vis-à-vis the execution plan prepared. This solution has brought about more transparency.

Gopal Rangaraj,SVP-IT, Reliance Life Sciences

Rangaraj wanted to centralize and standardize quality control

processes at Reliance Life Sciences’ laboratories. So, he implemented a Web-based tracking tool to automate the laboratory process. The tracker captures quality results and process parameter data, and automates quality management processes across labs. Once implemented, the tracker helped automate, centralize, standardize, and improve all QC processes. It also improved RLS’s operational efficiencies significantly.

Monika Gauniya,Manager, Renault India

Gauniya implemented an enterprise system for Renault India’s internal team to

handle new vehicle procurement and distribution. Being part of the Renault-Nissan alliance, Renault India chose to develop a system which can be used by both companies while keeping their data separate as they are competitors in market. This helped its strategy of faster market rollout by shortening IT deployment cycles.

Shalabh Raizada,VP-IT, Safexpress

Raizada designed and implemented a smart IT-enabled solution to replace the

manual process of cargo routing and shipment checking. The solution algorithm creates a unique identifier for each of the 275,000 odd packages it receives in a day. Each package is now checked by personnel equipped with a bar code scanner. This eliminated the possibility of any shipment being misrouted or short-loaded. The solution has enhanced productivity phenomenally.

VOL/8 | ISSUE/11


Anjan Deb, GM-IT, Great Eastern Shipping Company

Deb deployed two applications—DocSync and SeaScape—for the benefit of

senior management. DocSync allows them to carry files in a tablet, while SeaScape provides MIS reports that show the organization’s bottomline. The system allows a ‘what if’ analysis and throws up a re-calculated bottomline. This has allowed top management to tweak business plans effectively.

Tridib Bordoloi, CIO, Press Trust of India

Bordoloi’s collaboration initiative enables journalists to file stories

from anywhere across the globe securely, via the Internet. It ensures collaboration between regional bureaus to serve subscribers better. It made VSAT, which involved a huge recurring cost of Rs 45.52 lakh per annum, redundant. Also, it has improved organizational agility and ensured that business processes operate as a service.

Mohammad Wasim, Director & Infrastructure Practice Lead Worldwide, SapientNitro

Wasim developed a digital marketing platform (DMP) based primarily on Adobe content

management system and cloud infrastructure. The DMP behaves in accordance with consumption/traffic. The load balancing manages

the traffic, depending on geographic origin, and real-time cloud burst can scale up to accommodate request as the Internet traffic increases. SapientNitro’s users can now use features such as utility-based billing to concentrate only on their business.

Ravikiran Mankikar, CGM-IT, Shamrao Vithal Co-op Bank

The Bank already had a core banking solution (CBS) in place, but it wanted to

do more. So, Mankikar set up a three-tier datacenter in Thane. The idea was to propose an integrated CBS completely interfaced with all delivery channels and monitoring modules. This enabled an additional business stream to get other banks hosted on the network and facilitate interbanking transactions. It has brought in revenues in excess of Rs 10 crore.

Anand Padmanabhan, CIO, Shiv Nadar University

Shiv Nadar University wanted to create learning, teaching, and

community spaces around its campus. To facilitate that, its IT team led by Padmanabhan implemented a highly scalable three-tier network architecture on a 10G backbone, with wireless facility across the campus. He also deployed a UTM at the perimeter and configured it in such a way that academic freedom was not violated. The university has also ensured that servers are available within 30 minutes for users as per their requirements.

Manoj Shrivastava, Director-IT & Head-Integrated Technology, Sistema Shyam Teleservices

Shrivastava formulated a video-based value-added service, activated

by installing an app called mAd. The service enables a free call model, wherein a customer can choose to watch a free video ad before making a call, after which he gets 60 seconds free local talktime. This innovative revenue model has benefited customers, service providers, and advertisers immensely.

Kamal Matta, GM-IT & Telecom, Sonic Biochem Extractions (SBE)

Matta implemented an SAP BI platform to create interactive reports and

dashboards. The solution has improved SBE’s market share as the reports have been able to point to areas where marketing and sales efforts were lacking. This has also helped improve customer relation for the sales team. The solution’s low licensing cost has saved money and eliminated manual dependency.

Nagesh Aswartha, Head-IT, SPML Infra

Aswartha facilitated ERP rollouts across all group companies to introduce a

single platform and streamline business processes. He also initiated a BI project to bring in transparency. Besides extending

beyond detecting and measuring specific indicators, the BI project has also helped leverage the investment the company made on the ERP system.

Sri Karumbati, CIO, Stumpp, Schuele & Somappa Springs (SSSS)

Karumbati wanted to enable SSSS’s customers to see a virtual prototype of properties

before they bought. He envisaged a solution to create 3D prototypes of its offerings, using augmented reality. Using proprietary mathematical algorithms, the 3D prototypes are brought alive virtually. This has given SSSS a competitive edge, and helped uncover costly design flaws early in the project.

Atul Kumar, GM (DIT), Syndicate Bank

Kumar rolled out an enterprise-wide data warehouse and BI solution, and

established a comprehensive single database that can be accessed to obtain any information. Collating data from all major sources such as ATM switch, cCard operations, and Internet banking operations, the EDWBI gives the bank a 360-degree view of all customer transactions.

Muralidharan Ramachandran, CIO, Syntel

Ramachandran implemented an enterprise collaboration platform

to support Syntel’s overall

CIO100

CIO100

static and mobile workforce globally. This initiative aims to bring cohesiveness to existing platform usage and optimize it. With almost 3,000 employees working offsite , the platform has improved operative effectiveness considerably. It has also saved nearly Rs 1.7 crore on procurement of smartphone and tablets.

Amit Jain, Head-Infrastructure Services, Internal IT, TCS

Jain implemented an immersive collaboration suite of solutions (iCollab) to

create a compelling collaboration experience for TCS’s employees. This solution enables seamless audio-visual collaboration, enterprise social networking, and leverages the collective knowledge and experience of all TCS employees across geographies. It has streamlined the collaboration process by eliminating manual intervention and the possibility of human errors.

V. Balaji, CIO, Tata Technologies

Tata Technologies wanted to optimize its global technology inventories.

To achieve this, Balaji set up an Engineering Asset Optimization Management system that gathers relevant data from all locations and integrates it with the ERP. The resulting accurate inventory has given Tata Technologies the ability to ramp up large customer delivery centers faster, and plan projects around its current global availability.

Anil Nadkarni, CIO, Thermax

Nadkarni deployed a hosted virtual desktop solution for Thermax’s applications,

moving 800 users to the platform. The objective was to create a BYOD-ready organization and circumvent its tedious hardware lifecycles. With the solution, specific users can now draw more resources whenever needed. It has also improved agility as users are now able to quickly deploy and rollout solutions. The solution has additionally reduced power costs by more than 60 percent.

Heramba Naik, GM (ICT) and CIO, TRL Krosaki Refractories

Dolomite refractory bricks are highly hydrated in nature. Therefore, they

have to be packed as quickly as possible after production. Since TRL Krosaki manufactures about 120MT of these bricks every day, it was tough to pack them all within 12 hours. Naik expedited the process by integrating the company’s online packaging system with the ERP. As a result, the company now saves production losses of about Rs 35 lakh per day.

Subodh Dubey, Sr. VP-IT, Usha International

To add value to the company’s BI insights, Dubey included geographical

representation of the data points. He installed a GMaps plugin to provide an interactive map for enterprise dashboards. Based on the insight

thrown up, the company’s service department decided to appoint more service partners to tap untouched areas. The company has witnessed a sales performance increase of 5 percent within 3 months of the launch of this application.

Kamal Karnatak, Group CIO, Varun Beverages

To streamline sales, and reduce manual errors, Karnatak implemented

a sales force automation solution. The sales force was given Android-based devices with pre-loaded apps to complete order fulfilments. All sales are now captured and moved automatically to the sales portal. This project provides salespersons with real-time data. It has helped increase the sales volume from 5 percent to 35 percent.

Anthony Thomas, CIO, Vodafone India

Vodafone India’s legacy billing system defined the roaming instances of

each of its 23 circles separately. Thomas consolidated them into one, improving customer experience. Thanks to the project, the telco now enjoys a single coherent view of its 687 operators and 5,211 roaming arrangements.

Ramesh Nagarajan, CIO, Wipro

Wipro’s sales team needed near real-time customer information to enable

timely action, and its workforce

management group required better visibility into proposals to manage manpower lifecycle. Nagarajan deployed enterprise analytics to create high-end analytical reports for various business functions. With this, the sales team saw a considerable increase in deal-win ratio. It also gave project and delivery managers better visibility.

Surendra Shetty, Senior President and CIO, YES Bank

Initially, when a YES Bank customer wanted to avail of a service, the

relationship manager and contact-center staff needed to sift through a plethora of data about the customer and put it all together. Shetty implemented an in-house platform on the existing infrastructure at no additional cost. It provided a holistic single interface for the complete spectrum of customer engagements and improved operational efficiency.

Sanjay Marathe, EVP & Head-Business Transformation Group, Zensar

Marathe created an Organizational Excellence Enablement (OEE) program

to optimize critical business functions and contract excellence by implementing new business controls and enabling complete visibility across processes. The project helped optimize business processes and also helped the organization with a decision advantage that enables complete visibility to monitor KPIs for each of the processes and to take necessary corrective actions.

Not featured here: Marico and WNS (Holdings) REAL CIO WORLD | S E P T E M B E R 1 5 , 2 0 1 3 1 3 1

Special


CIO 100

AwardsTarun Pandey, Senior Vice President, Aditya Birla Financial Services Group

Baljinder Singh, Global CIO, EXL Service Holdings

Anoop Handa, EVP & CIO, Fullerton India Credit Company

Anup Mandal, Chief Technology Officer, HT Media

Ajit Awasare, Head-Enterprise IT Infrastructure, Larsen & Toubro

G. Radhakrishna Pillai, Chief Information Officer, SRL

Prasanth Puliakottu, CIO, Sterlite Technologies

Sanjeev Kumar, Group CIO & Group President-Business Excellence, Adhunik Group of Industries

Shirish Gariba, CIO, Drive India Enterprise Solutions

Sanjeev Prasad,Senior Vice President, Genpact

Shailesh Joshi,Vice President-Corporate IT, Godrej Industries

S.T. Sathiavageeswaran,Executive Director-Information Systems, Hindustan Petroleum

Rakesh Mishra,Head-IT&C, Angul, Jindal Steel & Power

Rajeev Mittal,Head IT/IS, Piaggio Vehicles

Viresh C. Shah, IT Country Head, Dana India Technical Centre

Yogesh Kapoor, Head-IT, Operations, India, HSBC

Chella Namasivayam M., Senior Vice President, iGate Global Solutions

Shashi Mohan, CIO, Polaris Financial Technology

R.P. Rath, VP-Technology, Quatrro Global Services

Ajit Manocha, Associate Vice President & CIO, Syngene International

Ravikiran Mankikar, Chief General Manager-IT,

Shamrao Vithal Co-Operative Bank

S. Francis Rajan, VP-IT, Bangalore International Airport

Pratap Kumar Singh, President-IT, Ibibo Web

V.C. Kumanan, Senior Director-IT, IDFC

R. Sundara Rajan, Head-IS, L&T Infrastructure Development Projects

Mohit Bhishikar, CIO, Persistent Systems

Muralidharan Ramachandran, CIO, Syntel

M. Manikandan, Deputy General Manager, The Lakshmi Vilas Bank

C l o u d C o n q u e r o r

The CIO 100 Special Award WinnersSpecial Awards are no longer a subset of the CIO 100. It is thus possible for a nominee to win both or either. However, a nominee can win only one Special Award.

E f f i c i e n t En t e r p r i s e

G r e e n C r u s a d e r

Ne t w o r k i n g P i o n e e r

CIO100

REAL CIO WORLD | S E P T E M B E R 1 5 , 2 0 1 3 3 7

Rajat Sharma,President-IT, Atul

Pratap Gharge,President & CIO, Bajaj Electricals

Prashant Veer Singh, CIO, Bharti Infratel

Ramnath Iyer,CTO, CRISIL

Jayantha Prabhu,CTO, Essar Group

Sanjay Chowdhry,Head-IT, General Cable Energy India

Thomson Thomas,Senior Vice President-Business Systems & Technology, HDFC Standard Life Insurance

Harnath Babu, Vice President, Aviva Life Insurance

Jijy Oommen, EVP, Bajaj Capital

Makarand Sawant, General Manager-IT Facilities, Deepak Fertilisers & Petrochemicals

B.V. Meshram, VP-IT, Shipping Corporation of India

Kopal Sarin Raj, Head IT, Tata Projects

Nayaz Shariff, Regional IT Head, Thomson Reuters

Venkatesh Natarajan, Special Director-IT, Ashok Leyland

Vivek Khanna, VP-IT & Finance, Havells India

S.Ramasamy, Executive Director (Information Systems), Indian Oil

Man Mohan Goyal, CIO, Phillips Carbon Black

Manoj Shrivastava, Director-IT & Head, Integrated Technology, Sistema Shyam Teleservices

Ashish Pachory, CIO, Tata Teleservices

Ravi Ramakrishnan, Global IT Head & CIO, Uflex


Anil Kumar Kaushik, GM-IS (Infrastructure & Services), Bharat Petroleum

Bhushan Akerkar, CIO, Hindalco Industries

Mukeshkumar Jain,CTO/Senior General Manager, ICICI Bank

Mithilesh Kumar Singh,Head-Information Security, Wave Crest Payment Technology

Mukund Prasad, Group HR, Business Transformation & Group CIO, Welspun Group

Cyrus Lacka,Systems Director, JWT

Tarun Pandey, Senior Vice President, Aditya Birla Financial Services Group

V.S. Parthasarathy, Group CIO, EVP-Group M&A, Finance & Accounts, Member of Group Executive Board, Mahindra & Mahindra Group

S. Ramasamy, Executive Director (Information Systems), Indian Oil Corporation

G.S. Ravi Kumar, CIO, Gati

Shalabh Raizada, Vice President-Information Technology, Safexpress

Gopal Rangaraj, Sr. Vice President IT, Reliance Life Sciences

Dr. Sanjay Saraswat, CIO, Reliance Globalcom

Sunil Sirohi, Vice President, NIIT

S.T. Sathiavageeswaran, Executive Director- Information Systems, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation

Jayantha Prabhu, CTO, Essar Group

Satish Das, Chief Security Officer & VP, Cognizant Technology Solutions


Hal l Of Fame

I n f o r m a t i o n M a s t e r m i n d

Infrastructure Evolution Futurist Securi ty

Supremo

I n n o v a t i o n A r c h i t e c t

Not featured here: WNS (Holdings), a winner of Infrastructure Award

CIO100


EMC’s very own virtual space that provides hands on, ready-to-use demonstrations

of its products and solutions

Unveiling EMC vLab


CIO 100 2013

ASTUTE LEADERST

he Oxford of East, the ninth largest metropolis India and the seat of power for Maratha Empire, Pune entertained yet again the crème-de-la-crème of the senior most enterprise technology decision makers in the country. On September

5th and 6th, the JW Marriott, Pune played host to India’s 150 smartest, sharpest and most adroit IT leaders, who were either the honorees and the jury members of the eighth edition of the coveted CIO100 awards.

This year’s Astute100 are Indian IT leaders who have taken risks on emerging technologies or even deployed the tried-and-true technologies in a new way. They have not only executed projects stupendously well, but have also done that in uncommon, innovative ways. To turn the spotlight on exceptional contributions, we presented 56 IT leaders with a special award in eight categories. Continuing the tradition, CIOs who won the

The largest awards ceremony for excellence in IT leadership salutes India’s sharpest technology minds.

CIO100 awards for the fourth time representing the same organization entered the Hall of Fame.

The CIO100 symposium featured talks from global thought leaders such as Andrew Grant, celebrated author and CEO of Tirian, who encouraged CIOs to learn to see the unexpected and discover creative solutions. Andrew Bryant, leadership consultant, addressed the audience and urged them to open their minds to find workable strategies. Michael Podolinsky, referred to as Asia’s Productivity Guru, explained to CIOs on what sets astute managers apart. Apart from the sessions, the CIO100 symposium featured profound conversations with a panel of CIOs and IT leaders and a host of thought-provoking and insightful focused roundtable discussions.

The event was also enriched by grand performances of celebrated personalities from the Indian entertainment industry. CIO invited world-renowned percussionist Sivamani, who created magic and enthralled CIOs and their spouses with his soulful music. Dance performances from Bollywood choreographer Terence Lewis and his dance company were also a hit among the audience that brought the two-day symposium to a magnificent and memorable close.

CIO100 KEY NOTE

Like Albert Einstein’s thought experiments, when we open our mind to possibilities and formulate the question, we can then find workable strategies that make a difference, says Andrew Bryant.

BY GOPAL KISHORE

SELF LEADERSHIPAUTHOURED BY

ANDREW BRYANT & ANA KAZAN

Inspirational speaker, Andrew Bryant is known for his constructive realism, energy and sense of humor which helps audiences transform their thinking and behavior to be more effective and successful.

Andrew Bryant

In his keynote presentation at the CIO 100 2013 awards, Andrew Bryant spoke about the qualities that an astute CIO should have and

how in challenging times they should change their identity so that they can influence their team and the business to create a competitive advantage.

