cio august 1 2009 issue

Many CIOs turn to consultants to help navigate tricky stretches of IT. But they come at a price. Ranbaxy shows why you don’t need them. 8

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From The ediTor-in-ChieF

“A consultant is someone who takes your watch away to tell you what time it is.”

—Edward Finkelstein

Just reading this quote should let you understand that Ed Finkelstein wasn’t sold on

consultants or their opinions. I even know of CIOs who would only readily agree with the

former chairman of R.H. Macy, but more on that later.

I want to first take you back a hundred and fifty years, to Titusville, Pennsylvania — the

site of what was known as Drake’s Folly. This was where Edwin Drake decided to drill for

oil, against the advice of geologists. While oil was known to exist in Titusville, the experts

had pronounced it impractical to extract.

But Drake was convinced that it was possible, and decided to go ahead all the same.

Progress was painfully slow at about three feet a day. Crowds gathered to mock the crew,

which was beginning to harbor doubts.

But Drake persisted, all the while

innovating his drilling technique. Just

about the time that funds were running

out, on August 27, 1859, Drake and his

team struck oil.

Curiously, the three of the most important strikes in American oil history — Titusville,

Spindletop, East Texas — were all drilled against expert opinion.

So why did the geologists get it wrong, not once but thrice? Was it because they were too

caught in the technicalities to consider the potential of a new approach?

‘Domain expertise’ CIOs tell me, is what few consultants or external experts bring to the

table. And, it’s domain expertise, which they feel leads to a better understanding of end user

requirements, and thus project success.

While there is a significant bunch of CIOs who feel that “without the well rounded

experience of consultants a project can become an exercise in trial and error”, an increasing

number also feel that in-house teams can do a better job of it.

But this does not mean that consultants have no redeeming qualities. Far from it. In almost

every case that I know of where a consultant has entered the equation -– either management

support has been more forthcoming or the scope of a project has been widened.

The reason for that, I suspect, is that consultants are better (and smarter) at couching

benefits in purely business terms. Now surely CIOs can do that too?

Domain expertise, which few consultants bring to the table, leads to a better understanding of end user requirements.

Keeping it in the family.

The D.I.Y. Benefit

Vol/4 | ISSUE/182 a u g u s T 1 , 2 0 0 9 | REAL CIO WORLD

Content,Editorial,Colophone.indd 2 7/28/2009 6:38:37 PM

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Career Strategist RIDIng A BEAR MARkEt | 16In a changing market, it’s essential for CIOs to change as well. But adapting to a bear market is not always easy. Here are a few pointers on how you can do it as best as possible. Column by Martha Heller

more»

Project ManagementCOVER StORY gOIng It ALOnE | 18In the treacherous waters of ERP upgrades, consultants are viewed as safety nets, without which few enterprises dare go. But they come at a significant cost. Ranbaxy decided to go without one. Here’s how it saved costs, increased project control and delivered business results. Feature by gunjan triveditrivedit

AUGUST 1 2009‑ ‑Vol/4‑ ‑iSSUe/18

The Balanced cIOBeing a leader today is harder than it used to be. Five veterans from different functional areas share what it takes.

26 I ramanuJam Sridhar Founder & CEO, Brand-Comm28 I dr. Sridhar miTTa MD & CEO, E4E Solutions30 I John PowaTh Partner, Ernst & Young32 I ravi daSguPTa Head-HR, Biocon34 I alaganandan Balaraman VP & Head-HR & Process Architect Britannia Industries

cIO dIscussIOnsThe leadership council provided a platform for CIOs to express their opinions and insight on the importance of enterprise architecture and adopting cloud computing.

36 I ConCrete Plans38 I I taking off

AUGUST 1 2009‑|‑Vol/4‑|‑iSSUe/18

conntntn entntn

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The Many Facesof The cIO


Faced with upgrading the Goliath of enterprise apps, ERP, David Briskman, VP and CIO, Ranbaxy Laboratories, took an unusual route: he banned the use of consultants. It’s a decision he does not regret.


content (cont.)

DeParTMenTS

NOW ONLINE

For more opinions, features, analyses and updates, log on to our companion website and discover content designed to help you and your organization deploy IT strategically. go to www.cio.in

c o.in

IT Management PuttIng A CRIMP In nEtWORk ExPEnSES | 44Squeeze the cash out of your infrastructure expenses without cramping your organization’s style and see your budgets go click. Feature by Sandra gittlen

VirtualizationDESktOP VIRtuALIzAtIOn: gO, nO gO? | 40Virtualizing your desktops isn’t a hop, skip, and jump. Nor is it an extension of the more familiar server virtualization. But it has its benefits. We weigh the pros and cons.Feature by Denise Dubie

Trendlines | 9 Innovation | Message for a Good Harvest Quick take | Arvind Saksena on Telecommuting Voices | Is a Leadership Gap Emerging in IT? It Management | Missed the Bus Survey | Going Green: It’s Not Just the Cost Opinion Poll | Still In Survival Mode It Budget | Looking Forward to Wealthy Days Study | CEOs: What Security? Security | Caught In the Act Energy | Datacenters Need to Chill Out Staff Management | Time for a Holiday It Skills | Are You Skilled in Virtual Competence?

essential Technology | 53 Enterprise 2.0 |The Clash Over Enterprise Collaboration Feature by C.G. Lynch Pundit |Wisps of Hope Column by James Damoulakis

from the editor-in-Chief | 2 the D.I.Y. Benefit

By Vijay Ramachandran

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India’s finest CIOs came together to attend the second CIO Leadership Summit, powered by the CIO Leadership Council. The event was highlighted by extremely thought-provoking discussions by leaders such as Dr. SriDhar Mitta, MD & CEO, E4E Solutions; ravi DaSgupta, Group Head HR, Biocon; raManujaM SriDhar, Founder and CEO, Brand-Comm; john powath, Partner, Ernest & Young and alagananDan BalaraMan, VP & Head HR & Process Architect, Britannia Industries. The discussions were focused on one of the most important challenges CIOs face today: The Different Facets of an IT Leader.You can now catch the proceedings of the event on CIO.in and access a wide range of web-exclusive content.

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EDItORIAL

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usA larry Arthur; Jo ben-Atar

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adverTiSer index

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

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global Head - Internal IT, TCS

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gM (MIS) & CIo, bajaj Auto

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CTo, bSE

AshIsh ChAuhAN

President & CIo, IT Applications, reliance Industries

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President Corporate IT & group CIo, Aditya birla group

DONALD PAtRA

CIo, HSbC India

DR. JAI mENON

director Technology & Customer Service, bharti Airtel &

group CIo, bharti Enterprises

GOPAL shukLA

VP - business Systems, Hindustan Coca Cola

mANIsh ChOksI

Chief Corporate Strategy & CIo, Asian Paints

mANIsh GuPtA

director-IT, Pepsi Foods

muRALIkRIshNA k.

Head - CCd, Infosys Technologies

NAVIN ChADhA

CIo, Vodafone

PRAVIR VOhRA

group CTo, ICICI bank

RAJEsh uPPAL

Chief general Manager IT & distribution, Maruti Udyog

sANJAY JAIN

CIo, WnS global Services

shREEkANt mOkAshI

Chief-IT, Tata Steel

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V. k mAGAPu

director, larsen & Toubro

V.V.R BABu

group CIo, ITC

governing Board



n e w * h o t * u n e x p e c t e d

S t r a t e g y Companies that use telecommuting vouch for its significant bottomline benefits and are mulling over alternative workplace initiatives. Sneha Jha spoke to Arvind Saksena, group CIO, Consilium Software, and here is what he said:

How have you used telecommuting in your organization? Telecommuting is a major collaborative tool for us. A good proportion of our staff works from home and this model is being used by sales, marketing and IT. These employees have to maintain anytime, anywhere access to cover various time zones (from the US to China).

What challenges did you face when you undertook this initiative? People were used to a formal working environment and the first challenge was overcoming this shift in culture. We had to educate them on a new method of working. Ensuring co-ordination was another issue because when people work from home they are not always sitting next to their machines.

Arvind Saksena on TelecommutingThird, was identifying the people who qualified for telecommuting because we needed to choose employees who were intelligent, smart and also stayed far away from the office.

What are the benefits of telecommuting? Our expense on real estate has come down by 70 percent and energy expense has reduced by 37 percent. With this flexible model, we have opened a little more than 10 offices spanning from Greater China to the US

in less than two years.

Despite these benefits, why aren't more Indian CIOs looking at telecommuting? People still believe that a formal work environment ensures efficiency and fosters team spirit. Telecommuting cannot be a CIO’s baby, it has to be the management’s baby. Sometimes CIOs want to adopt it but they require the management’s backing. In future, the dynamics of the economy will force managements to think in this direction.

Quick take

Arvind Saksena

n e w

Message for a Good Harvest

innovation

Teleservices is testing technology that allows farmers to use their mobile phones to remotely monitor and switch on irrigation pump sets in far flung locations.

The technology, called Nano Ganesh, is being tested in two villages in Gujarat. In more remote parts of the country, where the electricity supply is erratic, farmers often walk several kilometers to where their irrigation pumps are located, only to find that there is no electricity available, says Lloyd Mathias, chief marketing officer of Tata Teleservices. By dialing a code number from their mobile phone

to a wireless device attached to the pump, farmers can now remotely monitor electricity supply, and switch their pumps on and off, Mathias said.

To use the service, the farmer pays Tata Teleservices Rs 2,700 for the device attached to the starter on the pump and another Rs 2,000 for the mobile phone, as well as monthly service charges. The mobile phone can be used by the farmer for other communications as well.