“We are not nouns, we are verbs. You can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun like being a CIO, or an engineer or even an actor or a writer,” Bryant said quoting Stephen Fry, an English actor and a multifaceted personality. “As part of the C suite CIOs should be leading business processes for competitive advantage and not just following orders,” he reflected.

According to Bryant, a CIO is constantly challenged by business to increase capability but cut cost, be responsive and efficient, customize and standardize, build open but secure systems, strategize as well as execute flawlessly. Using the game of Chess as a metaphor, Bryant wondered if we are fully utilizing our leadership potential.

“Are you a Knight, able to take risks and attack, but with little concern for your own safety, or you may think of yourself as a Rook, solid and safe but not very adventurous, do you consider yourself to be a King, who is very important but requiring other pieces to serve and defend you, which leaves the Queen, who is highly f lexible and adaptable, and able to move in any directions,” he asked. “You know what you should not be, a piece of wood being

pushed around by someone bigger than you,” he pointed out.

Bryant underscored that change is often like having one foot on the accelerator and the other on the brake. “You must be aware of the immunity to change. Whilst we may want to be astute, agile and a leader, we may also want to be liked and to play it safe,” he warned.

“Self-leadership is the practice of intentionally influencing your thinking, feeling and behaviors to achieve your objectives,” said Bryant as he demonstrated the difference between influence and manipulation.

The Astute CIO - Leader or Follower?One of the most important qualities of an astute CIO is understanding why the business needs technology and show them the what that enables them to do things better, faster, and cheaper than the competition.

“It’s hard to speak about technology, inf luence and leadership without referencing Steve Jobs. Jobs knew what it meant to know ‘Why” you are doing so that you can deliver the ‘What’,” said Bryant.

“In contrast followers believe that they are being paid for fixing problems rather than for fostering breakthrough thinking,” he added. The common challenge is focusing on the wrong things.

“To be successful as a leader we need to zoom out and see the larger perspective. Typically people get focused on the small

CIO100

“SELF-LEADERSHIP IS THE PRACTICE OF INTENTIONALLY INFLUENCING YOUR THINKING, FEELING AND BEHAVIORS TO ACHIEVE YOUR OBJECTIVES”

For more videos of the speaker log on to our site. Go to www.cio.in

things which lead to small thinking and small results,” he said.

Br yant concluded his keynote highlighting that leadership is about asking questions, and astute leadership is about asking the right questions. He urged the CIOs to assess their current situation, discover the big questions, create images of possibility and evolve workable strategies.

Like Albert Einstein’s thought experiments, when we open our mind to

possibilities and formulate the question, we can then find workable strategies that make a difference,” he said.

CIO100 C ONVERSATIONS

ACHIEVING OUTSTANDING OUTCOMESThe changing role of IT coupled with business expectations veering towards tangible ROI based investments on projects enforces the need for CIOs to focus on outcome based IT.BY ERSHAD KALEEBULLAH

When the history of Indian enterprise IT is chronicled, the beginning of the economic slump in 2008-09 will emerge

as the watershed year after which nothing ever was the same for Indian CIOs.

Over these years, since organizations have rolled out more and more projects with fewer and fewer people in shorter and shorter time cycles, IT’s role as a valued service provider and as a key differentiator has never been in a brighter spotlight.

Since the slowdown set in, we’ve seen

managements transform how they view IT. Clearly, Indian organizations no longer invest in technology, instead they fund business results.

Thus, what CIOs are pushing at business can’t be about big data or mobility or the cloud or analytics or ERP or any other enterprise-class technology—instead it has to be about revenue growth, about customer outreach and about helping them build the right product or service.

How CIOs can tap into organizational and departmental budgets—both implicit and

From left to right: CVG Prasad - ING Vysya, Rajesh Uppal - Maruti Suzuki India and Arun Gupta - Cipla.

explicit—is a function of how well they are addressing their organization’s business drivers and the competitive scenario. The technology is almost incidental.

Also, given the attrition in the mid-tier of the IT department in the first two years following the slump, and the consequent skillset shor tage (particularly in domains like cloud, analytics and mobility), Indian enterprises have no option but to turn source agnostic.

CIOs need to focus on their organizations’ business drivers and end-goals —that has to be their mantra this year.

An esteemed panel of CIOs which included Arun Gupta, CIO, Cipla, Rajesh Uppal, executive officer-IT and CIO, Maruti Suzuki India and CVG Prasad, IT advisor, ING Vysya Bank brought to fore their experiences at handling the management and gave suggestions on how their fellow CIOs, using technology, can achieve outstanding outcomes and show tangible returns for the business.

Talking about the importance of creating an outcome based IT infrastructure, Uppal said, “Once the basic hygiene of the IT infrastructure is in place, organisations across any vertical start focussing on outcome based IT. In short, it is no more an IT project but a business project.”

Once an organization reaches a certain maturity level, the synergy between IT and business becomes strong. “In fact, pure IT investments have to make a business case for it to be approved,” said Prasad.

It is a known fact that CIOs have always had financial acumen. Their command over the financials of a particular IT solution is unparalleled. A slight modification in their outlook will help them align with the needs of the business considering how they are looking for solutions that ensure tangible business benefits. Gupta explains, “All that

the CIO needs to do, today, is to be more outward focussed than inward focussed with the business. This means that when a CIO takes up a project, he/she has to extend the value for the understating of the entire organization rather than imbibing it only within the team.”

The push for outcome based IT presents the danger of organization prioritising projects that assure tangible ROI. As a result, the IT department might start functioning like their operations or

sales counterparts. Prasad squashed the concern by saying, “Even now, generally, the funding comes through only if the IT project promises tangible ROI. That doesn’t mean that the crying baby only gets the money. It helps if the organization has a proper governance mechanism in place.” Asit Sinha,

CIOs are expected to be proactive and there has been constant chatter about the changing role of the CIO. However, there is a fear that we might be expecting too much from them. Uppal says, “From a CIO standpoint, one needs to be part of the discussion to ensure that you talk the language of the business. It only adds to the holistic growth of an organization.” Gupta counters, “I don’t believe that the CIO can be everything that everyone expects from you. Proactive attitude should also trickle down to the team because sometimes the conversations that your team members have with others may actually benefit the organization.”

Technologies like the cloud indicate that the future of IT projects is soon shifting towards outcome based payments. “We may have a discussion about outcome based IT but it helps if at the backend, the vendors support us by providing outcome based solutions and pricing,” said Uppal.

Q&AQ&ACIO: Indian organizations no longer invest in technology, instead they fund business results. Are you seeing this in your company as well?Rajesh Uppal: In our organization, the IT budgets are with the business and not with IT. Our department has a limited budget for experimentation. Before embarking on an IT project and procuring the budget we have to present a strong business case. So yes, undoubtedly management doesn’t invest in technology but business results.

CIO: If outcome-based IT is the way forward, is smarter sourcing a route or an objective in this journey?CVG Prasad: Smarter sourcing is one of the catalysts in outcome-based IT. In our case, we are already at a maturity level. There is a closer collaboration with business and outcome-based IT is already a reality. Sourcing is just one of the elements.

CIO: Will this help the CIO demonstrate fi nancial acumen and become a key business driver?Arun Gupta: If you look at most CIOs, their position of power comes from the ability to negotiate. The financial acumen, which is generally inward focussed, now, needs to extend outward to the business.

“Outcome based IT needs a foundation based on the “New Style of IT” which enables everything-as-a-service.”ASIT SINHA India Head - Strategic Outsourcing, HP Enterprise Services

CIO

Inspiring

You have great strengths in consumer electronics, why

are you getting serious about inspiring enterprises?

Sameer Garde: I think there is a reverse trend happening. Earlier you had a lot of technologies which was in the enterprise domain moving into the consumer space. Now, consumerization of IT is a reality, with BYOD, location based services and collaboration becoming an integral part of the enterprise. We already have a strong footprint in the hospitality, healthcare and retail verticals and with our expertise in the consumer technology space, we believe that we can inspire enterprises to embrace the millennials and become more agile and flexible.

How is Samsung helping enterprise collaborate better?

Samsung provides collaborative mobile solutions that allow business professionals to easily collaborate and share files and documents. Users

can seamlessly work together on presentations, connect wirelessly and share files, or view content in a larger format, all of which make collaboration faster and more efficient. Collaboration is also a lot about video meetings and there are two factors driving this trend. One is the improved availability of mobile bandwidth such as 3G and 4G, while the other is that the bandwidth requirements for a video meeting have been drastically reduced. Collaboration is one area that we are looking to provide a platform where people can have secure conversations and reduce the need to travel for business meetings. The Unified Communication and Collaboration package integrates and assimilates a broad range of key real-time mobile business services, including web conferencing, instant messaging and telephony, along with non-real-time options such as fixed mobile communication. Waste management at Hyderabad, reducing TAT for a leading bank for customer account opening, helping a specialized retail chain in selling better and Room automation for a leading hotel are a few examples of

Sameer Garde SVP, Enterprise

Business, Samsung points

out how Samsung Mobile is the

ideal resource for corporate mobile

solutions, offering comprehensive

enterprise devices.

Innovations

presented by

CIO100 I NTERVIEW

BY GOPAL KISHORE

where Samsung has helped enterprises to collaborate better.

How does Samsung address enterprise security concerns?

As more employees are dealing with both private and corporate information on their mobile devices, employers need better and safer mobile security infrastructures to keep up with the BYOD trend. Mobile security and manageability are the foremost concerns of CIOs, yet companies are still struggling to manage and monitor individual mobile devices. To succeed with the BYOD trend, CIOs must ensure that their IT groups are armed with a relatively new genre of powerful tools that address several aspects of mobility management and security. Samsung

products interoperate with leading suppliers of mobile device management (MDM), VPN security and other mobile security technologies, enabling enterprises to deliver an outstanding user experience while keeping corporate data assets secure. We also use technologies such as Samsung on Device Encryption (ODE) and Samsung Enterprise Software Development Kit (SDK). These enhanced core capabilities for enterprise mobility are available only on Samsung Android devices.

What kind of partnerships and alliances do you have in place,

which goes beyond the device?

Under the Samsung for Enterprise (SAFE) program, Samsung works with a number of leading third-party MDM

providers to offer solutions that address even the most challenging management and security concerns. SAFE devices provide ultimate flexibility for IT administrators by allowing them to remotely manage mobile applications and overall device functionality. We have also introduced Samsung KNOX which is a new Android-based solution designed from the ground up with security in mind to address the perception of the current open source Android platform. Samsung KNOX retains full compatibility with Android and the Google ecosystem while integrating fundamental security and management enhancements. All of these advantages make Samsung KNOX the perfect choice for both regulated and general enterprise environments.

“ Employers today need better and safer mobile security infrastructures to keep up with the BYOD trend. ”Sameer Garde SVP, Enterprise Business, Samsung

CIO100 D ISCUSSION

Security InsecuritiesThe consumerization of IT and APTs are creating security worries. A roundtable arranged by CIO and Blue Coat gives IT leaders an opportunity to discuss their security challenges.

Never in the history of IT leadership have CIOs and CSOs been in as

much in danger of arousing the ire end users as they are today. Sure, in the past, not every application was as intui-tive as staffers wanted. But the frustration associated with that pales in comparison to the annoyance CIOs face as they come in-between today’s users and their personal devices.

“The main issue for organi-zations today is that users want freedom. But, at the same

time, it’s the IT department that must be responsible,” said Girish Rao, head-IT, Marico. “The truth is that most end-users care a damn about secu-rity.”

As a result, most IT and security leaders, have learned to play defence. Over time, managing risk has became more about what they thought could be blocked, controlled, and outlawed.

It doesn’t help that security threats have sprung up in areas

that were otherwise thought to be ‘safe’. Take, for example, the IT system in manufacturing floors. Until recently--mainly because they were not IP linked--these systems weren’t under attack. Attacks like Stux-net changed that.

“There have been a recent spate of attacks on manufactur-ing sites, a place people didn’t think attackers focused on,” said S. Ramasamy, executive director-information, Indian Oil Corporation.

“There’s a cross-over effect between IT systems and manu-

facturing systems and that’s a huge worry. APT threats could, potentially, have a greater impact on manufacturing sys-tems than on IT systems,” said Venkat Raghavan, SVP, corpo-rate development, Blue Coat.

The unstoppable consum-erization of IT, the growing importance of data, the advent of social media, and the fact that attackers are finding new hunting grounds are just some of the reasons that the impor-tance of security is on the rise.

They are also keeping CIOs up at night.

“I lose sleep over this (secu-rity),” said Rao.

What’s a CIO to Do?At a roundtable discussion arranged by CIO and Blue Coat to figure what security trends worry CIOs and how they are tackling these challenges, lead-ing CIOs offered some ideas.

Take for instance what Dhandpani T.G., CIO, TVS Motors, had to say. “When it comes to cultural issues (refer-ring to the amount of impor-tance different organizational cultures place on security), getting middle management to abide by security protocols is key,” he said. His argument is that if IT can get middle man-agement to become more secu-rity conscious the rest of the organization will fall in place.

Ramasamy stressed on the importance of creating busi-ness cases for security based on different threats.

“‘Yesterday nothing hap-pened. Tomorrow nothing will happen.’ That’s the manage-ment view of security. And that’s why getting security buy-in is so hard,” said vendor sympathizing with the chal-lenge CIOs face.

“It’s important to educate business on the benefits of security,” said G.S. Ravi Kumar, CIO, Gati.

PANElISTS

BY SUNIL SHAH

“APT threats could, potentially, have a greater impact on manufacturing systems than on IT systems.”

VENKAT RAGHAVANVenkat Raghavan, Senior VP, Cor-porate Development, Blue Coat ria

G.S.RAVI KUMAR GATI LTD.

RAMESH NAGARAJANWIPRO LTD.

DHANDAPANI TG TVS MOTOR COMPANY

M.MANIKANDAN THE LAKSHMI VILAS BANK LTD

S.RAMASAMY INDIAN OIL CORPORATION LTD.

ALOK KUMAR TATA CONSULTANCY SERVICES

YATENDRA KUMAR GOKALDAS EXPORTS LTD.

BHUPENDRA PANT L&T EWAC ALLOYS LTD.

GIRISH RAO MARICO

MOHIT BHISHIKAR PERSISTENT SYSTEMS

YAGNESH PARIKH ICICI SECURITIES

Panelists

PANElISTS

CIO100 D ISCUSSION

Outcome-based outsourcing promises results, but moving from input-based pricing to outcome-based contracts is easier said than done.

The economic slow-down of 2008-2009 has remarkably impacted the state

of Indian enterprise IT and influenced the play of CIOs in the country.

Our surveys, where we have extensive conversations with CIOs in India, reveal that in last few years there seems immense pressure on the senior-most technology decision makers in India to undertake, execute and roll out increasing number of projects with fewer resources

on tighter budgets and shorter timelines. This also clearly demonstrates that now there is enough impetus and spotlight on the role of IT as a valued service provider and key differ-entiator for enterprises.

Hence, the dialogue of busi-ness and CIOs can no longer be about specifics of technology. Instead, it has to be more about the eventual business outcome, for example revenue growth, customer outreach or helping

the business build the right product or service.

Thus, a big challenge that has now emerged for CIOs is the constant search for the right solution partners who can help them achieve these business outcomes.

And, given the attrition in the mid-tier of the IT depart-ment and the consequent skill set shortage (particularly in domains like cloud, analytics and mobility), Indian enter-prises have no option but to turn source agnostic—making

them lean on service providers and the public cloud to deliver on promises to business.

“Given the kind of dynamic business scenarios and markets and rapid technology changes a CIO faces today, it would turn them mad if they try to find the right solutions, join the pieces together and find people to make all this possible, all by himself,” says Ashish Pachory, Chief Information Officer, Tata Teleservices Ltd. He added

in such changing scenarios it always makes sense to have a partner who can realize the ulti-mate business goal that the CIO is trying to achieve and help him get there.

But despite the convenience and effectiveness of an outcome based outsourcing model, most CIOs agree the entire onus of sharing the risk/reward of an outcome getting/not getting delivered at the end can never be only the solution provider’s worry. “Business needs are changing everyday. So the out-comes businesses expect from the CIO are also changing every day. In such a scenario one can-not leave the entire responsibil-ity of achieving outcomes on the solution provider,” says Jijy Oomen, EVP and Group Head Technologies, Bajaj Capital Ltd.

However as Mukesh Kumar Jain, CTO, ICICI bank reveals that while most partners bring in a lot of promises to the table at the beginning of the relation-ship, the challenge is main-taining those levels of service as time progresses. “Levying penalty when a promised busi-ness outcome fails is of no use to me because at the end of the day it’s my business that suf-fers. What’s worse is now I don’t even have clarity on what went wrong on the vendor’s side,” Jain said.

BY DEBARATI ROY

“It would be interesting to see if outcome based IT models will adapt mainly to short-term, specifi c projects or wil also govern long term contracts, as needed.”

ANAND RAMAKRISHNANBusiness Head- Managed Services, Cloud & Microsoft Services, HCL

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BALA MESHRAM SHIPPING CORPORATION OF INDIA

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JIJY OOMMEN BAJAJ CAPITAL LTD.

PRASHANT VEER SINGH BHARTI INFRATEL LTD.