There are currently about 14.1 million irrigation pumps across India, Mathias said. Tata Teleservices plans to roll out the service across the country, once it tests consumer acceptance in the two villages, he added.

India had 109.7 million rural mobile subscribers at the end of the first quarter, up by 17.8 percent from 93.15 million users

in the fourth quarter of last year, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).

Rural wireless subscribers accounted for 28 percent of mobile subscribers at the end of the first quarter, TRAI said.

The rural market is seen as the next opportunity for mobile service providers and handset vendors. The key to these markets is the ability to offer appropriate local content and services, Kamlesh Bhatia, a principal research analyst at Gartner said.

Value-added service revenue from rural markets will grow slowly, because customers in these markets will be concerned about the ease of use of new technology and the price for these services, Bhatia said. Many farmers are not technically savvy and are still getting used to using a mobile phone, let alone try out enhanced features and services, he added.

—By John Ribeiro

REAL CIO WORLD | a u g u s t 1 , 2 0 0 9 9Vol/4 | ISSUE/18

Message for a Good Harvest

innovation Mobile operator Tata Teleservices is testing technology that

to a wireless device attached to the pump, farmers can now remotely monitor electricity supply, and switch their pumps on and off, Mathias said.

To use the service, the farmer pays Tata Teleservices Rs 2,700 for the device attached to the starter on the

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i t m a n a g e m e n t Organizations that are looking to process improvement methods in the current economic environment are too late, as the economic tide might turn before it delivers cost takeout, said research firm Ovum.

While commonly used approaches such as Agile and Lean can reduce waste in IT systems and software development, they don't offer the rapid efficiency gains that CFOs are increasingly demanding of CIOs.

Their implementation takes too long and is too resource-intensive for an organization that's currently reviewing its IT processes.

"A lot of CFOs have heard that process improvement can cut the cost of IT processes, and in the current economic environment, that's very appealing," said Dr Alexander Simkin, a senior analyst and process improvement specialist within Ovum's IT services practice.

"What they don't realize is that becoming Agile or Lean takes time and requires major change management. If you're starting from a base of traditional processes, these approaches won't provide rapid cost reduction. The efficiency of your processes may even get worse before they get better. CFOs need to know that and it's a CIO's job to educate them," Simkin said.

Organizations that already have an established process improvement program aimed at waste reduction in IT have a competitive advantage in the current economic situation. However, when the economy eventually improves, the cost-cutting agenda will wane and other priorities such as improving the quality of processes will come to the fore.

"Organizations that are only now seeking to improve their IT processes should consider methods that cut costs and improve quality. Lean Six Sigma is a good choice," advised Simkin.

Methods that audit and certify the maturity of an organization’s IT processes such as the capability maturity model interactive (CMMI) and the International Organization for Standardization’s ISO 20000 are also attracting renewed interest in the recession. These methods provide CIOs with evidence to C-level colleagues and other stakeholders that investments in process improvements are providing returns.

For IT services vendors, they have another advantage: they make those vendors eligible for contracts that stipulate minimum levels of process maturity. Two sectors in which IT service contractors typically have to certify the maturity of their processes are defense and healthcare.

"Defense and healthcare have been relatively unscathed by the recession, so being able to bid for contracts in those sectors is increasingly important. Hence some of the extra attention that audit methods are currently receiving," Simkin said.

—By Carol Ko

Do You Think There is a Leadership Gap Emerging in IT?b u S i n e S S i S S u e S Companies are increasingly recognizing the need to focus their efforts on building a strong leadership pool. An imminent gap in the leadership pipeline is rearing its head as the senior generation of CIOs hangs up its boots. Are organizations witnessing a shrinking talent pool of executive-level IT pros? Sneha Jha spoke to your peers and here is what they thought:

ajay kumar dhirCIo, Jindal Stainless

n.kailasanathanCIo, titan

“Yes. The gap is because of a lack of systematic succession planning. The senior generation of CIOs is retiring or moving to higher management roles without grooming the second-in-command.”

subodh dubeyaVP & CIo, K. raheja

Write to [email protected]

lend your

Voice

“There is a partial gap in leadership. There is a lot of attrition in the middle layer and second-in-commands need to be stable in their jobs if they want to be groomed.”

“I would call it a shift, not a gap. The older generation had a strong technical background

and it's passing the baton to today’s CIOs who need to

align business with IT.”

Missed the Bus

Vol/4 | ISSUE/181 0 a u g u s t 1 , 2 0 0 9 | REAL CIO WORLD

Trendlines.indd 10 7/28/2009 4:59:47 PM

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GoinG Green: It’s Not Just the Cost

Source: Economist Intelligence Unit

S u r v e y According to Symantec’s 2009 Green IT Report, senior-level IT executives report significant interest in green IT strategies and solutions, attributed to both cost reduction and environmental responsibility.

Enterprises in India have embarked on the drive to be environmentally conscious. Close to 60 percent of respondents from large enterprises in India state that they are at least discussing or are in trial stages of a green IT strategy, while 39 percent are already in the process of implementing green IT initiatives.

IT decision makers are increasingly justifying green IT solutions by more than cost and IT efficiency benefits. Respondents cited key drivers as reducing electricity consumption (83 percent), reducing cooling costs (91 percent), and corporate pressure to be green (86 percent).

“Large Indian enterprises today are confronted with issues of unprecedented data explosion, burgeoning storage and complex information management processes,” said Anand Naik, director-systems engineering, Symantec India. “This has put tremendous pressure on IT departments and CIOs while managing storage utilization, power consumption costs and energy efficiency matters. For CIOs, green initiatives figure high on the ‘must do’ list to perk up their datacenters from a technology, business and environment point of view”.

IT executives in India report a significant increase in green IT budgets. Ninety percent expect an increase in green IT budgets over the next 12 months, while 24 percent expect increases of more than 10 percent. The typical respondent reported spending $10 to 16 million (about Rs 50-80 crore) on datacenter electricity.

At the same time, IT is willing to pay a premium for energy efficient products. One-third of respondents said they would pay at least 10 percent more, while 36 percent are willing to pay at least 20 percent more. Additionally, 97 percent of respondents said IT product efficiency

is either important or very important. As organizations continue to adopt programs and practices to drive environmental responsibility throughout the enterprise, IT is increasingly important to the broader enterprise green efforts.

Perhaps the strongest indicator, 70 percent of IT departments report they are now responsible or cross-charged for electricity, providing a strong motivator for IT to reduce energy costs. This expands the role of the CIO from beyond the confines of IT to now being included on non-technology areas, such as location and size of office space addition, power consumption and utilization, HVAC selection and implementation.

Furthermore, 90 percent think IT should play a very or extremely significant role in ‘green’ efforts and 52

percent have a corporate green advocate, with more than one-fifth focusing exclusively on IT initiatives.

IT professionals are regularly deploying several key initiatives for green IT purposes. Replacing old equipment was the most popular strategy, with 88 percent reporting new energy efficient equipment as part of their strategy, followed by monitoring power consumption (83 percent), server virtualization (73 percent), and server consolidation (66 percent).

Additionally, more than half (54 percent) of respondents see software-as-a-service offerings as green solutions.

The report is the result of research conducted in March 2009 by Applied Research, which surveyed enterprise IT executives, including vice presidents, directors, and C-level IT executives. The study included 1,052 respondents in the United States, Canada, France, Italy, the UK, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, India, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea, New Zealand, and China.

—By Albert R. Eng

90%The number of

respondents who expect an increase in green IT budgets over the next

12 months.

a u g u s t 1 , 2 0 0 9 1 1Vol/4 | ISSUE/18

Still In Survival ModeMore companies say they’ll spend the next year trying to stem losses rather than pursue new sources of revenue.

Source: Economist Intelligence Unit

REAL CIO WORLD | a u g u s t 1 , 2 0 0 9

Management’s approach to

business growth51%

44%

6%

On the offensiveOn the offensive

Don’t know

On the defensive

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CEOs: what security?S t u d y Compared to other key corporate executives, CEos appear to underestimate the It security risks faced by their own organizations, according to a survey of C-level executives released today by the Ponemon Institute.

the Ponemon survey of 213 CEos, CIos, Coos and other senior executives reveals what appears to be a perception gap concerning information security issues between CEos and other senior managers. For instance, 48 percent of CEos surveyed said they believe hackers rarely try to access corporate data. on the other hand, some 53 percent of other C-level executives believe that their company's data is under attack on a daily or even hourly basis.

the survey also found that the top executives were less aware of specific security incidents at their companies than other C-level executives, and are more confident that data breaches can be easily avoided.

the survey found that CEos tend to view data protection efforts as vital to maintaining good customer satisfaction levels and to the company's brand image. the other managers, however, were more likely to say that the most important role for data security efforts is to satisfy regulatory requirements.

the survey also found that CEos and other top managers differed in their opinion of who is responsible for protecting corporate data. While eight out of 10 respondents believed there was one person responsible for data protection in their organizations, but there was a sharp difference of opinion on just who that person was. More than half of the CEo's said that CIos are responsible for protecting data at their companies; only 24 percent of other senior managers felt the same way.

and 85 percent of respondents said someone else would be held responsible for a data breach. "on the issue of accountability we found that while people acknowledged that data breaches were a problem, very few people felt that if [their company] suffered a breach, they would be held responsible," said larry Ponemon, founder of the Ponemon Institute.

Some of the differences in perception between the CEoand other top executives can probably be traced to the metrics they use to define information security goals and to measure success, Ponemon added.

While most CEos look for their companies to create cost-effective, and even profitable information security policies, other top executives said the policies should focus strictly on threat mitigation and compliance related matters, he said. "CEos want bigger picture metrics, but what they are getting is the compliance story," Ponemon said.

—by Jaikumar Vijayan

i t b u d g e t While most IT network professionals report modest cutbacks in spending this year versus last year, they seem optimistic that it will change for the better next year, according to an early look at an ongoing study from The Info Pro consultancy.

Of 150 IT professionals interviewed from a group of 250, 40 percent say they expect more funds in 2010 than this year, and another 40 percent say they expect flat funding, says The Info Pro's director of networking and information security research Bill Trussell. About 20 percent expect spending declines.

Earlier upgrades in certain aspects of a network may have an impact on other areas, forcing other spending. WAN optimization is one area where spending has kept a constant pace in 2008 and 2009, Trussell says. It is proving its worth as an element of improved application performance and a way to reduce WAN bandwidth needs or at least defer bandwidth increases.

Trussell says he expected to see an increase in demand for 10Gbps Ethernet switching based on higher core traffic levels due to larger datacenters. "There's no data to support that," he says. "We haven’t seen with virtualization rollouts that this is coming to fruition."

Similarly, while there has been talk of merging storage network infrastructure with data network infrastructure, that doesn't seem to be panning out either, at least short term. Slightly more than a third of respondents say they either have created a single infrastructure already or plan to by year-end, but 55 percent say they will not do it in the near future because they're not sure the benefits justify the cost.

Meanwhile, demand for network-access control (NAC) is stalling out, with 30 percent saying they are piloting the technology or have long- or short-term plans to deploy it. That is down from 40 percent who said the same thing last fall. And those who have installed at least some NAC technology in their networks has hovered around 25 percent for the past 12 to 18 months, he says.

—By Tim Greene


bandwidth needs or at least defer bandwidth increases.

Trussell says he expected to see an increase in demand for

Where is the Money?by 2010, It leaders leaders are hoping to fill are hoping to fill their wallets.

40%

40%

20%

Expect more fundsExpect more funds

Expect flat Expect flat fundingfundingExpect

spending declines

Looking Forward to Wealthy Days

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S e c u r i t y a computer program using new imaging technology which enables moving police cars to automatically detect stolen cars in traffic, has been developed by researchers at the University of technology, Sydney (UtS).

the new technique enables a computer linked to a camera to accurately identify and read number plates in real-time, so the plates can be checked immediately against a database.

according to the national Motor Vehicle theft reduction Council, there were a total of 15,025 car thefts in australia during the first quarter of this year.

Geoff hughes, director of strategy and programming for the council, who was a consultant on the project, says the technology can not only eliminate the false readings on number plates, but can also be placed in fixed speed cameras.

"one of the failures of existing camera technology is that they often can't read the state designator on the plate, and because number plate sets are duplicated between jurisdictions, that can confuse the camera," hughes said.

the technology can be used by police to track the way criminal gangs operate and track cars that were identified as being used in a crime. "Vehicles are often the key to an actual crime being committed because they're either using it

to transport goods or get away from a crime scene. "as time goes on, the system will be fine-tuned to be able to identify false plates because they are sitting on a holden when they should be on a toyota."

the research, which was carried out over three years, resulted in the further development of Spiral architecture, a data structure in which images are represented as collections of hexagonal pixels. UtS project leader Professor Xiangjian says hexagonal pixels give smoother edges in images than square pixels."It's not a new idea, but what our team has done is use hexagonal pixels to develop much better methods of curve detection than is possible with square pixels, and this has opened the way for much quicker and more accurate shape identification.

"We are now world leaders in hexagonal pixel technology, and the potential is enormous — it could for instance provide improved resolution for still and moving digital cameras and could find many applications improving the object recognition capabilities of robots," says Xiangjian.

the team is also exploring the use of this technology for the development of a program to manage parking fine evasions.

—by Kathryn Edwards

e n e r g y Some innovative university researchers are focusing on cutting the cost of cooling the hot racks of servers in datacenters. The Georgia Institute of Technology announced that its faculty had created a 1,100-square-foot testing facility where researchers can test new cooling designs and measure the impact that the designs have on power efficiency.

The Georgia Tech researchers aim to analyze power consumption "all the way from the chip to the datacenter facility," says Yogendra Joshi, a professor of mechanical engineering at the university.

Two major trends in the datacenter sector are driving the interest in cooling. As the demand for datacenters continues to rise, despite the down economy, Moore's Law — the prediction that processors will become twice as

powerful every 18 months to 2 years — means that datacenters will produce more heat. However, companies looking to build new datacenters are finding resources increasingly scarce. Five years ago, a typical server rack — the size of a household refrigerator — produced between 1 and 5 kilowatts of heat. Today, typical server racks generate around 18 kilowatts, about as much as two average households. The trend towards hotter hardware will only continue. Manufacturers are working on cabinets containing higher-power chips that will produce three times as much heat, or about 60 kilowatts.The two trends mean that future datacenters need to drastically reduce the cost of cooling to prevent it from

overwhelming facility budgets. Typically, the energy required to cool a datacenter consumes 30 to 50 percent of the cost of running such facilities. In total, 60 percent of the cost of a datacenter's maintenance relates to energy.

Georgia Tech's Joshi aims to reduce datacenter cooling costs by more than 15 percent. The research group has found a way of configuring cabinets in the datacenter to increase air-cooling efficiency. Rather than long rows of server racks with hot air exiting the cabinets on one side and cool air entering on the other, Joshi and his colleagues found that four cabinets arranged in a plus formSation, with cool air entering from the middle, works best.

—By Robert Lemos

Caught In the act

Datacenters Need to Chill Out60%The amount that energy

contributes in a datacenter's maintenance

cost.

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S t a f f m a n a g e m e n t Stress necessitates rest, and yet a recessionary pressure-cooker of a workplace has some IT leaders scared to take their due vacation time.

According to Expedia's 2009 vacation survey, about one-third of US workers don't use all of their vacation days. And an informal query of CIO Forum on Facebook reveals a certain bitterness about vacation plans (or lack thereof). "Vacation? Ha!" says Shawn Beighle, CIO of International Republican Institute. "My boss has been on me to take more time off, and though I know he's sincere, there's just too much to do," Beighle says.

Others, though, have conceded that skipping vacation is counterproductive. Constant work inhibits calm, clear thinking and the generation of fresh ideas, says Jason Paulsen, a project manager at MAC Cosmetics. "Vacation gives you a chance to come back to tasks with a new perspective and more energy."

Darrel Raynor, interim CIO and founder and managing director of consultancy Data Analysis & Results, plans to take his family twice this summer (four times a year) to their timeshare in Mexico. "Have to have that balance," he says. Swine flu be damned.

Indeed, CIOs can and should set a healthy example by taking time off, says Diane Morello, a vice president and fellow at Gartner. Perhaps not a decadent three weeks in Bali, she says, but certainly a solid week at a time and weekends bracketed by extra vacation days is reasonable.

Doing so shows you're a leader who values work-life balance and that you trust your group to work well even when you're not there. "If you've spent the time in advance to lay out an effective organization, urgent issues can be handled by a path other than one through you," she says.

Import-export firm GHY International actually forced its employees out the door. GHY is considered among Canada's best places to work, but in 2006 it was so bad that vice president of IT Nigel Fortlage took just 25 percent of his due time off and saw the rest of his group follow suit.

"IT was the worst for not taking holiday time," he says. "And it took two years to get all holiday time caught up." Despite smaller staffs and added pressure, the time to make a vacation push may be now. As busy as we are, the pace will quicken when the economy rebounds, notes Gartner's Morello. CIOs should know that, she says, and keep their teams "refreshed" with regular time off.

—By Kim S. Nash

tIME For a Holiday


are you skilled in Virtual competence?i t S k i l l S research from the richard Ivey School of business at the University of Western ontario, conducted by associate Professor nicole haggerty and Dr. yinglei Wang, suggests It leaders pay attention to virtual competence if they want their teams to be successful at online communication.those who exhibit virtual competence have the skills and knowledge they need to work in virtual environments, whether with their colleague in the cubicle next door or a global team, haggerty said.

a term coined by haggerty and Wang over the course of their research on what employees need to know in order to work effectively in virtual settings, virtual competence consists of three skill sets that work in tandem.

Virtual social skills describe an individual's capability to build online social relationships; virtual media skills are the actual capabilities in using a range of tools and features; virtual self-efficacy is simply self confidence, she explained.

"the reason self confidence turns out to be important is because it gives people the motivation to persist when they have difficulties and it gives them the confidence to explore new features, new tools and new ways of doing things," haggerty said.

While employees need the skills, the research mostly sends a message to management who create those opportunities or tasks that require employees to collaborate. "they need to have at least a sensitivity for what they are asking people to do and therefore what they must know to be effective," she said.

the more a firm needs its people to collaborate online and work with remote locations and make use of mobile devices like laptops and PDas, the more they need to look at this ensemble of skills and how they can help their employees develop it, she said.

one way of developing these skills is to use online social networking in your personal life. In their research, haggerty and Wang found that people learn valuable skills using those tools, and those skills can transfer into the workplace setting.this includes how to communicate using text as a primary medium, different techniques for information searching, getting used to being available online and how to explore different applications.

So the question is, should you allow those things at work or should you encourage people to use them but outside the workplace setting, said haggerty. "the answer is it depends on what they're trying to accomplish," she said.