SRINIBASH SAHOO DSP BLACK ROCK INVESTMENT MANAGERS PVT. LTD.

AJIT SUNDAR AWASARE LARSEN & TOUBRO LTD.

SHASHI KUMAR RAVULAPATYRELIANCE COMMERCIAL FINANCE

ANJAN DEB THE GREAT EASTERN SHIPPING COMPANY LTD.

NAGESH ASWARTHA SPML INFRA LTD.


PanelistsPowering Business:The Promise of Outcome-Based IT

Michael Podolinsky, author, entrepreneur and certifi ed speaking professional spoke to India’s top 100 CIOs on what sets astute managers apart.BY SHWETA RAO

ELEPHANTS DON’T BITE. BUT, MOSQUITOES DO. IT’S THE LITTLE THINGS THAT GET US AND END UP COSTING US.

CIO100 KEY NOTECIO

Michael Podolinsky is Asia’s Productivity Guru. Since 1981, as author of 15 books, entrepreneur, speaker and trainer, Michael devoted himself to studying productivity and human psychology.

Michael Podolinsky The best managers have a f u nda menta l ly d i f ferent understanding of workplace, company, and team dynamics.

Michael Podolinsky, author, entrepreneur and speaker underscored this fact while addressing India’s top CIOs at the 8th edition of CIO100 on what sets astute managers apart.

He maintained that strong managers can take incisive decision when they get their strategies right. A good leader sees the bigger picture and determines a winning line of attack. Most of this plan is quite often targeted at getting better than the rest. “To gain a competitive advantage, a CIO must find out what everybody else is doing and then not do it,” said Podolinsky.

For example, a CIO is probably the best hand in the organization that knows business’s nooks and crannies. It’s time he begins paying attention to details outside the IT bubble. “Elephants don’t bite,” he said. “But, mosquitoes do. It’s the little things that get us and end up costing us. ”

Motivation at WorkplaceA good leader identifies with neither

technology nor hard work but by the people he leads. Podolinsky cited a St. Paul Fire & Marine Insurance Co. survey which involved 28,000 respondents. Insights from St Paul’s report draw attention to numbers from global organizations that pay attention to staff training and motivational workshops. “Companies across the world who spent more than 900 million dollars on training their staff with important skill sets experience 57 percent of more sales compared to the ones who spent only 250 millions and less,” said Podolinsky.

So, an astute manager creates an office environment that makes it easy for smart people to do good things. He motivates them to work towards success, automatically ensuring his own success as an IT leader. “Every team has three kinds of people: the wieners, whiners and winners. But a manager can’t impress all of them. The St Paul report illustrates that at any given point of time, a third of a company’s employee workforce is either neutral or disappointed in their respective bosses. These are the whiners,” he said, “These negative co workers can drag per person

productivity down by 20 percent. They miss deadlines and cost an organization a whopping 247 percent of their money’s worth on average. This means, people with bad attitudes drive everyone down.”

That said, even the best of the best managers, ultimately look at making their teams a profit center, Podolinsky said. He continued, how then does one get ahead and get a team to improve? “Get obstacles out of the way of your team!” he says, “If it means booting the wieners, so be it. Build a team that works efficiently in your absence. Obviously, wieners won’t let that happen.”

A CIO has to be a full time motivator, full time trainer and a part time manager. “Motivation is the catalyst for all human endeavours. It is nutritive, not curative,” said Podolinsky. Motivation is developed and maintained through the constant positive reinforcement of one’s self-worth and your team needs that, he said.

Productivity Management Being the most productive manager

means knowing more than just doing your job well. A CIO must step up and being to get involved in processes outside of IT. “If you want to advance, you need to know three more silos apart from IT really well. It can be finance, sales, operations, HR or administration. Doing that will prepare you to handle responsibilities and understand what everybody else is doing,” he said.

Being astute also means stepping up and being an initiator. “Being proactive stands at the top of career development compass points for any new-age leader. If you have to wait until the CEO approves each IT buy, it means you are seen as someone who needs to wait for approval,” he said.Often, such hands-on CIO action bears fruit right at the boardroom table. “When you are a cost-centre, the board continues to ask, “What can you save?” But when you are a profit-centre, they ask, “What do you need?” said Podolinsky, “That’s a good place to be.”


PRODUCTIVITY: WINNING IN LIFE

By Michael Podolinsky

Leading with

BY SHWETA RAO

MobilityHow has Microsoft realigned itself to enable innovation at

greater speed and efficiency?

Bajwa: About a year ago, we embarked on a new strategy to realize a vision of opening the devices and services chapter for Microsoft. We have made important strides since then. Understandably, the manifestation will be more deliberate when devices and services come together. From launching Windows 8 and Surface to acquiring Nokia and moving to continuous product cycles, we have continuously worked on bringing a consistent hardware user interface to PCs, tablets, phones and Xbox. Going forward, our strategy will focus on creating a family of devices and services for individuals and businesses that empower people around the globe at home, at work and on the go, for the activities they value. Obviously, we have much more to do.

We have enabled enterprise value through products like Windows Server and

Exchange. The form of delivery has shifted to a broader set of devices and services versus packaged software. The frontier of high-value scenarios we enable will march outward, but we have strengths and proven capabilities on which we will draw.

During the transition, did you draw any learning from the strength

of social media, analytics, cloud and mobile in the Indian context?

IT transition in the Indian context is, contrary to popular belief, the easier nut to crack. We in India have a great opportunity to literally leap frog. The developed world, on the other hand, has a stronger legacy and is difficult to do away with. That’s why, Microsoft’s Paas and Iaas (Azure) business in India has grown over a 160 percent YoY. This has brought us to the question: should we take all our 220,000 users to the cloud from a productivity standpoint?

With the introduction of Windows 8 devices to this environment, we have again

presented by

CIO100 I NTERVIEW

Karan Bajwa, MD, Microsoft

India speaks on how Microsoft’s

strategy will focus on devices

and services that empower people around the globe at home, at work

and on the go, for the activities they

value.

infl uenced a big paradigm sift around the UI. We have gone to the market in the enterprise with a consumer look and feel. Post its launch on October 2012 till now, we have up to 140 variants of devices that have come up and that is going to increase.

The last year has been a witness to a slew of Microsoft launches.

What are your plans for 2013?

Absolutely. Owing to a lot of marketplace uncertainty, a lot of investors and competitors tied down on their investments in 2009 while we at Microsoft chose to do just the opposite. Our R&D investments doubled in 2009. As a result of that, the past 13 months have seen a slew of launches across infrastructure, productivity, applications and platform. These include revamped Windows Server, SQL Server and Offi ce Suite apart from the launch of Windows 8. Our biggest goal in the next 12 months is to make sure we land the value of these innovations with customers who are invested on our platform.

We also plan to launch a Windows 8.1 RT by October 2013. There are also Windows Server 2012 R2 version, System Center 2012 R2 version and SQL Server 2014 coming up in the next 12 months. We also look forward to the assimilation of our new acquisitions.

What business benefi ts do you think technology trends hold

from an enterprise standpoint today?

As devices become further integrated into everyday life, enterprises will have to create new and extraordinary experiences for end users on these devices. From a devices standpoint, it’s all about what it means to adopt a mobile device of any form or factor into your enterprise. Be it field force productivity or CRM, CIOs must begin to offer LOB applications over mobile devices. Applications need to be created way more intuitively, to help mobile devices offer end users in the enterprise a productivity benefit. Services is all about choice, be it on cloud, on premise or even hybrid.

“ As devices become further integrated into everyday life, CIOs will have to create new and extraordinary experiences for end users on mobile devices.”Karan Bajwa, MD, Microsoft India

CIO100 D ISCUSSION

The New Paradigm Businesses consider the deluge of new-age devices a boon that makes them more productive. Is IT is beginning to see it that way too?

The rapid adoption of Bring Your Own Device policies by companies, which

have enabled employees to use their personal mobile devices to access corporate networks and resources may have improved employee productivity, but it has also created a complex secu-rity problem.

While the easy, anytime, any-where access smartphones, tab-lets, and other mobile devices can provide may improve employee productivity, unpro-tected and ill-secured personal

mobile devices running poten-tially dangerous or malicious apps connecting to the company network can lead to malware attacks, loss or theft of confi-dential corporate and personal data, and may even create com-pliance or legal problems.

Ultimately, CIOs have to mitigate risk and control data; who’s accessing it, where it’s going, where it’s been, and who’s using it.

IT departments can’t be blamed for wanting to keep out devices that aren’t approved under their corporate policies.

These end points with their access to information and appli-cations over the cloud defy the accepted rules of boundaries and open the corporate net-works to social media and the lures of cybercrime. This loss of control needs to be tackled by embracing Bring Your Own Device policies that enable employees to use their personal mobile devices to access corpo-rate networks and resources.

While this has potential to improve employee productivity, it also brings with it a complex security problem. Some of the

leading Indian CIOs discussed these issues regarding BYOD security policies on the side-lines of CIO 100 2013 at Pune. The roundtable was chaired by Ravi Chauhan, Managing Director, India & SAARC at Juniper Networks and moder-ated by Vijay Ramachandran, editor-in-chief, IDG India.

The easy, anytime, anywhere access that smartphones, tab-lets, and other mobile devices can provide may improve employee productivity, but they also lead to unprotected and ill-secured personal mobile

devices running potentially dangerous or malicious apps connecting to the company network and cause malware attacks, loss or theft of confiden-tial corporate and personal data, creating compliance or legal problems. “There are an endless number of devices entering the enterprise right from the level of CEO to the youngest employee. CIOs need a versatile MDM solutions and figure out what to accommodate and where to the draw the line,” said Rajesh Chopra, senior vice president - corporate IT, EIH Limited.

An organization that allows its authorized users to access its critical network, and sensitive data with their personal devices need to know the whereabouts of these devices physically and otherwise. “Device mapping is important because you can’t run a network of thousands of nodes without knowing your devices. You need to manage not a technology risk but infor-mation risk,” said Vijayeendra Purohit, AVP corporate net-working, Infosys.

But in order to achieve the desired levels of compliance and get a hold of who’s access-ing it, where it’s going, where it’s been, and who’s using it one needs professionals with exper-tise. “There is an acute shortage of skill sets and it’s not a prob-lem that is going away soon,” acknowledged Chauhan from Juniper Networks.

BY ANUP VARIER

“There is an acute shortage of skill sets and it’s not a problem that is going away soon.”RAVI CHAUHANManaging Director, India & SAARC at Juniper Networks

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B V MESHRAM SHIPPING CORPORATION OF INDIA LTD

SANJAY AGARWAL INDIA YAMAHA MOTOR

VIJAYENDRA PUROHIT INFOSYS

RAGHAVENDRA WNS HOLDINGS

GOPAL RANGARAJ RELIANCE LIFE SCIENCES


Panelists

PANElISTS

CIO100 D ISCUSSION

With the tremendous growth of data in recent times, organizations and their CIOs have their tasks cut out for them in trying to effectively address this issue.

Managing Data for the Future

Data is a critical business asset, and one whose growth continues to be exponential. This statement holds true for organizations irrespective

of the existing economic climate or market conditions. Of course addressing this issue is easier said than done.

While it is true that the Datacenter infra-structure hasn’t ideally kept up to pace with our data consumption rates, organizations and their respective CIOs are keenly addressing the issues to keep up with the growth of their data.

One such area that CIOs need to look at it is storage. When facing a storage problem, throwing more storage at it doesn’t always resolve the issue. “Adding storage all the time will not be the solution to the problem. And with today’s economic situation, we need to try and explore other solutions (to address this issue),” says Rahul Mahajan, VP-IT, K Raheja Corporate Services.

Yogesh Zope, Group CIO, Bharat Forge recalls, such forecasting can at times, especially when it is connected with storage, all come to naught. “We had consolidated our group storage a few years back. But the way storage requirements scaled up, we had to recalibrate our future storage forecasts,” says Zope. In fact through that exercise, Zope has realized

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“Software Defi ned Storage (SDS) lets you deploy as fast as possible, provide licensing and policies to users on the fl y.”

BARUN P. LALADirector - HP Storage Division

BY ERIC ERNEST

the importance of placing more emphasis on understanding various facets of data: what to store, why to store it, who is going to access it, how long does it need to be stored and so on and so forth. All in all, the consensus was that CIOs must classify their data first before they

realize what they are to do with it. Classification of data can prove very help-

ful to an organization. Consider what Mahajan did at his company. They asked their employ-ees to have all their personal data on their systems removed within stipulated period. Through this endeavor, the company was able to reap significant space savings. “Our data size reduced by 22 percent,” adds Mahajan.

D.C. Shah, General Manager - IT Guja-rat Mineral Development Corporation, shares Zope’s viewpoint, adding that the best approach for CIOs,would be to make a short term strategy for addressing the storage requirements. For this, data classification is very important.

With this in mind, CIOs should be looking for storage solutions that can seamlessly scale, virtualize, federate and adapt to future needs. Mahajan suggests, “CIOs should be looking for a solution wherein the users can get seamless access to data from whichever app they prefer where a single version of the data is available.”

Man Mohan Goyal, CIO, Phillips Carbon Black adds, “We need to look at value. At this stage there are solutions, but they are very costly. We need vendors to come up with more ‘right value’ products for meeting our kind of challenges.”

Panelists


DEFINING TOMORROW’S TECH:SOFTWARE-DEFINED IT INFRASTRUCTURERising business demands and the need for automation is leading to a new kind of revolution in enterprise IT – software-defi ned IT infrastructure.

Over generations of evolving enterprise IT, infrastructure has moved from physical to virtual to cloud. What next, is the question?

Software-defined IT infrastructure seems to be the answer.

A panel consisting of Sachin Jain, CIO and CISO, Evalueserve, Shrikant Kulkarni, senior VP and CIO, KPIT Cummins Infosystems, Shashi Kumar Ravulapaty, senior VP and CTO, Reliance Commercial Finance and

Balaji Rao, director sales – India and SAARC, VMware delved deeper into the future and answered the questions on how does it start to unravel in the enterprise context and what can it really do to transform the way organizations deliver IT.

Moving to a software-defined environment may increase the complexity of the entire architecture. Legacy infrastructure may create a bottleneck in the path to transformation. Rao says, “Datacenter

BY ERSHAD KALEEBULLAH

From left to right: Shashi Kumar Ravulapaty - Reliance Commercial Finance, Balaji Rao - VMware, Sachin Jain - Evalueserve and Shrikant Kulkarni - KPIT Cummins Infosystems.

is at the heart of the transformation for most customers today. The complexity is evident in the pools of data that is being generated. Reducing complexity is vital before heading on this transformational journey.”

Delivering IT-as-a-service to the business requires automation to a certain extent. CIOs can follow a three pronged approach to transforming the datacenter. First step is virtualising and bringing all the elements of the IT infrastructure into a common platform to achieve a certain level of flexibility. Secondly, move business critical applications to the virualized platform. The third and final step is the most critical and one where CIOs are still playing safe – moving business critical apps to the cloud and attain a level of automation. The major concern here is the security aspect of it all.

New trends like software-defined storage (SDS), software-defined networking (SDN) and software-defined datacenter (SDDC), all indicate that the software-defined IT infrastructure is the future. However, the question on everyone’s minds is when will it attain a level of maturity and start showcasing benefits for the business? Kulkarni asks CIOs to act with caution. “Trends like these emerge out of the blue. We need to take a realistic approach before adoption. We can marvel at the technology but for it to reach us might take a long time.”

Being cautious involves running a few pilot projects with a focused group in the enterprise. Ascertain the success of the project and then zero in on its implementation. Ravulapaty says, “It would be helpful if third-party service providers are ready to agree on certain SLAs, for eg. service and management, during the experimentation stage. This way it will give us the freedom to innovate without

worrying too much about the risks.”

He adds, “At cer tain t imes, the organization does not require a full-fledged IT infrastructure. For example, during the telecast of IPL matches that last for about three months, the telev is ion channel would require instant IT solution that can scale up and down as and when required. I think SDDC helps in such a case.”

SDN - the open s t a n d a r d f o r networking is still

in its nascent stage and CIOs are waiting for the new and improved open network architecture to show tangible results in innovation. “It is intriguing to note that SDN allows applications to define how the physical network architecture should function. When it materializes, SDN will definitely change the entire outlook of how networking works within the datacenter,” says an excited Ravulapaty.

The implementation of a fresh-out-of-the-oven technology requires trained IT staff. This might be a limitation in the initial phases of the project. “When virtualization entered the scene, organizations were aware of the benefits but the lack of talent pool to implement the solution was a deterrent. That is the case even today with SDDC,” contends Jain.

Moving to a software-defined IT infrastructure means that the datacenter will now be consolidated and a whole new level of automation sets in. This means that the core IT team might need to equip themselves with adequate skillsets to perform certain operations. “We are constantly trying to train employees and we have churned out at least 7000 certified professionals who are equipped with the right skillset for the next generation of datacenter,” assures Rao.

Q&ACIO: When you start to move into a software-defined world does the complexity go up?Balaji Rao: When you look at transforming the datacenter the challenge that you have is pools of data that are concentrated in silos. And over a period of time the complexity of the existing framework increases as various applications are introduced in the system. Now we are talking about Big Data and social and it is a big leap from where we are and what we wanted to achieve. Hence, integrating with the business and turning it into meaningful data is turning out to be a challenge.