—by Jennifer Kavur


In the period between 2005 and 2008, I followed an exceedingly simple approach to business development. I would walk into my office, put my feet up on my desk, throw open the window, and smile as bluebirds

flew in with juicy search projects in their beaks. I was a bull market executive recruiter.

This year, however, with executive search revenues down by a considerable amount, my approach has somewhat changed. My feet are planted squarely on the floor as I tirelessly work my networks to unearth potential companies that are in need of IT leadership. In short, I have adapted to a bear market.

When I looked back on this change, it occurred to me that CIOs would also have to make a similar shift from bull to bear. In bear markets, a company’s goals, culture, and practices can change dramatically. CIOs who adjust to these changes will fare far better than those who choose to remain stagnant. If you’re a bull market CIO in need of help, I offer this checklist:

For starters, try reaching beyond IT. From human resources to customer service to call center operations, the majority of today’s CIOs (in fact, nearly two-thirds of you, according to data compiled from CIO’s 2009 State of the CIO Survey) have taken on at least one major responsibility that extends beyond just IT. If you have not, then the bear market should provide you with a significant opportunity to do so. Keep in mind that adopting additional duties will not only help you find new ways to leverage IT during these tough economical times, but will also help you in raising your own visibility as an enterprise leader.

Martha Heller Career StrategiSt

Riding a Bear Market In a changing market, it’s essential for CIOs to change as well. But adapting to a bear market is not always easy. Here are a few pointers on how you can do it as best as possible.

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Martha Heller Career StrategiSt

But before doing so, make sure that your own shop is clean. The CIO survey reported that 70 percent of CIOs believe that IT is considered to be an integral business partner, and is a beloved component of the company. It isn’t all a love fest, though. In fact, according to the survey, 46 percent of CEOs ranked their IT departments as ‘fair’ or ‘poor’ when it comes to improving the quality of products and processes.

"In tough economies, 'one must be purer than Caesar's wife,'" says Greg Buoncontri, EVP and CIO of mail services company Pitney Bowes. "You cannot afford to offer assistance in other areas unless you've got your own IT function in order."

Nowadays, CEOs are making decisions regarding which of their executives to keep. It is definitely not the time to take your delivery record for granted. It’s also essential to know your numbers. Although any bull market CIO would be familiar with details revolving around “IT as a percentage of revenue” and “IT’s share of corporate expenses,”, aggregate numbers are not enough in a bear market.

"Since good times are forgiving, people tend to be less focused on their expenses," says Frank Wander, CIO of mutual life insurance company Guardian Life. "In down

markets, on the other hand, you need to have detailed figures of your expense pools at the ready."

In 2007, Wander and his IT team began to gather cost data, and subsequently put in a formal expense optimization program in 2008, with a structure for engaging the business in cost discussions. If you feel that you and your senior leaders do not have a 100 percent visibility of what you spend and why, now is definitely the time to set up something formal. (For more read Tracking the Needle, Pg xx)

It helps to make new friends. In tough times, it is always tempting to spend more time with people who love us, and give a wide berth to those who don’t. But this isn’t always beneficial, says Pitney Bowes’ Buoncontri. If, during your company’s last growth spurt you won the devotion of the head of sales and marketing, now is the time to win over the executives who drive controls and efficiency.

"As the market shifts, so do the spheres of influence inside your company," says Buoncontri. "It makes sense to focus on the people whose stars shine brighter during tough times."

Be sure to keep your project management office involved. In good times, your project management team faces the responsibility of keeping track of all those

wonderful investment initiatives. In lean times, the project office is no less valuable.

"In my project office, I have experts in technology, finance, architecture and procurement," says Ray Barnard, CIO of Fluor, a large engineering and construction services company. "Their job during this economical phase is to take last year's plan and meet with the lines of business to gain consensus about prioritization, so that I can reset my plan. They take care of everything, ranging from delaying software purchases to advising on edicts against travel.” If you haven’t already done this, now would be the time to push up your project office to a critical position in your cost management offense.

It’s also time to discover who your real partners are. Prepare to be surprised: not everyone is willing to go the extra mile. "Let's say I've got 30 key suppliers when times are good," says Barnard. "In a down market, only five of them have stepped forward to talk about how we can work together during the prevailing economic period. You would have thought they would all come forward, but it turns out that some of them behave like commodities, not real partners."

To separate the proverbial wheat from the chaff, Barnard’s procurement office sends a letter to all of its IT

suppliers. The letter asks them whether they can afford to offer increased value down the economic downturn.

“During these discussions, we don’t focus on costs. We talk about partnerships and value,” says Barnard. “The suppliers that step up generally understand that while our relationship may not be particularly beneficial to them today, they’ll make good money somewhere in the future.”

Adapting strategies that were meant for a bull market to a bear market is not always easy. But for a CIO, making this transformation is more crucial than they think. CIO

Martha Heller is managing director of the It Leadership Practice at ZRg, an

executive recruiting firm based in Boston. send feedback on this column to

[email protected]

in bear markets, a company’s goals, culture, and practices can change dramatically. adapting to new strategies is not always easy. But CiOs who do adjust to these changes will fare far better than those who choose to remain stagnant.

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A loneGoing solo: David

Briskman, VP and CIO, Ranbaxy Laboratories,

undertook an ERP upgrade without the safety net of

a consultant and found multiple benefits.

Cover Story.indd 18 7/28/2009 6:12:52 PM

Reader ROI:

What to watch out for when going solo

Where to get help from

How a DIY approach can build loyalty

The increased importance of testing

Cover Story | Project Management

In the treacherous waters of ERP upgrades, consultants are viewed as guides and often safety nets, without which few enterprise dare go. But thEy comE

at a sIgnIfIcant cost. Ranbaxy decided to go without one and saved costs, increased project control and delivered business results with minimal

challenges. here’s how. By Gunjan Trivedi

A lone

REAL CIO WORLD | a u g u s T 1 , 2 0 0 9 1 9Vol/4 | ISSUE/18

GoInG It

Rabindranath Tagore said it best in his poem Êkla Chôlo Re: have the conviction to walk alone. It’s a lesson that David Briskman, VP and CIO of Ranbaxy Laboratories, takes to heart.

Last year, Briskman found himself staring at an ERP system that was creaking under the weight of a fast-growing enterprise and decided something needed to be done. Multiple acquisitions and seven years of double-digit growth had pushed Ranbaxy’s hardware needle into the red. He had an ERP upgrade in mind, but from experience he knew it was a decision that couldn’t be taken lightly. The task was huge and considering Ranbaxy’s size, it was complex as hell — and he wanted to simultaneously refresh the company’s hardware. Im

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Typically, the decision to go it alone — especially on high-risk, large-impact projects — isn't taken by just IT. This is where Ranbaxy’s IT department’s track record stepped in. “there’s no confidence-builder like good, consistent delivery," says Briskman.

But the project itself isn’t what separates Briskman from your average CIO. He decided that the task would be done in-house. By any standards, it was a bold decision. An ERP upgrade on this scale would have left most organizations scampering to find the closest consultant, and hordes of subject matter experts — immaterial of the price.

“When organizations enlist consultants for such high-level projects, the cost of consultancy usually makes up 60 to 70 percent of the total cost of the project. The rest largely goes in procuring hardware and software,” says Briskman.

By taking a D-I-Y approach, Ranbaxy lowered the total price of the project and reversed that ratio. “In our case, 70 percent of the costs we incurred on the upgrade were billed for hardware and software. That gives you a sense of how little consulting we used. With our internal team we carried out the upgrade quite cost effectively,” says Briskman.

The question is: how did he do it?

Health CheckIndia’s largest pharmaceutical company, the Rs 4,400-odd crore Ranbaxy has a complex IT fabric with a global presence across 125 countries. It has ground operations in 49 countries including India, the US, France, South Africa, Romania and China, besides manufacturing locations in 11 countries.

Most of those locations run on a single instance of SAP. Their 4.6c version of SAP R/3 ran on a 32-bit environment

of Windows 2003 and SQL 2000 with database of about 2.25 terabytes, growing at about 45 GB a month. As the business grew manifold, the number of users and transactions skyrocketed, putting a huge amount of pressure on the ERP system. By 2008, 1,300 out of 1,900 users — or about 70 percent of the people with access to the system — were using the ERP concurrently.

The company’s global footprint added to their ERP woes. For example, the system needed to run in six different languages including Chinese, which required double-byte fonts. All that activity bore down heavily on the system. Ranbaxy recorded about 2,500 custom-built programs and about 900 types of transactions. At over 13 lakh dialog steps (these are screen changes in a sequence of steps during a transaction in an application. How quickly

one screen changes to another is an indicator of a system’s health) logged each day, servers began to hit maximum CPU utilization. The result? According to Ranbaxy’s Head of Global Infra-Structure, Rajan Bir Singh, the average response time for a dialog task took a painful 1,200 milliseconds on the ERP and about 1,000 milliseconds at the database. It became worse when in January 2007, CPU utilization at the database server hit 52 percent, and tipped 100 percent by December of the same year.

“We applied plenty of band-aids but systems began to crawl and impact the business. And if wasn’t bad enough that our hardware was hitting its physical limitations. Worse, our SAP instance was already in its extended maintenance period and SAP announced that it would discontinue its 32-bit platform,” recalls Briskman.

Evidently, the situation called for drastic measures. Briskman and team decided to overhaul the entire ecosystem by upgrading not only their hardware but also the software landscape including the operating system, the database and the ERP platform. “We simply went to the business and made this declaration ‘you have a crisis, your systems are going to die and we are going to upgrade them’,” he says with a smile.

Management got the point quickly. They cleared the upgrade project that would introduce a 64-bit platform for Windows 2003, push the database onto the newer SQL 2005 and make way for the next SAP avatar: SAP ECC6 running on more efficient servers from a new vendor.

But Briskman was not only aiming to address the company’s immediate performance issues, he also wanted to enable new SAP functionalities and prepare the foundation for SOA.

It was a great idea, but pinning down the dream would be a challenge.

David vs. GoliathWith the decision to refresh and upgrade out of the way, a tougher question presented itself before Briskman: how were they going to do it? There was the tried-and-tested — but expensive — approach of hiring consultants. It was the solution most CIOs would take and is generally considered the safe route. And given Ranbaxy’s complex ERP fabric,

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few could have blamed Briskman for the added expense. The other, more risky, proposition was to trust that he could lead his team to take on the Goliath of enterprise software.

Briskman chose the latter.“It was a simple decision to take.

I know organizations generally avoid taking risks with a project of such magnitude, but we were a tad different. I’ve always strongly believed in nurturing a skilled team on the systems we work on. We have maintained an internal SAP center of excellence and have consistently delivered on SAP for several years. We have been doing rollouts and upgrades without any consulting help and decided that this project should be no different,” says Briskman.

Typically, this is not the sort of decision that IT departments can take on their own — not on a project of such proportions and one which exposed the organization to huge risks. This is where Ranbaxy’s IT department’s track record stepped in. “There’s no confidence-builder like good, consistent delivery. Our management has always had faith in our IT group and has always expected us to tackle problems,” says Briskman. In fact, he adds, management would have probably questioned a need for consultants.

The IT team planned a two-phase attack. In the first phase led by Singh, they would move their current ERP to the new servers. The 32-bit instance of Windows Server 2003 would also be scaled up to a 64-bit environment and SQL 2005 would replace the earlier version of the database.

The second phase, led by the SAP COE Head, Neeraj Kukreti, would involve a combined upgrade of SAP environment and migration of the data code pages based on MDMP in earlier SAP R/3 to Unicode on the newer ECC6.

During the process of upgrading the ecosystem, which started in February 2008, there were several sub-projects that the Ranbaxy SAP team also undertook. While Windows and SQL were moved to the 64-bit platform and SAP R/3 made way for SAP ECC6, business warehouse and APO were integrated. Several interfaces and products were also introduced, such as Solution Manager, .Net/Java connector-based applications, Readsoft, Newgen, a procurement portal, SAP XI and Webmethods.

By August 2008, results became apparent. The maximum CPU utilization level at the database server dipped from about 100 percent in January 2008 to about 40 percent in


September 2008, bringing life back to the sluggish servers. Similarly, the maximum RAM utilization level at the server slid from 74 percent to 48 percent, and the average response time for an application to respond with a dialog step jumped: from about 1,000 milliseconds to just about 350 milliseconds. According to Singh, “the system was meticulously sized with the help of our vendor, to deliver sub-second response time. Which it did!”

look! no ConsultantsAlthough Briskman had complete faith in the skills of his 20 plus-member SAP team, he felt that there were several ways the upgrade exercise could be derailed. Not getting these right made the proposition much riskier. “Expectation management, change management, human resource management and project management all demanded attention if we wanted to run this show. When you build confidence by delivering consistently, you are not asked a lot of questions. I wasn’t keen on changing this equation,” he says.

Briskman began by defining the results that were expected from the upgrade. Too many IT leaders, he says, dig themselves in a hole by guaranteeing capability enhancements as part of an upgrade. A lot of the time it is difficult to stay true to such promises because of the many


Before the ERP ecosystem upgrade and hardware refresh, Ranbaxy’s systems were fighting to deliver. That changed around august of 2008.

Performance Monitor

lEGEnd: Average response time for a dialog task in seconds. Maximum CPU utilization at database servers Source: Ranbaxy

Jan-08 Feb-08 Mar-08 Apr-08 May-08 Jun-08 Jul-08 Aug-08 Sep-08

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variables involved in an upgrade project. “My experience has been that as soon as you step out of the realms of technical upgrades and move into functional upgrades, I have rarely seen benefit projections that are met easily,” he says.

So, Briskman started by tempering unrealistic business expectations from the upgrade to avoid undue pressure on his team. It formed part of his initial conversation with the business. “We told the business that the systems were dying and needed an upgrade just to keep the lights on. That’s it. As a team, IT focused on incrementally delivering benefits to the organization at practically no extra cost. We pay constant attention to continual improvement as opposed to chasing benefits that have been promised up front,” he says.

The second thing that needed to be done was to identify areas in which the internal IT team had expertise and that could therefore be tackled without much issue. They also marked out areas where they would need assistance. The idea, he says, was to keep the number of surprises low.

In the meanwhile, he put his in-house team through all the appropriate SAP training so that they could understand the new aspects that ECC6 would bring. Briskman figured that this would be easier than bringing in a consultant and then training them on Ranbaxy’s business, their system landscape, and various configurations and modifications. “Post training, the team was better equipped to support the environment they themselves had modified. This ensured that we weren’t doing anything that could surprise us later,” he says. “Failure on any major step of the project was not an option.”

Despite this preparation, there were technological issues that went beyond the team. These were identified and addressed by ushering in specific expertise from their solution providers. SAP Safeguarding, for instance, was called to ensure the technical robustness of SAP solutions. And domain experts from Microsoft were roped in to address key issues such as running SQL in an SAP landscape. With some assistance from HP and working with existing partners Religare Technova and Zensar-OBT.

“India is predominantly a SAP-Oracle market. So, finding an advanced level of expertise in SAP-SQL can become a problem and then you have technical issues that stump an otherwise skilled team. My philosophy to tackle this is simple: don’t let the OEM get off the hook. From experience, it’s important to involve the strategic and original partners. It is up to them to make sure that the right skills are engaged and point out if you are doing anything that is wrong,” he says.

By bringing his experience to bear, Briskman ensured that hurdles the team faced with SQL were handled by Microsoft. He also got people at SAP’s office in Germany to look over some of their work. “We found that it was advantageous to spend a little more and ensure that even when you have internal expertise, OEMs are involved,” he says.

Briskman, Singh, Kukreti, and the rest of the team spent three months planning the entire upgrade exercise in conjunction with SAP, Microsoft and HP, before they embarked on the actual execution. “Our approach was clear: make a plan, work the plan and live the plan. We ensured that we rehearsed thoroughly. Using an internal team is no excuse for a lack of precision,” he says.

D.I.Y. Strategy:Test, Test, and Test AgainThe team undertook a detailed pre-upgrade analysis starting with a hardware sizing exercise in conjunction with the server vendors. A functional upgrade check for ERP was leveraged to identify hardware and performance capabilities before and after the upgrade. The team also took advantage of application specific upgrade tools from SAP to outline problems with the corresponding solutions involved in the new SAP environment and figure out the tools built into ECC6 to correct the known problems.

As they worked towards the actual upgrade, Briskman and his team undertook testing and carried out dry runs like a religion. “With any kind of upgrade and implementation, you test the hell out of it. We did at least three dry runs of major steps in the development environment. When you take systems down in a planned manner, you can cover things for a few days in terms of moving materials, placing purchase orders and putting work orders in place. But not succeeding to bring these systems up again can seriously hit the business’ bottom-line. So, we put in place several additional dry runs to ensure success,” he says.


Credibility with management A project everyone believes is needed A clear outline of the benefits of the project A center of excellence A self-reliant team that is both mature and business-oriented A list of your team’s strengths and weaknesses the knowledge of where to get the expertise to fill in those skill gaps the ability to rope in oEMs An extremely detailed plan the knack for staying ahead of your team to clear the way A propensity for testing and rehearsals

If you’re planning to go solo, ensure you have these before you leave.

D.I.Y. Checklist


Yet all the testing did little to relax Briskman — especially if they went too well. “I’ve been in too many projects to know that nothing ever goes perfectly,” he says. But that’s exactly what happened in one instance when his team did dry runs of a database upgrade. Everything, he says, went smoothly and ahead of the schedule. “This had me worried because I knew that Murphy’s Law was going to visit us soon. Then on the Saturday afternoon of the cut-over, we had a major crisis which took about four hours to resolve. While my team was stressed out, I heaved a sigh of relief because our bump had occurred before the go-live,” he says.

Testing played a more crucial role at Ranbaxy’s upgrade because compliance is key to the pharmaceutical major. It created an enormous amount of testing and documentation for the internal team. “To a certain extent the rigid requirements of CSV (computer systems validation) of a system forces a level of precision not only in the execution but in planning and testing too. It enables you to safeguard your environment against potential mishap,” says Briskman.

In fact, to strengthen the validation process, the corporate quality team and a third-party quality expert were roped in. The specialist was engaged for a fortnight to independently review the internal team’s validation and testing approaches. “One of the ways to be efficient in any project is to engage the right expertise at just the right time. That’s another problem with working with large consultants. They want people on the ground and available the whole time and I only need them at testing and during the go-live as a QA check,” Briskman points out.

The extensive testing and dry runs enabled the team to iron out all the possible issues and alleviate most of the pain-points before the go-live process. Briskman says his team had the whole process detailed down to the minute. If a scheduled task within a process was slotted to take 15 minutes but gobbled up three additional minutes, they could immediately pinpoint a new timeline for the rest of the process.

All the rehearsals helped shave off hours from their timing. While their first dry run took about five days, the final go-live for the upgrade took under 50 hours, including a 10-hour slab for final testing. “We had earmarked 72 hours for the process but saved time. It goes back into having a combination of planning and on-bolt technical and functional upgrade processes executed by in-house skill-sets,” says Singh.