CIO: SDDC, SDS, SDN… at what stage do acronyms translate into business benefit?Shrikant Kulkarni: We need to take a realistic view. Today, if you see, even cloud as a concept I am unsure if many enterprises in India have come to terms with it. There is a lot of time for these acronyms to translate into business benefits.

CIO: With shift in focus from infrastructure to software, what should IT departments be looking out for?Sachin Jain: See, they already have too many things on their plate. There are too many changes happening at a rapid pace and it is obviously difficult for employees to keep up with the pace and adequate training is absolutely essential.

“The switching and routing should become a part of the hypervisor. This helps in decoupling hardware from software.”

BALAJI RAODirector sales – India and SAARC, VMware

CIO100 D ISCUSSION

CIOs discuss why software defined networking is being hailed as the next big thing that will help businesses innovate at a faster pace and gain agility.

SDN: The App Advantage

Manually configuring and managing their networks is a highly resource intensive and error prone chore that organi-

zations need to move away from, especially in the era of cloud and mobility solutions. While network virtualization offers a cen-tralized control plane it does not automate configuration and provisioning of physical network devices. So how can IT depart-ments get an integrated approach to auto-mating their physical and virtual network infrastructure? CIOs increasingly need to get a centralized view, unified automation, visibility and control of the complete data center network, improving agility, monitor-ing and troubleshooting.

These were some the issues that were debated and discussed in a roundtable dis-cussion titled ‘SDN: The APP Advantage’ with some of the leading CIOs on the side-lines of CIO 100 2013 in Pune. The round-table was chaired by Dixit Roy Mahidhara, zonal sales manager-HP Networking Business Unit and moderated by Vijay Ramachandran, editor-in-chief, IDG India.

Clearly, the impact of Software Defined Networking on the application landscape is tectonic. It holds the promise of reduced

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“It is the organizations’ need to be an agile enterprise which is the driving force behind the increasing demand for SDN.”DIXIT ROY MAHIDHARAZonal sales manager-HP Networking Business Unit

BY ANUP VARIER

latency, faster access, better security and happier end-users. “It is the need for speed and flexible networks that is driving interest in SDN today,” said GS Ravi Kumar, CIO at Gati Limited.

This in turn holds the key to businesses

innovating at a faster pace and gaining agil-ity. In this roundtable we’d like to hear your views on SDN, your concerns, challenges and options, and how you see this journey proceed. According to Dixit from HP Net-working, “There are innovations on every front and network innovations like SDN help deliver these seamlessly without let-ting the network be the bottleneck. It is the organizations’ need to be an agile enterprise which is the driving force behind SDN.”

The network often morphs into a bot-tleneck and it is often wondered whether network virtualization and SDN increase flexibility while keeping cost in check, as well as future-proof IT infra. “The tiered architecture of SDN needs some more clarity and it would also be interesting to know how the control plane is decupled from the data plane,” said SS Sharma, Head – IT, JK Tyres

While there is undoubtedly an interest in SDN there are some ambiguities that sur-round it. Sunil Sirohi, vice president, NIIT Limited expressed a similar opinion and said, “SDN is probably one more stepping stone in the completion of the cloud journey but there are still some doubts regarding it that need to be cleared.”

Panelists

CIO100 D ISCUSSION

Shielding Your NetworkSmart hackers and BYOD are giving CIOs sleepless nights by invading corporate privacy and inventing new security loopholes. But solutions like MDM are saving the day.

There’s fear and then there’s the fear of the unknown. Today,

CIOs and CSOs of Indian organizations are battling the latter. And it’s a fight in which the scales are clearly tilted towards the bad guys. They’re winning this one.

And it isn’t hard to see why. “Today’s hackers are highly organized. Their objective is to get access to intellectual assets which is why their attacks are tar-

geted and focused. Compli-cations relating to protecting information security have gone up several notches. That’s why traditional secu-rity approaches wont work,” said Ravi Chauhan, MD, India & SAARC at Juniper Networks.

That’s a trend, said CIOs at a roundtable, that they are acknowledging and paying heed to. With technologies and approaches like BYOD and the increasing influence

of mobile devices on busi-nesses, security is a major concern. “It’s a scary envi-ronment. You can launch an attack from anywhere. For us, 90 percent customers, except travel agents, come from the Web, exposing us to threats. We need systems that are strong enough to combat these threats,” said Ramandeep Singh Virdi, VP-IT, Indigo.

Like Virdi, A. Bal-akrishnan, CTO, Geojit BNP Paribas, faces the challenge

of being exposed to mobile threats. “About 80 to 90 percent of our transactions are through mobile devices. If some customer data gets into the wrong hands it would tarnish our reputa-tion and we could also lose the customer. It’s a grave threat,” he said.

It’s a problem of plenty because not only is it now hard to track where the attack is coming from, it’s harder to create a solution

within a limited time frame. “You can no longer take three to six months to implement a solution as hackers are get-ting smarter. By the time you react to it, you have suffered a business loss. Another problem is that enterprise users within boundaries, they like the freedom of social media,” said Virdi.

The only way to get past that, according to Girish Rao, head-IT, Marico, is to educate employees and stress on the importance of security. “These are grave concerns. Huge amount of education is required. If we aren’t able to do so, we’ll be talking about this forever,” he said.

And that’s an imperative now that BYOD is becom-ing the norm and the lines between personal and offi-cial data are blurring. But organizations have less rea-son to worry. “We have come up with solutions like MDM for that. This ensures right-ful access to the network. So, for example, there’ll be a set of 50 parameters that’ll decide who can access what information. This puts con-trol in the hands of the IT department,” said Juniper Networks’ Chauhan.

BY SHARDHA SUBRAMANIAN

“We have come up with solutions like MDM that ensure rightful access to the network and puts control in the hands of IT.”RAVI CHAUHANManaging Director, India & SAARC at Juniper Networksria

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RAMNATH IYER CRISIL LIMITED

A.BALAKRISHNAN GEOJIT BNP PARIBAS FINAN-CIAL SERVICES LIMITED

THOMSON THOMAS HDFC STANDARD LIFE INSURANCE

PRATAP KUMAR SINGH IBIBO WEB PRIVATE LIMITED

RAMANDEEP SINGH VIRDIINTERGLOBE AVIATION LTD (INDIGO)

V C KUMANAN IDFC LIMITED

R. SUNDARA RAJAN L&T IDPL

DC SHAH GUJARAT MINERAL DEVELOPEM ENT

GIRISH RAO MARICO

Panelists


VISUAL VELOCITYWorkforce collaboration and use of video, today, is forcing CIOs to fi nd innovative solutions within the existing framework.BY ERSHAD KALEEBULLAH

Improved responsiveness and streamlined communication are critical for any business no matter the size. Quite naturally, collaboration

is continually emerging as the next breakthrough source of effectiveness and innovation for business.

As our CIO surveys discovered that multiple trends are converging to create a profound transition in the way people interact and do business, including a range of mobile compute

devices, an increasing use of video at work, and the nascent adoption of enterprise social software.

In the past few months we’ve also seen innovative uses of video—from training the extended enterprise to better servicing high-networth customers to improving connects between plants in remote locations to surveillance to building wider and better idea funnels. From the boardroom to the browser, from the conference table to the tablet, video

connects us all with a visual lifeline.The trio of Peter Quinlan, VP-Integrated

Business V ideo Ser vices, Tata Communications, Jayantha Prabhu, CTO, Essar Group and Hitesh Arora, director and head-IT, Max Life Insurance formed a panel that discussed how CIOs need to understand the visual platform and exploit it for the benefit of the business.

They also tried to tackle the challenges of establishing a visual collaboration platform to empower better idea exchange in organizations; the role of user experience; why this can be both an easy and difficult transition; and the cultural aspects of engaging employees, customers and partners more closely in the business.

Delivery models and consumption platforms around collaboration tools are ever-changing. Keeping up with these changes is vital for a CIO to provide the right

From left to right: Peter Quinlan - Tata Communications, Hitesh Arora - Max Life Insurance and Jayantha Prabhu - Essar Group.

solutions for the right platforms within the existing framework. Quinlan said, “The biggest change is undoubtedly mobility. Today’s user expects video and collaboration to work whenerever he or she is and on whatever device he or she owns.”

Talking about the visual collaboration at Essar and how it transformed the organization and the way they work, Prabhu detailed, “It is a critical tool for us today. For example, we provided thin clients on tablets for the senior officials in the organization who can connect to the video conference seamlessly over any available network. Hence, reducing travel costs and improving productivity.”

Arora supplemented the discussion by stating how Max Life Insurance realized the need for video collaboration tool. “Being a diverse organization, with around 219 offices covering 135 cities in India, the need to connect to all the employees in those offices became apparent. Secondly, the extended family including our trusted advisors also needed to be connected to us on a regular basis.”

The first concept of collaboration that Max Life rolled out was a quarterly webcast. “Today, if we have to announce any launch or introduce the organization to a concept we resort to the webcast platform since its initial reception was overwhelmingly positive.”

Regular training for employees can incur high costs for the organization when we take into account the travel costs. Arora says, “We introduced online video training content for all our employees and thus eliminating the need for travel.”

“We do not have an intranet portal. All the information, including training content, is packaged using video,” Prabhu adds.

Certain enterprises have offices in

i n a c c e s s i b l e locations. For senior management to get to such locations is a hassle. “Some of our offices in states like Odisha take 16 hours to reach from the corporate office in Mumbai. It is a waste of time. In this case what do we do? Video conferencing.”

T h e i n i t i a l i n v e s t m e n t notwithstanding, to retrieve hard ROI out of a video solution is a tough ask. However, businesses might encourage, in some cases push, CIOs to determine the value of the investment.

Quinlan said, “It might be a wise idea to present a case study to the organization. For example, run a pilot with a particular department and try to outline the financial benefits of implementing the solution.”

Cross-platform integration of video solutions can be a hassle especially with a trend like BYOD becoming more prominent in enterprises. Not every user has the same device. “It is not in the hands of the CIO or the CTO to control what devices enter the system. The fact that there are multiple UC applications in the user space and it is difficult for the IT department to keep pace with user expectations and demands,” Quinlan states.

He adds, “With respect to the enterprise, security is the most critical factor for any enterprise. User experience, definitely, takes a backseat. A perfect UC setup entails the seamless functioning of different aspects like the video, networking and messaging. Jamvee, our on-demand video meeting solution, lets you connect anytime anywhere using virtually any device.”

“When you believe a particular IT solution will work for your solution and are convinced about it, you might have to take that risk. Putting your neck on the line helps at times,” concludes Arora.

“A perfect UC setup entails the seamless functioning of different aspects like the video, networking and messaging.”PETER QUINLANVP-Integrated Business Video Services, Tata Communications

Q&ACIO: What changes are you seeing in the delivery and consumption models for collaboration among the new-age mobile, dispersed yet connected workforce? Peter Quinlan: Enterprises are trying to cope with providing video and collaboration services to users and ensuring that it works wherever the user is and whatever device he or she is using. To do this within the existing framework is the biggest challenge.

CIO: From the boardroom to the browser, from the conference table to the tablet, how are you seeing video evolve?Hitesh Arora: We’ve reduced travel costs by resor ting to a webcasting solution for most of the announcements. A large salesforce also meant that we had to introduce a primitive collaboration solution.

CIO: Do travel mandates really spur video use?Jayantha Prabhu: Using video as a value added product might work. At Essar, video is very key for us. We’ve created a state-of -the-art studio to encourage the use of video and eliminate the need for an intranet portal. Televisions at all strategic locations across the globe display content 24x7, which is generated from a central transmission base.

CIO100 D ISCUSSION

It’s not the means but the end that matters to business. Gearing up for this with as much agility as possible is the need of the hour.

Moving with Outcome-based IT

When the history of Indian enterprise IT is chronicled, the beginning of the eco-nomic slump in 2008-09

will emerge as the watershed year after which nothing ever was the same for Indian CIOs. Over the years since organizations have rolled out more and more projects with fewer people and in shorter time cycles, IT’s role as a valued service provider and as a key differentiator has never been in a brighter spotlight.

Since the slowdown set in, CIOs have seen managements transform how they view IT. Clearly, Indian organizations no longer invest in technology, instead they fund business results. Some of India’s leading CIOs shared their views on these aspects in a roundtable discussion titled ‘Moving For-ward with Outcome-based IT’ conducted on the sidelines of CIO 100 2013 in Pune. The roundtable was chaired by Shoaib Ahmed - President – Tally Solutions Private Limited and moderated by Vijay Ramachandran, editor-in-chief, IDG India.

How CIOs can tap into organizational and departmental budgets—both implicit and explicit—is a function of how well they

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RAJEEV MITTAL PIAGGIO VEHICLES PVT. LTD.


“Once objective is clear, for quick and effective results, incremental implementation is the key.”SHOAIB AHMED President, Tally Solutions

BY ANUP VARIER

are addressing their organization’s business drivers and the competitive scenario. “Dur-ing a downturn even opex is a fixed cost that cannot be compressed. It is important to figure out how to have variable costs that are in line with business outcomes,” said Venkatesh Nat-arajan, special director- IT, Ashok Leyland.

Thus, what CIOs are pushing at busi-ness can’t be about big data or mobility or the cloud or analytics or ERP or any other enterprise-class technology—instead it has to be about revenue growth, about customer outreach, about helping them build the right product or service rather than making the product right, and about profitable growth.

Also, given the attrition in the mid-tier of the IT department in the first two years fol-lowing the slump, and the consequent skill-set shortage (particularly in domains like cloud, analytics and mobility), Indian enter-prises have no option but to turn source agnostic—making them lean on service providers and the public cloud to deliver on promises to business, said Ahmed. “There is very little time for documentation and deliberation. Once the objectives are spelt out clearly one should not have to worry about how it is done and with scrum meth-odologies gaining popularity we are wit-nessing a shift towards an iterative model,” said Shalabh Raizada, VP-IT, Safexpress.

CIOs need to focus on their organiza-tions’ business drivers and end-goals —that’s has to be their mantra this year.

Panelists

CIO100 D ISCUSSION

There never was and in all likelihood never will be a silver bullet for security. The best CIOs can do is stay on their toes – always.

There’s no single tech-nique that is guar-anteed to identify all types of advanced

threat malware. It may avoid detection in sandboxing by delaying execution beyond the examination period or by tak-ing alternate execution paths when the malware discovers it is in a sandbox environment. It can even avoid static analysis detection by code obfuscation.

Unfortunately, most organi-zations do not have the ability to easily piece together all the

information needed to under-stand an infection incident as well. If you can know more about an incident than just which system you fixed or quarantined, you may end up saving your organization time and money.

Some of these techniques were put to test by some of India’s leading CIOs in a roundtable discussion titled ‘Getting the Advanced Defence Edge’ conducted on the side-lines of CIO 100 2013 in Pune. The roundtable was chaired by Rajeev Sreedhar, Regional

Sales Head (West), McAfee India and moderated by Vijay Ramachandran, editor-in-chief, IDG India.

IP reputations—gathered by McAfee Labs from more than 100 million global threat sensors—are available to a security information and event management (SIEM) solution. This constantly updated, rich feed for McAfee Enterprise Security Manager enhances situational awareness by ena-bling rapid discovery of events involving communications

with suspicious or malicious IPs. “No one technology can safeguard against all threat vectors. What could help how-ever is a global DB of all threat vectors based on multiple parameters,” said Sreedhar from McAfee.

It has become a priority for enterprises concerned with the increasing volume and subtlety of attacks. “IP theft is a menace you need to tackle in an era of state-sponsored corporate espionage. If you are connected to the outside world then you must have an

advanced view of security,” said Rajeev Agarwal, head cor-porate IT, HAL.

Surely, gone are the days of relying on anti-virus solutions to protect yourself. “Technol-ogy proliferation will continue to happen and CIOs need to be on their toes,” opined TG Dhandapani, CIO, TVS Motor company. Moreover, security is not just about knowing what’s coming in abut also what’s going out. It’s always a catch up game. “Since organizations do not see the business value of preventing attacks there is little incentive to invest in secu-rity,” said Anoop Handa, EVP & CIO, Fullerton India Credit Company.

With workers’ accessing the enterprise network using multiple devices, data and applications are being moved into the cloud, where data own-ers have little direct control over security. “A global data-base with threat vectors based on multiple parameters will help CIOs safeguard against all threat vectors,” said Rajeev Sreedhar, Regional Sales Head (West) at McAfee India. There was a general consensus that a single unified view on a dashboard can help CIOs and CISOs manage enterprise risks more efficiently.

BY ANUP VARIER

“A global DB with threat vectors based on multiple parameters can safeguard IT against all threats.”

RAJEEV SREEDHARRegional Sales Head (West), McAfee India

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Panelists

Getting the Advanced Defense Edge

CIO

Documenting

How do you see the rising technology trends impact

Indian enterprises in the current context?

Dr. Alok Bharadwaj: Since the economic macro business environment has undergone majorly unpredictable changes in the past two years, the impact has been in seen on three areas in the enterprise. First, the demand side of the business has slowed down and that has impacted the way we create customer value and handle business challenges. Secondly, business costs have doubled and even tripled in some areas. Fixed costs have risen considerably more than variable costs, making the Indian marketplace unique compared to the rest of the world. Lastly, the people are affected. Work force and stress levels are at an all time high. To put it simply, the cost of producing the dollar as well as the exhaustion or stress rate to produce the dollar has increased in a macro level.