As the in-house team took on the giant project head on, Briskman ensured that they were not outflanked by several possible complications. Among other things, he knew that the project needed a high degree of senior management endorsement. At a more tactical level he reviewed previous customizations to the ERP to find out if there was still a practical need for them and whether functions in the upgraded SAP could replace them. By reconnoitering ahead of his team and clearing away potential sand traps, “We


“It depends entirely on the “It depends entirely on the skill-set maintained within an skill-set maintained within an organization and the maturity organization and the maturity of business’s approach to Iof business’s approach to It. Since we maintain a strong Since we maintain a strong team with SAP expertise, team with SAP expertise, i’d

go completely in-housego completely in-house — without third-— without third-party consultants.”party consultants.”

—Satish PendseCIO, Hindustan Construction Company (HCC)

team with SAP expertise, go completely in-housego completely in-house

“in a greenfield project it may make sense to involve consultants. consultants. But, for a large But, for a large upgrade project, I would rely upgrade project, I would rely on in-house expertise because on in-house expertise because the internal team already the internal team already

understands our business processes. Without understands our business processes. Without in-house experts, going ahead without external in-house experts, going ahead without external consultant support can pose a high risk.” consultant support can pose a high risk.”

—M.D.AgrawalCM-IT (Refinery Systems), BPCL.

consultants.

the internal team already understands our business processes. Without understands our business processes. Without

“Without the well-rounded experience of consultants,

undertaking an ERP project could become an exercise in trial

and error. While the technical nitty-gritty can be handled by

the team, the planning and direction should come from consultants. And they should

have a minimum of five similar-sized ERP projects under their belt.”

—Anil KhopkarGM (MIS), Bajaj Auto

the planning and direction should

Would You Go Solo?Large ERP installation upgrades can be daunting propositions. We asked some of your peers to find out how they would go about it. Here’s what they said:



were able to reduce the complexities of implementation and customization by about 50 percent,” he says.

He also dislodged user reservations by proactively seeking out users. Since many on the core IT team originated from various functions at Ranbaxy, he initiated peer-level conversations with users from functions that would be most affected by the upgrade. “I am aware of many an upgrade projects of this size have crashed and burnt because of change management issues. I always say that the software works. Success is getting people to use it,” says Briskman.

labor of love Builds love for labor If the project brought up some people’s hackles, it worked wonders for the IT team. It challenged and motivated them, a benefit CIOs who play it safe miss out on. A team, Briskman says, operates best at full throttle. “We strive to ensure that 50 percent of a person’s work is on new projects, new technologies and new functionalities. But we also work hard to provide a balanced work-life environment,” he says.

That approach makes them choosy about the people they invite on the team. “People with just a couple of years of experience do not get past the first round of interviews because we are very picky. In fact, we have developed a lot of people in-house from within business functions,” says Kukreti.

The numbers bear him out. About 30 percent of his core SAP team started off in business functions. It helps with attrition because people who are invited to join the team already have strong bonds with the company. “Being able to provide work-life balance and technological challenges attracts people,” he says.

The strategy seems to work. “Attrition in the core team this year has been zero. Last year two people left and two years ago only three left,” he says.

Briskman now plans to leverage his team to implement a large number of productivity enhancements based on the new capabilities of ECC6. The team will stretch the use of NetWeaver from an integration standpoint across the platform, and focus on introducing business intelligence capabilities and information dashboards. Additionally, the core team will roll out other major sub-entities within the SAP ecosystem including financial, and governance, risk and compliance (GRC) tools, among others.

“This year is probably the most aggressive that we have had in terms of planning to deploy a range of new functionalities, capabilities and executing geographic expansion. This should keep the team engaged and busy,” he smiles.

It’s been a good year. CIO

gunjan Trivedi is assistant editor. send feedback on this feature to

[email protected]


“The cost of consulting for high-level projects usually makes up about 70 percent of its total cost. With our internal team we carried out the upgrade quite cost effectively and reversed that ratio.”— David BriskmanVP and CIO, Ranbaxy Laboratories

Leadership Summit 2 I The Balanced CIO

As companies push their people harder to meet the demands of a tougher market, there's a sense of indecisiveness among many. Like runners who want to pick up the pace but are blinded by sweat, many enterprises find themselves dashing into the future with less leadership than they need.CIOs, as members of the senior executive or higher, are seen as sources for leadership. But in today's world, fulfilling the role isn't always easy. It takes more than being an able administrator or being functionally competent. It's a combination of all these and more. To help, CIO brought together a brand guru, an enterprise strategist, a human resources veteran, a CTO turned entrepreneur, and a budget expert to share useful pointers.

Being a leader today is harder than it used to be. Five veterans from different functional areas share what it takes.

Traits of a

Being a leader today is harder than it used to be. Five veterans Being a leader today is harder than it used to be. Five veterans Being a leader today is harder than it used to be. Five veterans

Leader


The Brand GuruRamanujam Sridhar, Brand-CommPage 26

The EntrepreneurDr. Sridhar Mitta, E4E Solutions Page 28

The Budget ExpertJohn Powath, Ernst & Young Page 30

The HR VeteranRavi Dasgupta, BioconPage 32

The Enterprise StrategistAlaganandan Balaraman, Britannia Industries Page 34

Ramanujam Sridhar, Founder and CEO, Brand-Comm, says that companies need to listen to their customers and create a unique image of their brands to stay ahead of the competition. As told to snehA jhA

“Be Relevant to Customers and Different From Competitors.”


On the contrary, the Finnish giant Nokia built a brand around observation of consumers and this helped them reach their target segment with ease. Nokia’s research suggested that the semi-urban and rural Indian needed a mobile phone but felt it was out his reach. So, Nokia launched inexpensive handsets for the rural consumer. That helped Nokia take the market by storm.

Several smart brands like Tata Tea are now tapping into social change and the Jaago Re campaign is a good example. It had a deep social relevance and impact. It capitalized on the idea that the youth is increasingly getting involved in matters of national interest. It underscored the point that brands want to connect emotionally with the issues that drive social consciousness.

Building brands is not the direct responsibility of a CIO. But as the new-age CIO moves into greater business roles, he should be concerned about the entire business and brands are an integral part of this role. So, he has to keep himself abreast of whatever is happening outside his industry. IT is a great advantage in brand building. It can be a key enabler in supporting customer service. If a traditional BFSI company like HDFC can use SMS to send account statements on your mobile then I think technology can take your brand places. CIO

sneha Jha is correspondent. send feedback on column

to [email protected]

What is the essence of the brand? What can you do to make your brands stand out? What is different about your products? How can you make your brand shelf-confident?

Brand Quotient

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We are living in a surplus society where more and more similar-looking products muscle their

way into the market and jostle for shelf space in retail outlets everyday. Take these for example: the Indian market has 721 options in cars, 619 choices of soap, 165 different washing machines and 250 types of pressure cookers. In such hyperactive market conditions how do you make your brand stand out? How can you ensure that your brand is better than the rest?

The answer lies in being relevant to your customers and different from competition. And to accomplish this, you need to focus on core brand values: product superiority, price value proposition and brand experience.

Brand Conscious A brand is an enduring promise that resides in the consumer's mind. When you know enough about the brand you assign it a mental file name and you will save it if you are loyal to it and trust the core values it stands for. Cultivating brand loyalty depends on creating brand memories that forge an enduring relationship between the brand and its consumers. Most brands transcend the products that make them famous. Think life insurance and the image you’re most likely to conjure up is LIC — the most enduring brand of the life insurance business in India. Some brands build brand loyalty by developing an emotional connection with consumers. Bajaj Scooters' Hamara Bajaj campaign established a strong relationship with its consumers and held fort for decades. The brand was etched in the consumer's mind, giving the product a vice like grip on the market.

It’s DifferentIf somebody is paying 60 cents for a cup of coffee in the US how is one brand able to charge three-and-a-half dollars for it? Starbucks is a good example of how

customer experience can be a differentiator because they engage with their customers in a very different manner. They have created a third place in the life of an average American (after home and the workplace) where he can chill out.

Sometimes a brand can become a venerable player in its category by focusing on its design. Apple is a brand that articulates the philosophy of simplicity of thought conveyed by design. The brand not only ‘thinks differently’ but also does things differently. This brand can beat back any assault because of its unconquerable product superiority.

Cashing on the tendency of price sensitive Indian consumers, CavinKare started selling Chik shampoo in sachets which led to the evolution of sachet marketing. Call it first-mover advantage or simply an understanding of the Indian consumer but the new approach helped them acquire a market hold. This is what I call consumer-focused brand building.

Some brands come up with events that can create history. Indians want good quality at affordable price. The ‘sabse sasta din’ of Big Bazaar took the retail market to a new high by grossing business worth Rs 300 crore in three days.

Rules of the GameBrands also need to harness the power of consumer insight by observing customers and trying to strike a chord with them.

India forces brands to alter their thinking, strategy and marketing technique. When a brand lands on Indian turf, it needs to do market research. Motorola, the original mobile company, made costly mistakes by not researching and listening to customers. It thought that India was another pin on its global map so it came here with the same products it sold in other markets. The first set of Motorola phones it launched here had heavy batteries. So, the company made pricing and advertising attractive and roped in celebrities to gain market hold.


CEO_Speaking.indd 27 7/28/2009 5:58:26 PM

Dr. Sridhar Mitta, MD & CEO, E4E Solutions,

says that CIOs should move beyond their roles

and venture into being entrepreneurial.