CIOs today are left worrying on how to create a stronger customer value. Reconfiguring old processes or optimising them are more important today than ever.

Can certain industry verticals adopt managed document

services better than others?

Bharadwaj: If you look at the top 500 large private enterprises in India, about 10 percent of them have already moved deeply into management services outsourcing and have begun reap benefits off it. The secret is that there’s nothing as partial adoption when it comes to management services. You either do it, or you don’t. 70 percent of large Indian enterprises today are in different stages of accepting this concept. The best part though, is unlike other technology deployments, the tangible benefits can be measured right on Day One.

Dr. Alok Bharadwaj,

Executive VP, Canon India states

that Managed Document Services is a global solution

that can offer CIOs operational

flexibility yet consistency

in design and scalability.

Development

presented by

CIO100 I NTERVIEW

BY SHWETA RAO

Business goals are continuously driving the way

IT gets deployed in organizations. What are the early tangible benefits of having managed document services?

Bharadwaj: The first big advantage, no doubt, is the cost. With an on-site assessment and discovery of the output environment and activity. Managed document services can quickly and easily gather usage statistics. It provides the analysis CIOs need to gain visibility into the costs and efficiency of their IT environment. Canon goes beyond basic meter reading and provides a detailed and accurate view of not only assets, but finds tangible areas for saving costs immediately, and implementing new strategies for long term optimal

print management. The second biggest outcome is control. Control is important as it brings with it the advantage of visibility. CIOs can also benefit from the convenience and confidentiality that comes with managed document services. Businesses today face significant risk with documents and information being core assets of every one of them. Managed Document Services can help ensure that sensitive information can only be accessed, retrieved or distributed by authorized users thereby safeguarding a valuable corporate asset, be it secured printing, document password protection, encryption or document rights management. It also offers environmental care and conservation. Most of these benefits begin to accrue from day one and get concretised a short time later.

Do these benefits accrue when an organization is centralised

or when it’s fragmented?

Bharadwaj: One of the indirect benefits that come with managed document services is that it reinforces the need for consolidation in your organisation. But, benefits even in a fragmented environment become apparent only when the deployment is enterprise wide. This means that true benefits are seen only in environments where printing requirements are at least 5000 sheets per month.

“ There’s nothing called as partial adoption when it comes to management services. ”

Dr. Alok Bharadwaj Executive VP, Canon India

CIO100 D ISCUSSION

More and more organizations seeking competitive advantage are evaluating managed print and document services (MPDS) to advance their print and document infrastructure.

Towards Effectively Managed Processes

With the amount of data that an organization deals with everyday, digitization has evolved as the corner stone

of ensuring smooth and error free flow of information, in the most minimal time possi-ble. Businesses today cannot afford generating and maintaining paper documents.

As organizations are increasingly driving greater operational efficiency, core business processes are needing support by effective tools and technologies that ensure a smoother flow of information.

As Kapil Pal, Head-IT, Pepsico India, men-tions that businesses are struggling between the change from the traditional way of manag-ing documents to a more digitized managed services model. There are various adminis-tration and departmental challenges. “Many organizations continue to have a struggle between finance, management and IT as most business users don’t initially see the direct value in managed services or realize its full potential till the time the solution is deployed,” he says.

Nayaz Shariff, Regional ITS Head – Work-place / Infrastructure (South Asia), Thom-son Reuters says that when he undertook a managed printing services project, the initial phases was full of chaos. “At Thomson Reuters, information is business for us and thus secu-

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KAPIL PAL PEPSICO LTD.

“The solutions we are looking at encompass the entire lifecycle from digitization, archival, sorting to physical record management.” DR ALOK BHARADWAJExecutive Vice President, Canon India

BY DEBARATI ROY

rity was our paramount goal. But in the pro-cess we have also managed to save about 40 percent of our original cost in just two years,” he says.

MPS will help CIOs evolve above the cost parameter. Contrary to popular belief, CIOs are looking to not just save costs, but to also

redeem their IT teams from worrying about paper or cartridge availability and also look at it from a security, convenience and green IT perspective.

Kopal Sarin, who is the Head IT at Tata Pro-jects, says that MPS on cloud will make storage and maintaining the flow of documents easier. Features like lean printing and dashboards that help an organization determine the department ‘s use of printing services will be able to help the CIO reduce carbon footprints as well.

Most CIOs also agree that MPS not only facilitates smoother inflow and outflow of information, but ensures that the informa-tion is captured, secured, and managed in a manner that meets the corporate guidelines. However Arun Gupta, CIO, Cipla also believes that the real value of MPS will only be real-ized when solution providers just not focus on printing. “The paradigm will start chang-ing when people just don’t stop at printing but move towards records management and docu-ments management that is where you get some real value for the organization,” he says.

MPS is not only about printing. “MPS doesn’t end at printing, it begins with it. It is easy to get bogged down in the mechanics of the initial stages of MPS - but there is more than print. We are the partners who can help you look over the horizon,” said Bharadwaj.

Panelists

CIO100 D ISCUSSION

New-age technologies like BYOD and SMAC are inviting new-age troubles like APTs. But armed with the right security solutions, CIOs can now defend their organizations.

Combating Advanced Persistent Threats

Brace yourself. Your organization is surrounded by landmines of secu-rity threats and you need to tread carefully.

Look around you and you’ll know why. There have been enough and more exam-ples of security breaches that have tar-nished reputations of organizations. Today, SMAC technologies come loaded with new age security challenges like advanced per-sistent threats or APTs. And at a time when the economy is down, safeguarding your company is an imperative.

“You need a very experienced team to fight security threats. Especially to protect the C-suite as most attacks are targeted at the higher-ups. That’s a problem. For example, if your CFO clicks on a malicious link, that’ll take down the CFO’s office for an hour! That doesn’t look good. I feel fraud controls need to be redesigned,” said Satish Das, CSO and VP, Cognizant.

When it comes to protecting the C-suite, some CIOs feel that while they do need protection, they are also aware of today’s security threats. Rajesh Uppal, executive director-IT and CIO, Maruti Suzuki India, for example, says that it is because of senior management’s awareness of security threats

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“Our solution helps CIOs protect their assets across all major threat vectors, including Web, email, fi le and mobile-based cyber attacks. ”RAMSUNDER PAPINENIRegional Director, India and SAARC, FireEyeia

BY SHARDHA SUBRAMANIAN

that it has become easier for CIOs and CSOs to get funding for security projects. “Certain frameworks are in place. Security breaches get discussed at the senior management meetings. That’s why it is easier to get fund-ing for security. But have we done enough? I

think it’s an ongoing battle,” he said.That battle has intensified with the advent

of new threats, like BYOD, creating new breeding grounds for APTs. That’s a huge challenge for a company like Essar Group.

“We carry a lot of IPs. Users are demand-ing dashboards on ipads and other mobility devices. This means all the company’s data will reside in one place. It’s a huge risk,” said Jayantha Prabhu, CTO, Essar Group.

Like Prabhu, most CIOs at the roundtable were worried about the increasing power of APTs and if they will find a comprehen-sive solution to combat these threats. Fire-Eye can address that. “Our solution helps organisations protect their assets across all major threat vectors, including Web, email, file and mobile-based cyber attacks. If there is an attachment that comes with an email or some other malicious packet over the Web, we are able to identify and block these malware in real time with our multi vector virtual execution engine,” said Ramsun-der Papineni, regional director, India and SAARC, FireEye.

As more and more solutions help CIOs and CSOs secure their organizations against APTs those landmines of security threats can be diffused.

Panelists

Smarter Sourcing

Strategies Enterprises are beginning to turn source agnostic, and

reaching out to third party service providers for their datacenter needs. What is driving this trend?

Sridhar Pinnapureddy: Facilities that can reliably house the data and applications that businesses need are costly to build, and the ongoing capital expenditures of in-house facilities can limit growth, slow time to market, and be a distraction from your core business. Since more and more IT Dept are finding it tough to get their capex budgets sanctioned, we have seen an increase in enterprises taking advantage of our services and enjoy significant savings on total cost of ownership. Another important reason for enterprises to look at outsourcing their data centres is security. CtrlS offers a wide range of managed security services that help your organization to prevent potential data compromises, network breaches and unauthorized system access.

Can you tell us about CtrlS’ policy of total ownership and

how it helps CIOs?

At CtrlS, we believe in meeting client expectations and not just to follow a letter or contract. CtrlS’ commitment to its customer is total ownership. When we started off, we realized that we could only make a difference if we came up with a significantly improved and differentiated offerings. This resulted in building Asia’s largest Tier 4 datacenter. We have developed the capabilities to provide a complete suite of offerings from platform level services which include datacenter infrastructure, storage, backup, hardware to OS layers, network and security layers. We are operational in Hyderabad and Mumbai, and building another one in Delhi. Our datacenter in Chennai will be operational this year, and the one in Bangalore, the next financial year. This ensures that our geographical reach is substantial, to meet our client’s

presented by

CIO100 I NTERVIEW

Sridhar Pinnapureddy,

Founder and CEO, CTRLS

highlights how CtrlS is redefining infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and

creating new rules in the outsourcing

space.

BY GOPAL KISHORE

expectations of having the datacenter closer to their area of operation.

Running Tier 4 datacenters across several locations can

be really capex and skills intensive. How do you manage to get the right funding and talent?

Our datacenters at Hyderabad, Mumbai and Delhi are fully owned by the company, and CtrlS is promoted by the 18 year old Pioneer Group, which has been building the largest available infrastructure in the Datacenter space and we have had several rounds of funding. Our datacenters are built to withstand earthquakes and other natural disasters. We have kept our fi nancials healthy, and our repayment obligations have always been half of our cash fl ows. This is a guiding principle that we will not grow beyond a 1:5:1 ratio between debt and equity. Our growth rates are close to 100 percent, making us a very fi nancially healthy company.

Our attrition levels are extremely low, as we believe in hiring fresh talent and grooming them. We have a training academy to that effect. Also, once on board, we offer a clear career progression plan which goes upto 16 levels, offering them many options in diverse roles. Our ‘Total Ownership” policy makes our employees extremely proud of the work they do, and they get to do whatever it takes, to make their customer happy, which keeps them motivated.

How do you take your relationship with the

customer from transactional to transformational?

Our ‘Total Ownership’ policy is defi nitely plays a key role in helping us achieve this. We develop a joint roadmap, which we commit to in being a completely transparent company, and want our customers to look at us more as long term partners and less as vendors. We learn from our customers too. Once the trust is established, we develop a joint roadmap, which we then commit to our customers. We realize that our clients are varied, and we want to give them the fl exibility to customize. All of these make our relationship with our customers more than just transactional.

“ At CtrlS, we believe in meeting client expectations and not just to follow a letter or contract. CtrlS’ commitment to its customer is ‘total ownership’. ”Sridhar Pinnapureddy Founder and CEO, CTRLS

Andrew Grant showed the CIOs to learn to see the unexpected, and discover creative solutions that were possibly there all the time but may have been overlooked. BY GOPAL KISHORE

“A CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION IS UNDERWAY TO INVESTIGATE A DEATH. THIS IS NOT AN AVERAGE DEATH, THIS IS THE DEATH OF CREATIVE THINKING.”

CIO100 KEY NOTECIO

Andrew Grant is the CEO of Tirian, author of ‘Who Killed Creativity? He has worked on creative thinking, leadership and team development for more than 20 years and is a recognized leader in the field.

Andrew Grant At the CIO 100 Awards symposium, Andrew Grant spoke about how solving today’s problems requires

being open to new ideas. “It’s the individuals and organisations that get into this new space first that are the most rewarded. Today’s success is no excuse to sit back, since as soon as one sits back others are ready to overtake. Being creative is not a one off event but a constant vigilant mindset,” he said.

The death of creativity“A crime scene investigation is underway to investigate a death. This is not an average death, this is the death of creative thinking,” he said. Quoting several studies, Andrew bought to attention the fact that while IQ levels have been rising owing to enriched environments creativity scores have actually been falling over time. He said that this decline is also evident across an individual’s lifespan.

“We have been fortunate to work with some of the world’s most creative companies, and yet when we survey our workshop participants only about 10 percent of participants say they are functioning to 100 percent of their creative ability,” he said. “The reason for this is due to the fact that their brains are simply overwhelmed by the amount of information they are exposed to and need to deal with on a regular basis,” he added.

Who killed Creativity? Andrew asked the CIOs to identify and deal with the creativity blockers (the killers) and activating the enablers (the rescuers). “We have narrowed down the list of suspects to 7 key profiles. By recognising and managing these effectively, we believe it will be possible to revive and nurture creative thinking,” he said. Taking a creative approach, Andrew called them the control crew, the fear family, the pressure pack, insulation clique, apathy clan, narrow minded mob and the pessimism posse. He also provided several ways to deal with the creativity blockers.

According to him, a creative mind must first find the creative space to open up possibilities away from distractions, and then it will be able to look for solutions outside of the system, for new paths. “Getting out of the system, or changing the

frame of reference, will help to open up new possibilities. When unfiltered information reaches the conscious awareness of people who are open to being creative, and when they can process this information without being overwhelmed, it can lead to exceptional insights,” he remarked.

How to get creativity backAndrew highlighted the lack of awareness using several ‘magic tricks’ and videos. He also explained how professional magicians can direct an audience’s attention to one restricted area while the magician works in a much broader area – outside the ‘box’. He said that this was the simple premise behind all magic tricks and our best definition of creative thinking. “The ability to look for solutions way beyond boundaries set up by our current environment, habitual ways of thinking, and standard ways of doing things. Don’t be fooled by the magician’s tricks – or the norms and standard expectations. Start to look outside where you have been directed to look. A whole new world might just open up,” he said.

Grant urged the CIOs to learn to see the unexpected, and discover creative solutions that were possibly there all the time but may have been overlooked. Agreeing that all of us need normal pattern-seeking brain behaviour to survive normal everyday day life, as without patterns and ‘norms’ our brains cannot make sense of the huge amount of stimulus that comes in each day. “But there are times when we need to let go of these pattern-making predispositions,” he pointed out. On the other hand, Grant warned about how there are those who have been driven to creative insanity by not being able to relax into familiar patterns. “There are many tortured souls unable to know when or how to switch between these two states. The key here is that we need to know when and how to actively access our creative brain, and when to simply leave it running more passively in the background,” he said.


WHO KILLED CREATIVITY...AND HOW DO WE GET IT BACK

By Andrew Grant and Gaia Grant

CIO100

CIO HALL OF FAME

TARUN PANDEYAB FSG

SATISH DAS Cognizant

G S RAVI KUMARGati

SUNIL SIROHINIIT

YOGESH ZOPEBharat Forge


The Hall of Fame Awards are a testimony to the pursuit of excellence and perseverance. In this regard, this award category recognizes and felicitates those CIOs who have shown astounding and remarkable dedication to excellence in IT, year after year.

BY GOPAL KISHORE

H ALL OF FAME


V S PARTHASARATHYM&M

S RAMASAMYIOCL

S SATHIAVAGEESWARANHPCL


When success repeats itself it ref lects the highest level of achievement. The CIO Hall of Fame—men

and women whose work has profoundly shaped the Indian technology-enabled business landscape, demonstrating both creative vision and practical leadership in information technology. All of them have had significant accomplishments in the innovative use of IT while consistently demonstrating business impact. “Each CIO Hall of Fame honoree has won the CIO100 Award four times, being associated with the same organization on each occasion. They have indeed advanced the CIO role. These winners are members of an exclusive club: The CIO Hall of Fame,” said Vijay Ramachandran,

Editor – in – Chief, IDG Media. The Hall of Fame Awards are a

testimony to the pursuit of excellence and perseverance. In this regard, this award category recognizes and felicitates those CIOs who have shown astounding and remarkable dedication to excellence in IT, year after

year. “Being in the ‘Hall of Fame’ is all about winning. And it is a great feeling to be a part of this elite group, for the organizations, the team, and for the CIO. It is a sense of achievement and pride, and above all, it is a great feeling,” said V Subramaniam, Director – IT and CIO (Pacific Asia), OTIS. “Hall of fame is an industry recognized award, given to CIOs for hard work done for the last 4-5 years, and then they get nominated to the ‘Hall of Fame’,” added Tamal Chakravorty, CIO, Ericsson India

Developments in IT have a n unmatched potential to transform customer expectations, rewrite the rules for work practices, and disrupt the status quo. For CIOs to do this every year, keeping in mind the multitude of constraints is not just challenging, bit almost impossible for most. Against this backdrop, many factors contribute to the success or failure of innovation within t h e e n t e r p r i s e . Innovation is not easy. “ These are the CIOs who give not just technology solutions to t he org a n i zat ion but t h e i r s o l u t i o n s really provide value to the business. They are helping the business achieve i t s o b j e c t i v e s ,” said Vijay Sethi, VP- IS & CIO, Hero Motocorp. “What we were looking from the entries was an innovative approach to provide business solutions for end customers g iving t h e m b u s i n e s s

benefit and agility to the approaching market and time to market.” added Alok Kumar, VP and Global Head – Internal IT & Shared Services, TCS.

For almost 74 years, HP has p e r si ste nt ly le d t r a n sfor m at ive technology changes year after year. There is so much that comes with experience and dedication. It was but natural for CIO and HP to jointly announce the prestigious CIO Hall of Fame Awards. According to Neelam Dhawan, Managing Director, HP India, these tough times bring out the best out of the organization. “We have partnered with IDG for the last five years to present the Hall of Fame awards, and witnessed how IT has been transforming the business. One of the key factors that we recognize is how innovative CIOs helps business achieve its goals, while also keeping an eye on the return on investment,” she said.

“We are seeing an environment change where the controls are weakening, demands from the millennials are increasing and information is not just data but an explosion of voice, video and everything in-between. CIOs are

facing the challenge that this new way of working brings in, and it just cannot be wished away. The question is how soon we adapt it, and how do we reduce the complexity. The job is not going to get simpler, but more complex,” she adde d . Dh aw a n h igh l ighte d t hat there are interesting times ahead, and at HP these are the challenges that they work with everyday, and together, they c a n i m p l e m e n t innovative solutions to f a c e t h e s e challenges.

“Today’s environment change has controls that are weakening, demands from the millennials are increasing and information is not just data but an explosion of voice, video and everything in-between.NEELAM DHAWANManaging Director, HP Indiaria

CIO100

CLOUD CONQUEROR ANOOP HANDA

Fullerton India

PRASANTH PULIAKOTTUSterlite Technologies

BALJINDER SINGH SABHARWALEXL Service

The benefi ts of cloud computing are no longer theoretical or hypothetical. The cloud is here; the benefi ts are real; and the time to make the transition is now. The Cloud Conqueror awards honor those CIOs who have led this transition and are now pioneers in creating cloud strategies and projects for others to emulate.

BY GOPAL KISHORE

Lines of Business are already by-passing IT and going directly to external cloud providers. Running workloads

on external cloud provider infrastructure isn’t necessa r i ly a bad thing but to regain control, IT must begin to think and acts like a cloud provider. They must b e come ser v ice-d r i v e n w h i c h has far reaching implications. But how? To f u l ly take advantage of cloud comput ing c ap ab i l it i e s , I T mu st t r a n sfor m itself. This includes t r a n s f o r m a t i o n f r o m s e v e r a l p e r sp e c t ive s a s they relate to cloud: o r g a n i z a t i o n a l , operational process and supporting tools,

business management, and underlying software technology and architecture. When, not if, IT transforms itself it will enable business transformation. Cloud Conqueror Special Awards aims

to recognize the preeminent Indian o r g a n i z a t i o n s , which have ably de mon st r ate d a m o v e t o w a r d s using the cloud t o e m p o w e r business. The Cloud Conqueror Special Aw a r de e s h ave implemented cloud and virtualization initiatives that have changed the face of IT within their organizations.

“ T h e c l o u d transforms. Period. Its various f lavors a l l o w s m a r t organizat ions to manage scale; lower

TCO; leverage efficiency; secure growth; vary cost; increase agility and deliver value,” said Vijay Ramachandran, Editor – in – Chief, IDG Media. “We were trying to spot organizations that have taken initiatives to manage scale and delivery timelines, while lowering TCO; that have leveraged the efficiencies, while securing future business growth and brought in cost variability, while increasing business agility. This year’s Cloud Conquerors have achieved this through the myriad flavours of the cloud: private, public, hybrid, managed, hosted and IT as a service,” he added.

Cloud computing represents a major opportunity for IT. At the same time it presents challenges. To fully take advantage of cloud computing capabilities, IT must transform itself.

“Growth is around the corner, and business expects IT to help sail the crest immediately and not plan subsequently.”RAMANUJAM KDirector, Enterprise Sales,NetApp

C LOUD CONQUEROR

G R PILLAISRL

AJIT AWASARELarsen & Toubro

TARUN PANDEYAditya Birla Financial Services

When, not if, IT transforms itself it will enable business transformation. “The cloud is not just another IT hype. It is not a destination either. The philosophy and the technology behind the cloud are about delivering to our end users and customers what we were unable to deliver using conventional computing,” says Ananth Sayana, VP and head corporate IT, L&T and a jury member of the CIO 100 Awards. “The cloud conqueror is not a CIO who just put a cloud project, of one application on the cloud, it is about the CIO who delivered value to the end users, using the cloud technologies,” he added.

The Cloud is a phenomenon that has stirred up tremendous interest. The future belongs to those who will truly understand the present scenario, manage risks, and innovate with a vision to create

a new order. “The cloud has to be used and leveraged by every enterprise and every CIO, and make sure we have a balanced approach that ensures that organizations are transformed by effective IT,” said V Subramaniam, Director – IT and CIO (Pacific Asia), OTIS and a CIO 100 Jury member.

The advantages of moving to the cloud are numerous and compelling. These include cutting costs, improving efficiency, increasing agility, and so on, pointed out Ramanujam K, Director, Enterprise Sales, NetApp. “Creating a holistic cloud strategy can help you maximize the business benefits of the cloud, uncover business benefits you might otherwise miss, prepare the infrastructure you need, and retain control in an era of on-demand cloud

services,” he said. Reflecting that over the last two years,

the discussion around cloud has been ‘why cloud’ and ‘what are the strategies to adopt before moving to the cloud,’ Ramanujam said that organizations are now at some stage or the other in their cloud journey. “Growth is around the corner, and business expects IT to help sail the crest immediately and not plan subsequently. The key is to start with a small infrastructure, but to grow rapidly when the need arises. This is the flexibility that the cloud provides, and is the key to deliver agility to the business. It is an honour to recognize the cloud conqueror,” he added.

CIO100

Efficient IT is more than just being cost-effective, it’s about significantly transforming IT operations to keep them lean

and competitive and being able to switch budgets from ‘lights on’ to becoming

EFFICIENT ENTERPRISE

RAJEEV MITTAL Piaggio Vehicles

SANJEEV KUMARAdhunik Group

SHIRISH GARIBADrive India Enterprise Solutions Ltd.

The Effi cient Enterprise Special Awards aim to recognize Indian organizations, which have demonstrated a seriousness to switch budgets from mere ‘lights on’ to innovation by signifi cantly transforming IT operations to keep them lean and competitive.BY SHWETA RAO

innovation-oriented. That’s today’s ask. Economic pressures are transforming virtually every area of business, and the datacenter is no exception. New-generation Dell servers, storage, and management infrastructure offer

E fficient Enterprise


S. SATHIAVAGEESWARANHPCL

outstanding enterprise efficiency together with exceptional virtualization, scalability, and support—helping IT executives to cut costs without compromising strategic organizational goals.

Weathering a tough economic climate means putting a hard stop on wasteful spending. Datacenter complexity further complicates budget requirements, driving CIOs to scrutinize the IT infrastructure and devise innovative ways to get the job done while consuming as few resources as possible. As energy costs rise, so does the cost of running a datacenter. Nonetheless, information is the lifeblood of virtually every business—and data center capacity must continue adjusting and expanding to keep pace, even when power and cooling capabilities may have reached their limit. At times like this, it is

no surprise when the finance organization calls for belt-tightening tactics that have worked before: simply delay non-critical expenditures. Rather than paring back, many organizations are forging ahead with strategic IT infrastructure deployments designed to increase data center intelligence while reducing operating expenses—effectively boosting their datacenter IQ.

The Efficient Enterprise Special Awards aim to recognize Indian organizations, which have demonstrated a seriousness to switch budgets from mere ‘lights on’ to innovation by significantly transforming IT operations to keep them lean and competitive. The Awards spotted organizations that have taken initiatives to manage TCO while driving innovation that have leveraged the efficiencies of business process automation, cloud computing, virtualization, mobility, and outsourcing, while securing future business growth. Last year, for instance, the winners in this special award category aggressively deployed virtualization in the datacenter and beyond; built private clouds; improved scalability; drastically pruned software l i c e n s i n g ; a n d increased business a g i l i t y, w h i l e reducing operational costs significantly.

Girish Rao Head-IT at Marico was a part of the two-member jury that arrived at the name of the five winners for the Awards. “CIOs really need to scrutinize I T e x p e n d it u r e e s p e c i a l l y those related to i n f r a s t r u c t u r e . They also need to innovate to do more things with fewer resources,” he said. In today’s context, efficient IT is not just technology but also how well CIOs stitch people, process and technology together

said Nataraj. N, CIO at Hexaware, also part of the jury.

Being able to adapt is one thing, but becoming innovative will be the true test of a business’ ability to thrive in the future. One of the main driver’s of innovation today is through being efficient in how every penny is spent. Dell has created a new foundation by which companies can streamline IT budget and reallocate much needed dollars towards innovation. Known for its affinity for perfection and efficiency, Dell along with CIO magazine presented the Efficient Enterprise Special Awards to seven winners. “Keeping lights on comes with a lot of focus after Lehman Brothers brewed a worldwide economic storm three years ago. Since then, we have weathered quite a storm. Whether it is cloud transformation, managing information or looking at maintaining connectivity over all platforms and finally keeping it all secure, we have helped our customers forge past them. Over the past four or five years, Dell has fairly established itself along with the right acquisitions in areas the world doesn’t think about us as serious players in. We

have challenged incumbent vendors in storage, network and other areas with one objective, to bring the right technology to the hands of our end users and leaving the power to utilize it with them. Today, we have become the second player in revenue share for servers in India,” said S. Sridhar, Director – Enterprise Business Solutions at Dell.

“Dell today has challenged incumbent vendors in storage, network and other areas with one objective, to bring the right technology to the hands of our end users and leaving the power to utilize it with them.”

S. SRIDHAR, Director, Enterprise Business Solutions, Dell India

CIO100

THE GREEN CRUSADERS

YOGESH KAPOORHSBC

MANKIKAR RAVIKIRANThe Shamrao Vithal Bank

R. P. RATHQuattro Global Services

The Green Crusader Special Awards honor Indian enterprises that have implemented smart, effi cient strategies to achieve ‘green, sustainable IT’ strategies that benefi t the environment, while adding to an organization’s business value.BY GOPAL KISHORE

G REEN CRUSADERS

VIRESH C SHAHDana India

SHASHI MOHANPolaris Financial

Technology

AJIT MANOCHASyngene

International

Between rapidly growing IT infrastructures and high power and cooling costs, today’s technology executives

have more than enough reasons to explore green, sustainable IT strategies. An ever-increasing demand for IT innovation that advances strategic organizational goals only compounds these challenges. This is why CIOs are striving to drive costs out of IT infrastructures to help free capital resources for strategic investments.

Indian enterprises have always embraced green technology to drive projects within and external to them and also develop products with improved energy efficiency, waste reduction, and eliminating the use or the production of harmful substances. “IT Strategies, that benefit the environment; that reduce an

organization’s carbon footprint while adding to business value. That’s not an easy balancing act, but that’s what green, sustainable computing is all about,” said Vijay Ramachandran, Editor – in – Chief, IDG Media.

Green IT is a part of every CIO’s charter today. Is green image a result of peer pressure to gain competitive advantage? Or is it the sustained pressure exerted by governments and pressure groups across the world to pare green house gas emissions that is driving an enterprise’s green IT strategy? And how far can greening of IT help the cause of environment? For most enterprises, green IT strategy is confined to greening of IT infrastructure, where newer and better technologies are leveraged to reduce energy requirements. According Vijay Sethi, VP and CIO, HeroMoto Corp and part of the CIO 100 Awards Jury, “The CIO can really lead the Green IT implementation in any organization. Green IT initiatives have to go beyond the dimensions of IT. It has to become the philosophy of the organization.”

A l t h o u g h d e m o n s t r a t i n g e n v i r o n m e n t a l responsibility can be an important motivator for going green, these efforts can have concrete benef its for the bottom line as well. Adopting a green IT strateg y can help enterprises to minimize power c o n s u m p t i o n , maximize resource utilization, reduce m a n a g e m e n t c o m p l e x i t y , a n d d e c r e a s e operational costs. A t t h e s a m e t i me, g reen IT has the potential to d r a m at ic a l ly i mprove overa l l e n t e r p r i s e efficiency.

T h e G r e e n Crusader Special

Awards honor Indian enterprises t h at h ave i mplemente d sm a r t , efficient strategies to achieve ‘green, sustainable IT’ strategies, that benefit the environment, while adding to an organization’s business value. Honorees in this special awards categor y have taken varied paths towards sustainable computing and reducing carbon footprint; from revamping IT purchase and disposal policies; creating intelligent energy management systems to reduce power and cooling cost for IT; installing energy-efficient devices; and cutting data center energy use though virtualization; to greening business operations through automation and analytics to slash fuel use; helping to reduce corporate travel bills; promoting paperless offices; and even seeking out alternate sources of energy to fuel IT growth.

“Green IT is not just about reducing carbon footprints. Green IT is a practice that needs to be ingrained into the DNA of the organization. Adopting a green IT infrastructure is the key to sustainable growth, and in today’s economic

climate can often be the difference b e t we e n s i mp l y s u r v i v i n g a n d f lourishing,” says SC Mittal, Senior Executive Director, ( M a n a g e m e n t Services Department & IT), IFFCO.

K u m a r a n R a m a n a t h a n , Managing Director, IDG Global Services p r e s e n t e d t h e awards.

“The CIO can really lead the Green IT implementation in any organization. Green IT initiatives have to go beyond the dimensions of IT. They have to become our philosophy.”

VIJAY SETHIVP and CIO, HeroMoto Corp

CIO100

IT is the technology of information. To take information and transform bits and bytes into usable, actionable insight. That’s the

promise. That’s the challenge.Big Data is the foundation for creating

new levels of business value in enterprises across the globe. With integrated storage,

INFORMATION MASTERMIND

SANJAY CHOWDHURYGeneral Cable Energy India


RAMNATH IYERCrisil

RAJAT SHARMAAtul Ltd

The Information Mastermind Special Awards are designed to reward the enterprises that have blazed new trails in taking information and transforming its bits and bytes into usable actionable insight.BY SHWETA RAO

analytics, and applications, Big Data helps drive efficiency, quality, and personalized products and services, producing higher levels of customer satisfaction and experience.

The Information Mastermind Special Awards is designed to reward the enterprises that have blazed new trails

I NFORMATION MASTERMIND

THOMSON THOMASHDFC Life


PRASHANT VEER SINGH

Bharti Infratel

in taking information and transforming its bits and bytes into usable actionable insight.

In earlier years, honorees in this oldest of our special awards category drove business growth by reducing customer churn and speeding up go-to-market by providing a 360-degree view of enterprise data; eased recovery by improving data availability; scaled up both storage performance and capacity while consolidating; put in place on-demand; high-availability analytics; harmonized business process across a group to improve responsiveness; blueprinted an enterprise-wide warehouse that integrated multiple transactional and operational data sources; and created a foolproof method of

digital content transfer that created new business opportunities.

The Information Masteminds are CIOs and IT leaders who have integrated and automated disaster recovery not just across multiple storage clusters but even multiple cloud environments to ensure high business continuity. They successfully undertook and executed massive data mining and data consolidation initiatives and used analytics smartly for everything from improved supply chain management to near-real-time sales, order and inventory management system.

“The social and video platform with digitization of documents is generating huge numbers of structured and unstructured data. Only proper planning could help CIOs deal with this data burst problem today,” said Ajay Kumar Meher, Sr. Vice President & Head - IT and Post Production at Sony, who is also a part of the two-member jury, which helped CIO magazine arrive at the final winners. The moment you look at complexities of data, and the complexities which arrive because of the sheer size of data and how you can make meaningful information out of it and the inference that business needs out of it. That’s what you call being a n I n for m at ion M a s t e r m i n d , ” s a i d Ve n e e t h P u r u s h o t h a m a n , head IT at Hypercity.

Businesses that exploit Big Data to improve strateg y a n d e x e c u t i o n a r e d i s t a n c i n g t hemselves f rom competitors. The Big Data solution from EMC provides m a r k e t - l e a d i n g , scale-out storage, a unified analytics p l a t f o r m , a n d business process a nd appl ic at ion development tools. To g e t he r, t he s e

allow organizations to draw deeper insights and become a more predictive organization. EMC offers the industry’s most-comprehensive, market-leading information infrastructure portfolio that helps customers drive down costs while implementing more agile IT environments. That’s why EMC has been associated with CIO Magazine for the past 8 years into spotting and saluting India’s Information Masterminds every year. “At EMC, we believe that information is the most valuable asset of an organization and it has always been our endeavor to felicitate CIOs, the information masterminds who are role models in this direction. Our transformative portfolio allows customers to invest more resources in advancing their business—versus keeping the lights on—enabling IT to become more responsive to business needs. We are proud to be associated with an award which recognizes champion CIOs who are setting new benchmarks in the industry through innovative information infrastructure deployments to transform their IT operations,” said Rajesh Janey, President-India & SAARC,

EMC. Like true leaders we have been able to revolutionize the storage industry in India. The past eight years have seen brilliant amount of transformation and our lives as a consumer has changed. Today, we aim at launching our mid-range products will stagger the economics of mid-range storage in India,” he continued. D av id Web ste r, President – APJ at EMC India and Ja ney presented the awards to the CIO100 Information M a s t e r m i n d honorees.