As told to priyAnkA

“CIOs Need to Hunt for New

Opportunities.”


approximately 10 years to complete, and was likely to become obsolete.

Again, I approached the CIO and offered a solution. I suggested running a parallel system using the software I designed for commercial purposes. This arrangement was mutually beneficial to both the parties; it cut costs heavily, took less time, and met national targets.

Thus, we spotted and tracked down this business opportunity. During the early 1990s, the government decided to open the economy and provide greater flexibility to imports. We instantly sensed tough competition from global giants like IBM and Microsoft. We then decided to start offering services to a global customer, and the global R&D came into existence.

I took it upon myself to bring about a business change and I think CIOs should step in and take such decisions. Such endeavors are important and I encourage people to do their own experiments and add substantial value to their companies and their personal lives too. CIO

Priyanka is trainee journalist. send feedback on this

column to [email protected]

being an entrepreneur has nothing to do with age or experience look for opportunities build an internal plan for your company’s business Understand the customer and the market Encourage subordinates to experiment

Honing Your Entrepreneurial Skills


I can summarize 35 years of my experience as a CTO and an R&D specialist in two words: technology and entrepreneurship. Though,

I was never a CIO and I have never considered myself an entrepreneur, I am entrepreneurial. The difference is that all entrepreneurs are entrepreneurial, but people who are entrepreneurial need not be entrepreneurs.

There has been a sea change in the role of a CIO within an organization today. Having worked as the CTO in Wipro for nearly 20 years, I strongly believe that the changing role of a CIO is similar to the role of a CTO in an organization. This observation can also help redefine their learning processes.

This could be further explained with what I call a capability maturity model for entrepreneurs. This model can be employed to understand how the dynamic roles of a CIO within an organization impact him or her. It is, however, a layered architecture and the stages are present in a hierarchical order. Only after getting to the first step can a CIO move to the next one and so on.

LEvEL IThe Functional Manager It is well understood that any functional manager has to achieve a functional superiority in his or her domain. These functional goals should sync with the overall macro-business objective.

It is very important then that CIOs and business leaders interact with customers to understand their changing needs, and build mechanisms to reciprocate accordingly. A CIO should also actively engage other department heads and explain how technology works.

LEvEL IIThe Business GuyIT-business alignment is not new to the industry. As the CTO of Wipro, my

understanding of customer needs and the information I gathered from other departments, always helped me come up with better product designs.

For instance, we faced design problems before launching the 286 Series (Pentium-based PC platforms). We wanted a multi-layered PC board, but the only company manufacturing it in India went on a strike. So, I approached the CIO and convinced him that we could still manage the production if we arranged for multi-layer PC boards from Intel. However, management wasn’t sure if Intel would agree to fulfill our requirements because Wipro was a small company then.

Finally, we persuaded Intel and they agreed to manufacture the required product. As the R&D manager, it was disappointing for me to see that it was not precisely the design I had in mind, but Intel did produce something on similar lines.

It is thus very important to maintain a healthy inter-department relationship and focus on the overall business objective of the company. CIOs today are in a favorable position because they have access to all business processes and are aware of the revenue, growth, customer relationship, customer response and data.

LEvEL IIIThe Entrepreneur In this stage, a CIO needs to go beyond his day-to-day function, align with business and hunt for new opportunities.

Take for example; as an R&D manager in Wipro, I designed chips and apps that were primarily used for commercial purposes. The DRDO (defense research & development organization) was looking for products that could withstand extremely low temperatures. The traditional approach was to start from scratch, and develop their hardware and software. This would, in my opinion, be a very elaborate process that would take



“The Best Way to Beat the

Slowdown is to Start Spending.”

John Powath, Partner, Ernst & Young, believes that the budget has provided high-income groups with an opportunity to invest in the economy and beat the crisis. As told to

VArshA ChidAmbArAm

the abolition of Fbt and commodity tax It promotes investment in r&d an exemption on packaged and canned software the introduction of a proposal for alternative dispute resolution process

How the Budget Affects You

Enterprises should look at exploring opportunities to use limited liability partnerships (LLPs). Surcharge has been removed for individuals as well as partnership firms so your effective tax for an LLP compared to a company is much lower: you will save upto 3 percent.

The IT sector has quite a lot to look forward to. There has been an exemption on the duty for packaged or canned software. The deduction in R & D rates — up to 150 percent. Hopefully, it will encourage people to innovate more.

The government has announced that the goods and services tax (GST) will be introduced next year. From an IT perspective, GST is a dual tax; the state and the center will have their own legislation for GST. But there is no clarification around the rollout mechanism. Service tax refund and SEZ taxation formula are two other grey areas which need some clarification. . CIO

Varsha Chidambaram is a trainee journalist. send

feedback on this colum to varsha_chidambaram@

idgindia.com


Before the Union Budget was announced early last month, a lot of people and experts wondered if it would be the

budget of the millennium. Everyone wanted it to bring change, what with the shape of the plagued the economy. There was a lot of hope everywhere. The question is: has it done that? Will it provide the right stimulus or impetus to lift India's slowing economy?

If the stock market is any indicator, a lot of people didn't think so. But does the stock market's immediate tanking mean that the Budget will not work or is there a mismatch in expectation?

The GDP, which now stands at 6.5 percent, is a clear indication of the fact that growth has decelerated. And worse, it could find lower levels in the ensuing months. Tax as a percentage of GDP has also dropped mainly because of the contraction in the economy and the fiscal stimulus package offered by the government.

There are other problems. Take a look at the IT sector. The fall in the service tax rate from 12.36 to 10.3 and a reduction in custom duty has resulted in shrinking fiscal revenues for the government.

By far, the budget has been populist. The government has burnt its fingers by providing a lot of subsidies that will see thefiscal deficit bloom from 1-2 percent to around 6 percent. How is the government looking to fund this?

It is going to be difficult because foreign exchange rates (forex) have dropped and FDI into India has fallen to a trickle. Oil prices are on the rise and NRI remittances have taken a beating. If forex levels dips further, the Rupee will weaken. On top of

that, initial public offerings (IPOs) are not being issued. The ability of companies to take money from the public has completely dropped. These are all factors that define an economic crisis.

The Way OutBut, what we are going through is not a financial crisis; it is a crisis of confidence. Look at it this way: only 15 percent of the export sector has been impacted and domestic demand is still robust. If people come out and start spending, the GDP will rise and we’ll come out of this crisis. The best way to beat the slowdown is to start spending. We as consumers deepen the crisis further by being over cautious. The budget has effectively brought down the tax rate by 3 percent (from 33 to 30). This will put money back into the high-income bracket with the rationale of increasing demand, which will subsequently stimulate manufacturing and will set the wheel of a comeback in motion.

The abolition of the fringe benefit tax (FBT) and commodity tax are vital. For capitals, which typically work on a cost-plus basis, FBT forms part of the cost base and gives a 10-15 percent uplift. With FBT on its way out, the cost base will decrease and therefore cash outflows will reduce. As far as companies are concerned, they need to look at modifying compensation structures, because much of FBT was earlier covered under CTC to employees. In these times, there is nothing like variable pay. Thirty percent of your salary is variable; basically it is a 30 percent reduction in your salary coupled with that you have increased tax cash outflow, this might lead to employee dissatisfaction.



Ravi Dasgupta, Group Head HR, Biocon, one

of the top 20 biotech companies in the world, tells you why your team

defines you. As told to kAnikA goswAmi

“It’s Simple: to be called a Good Leader, You Need to

Have a High-class Team

Under You."

3 2 a u g u s t 1 , 2 0 0 9 | REAL CIO WORLD


I must be the rare HR head in Bangalore who has not worked at an IT company, but 21 years spent working with people in diverse

environments has given me a fair understanding of people. From what I can see, we all face the same challenges. Hopefully, my experiences at Biocon will point out how to tackle these better.

Finding and Retaining TalentThe dearth of good quality talent is a pan-Indian phenomena, despite the number of institutes we have. In biotechnology, for example, the employability ratio is only 20 percent. And as you go higher up the value chain the situation worsens.

There are two parts to the solution. First is a company’s employment brand. Second is how candidates match what they’ve heard from the outside and what they’ve got.

At Biocon, we break our employment branding into two parts: external branding and the value proposition we offer to recruits. This is where our brand pays off: despite our relatively low revenues, Biocon is one of the top 20 biotech companies in the world. We conduct very exciting research, including insulin therapy.

The respect Biocon enjoys in the medical community also forms part of our brand equity. Our employees regularly publish research articles in international magazines, and we are also known as a strong R&D (research and develeopment) organization.

To meet the second challenge we make sure we offer a great work environment. People who are looking for a challenge like it here because we can challenge them. We also partner with research organizations and have tie-ups with educational institutions. Essentially, this means that employees can undertake their PhDs while working with Biocon.

We find this partnership very useful in retaining talent.

Talent Management Today, even dealing with subordinates is a challenge. We need to learn to change with the times to keep up with different kinds of people. It is important — even if you’re not a people person — to be able, for instance, to mingle with people at an office party. We need to spend time learning how to deal with both our seniors and subordinates equally.

How leaders deal with their teams is determined by their value systems. There are three parts to this: their confidence in their subordinates' abilities, their inclination towards a leadership role, and their faith in their teams as a whole.

All this will determine how much a leader delegates, how much he or she will empower their teams. What is needed is a balance between the freedom that a subordinate has and how much authority a leader wields. A good leader has expertise to know when different proportions work. It’s a skill we all need to develop.