“At EMC, we believe that information is the most valuable asset of an organization and it has always been our endeavor to felicitate CIOs, the information masterminds, who are role models in this direction.”

RAJESH JANEY President - India & SAARC, EMC

CIO100

INNOVATION ARCHITECT ASHISH PACHAURI

TATA Teleservices

VIVEK KHANNAHavells India

VENKATESH NATARAJANAshok LeylandServices

The Innovation Architect Special Awards identify organizations that have leveraged IT supremely to beat the competition and shake up the way their industries operate.BY SHWETA RAO

Experiment; question the status quo; apply technology not as it might have been intended—That’s how competition is

beat and the way their industries operate changes forever.

The Innovation Architect Special Awa rds ident i f y organizations that have leveraged IT supremely to beat the competition and shake up the way t he i r i ndu st r ies operate. The winners in this categor y have all believed in experimenting, in questioning the status quo, and in often applying technology not as it might have been i n t e n d e d . H o w else would you describe a tractor that automatically summons a mechanic before a part fails? Or, taking training to an entirely different level till a talent pool emerged across 19 countries? Or,

cooking up a mini-ERP in-house to allow a greenfield division to hit the ground running, while concurrently rolling out the main ERP app? Or, using RFID to shrink the cost of cattle insurance? Or, building a reverse auction mechanism

to beat a truckers’ cartel? Or, even c o n v i n c i n g a competitor to do bu si nes s wor t h over Rs 35,000 crore from a single, linked platform? To be a winner in this category, a n org a n i zat ion must demonstrate that its innovative p r o j e c t b r e a k s with conventional ideas or processes; t h at i t g o e s beyond marginal improvements on s omet h i n g t h at already exists; and that it has had a wide impact.

Ac c or d i n g to Sudhir Reddy, CIO of Mindtree who was part of the two member jury team for the Awards,

CIOs have to encourage failure, in order to create a positive environment and stimulate innovation within their teams. “A little bit of cross-firing really drives innovation,” he says. “An innovative CIO has to use technology in a way that it transforms services and ensures that it creates a competent edge which is sustainable,” said Arun Gupta, CIO at Cipla also part of the jury.

Change seems to be the only constant in the 21st century. This dynamic means that businesses are facing challenges and opportunities which are very different to what they were a decade ago or even a year ago. The world of tomorrow is one where uncertainty and fierce global micro-competition is going to be the norm. Rightly so, the world is looking up to innovation in the triangle of technology,

“We believe that innovation is the quintessential ingredient to successfully differentiate, and outperform the competition. Innovation is a discipline to be mastered and managed and is at the core of our DNA.”

ANAND SANKARANSVP & Business Head at Wipro

I NNOVATION ARCHITECT

S. RAMASAMYIOCL

MANOJ SRIVASTAVASistema Shyam Teleservices

MAN MOHAN GOYALPhillips Carbon Black

sociology and the environment to help them deal with these changes. This innovation is coming to the fore in various hues and has shifted from the core to the edge of the enterprise. Innovation today is being driven by the rise of trends like analytics, mobility, cloud and as-a-service, even as the future will see newer technologies such as machine-to-machine (M2M) communication and natural user interface (NUI) fast becoming mainstream. In this fast changing world, Wipro believes it can leverage on its institutionalized innovation culture to push the boundaries for delivering solutions that provide enhanced value and direct impact for our customers.

Wipro along with CIO Magazine presented the Innovation Architect Special Awards to winners. “It’s never

the strongest nor more intelligent that survive in troubled times, but the people who dynamically adapt and become innovatively responsive to change. We at Wipro have been at the forefront of innovation to provide cutting edge technologies to our customers both in India and globally. We launched the fastest supercomputer in the country four years ago. Wipro has also designed solutions that have defined remote patient monitoring in the healthcare space. In the managed services space, we have been focusing to drive high levels of automation as well as using cognitive engines in the manufacturing industry,” said Anand Sankaran, SVP & Business Head at Wipro.

Taking forward our legacy in pioneering the ODC concept, Wipro

has also developed application-based innovations like Flex and Cigma delivery models which are service-based as opposed to resource-based. We believe that innovation is the quintessential ingredient to successfully differentiate, and outperform the competition. Innovation is a discipline to be mastered and managed and is at the core of our DNA. Innovation Architect Awards winners have challenged conventional wisdom and the Awards salute them to have exceeded limits of innovation every time, Sankaran said.

CIO100

With the proliferation of mobile devices and the corresponding rise in rich media consumption,

demands for resiliency and security from today’s networks are on the rise. To adapt to these challenges, modern day campuses as

NETWORKING PIONEER

V C KUMANANIDFC

R. SUNDARA RAJANL&T IDPL

MURALIDHARAN RAMACHANDRAN

Syntel

M. MANIKANDANThe Lakshmi Vilas

Bank

The Networking Pioneer Special Awards honor those organizations that have created the impeccable underlying connections and frameworks to keep enterprise data fl owing while addressing issues of growth, scale, and cost-optimization.BY GOPAL KISHORE

well as data center networks are becoming more complex, creating networks that are inherently difficult to manage and operate. Enterprise and service providers are seeking solutions to their networking challenges. “How do you keep users happy and the velocity of growth high?”

N ETWORKING PIONEER

CIO100

With the proliferation of mobile devices and the corresponding rise in rich media consumption,

demands for resiliency and security from today’s networks are on the rise. To adapt to these challenges, modern day campuses as

NETWORKING PIONEER

V C KUMANANIDFC

R. SUNDARA RAJANL&T IDPL

MURALIDHARAN RAMACHANDRAN

Syntel

M. MANIKANDANThe Lakshmi Vilas

Bank

The Networking Pioneer Special Awards honor those organizations that have created the impeccable underlying connections and frameworks to keep enterprise data fl owing while addressing issues of growth, scale, and cost-optimization.BY GOPAL KISHORE

well as data center networks are becoming more complex, creating networks that are inherently difficult to manage and operate. Enterprise and service providers are seeking solutions to their networking challenges. “How do you keep users happy and the velocity of growth high?”

N ETWORKING PIONEER

PRATAP KUMAR SINGH

Ibibo Web

S. FRANCIS RAJANBangalore

International Airport

MOHIT BHISHIKARPersistent Systems

asked Vijay Ramachandran, Editor – in – Chief, IDG Media. “By creating impeccable connections and frameworks to keep data flowing while addressing issues of growth, scale, and cost,” he answered. The Networking Pioneer Special Awards honor those organizations that have created the impeccable underlying connections and frameworks to keep enterprise data flowing while addressing issues of growth, scale, and cost-optimization.

CIOs need to make users happy by diminishing the impact of application latency. This can happen by building an efficient collaborative architecture spanning across the breadth of their enterprises. Some IT leaders have also used mobility to push information down

and back from their sales force. One can even empower the sales team to visually collaborate on the move and improve efficiency across the extended enterprise to deliver higher sales and an enhanced customer experience. It is also a good idea to use cloud computing to help dealers maintain lean inventory levels or building a redundant, self-healing platform across 42 countries. These among others are just a few of the initiatives championed by the winners in this special award category. “The challenge lies in how you design your networks to keep them internally operational and up 24/7,” he said.

A networking pioneer is a CIO who understands and strategically plans a completely secured network keeping in mind the disaster recovery, business continuity, and security as well as the availability of the network at all times,” said Sunil Mehta, SVP and Area Systems-Director, Central Asia, JWT and a member of the CIO 100 Awards Jury.

The days of IT services delivered through a tightly controlled internal network are long gone. That’s why providing a secure, identity-controlled network is imperative. A number of IT t re nd s—i nc lud i n g the consumerization o f I T, c l o u d comput i n g, a nd s o c i a l m e d i a— present significant o p p o r t u n i t i e s f o r b u s i n e s s e s t o i m p r o v e p r o d u c t i v i t y . B efore adopt i n g these technologies, h o w e v e r , organizations should fully understand the impact they will have on the underlying infrastructure and, more specifically, t h e n e t w o r k e n v i r o n m e n t , since it is a critical enabler for all of these services. “The Networking Pioneer is someone who has built their networks

to adjust and respond dynamically, based on their business policy. They want those policies to be automated so that they can reduce the manual work and personnel cost of running their networks. They want to quickly deploy and run new applications within and on top of their networks so that they can deliver business results. And they want to do this in a way that allows them to introduce these new capabilities without disrupting their business,” said T G Dhandapani, CIO, TVS.

Networks are the pulse of IT. Juniper Networks helps CIOs keep this pulse racing in sync with the business demands. And IDG takes immense pleasure to introduce the Networking Pioneer awards alongside Juniper Networks. The company is the leader in high-performance networking and offers a high-performance network infrastructure that creates a responsive and trusted environment for accelerating the deployment of services and applications over a single network.

According to Ravi Chauhan, Managing Director, India and SAARC at Juniper Networks, his organization is a classic Silicon Valley start-up. “Seventeen years

later, we still feel like one, simply because the business that we are in has seen so much change in these years. It is like living life constantly on an inf lection point. This creates an industry which is full of opportunities as well as challenges. We spend 23 percent of our revenues on R&D, one of the highest for any technology company in the world,” he said. “We are proud to associate with t he Net work ing Pioneer awards and congratulate all the winners,” he added.

“With the proliferation of mobile devices and the corresponding rise in rich media consumption, the challenge lies in how you design your networks to keep them internally operational and up 24/7.”

RAVI CHAUHAN Managing Director, India and SAARC, Juniper Networks

CIO100

SECURITY SUPREMO YOGESH ZOPE

Bharat Forge

MUKESHKUMAR JAINICICI Bank

MUKUND PRASADWelspun Group

New technologies expose businesses and other organizations to a variety of emerging information security risks. The Security Supremo Special Awards acknowledge the Indian enterprises that have dared to take the risk and best addressed the security, risk, governance and compliance landscape to keep business value high.BY GOPAL KISHORE

Today, successful organizations depend upon their ability to collaborate, communicate, and share information online.

Established tools, such as email and the Web, are now mor e i mp or t a nt than ever before, while emerging Web 2 .0 applicat ions, blogs, and social net work i ng sites allow organizations to work in new, more efficient, and innovative ways. Yet these technologies a l s o e x p o s e b u s i n e s s e s a n d other organizations to a variety of new a n d e m e r g i n g i n f o r m a t i o n security risks. The Security Supremo Sp e c i a l Aw a r d s ac k nowledge t he Indian enterprises

that have dared to take the risk and best addressed the security, risk, governance and compliance landscape to keep business value high.

Rolled out an app security testing framework across 550 applications? Developed a holistic model to ensure better operational threat visibility? Envisaged a data c o n f i d e n t i a l i t y s t r a t e g y t o m i n i m i z e d at a loss? Effectively p r o t e c t e d sensitive customer i n f o r m a t i o n ? Created a multi-layered securit y architecture that keeps enterprise c o nte nt h i g h ly available? Fostered a robust process for staying in sync with the fast-changing

regulatory environment? Past winners of this special award category have done all this and more. “All business is risk. Without risk there’s no reward. That’s why it’s critical to take a holistic view of threats, security, governance and compliance to keep business value high,” said Vijay Ramachandran, Editor – in – Chief, IDG Media.

From tarnished brand reputation to regulatory fines, the adverse impacts of data breaches are clear. Just a single incident of data loss can erode a business’s competitive advantage, weaken consumer confidence and result in fines or penalties from regulators. The problem is exacerbated by the rapid proliferation of mobile devices, widespread use of peripheral devices, and easy access to file-sharing software — all increase the risk

S ECURITY SUPREMO

“We are proud to listen to our customer’s stories, and recognize the brave CIOs who have faced down cyber criminals and reduced the risks for their organizations.”JOHN MCCORMACKCEO, Websense

ANIL KUMAR KAUSHIKBharat Petroleum

BHUSHAN AKERKAR

Hindalco Industries

MITHILESH KUMAR SINGHWave Crest Payment

Technology

of data loss and data theft. According to CVG Prasad, CIO, ING Vysva Bank, and a jury member of the CIO 100 Awards, “It has always been a challenge to get budgets sanctioned for IT security, but things are fast changing now. Enterprises are now willing to invest in IT security without waiting for disaster to occur.”

With the emergence of cloud, mobility, social business, big data and more, the boundaries of business continue to extend and dissolve. As a result, risks posed to confidential or proprietary information, business continuity, financial stability, brand reputation and even governmental control are increasing steadily. Thus it is critical to strategically manage IT and operational risk end to end. “The Security Supremos are those individuals who have responded well to the changing

IT landscape to mitigate risk arising externally as well and internally,” said Dhiren Savla, CIO, VFS Global Services and a member of the jury.

As organizations face t ighter requirements around privacy, they also face a mounting challenge in countering advanced threats. Developing security intelligence—the ability to predict, identify and react to potential threats proactively—is a key priority in this new digital age. Even the best warriors need a strategist to win over the complex security battles. Websense’s dedication to stand and fight this battle along with the CIOs, makes them the preferred choice for CIO to present the Security Supremo special awards.

Highlighting that cyberthreats broke new ground with mobile devices, while

reaching social media, John McCormack, CEO, Websense, said that online criminals also stepped up attacks via email, web and other traditional vectors. “This year, like the ones before has seen unprecedented activity ranging from cyber criminals, nation states, and a lot of hackers and activists out there who are after our organizations. No one is really safe, and at Websense, we pride in building platforms that help our customers deal with a broad spectrum of threats,” he said. Presenting the awards for the fourth year in a row, he said “We are proud to listen to our customer’s stories, and recognize the brave CIOs who have faced down cyber criminals and reduced the risks for their organizations.”

CIO100

INFRASTRUCTURE EVOLUTION FUTURIST B V MESHRAM

Shipping Corpora-tion of India

JIJY OOMMENBajaj Capital

KOPAL SARIN RAJTATA Projects

The Infrastructure Evolution Futurist Special Awards seek to put the spotlight on those organizations that have taken the building blocks-the nuts and bolts, of IT within an enterprise.BY SHWETA RAO

Today the apps and the business process layers are being forced to evolve at a rapid pace and in most cases are being

completely redone from scratch. This is predominantly being driven by the use of internet to enable business and SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud).

In order to enable this rapid change, the IT infrastructure l aye r a nd it s management has to be designed to be as dynamic as the app and business process layers while being robust and secure at the same time.

This is a big challenge to be su r mou nte d for many enterprises. CIOs have to ensure that while getting more bang for the buck that is being invested, the enterprises are not being impacted b y t e c h n o l o g y obsolescence.

Quite innately, a long-term view becomes immensely critical while planning for, architecting and setting up this infrastructure.

The Infrastructure Evolution Futurist Special Awards put the spotlight on those CIOS and their organizations who have visualized the future and thus built the IT

infrastructure that can constantly evolve seamlessly aligned to the changing business demands.

“Such a futurist d at ac e nte r C IO is the one who is on a constant look out for newer technologies and evolved approaches t o c o n s t a n t l y introducing a lot of new elements i nto datacenters f o r e f f i c i e n t management and effective monitoring that help sustain g r o w t h a n d prepare for future,” s a i d S e b a s t i a n Joseph, President-

Technology & FM, DDB Mudra, who was part of the two-member jury that helped CIO magazine to arrive at the seven winners in this category.

It is a well-understood fact that business growth comes from a relentless focus on customers and business innovation. Here, IT must do its part to ensure that the enterprise maintains its focus on innovating to create new products and services, and enhancing customer value. And, that’s exactly the platform IT infrastructure helps shape up.

To get to the right mix of envisaging, assessing, deploying and running the IT infrastructure bedrock that enables an enterprise to function, three aspects are required to be acknowledged: the mindset and investments need to shift from maintenance to innovation, enabling

“The winners of Infrastructure Evolution Futurist awards have innovated with their datacenter infrastructure, not just from the standpoint of current needs but also for the future.”

SHARAD SANGHIMD & CEO, Netmagic Solutions

I NFRASTRUCTURE EVOLUTION FUTURIST

RAGHAVENDRA RWNS (Holdings)

NAYAZ SHARIFFThomson Reuters

HARNATH BABUAviva Life Insurance

MAKARAND SAWANTDeepak Fertilizers and Petrochemicals

Corporation

flexibility and enhancing agility, and managing risk.

While CIOs appreciate these aspects to derive optimum results from their investments in the infrastructure, they also need to aim to reduce cost and increase utilization of resources. This frees up the resources to help enterprises focus on core competencies to augment solution or service competitiveness, while creating avenues to generate revenue and streamlining existing processes.

Quite naturally, to accomplish the aspects that are cornerstone to infrastructure, businesses are increasingly seeking ways to optimize their infrastructure by avoiding two extremes: wasted capacity that results in excessive expenditure; and insufficient capacity that directly impacts the ability

to respond to dynamic market demands. CIOs now require a spectrum of IT strategies atop an adaptive infrastructure to do more with less, and transform the forced austerity of the last few years into significant competitive advantage.

“The key to a successful infrastructure is doing a thorough cost-benefit analysis, a mixture of the hard dollar costs and the less tangible soft costs, and having qualitative measures of needs, risks, and benefits,” said Virender Pal, CTO at Spicejet, the jury member.

Netmag ic Solutions, an NT T Communications Company, presented these special awards to recognize such visionaries, as Netmagic supports their vision to foresee business’ needs while architecting IT infrastructure solutions that enable the growth for enteprises.

“Netmagic was founded in 1998 and it’s been a long journey since then. We have come a long way since partnering with enterprises in managing their evolving IT infrastructure needs. In short, organizations evaluating their options for moving complex applications or functions, have chosen Netmagic as their partner to manage their entire IT infrastructure,” said Sharad Sanghi, MD & CEO, Netmagic. The winners of Infrastructure Evolution Futurists have innovated with their datacenter infrastructure, not just from the standpoint of meeting current needs but also for enabling the future growth of their business, he continued.

Sanghi and Sunil Gupta, Chief Operating Officer at Netmagic gave away the Awards to the honorees.

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CIO 100 2013 awards and symposium saw some of the best speakers and the biggest names in the entertaintment industry. Here are the highlights

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Andrew Bryant speaks about quali-ties of an astute CIO.

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Micheal Podolinsky presenting his keynote.

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Enthralled audience.3

CIOs in conversation.4

Meet, greet and network.5

A resounding thumbs-up fromCIOs6

Andrew Grant investigating who killed creativity.

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CIOs flocking to the experience zones

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Sivamani at his best.9

Renowned sand artist, Siddhi Yadav scripting CIO 100 Awards over the years.

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Terrence Lewis grooving to Bollywood tunes.

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A TRANSFORMED VIEW OF ITEMC’s Head IT details EMC’s internal cloud computing strategy designed to completely transform the way his company does its business.

By Shweta Rao

C hange is the only constant thing. This gospel truth couldn’t have been more applicable to technology than anything else. The advent of IT and cloud computing has changed the face of communication and the flow of

information. More and more organizations are embracing cloud computing to help innovate and transform their business.

At the EMC Inner Circle which was held at Bangalore and Mumbai, Tarun Sareen, Head India IT COE and APJC Theater, Leader- IT, EMC spoke to India’s leading CIOs on how EMC can lead them to their customers and partners on their journey to transformation through cloud computing and big data.

“Businesses today run on the fuel of information and CIOs are the custodians of their IT’s resilience, compliance and security,” said Sareen. “Organizations need to take a comprehensive and methodical approach to risk mitigation to ensure not just business continuity but also preserve their brand image.”

In the face of massive regulatory change, most far-sighted enterprises in the country and around the world are seeing managing business risks as a source of competitive advantage rather than simply an exercise in meeting regulatory requirements or dynamic demand from their business. This transformative change requires an unprecedented collaboration between business and IT, as well as sponsorship from the company’s

executive management. IT organizations are trying to drive down non-discretionary

costs and free up funds to enable new business initiatives. Some also consider alternative organizational models, plan shared-services initiatives, and choose new IT applications and products. “This means that CIOs must continuously be examples of the transformation they talk about and that puts CIOs in the hot seat, everyday,” said Sareen.

Single Organization, Disparate IT ViewsCFOs have always viewed IT as an expense line which needs efforts to be minimized. “IT budgeting almost always is discussed in the board room based on last year’s run rate. There is never a question what the current IT demands are,” said Sareen. “IT is generally operated like a regulated monopoly. This kind of attitude from the CFO’s office leads to rationing and a focus on only maintenance. Not surprisingly, most CIOs just focus on keeping the lights on and there is no space left for innovation.”

Business’s outlook towards IT isn’t good news either. “For multiple reasons, IT is usually isolated from what the business wants. The business’ view of IT usually complains about IT being too slow, expensive, restrictive, and prescriptive. That’s

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why it’s reasoned that investment on IT needs to be avoided,” he said.

IT should ideally stand for Instant Technology, but that definition is far from reality today, said Sareen. “Today’s CIOs reasons that legacy systems are holding him back. Traditional systems come with space, cooling and power constraints. There is an unabated growth in consumption but security challenges have grown multi-fold. How then can CIOs expect to grab a seat at the boardroom table?”

Transformative Technology ForcesSareen’s contention is that with opportunities like big data and analytics, CIOs now have the chance to have a better seat at the table than ever before. Cloud, big data, mobility and social are major technology forces creating a demand for consumer grade experiences within enterprise IT. “Today’s business climate requires increased agility, and cloud computing can deliver that by providing scalable, flexible, and cost-effective IT. More than 15,000 services professionals at EMC have helped accelerate every phase of our customer’s transformation in the past decade to IT-as-a-service as part of their journey to cloud computing,” he said.

Sareen also shared stories of his successes and challenges as an IT leader at EMC, with the CIOs in the audience. For EMC, as an organization, the last 10 years has been a heavy investment into cloud and big data technologies internally. “EMC has been a serial innovator and market consolidator since 2003. We have invested more than 33$B on leading technology with upto 17$B on

mergers and acquisitions and the rest on research and development,” said Sareen. “Within EMC, we have grown from 24,000 internal users in 2004 to 60,000 today. Our IT environment runs on five datacenters globally, in USA, Ireland and India. From the time we began our cloud journey in 2004, our storage capacity has tripled yet our infrastructure manual costa have remained flat, and we stand 93 percent virtualized today.”

EMC has begun to recognize the market shift on how technology forces like cloud and mobile are being consumed and sold. “We are now moving from a transactional-based product selling organization to more of a consultative-led engagement. At the same time, we are not talking services from a traditional point of view or trying to build a generic services company. But we want to build our services around technologies that matter the most --things like cloud and big data,” said Sareen.

For obvious reasons, EMC is seen as an industry thought leader today. “We are now stepping aggressively into cloud applications, big data and mobility. We will also be aiming at further evolving and optimizing our organization model to align ourselves to these changes in the technology market. We will continue to look at the entire life cycle starting from strategy, design, implementation, operation, education and support for customers who want to consume those technologies,” said Sareen.

Architecting for the FutureWithin EMC, Sareen has led IT operations at COE to improve customer focus and create business transformation to deliver operational efficiencies. “To achieve

these goals, EMC IT has embraced the hybrid cloud approach to IT infrastructure,” he said. Sareen defines the hybrid cloud as the next-gen of IT infrastructure that provides its users the ef f ic ienc y, control and choice of internal IT

organization.By transitioning to a hybrid cloud-based IT

infrastructure, Sareen’s ultimate goal is to enable end-to-end, on-demand self service provisioning of IT services to the customers that are the business units at EMC.

“We have led our journey to cloud transformation, with virtualization at its core, delivering IT-as-a-service by becoming agents of change. We have partnered with business in building a constantly agile, contemporary IT organization that is run like a business,” said Sareen. Leveraging the power of private cloud, EMC IT is introducing innovative services such as on-demand IT infrastructure provisioning and self-service options for IT service enablement.

To facilitate the transition, EMC IT has concentrated its efforts on the definition of clear strategy for internal cloud and programs that focus on transitioning its IT infrastructure to the virtualized datacenter model. To prepare his users for the new paradigm of IT operations, Sareen also educated his stakeholders at various service levels. “We worked closely with partners and product divisions, so that EMC IT could concentrate on maximizing the business benefits of technology and move the existing IT infrastructure to the private cloud,” he said.

By having “risk versus reward” conversations with stakeholders at each level, EMC IT has been successful in accelerating the adoption of private cloud-based technologies within the company. EMC IT can now provide vendors with granular details of process workflows and solution requirements customers demand. “On the whole, EMC IT has successfully put together a more efficient and more agile ecosystem based on its cloud computing strategy,” said Sareen. “We have been concentrating

on internal infrastructure to prepare for cloud transition, and virtualization is at the core of this effort.”

TARUN SAREENHead India IT COE and APJC Theater, Leader – IT, EMC

HOSTED BY

Congratulates the Winners of CIO100 2013

For more details log on to www.cio100.in

Ten Cloud TenetsCLOUD COMPUTING | According to the IT industry trade association CompTIA, “over 80 percent of companies now claim to use some form of cloud solution, whether that be virtual machines that can be spun up on demand or applications that can be easily procured and put into use.”

Right now there are three major trends driving cloud usage and deployment, says Laura Maio, director of customer solutions for Trend Micro. “First, organizations are using public cloud as a natural extension of their internal environments. Second, non-IT business groups are using the public cloud to gain faster access to server resources and storage. Third, IT organizations are being pressured to establish secure private cloud environments that function like public clouds, in order to win back non-IT business groups from the public cloud.”

Ed Mahon, Kent State vice president and CIO, is a big believer in the cloud, but only if IT departments use it intelligently. “We use activity-based cost accounting to assess when it makes sense to move on-premises service into the cloud,” he says. “For example, we saved $650,000 (about Rs 4.1 crore) annually by moving our faculty and staff e-mail service to the cloud.”

For IT managers, the challenge is to use the cloud both effectively and safely. We consulted with several cloud experts and compiled this list of 10 cloud best practices.

Cloud computing has surpassed

its ‘hot-trend’ phase and started

permeating the enterprise IT architecture.

These pointers are to give you a

heads up on how to go about

choosing the right cloud solution.

technologyESSENTIAL A CLOSER LOOK AT CLOUD COMPUTING

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1: Know Your CloudsThe cloud is not a monolith. In fact, there are a variety of clouds for IT managers to deal with; each with its own characteristics and applications. Smart managers need to know which cloud is right for them—Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) or Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), before moving data outside of their enterprise servers and firewalls.

2: Assess Your IT ActivitiesTo use the cloud effectively, IT managers must know which applications would yield benefits to clients by migrating to the cloud. Kent State’s Mahon refers to this process as ‘activity-based cost accounting’. This means looking at the things you currently do in-house, and assessing whether they could be done more efficiently in the cloud.

He says, “In fact, you need to take a look at everything; not just what you do in-house, but what your IT department is good at, and not good at.”

3: No One Cloud Fits AllHaving selected the appropriate cloud(s) for their customers based on activity-based cost assessments, IT managers must

dig down into available cloud providers and applications to see which offering best suits their needs. This is because “there is no one set of overarching guidelines that dictate which cloud applications work best for all clients,” says John Howie, COO, Cloud Security Alliance (CSA). “This is why IT managers should investigate the cloud options that exist and compare them diligently against their own requirements, to find the one that truly best suits their client’s needs and the IT department’s security systems.”

4: Legal Compliance Drives Cloud ChoiceUnder both US and the laws of other nations, certain forms of information—usually financial and legal—must be kept on an enterprise’s own servers. Failure to heed these ‘compliance requirements’ can land business, institutional, and governmental clients into serious legal problems.

“This is why we recommend a hybrid approach to cloud usage,” says Jeetu Patel, general manager of Syncplicity. “Data that falls within regulated compliance should be kept on premise,” Patel says. “Other information, such as public relations information about the company, can be safely and legally be stored and accessed in the cloud.”

5: There’s Safety in RedundancyDon’t be fooled by the term ‘cloud’: We’re really talking about accessing and relying upon other people’s servers. Particularly in the IaaS scenario, it’s the IT manager’s responsibility to make sure that there’s redundancy built in because servers do fail.

“If you truly intend to use the cloud safely, then you should choose a provider or

providers who store your files in multiple locations, with multiple ways to access them,” says the CSA’s John Howie. “But don’t stop there: Make sure that you have multiple copies of your files on the cloud, with interconnections between them to ensure that when one file is updated, all are updated. This way, you’ll still be online and in business should one of your copies go down.”

6: Check Your VendorsJust as the cloud is not monolithic, neither are all cloud providers the same. IT

Just as the cloud is not monolithic, neither are all cloud providers the same. IT leaders need to carefully examine what each cloud provider has to offer.

ESSENTIAL technology

22.2% Indian CIOs think the public cloud is the most over-hyped technology today.

SOURCE: CIO RESEARCH

managers need to carefully examine what each cloud provider has to offer, and what resources and commitments they make to back up their promises.

“The issue isn’t so much security, since most cloud providers take security very seriously,” says Dave Elliott, product marketing manager for Symantec’s cloud business. “But what you need to ask is what kind of backups each provider has, what recovery protocols are in place, and how easy it is for your customer’s employees to access cloud-based data when primary systems are down.”

7: Take Time to Properly Migrate Applications to the CloudWhen migrating on-premise applications to the cloud, it is vital to do so in a manner that is methodical, carefully considered, and tested on a step-by-step basis. It is dangerous to simply upload applications onto the cloud, do a few configuration tweaks, and assume everything will work as desired – because it likely won’t.

Unfortunately, this latter approach is so common among new cloud users that Michael Kopp, technology strategist at the Compuware APM Center of Excellence, ranks it among the biggest mistakes associated with cloud deployment.

“Trying to migrate existing applications to the cloud without considering the changes that are necessary often leads to

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bad performance, outages and increased cost,” says Kopp.

8: Maximize Security by Keeping the Customer SatisfiedAs Trend Micro’s Laura Maio points out, one trend driving cloud deployment is the tendency for employees to bypass IT altogether. They do this because some IT departments’ private cloud policies make these resources more difficult to use than the insecure public alternative. People being what they are, will go for the easier solution first—in this case, the public cloud—without worrying about the risk it could pose to their employers.

“To succeed, the enterprise’s private cloud must provide users with public cloud-grade usability,” says Syncplicity’s Patel. “By doing so, IT managers will be able to keep cloud usage with VPNs and firewalls, rather than having convenience-focused users posting sensitive data on easy-to-use public clouds.”

9: Keep an Eye on ThingsJust because an application is in the cloud, doesn’t mean that the IT department can afford to ignore it and focus on other things. Even at the best cloud providers, things can go wrong. This is why savvy IT managers keep a close eye on their cloud-based applications and data, to catch problems before they become serious. As Kopp warns, “Using the cloud without proper monitoring and application performance management is like flying blind.”

10: The Cloud doesn’t Get You off the HookThe last and most important cloud best practice is to accept that cloud-based content is just as much an IT manager’s daily responsibility as anything stored on their on-premises servers. Moving applications and data into the cloud doesn’t offload the responsibility for them. It merely changes the nature of the responsibility, transforming into a shared responsibility borne by both the cloud provider and the IT manager. CIO

James Careless is a freelance writer. Send feedback to [email protected].

ESSENTIAL technology

CLOUD APPS | Hybrid cloud is probably the buzziest of the buzz words in the cloud

computing industry right now. All major vendors are publicizing their hybrid cloud

approaches widely.

Startup CloudVelocity is, however, tackling the hybrid cloud game from the

perspective of applications and software that are already running on customer sites

and moving those up into the public cloud, all without any changes to the code. Unlike

what other vendors focus on in terms of launching services specifically within their

own networks, CloudVelocity says it’s taking an open approach: Launch any app you

have to a variety of public cloud options.

Cloud Velocity works by analyzing applications that a customer wants to move

up into the cloud and the company’s software will determine all the root paths that

the system makes. In doing so, the software creates a blueprint of everything that

application needs to run. Once the Cloud Velocity software knows exactly what the app

looks like, it provisions those same resources in a public cloud setting.

By spinning up the application in the cloud, it allows organizations to easily migrate

applications to and from the cloud, or extend applications to take advantage of

the scale public cloud resources provide. In addition to CloudVelocity supporting

authentication credentials, the software also automatically encrypts data in motion

and at rest, and spins up cloud-based virtual machines in Amazon Web Service’s

virtual private cloud, which are resources dedicated to individual customers and not

shared on a multi-tenant platform.

“There is definitely a demand for ‘onboarding’ applications to cloud environments,”

says Gartner analyst Aneel Lakhani, commenting on the different approaches to

creating a hybrid cloud. “We’ve seen the rise of products and services that seek to

solve for the multi-system application space by understanding or modeling multi-

system apps in order to migrate or deploy them to multiple environments.” — By Brandon Butler

Hybrid Hosts

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Workers in high-pressure fields like emergency medicine and nuclear plant operations make critical decisions every day. When they have questions about complex situations in the field, consulting someone with more expertise can make a world of difference. Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and vendor Intelligent Product Solutions have combined voice and video technology in a wearable system that allows an ER doctor, for example, to see exactly what an EMT sees through a headset camera. A nuclear technician, meanwhile, can view remote content, such as repair instructions annotated live by an expert, through the headset’s eyepiece. This real-time visual connection means “the ability to debug a problem is in shared mode,” says Mike Roberts, a principal at PARC and a key developer of the HC1 headset combo. Nuclear power maintenance company Areva plans to use the headsets in part to reduce the number of workers in restricted areas, thereby protecting more people from exposure to radiation.


Double Vision

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THINKPAD OUTTHINKS ACCIDENTAL SPILLSWITH ITS SPILL-RESISTANT KEYBOARDFEATURING A UNIQUE BATHTUB DESIGN.The ThinkPad® keyboard has specially designed channels to divertand collect the water in a bathtub-like tray. That drains out the liquidthrough special outlets and keeps the critical components safe.So you can work without worrying about data loss.

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Drain holes

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Lenovo reserves the right to correct any errors, inaccuracies or omissions and to change or update information at any time, without prior notice. Trademarks: The following are trademarks or registered trademarks of Lenovo: Lenovo, the Lenovo logo, For Those Who Do and ThinkPad. Microso� and Windows are registered trademarks of Microso� Corporation. Other company, product and service names may be trademarks or service marks of others. ©2013 Lenovo. All rights reserved. AP _ IND _ PRN _ Q2-14 _ 360702 _ CIO 27.6X22.2

www.lenovo.com/in/en | 1800-3000-9990 | [email protected] your business the ThinkPad advantage