Succession Planning When a CIO picks someone to be a potential successor he has two choices. If he chooses someone early in their career, he or she has a chance to grow with the organization. Or a CIO can decide on someone at the GM level. Here, CIOs need to ensure that their pick has their sights on the next stage otherwise their choice will block the growth of others.

A good criterion in choosing a successor is the person’s ability to take decisions

during times of ambiguity. At Biocon, we use another metric to separate out good leaders. When I discuss potential candidates with my MD, she has one criterion: she does not review how good they are or if they can solve problems overnight, she looks at the kind of team he or she has built. Her definition of a leader is someone who can build a team that can handle responsibilities even in the absence of their leader. It’s simple: if you are good, you have to have a high-class team under you.

This opened my eyes. This is our challenge as team leaders: our ability to find the right kind of support within our organization. Sure, we can hire someone from outside if a functional head leaves — but it will take time before he or she gets the flavor of the organization. CIO

Kanika goswami is assistant editor. send feedback on

this column to [email protected]

Different Leadership Styles

Leaders order

Leaders sell pre-cast decision

Leaders present decision and invite questions

Leaders consult before taking decision

Leaders present situation and seek suggestions — but make decision

Leaders present situation but ask team to make decision

Leaders allow team to operate within pre-defined limits

More authority-centered More team-centered



Alaganandan Balaraman, VP & Head-HR & Process Architect, Britannia Industries, explains how his organization has altered its processes to adapt to the economy. As told to shArdhA subrAmAniAn

“We Need to Tweak and Refine Our Goals."


A young area sales manager recently asked me, “What do you think will happen to the stock market?” I asked, “Why

the interest? Are you a serious investor?”He said that everybody around him was

talking about the slowdown and he was wondering when it would end. I asked him if it mattered to him on a personal level, to which he said: “It is going to have a serious impact on everyone. Things are going to be difficult, sales will get affected, the job market is going to suffer and we won’t be able live the life we used to,” he said.

I asked him if it had changed anything for him. He thought for a while and said, “Actually you are right, I think it’s all in my mind and it’s affecting the way I think. I have never seen something like this before.”

And for me that was the telling point. The older generation has faced others downturns,


That was another reason why I was moved to HR. We needed to do away with these irrelevant processes. We tend to design processes for specific functions. We will need to move to a way of life which will allow us to build in the flexibility. We need to look at processes that enable decoupling so that we can reuse older investments.

Fix the cultural gap: People think: ‘We have been here for a long time and hence we don’t need to change the way we work. Nothing is going to happen to us.’ That’s not true and we need to change this mindset. Britannia has invested a huge amount of time and effort in communicating the idea of bringing about change.

Move to a capability-based strategy. Destination-based strategy — saying that ‘five years from now I want to be here’ — is giving way to ‘I need these base capabilities for now.’ We need to keep tweaking and refining our goals based on opportunities and threats. Building in capabilities for workflow and analysis are powerful drivers.

Architectures will become inclusive. We will be embracing a lot of external services and devices. This area requires dedicated investment. Putting in the infrastructure and being able to get buy-in is important. From an IT perspective, we are at a cusp, we will start shifting to alternative ways of operating because if we don’t we are going to start facing pressure from consumers.

The economy has taken us by surprise. Like the young area sales manager said, the economy has changed the way we think and its time that we agreed with him. CIO

shardha subramanian is copy editor. send feedback on

this column to [email protected]


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For the presentations and videos of these leaders, log on to our companion website. Go to www.cio.in/leadership-summit

c o.in


For premium products like Pure Magic, the For premium products like Pure Magic, the consumer is insensitive to price changes consumer is insensitive to price changes because the scale of change is very small because the scale of change is very small and affordable in those markets. and affordable in those markets.

But to deliver products like Tiger But to deliver products like Tiger Biscuits — that has been sold for Rs 3 since Biscuits — that has been sold for Rs 3 since the day it launched — is a huge challenge. Our consumers didn’t want us to raise the price but we did. And demand collapsed. That class of consumers could not take the price increase and we had to pull back and rebuild volumes in those markets.

The TransformersThe TransformersWe need to prepare for change. When We need to prepare for change. When you are looking at an economy, which is you are looking at an economy, which is fairly complex, trying to forecast what fairly complex, trying to forecast what will happen next is extremely difficult. will happen next is extremely difficult. In IT, we have been plagued with this In IT, we have been plagued with this problem for a long time. When programs problem for a long time. When programs start becoming really large, it becomes start becoming really large, it becomes very difficult to isolate, identify and very difficult to isolate, identify and fix problems. Businesses have become fix problems. Businesses have become more complex and being able to predict is difficult.

We need to learn to deal with uncertainty and change. And the need to reduce costs is the most obvious change that has come with the slowdown.

We all desperately need to focus on costs. Apart from reducing costs, we also need to alter the way we work. Here are some of the things we have tried:

Change structure. We had a very strong regional structure and we had been operating with it for 90 years. But we realized that it will not work in this economy. We had isolated our sales channel economy. We had isolated our sales channel and each region worked like a separate and each region worked like a separate company. Now we have consolidated company. Now we have consolidated each area. We are re-segmenting our each area. We are re-segmenting our sales channel and we also have a cost sales channel and we also have a cost effectiveness program which looks at effectiveness program which looks at saving about Rs 50-80 lakh per year for saving about Rs 50-80 lakh per year for the organization.

Architect Processes, don’t just design Architect Processes, don’t just design them. We had a lot of irrelevant processes. We had a lot of irrelevant processes. There were a number of processes that we There were a number of processes that we did not need and were not even in use. did not need and were not even in use.

but for the newer generation — not only of employees, but of consumers — this slump has been devastating in several ways. How companies look at the slump and what it has done to the way people think is very relevant to what will happen going forward.

Dealing With ChangeBritannia has been facing the slump longer Britannia has been facing the slump longer than other companies. Back in 2006, the than other companies. Back in 2006, the commodity markets flared up substantially. commodity markets flared up substantially. If you study the price trend of wheat buying, the minimum sales procurement price used to go up by Rs 5-15 per quintal every year. In 2006, it went up by Rs 125.

In 2007, sugar, dairy, and oil prices went up. So the four major commodities that make up Britannia’s input basket to make biscuits have seen substantial inflationary pressures in the last four years.

On the other side, we deal with products which span a whole range of consumers.

Today it would cost an equivalent of $70 million (about Rs 350 crore) and took 38 years to build, but that’s not what’s fantastic about the Winchester mystery house in

California. What makes it a tourist attraction — apart from the fact that it’s rumored to be haunted — is that it has 65 doors that open into blank walls and 13 staircases that stop mid-air.

How did this happen? It didn’t have a building plan. Your IT infrastructure probably isn’t in this state — but with

fast-changing business demands, new platforms like SaaS, and the average CIO tenure of four years, it could be. “There’s going to be blood on the wall if we don’t think strategically,” says Abnash

Singh, president, IT operations Center of Excellence, UCB Pharma.

The Rise of Enterprise Architecture: The world is changing so fast few companies can keep pace. Companies are switching business models to offer new products and are expanding into new geographies often through M&As. Then there are increasing pressures from compliance, a shortage of skills, and the need for more security, among others. The bottom line? Business is more complex.

This is where enterprise architecture steps in. Simply put, enterprise architecture aligns a business’ vision with its IT infrastructure. It’s what the Winchester mansion needed but didn’t have. “People don’t realize the importance of architecture until it fails,” says Ravishankar Subramanian, director-IT & corporate services, ING Life Insurance.

In India, few companies can claim to have formal enterprise architecture plans. At a CIO roundtable on the subject only four out of 12 CIOs who lead some of the country’s most celebrated companies, had an enterprise architect (EA).

However, many IT leaders say that the function exists. “We take enterprise architecture seriously,” says Sudhir Kumar Reddy, CIO, MindTree. “Whether or not we call it that.”

It’s a point view that gets many CIOs nodding, including Nishi Vasudeva, executive director-IS, HPCL. At the Rs 1,31,802-crore, 450-location petroleum company, she has a GM who reports to her that fulfills the role of an enterprise architect. “As an individual he is someone who has a good understanding of business and IT. That’s why he can play that role,” she says.

Those qualifications are what most CIOs are looking for in their enterprise architects. “I would place my enterprise architect

Designing a superstructure for tomorrow is becoming more important as companies change business directions and implement new IT platforms to adapt to change. That’s where enterprise architecture can help.

Concrete Plans

“I would place my enterprise architect bets on someone who is both business and IT savvy. But that’s a rare combination to find.”

— Ajay DhirCIO, Jindal Stainless

“There’s going to be blood on the wall if we don’t think strategically. We

won’t survive unless we change the way things are run.”

—Abnash SinghPresident, IT Operations Center of

Excellence, UCB Pharma

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bets on someone who is business and IT savvy. But it’s a rare combination to find,” says Ajay Dhir, CIO, Jindal Stainless.

So should enterprise architects come out of the business or should they be IT personnel with a deep understanding of business? “It’s an important question,” says Dhir. His company has someone from business who has experience in setting up the company’s ERP to fill the role of an EA. Like Vasudeva, he chose that person because of his understanding of both business and IT. But, he says there is another trait that made his enterprise architect tick. “Crucially, his ‘acceptability’ across the business is great,” he says.

Between his reputation and Dhir’s guidance, their collaboration, he says, boosts their success because they can better persuade the business of a blueprint to follow. And their success shows. When the steel and infrastructure sector took a hit last year, the company still managed to open two new global centers quickly “because we had a framework in place. With that we were able to create a template to roll out ERP at both these locations in just 45 days each. Conventionally, this would have taken between six to eight months,” he says. “The respect of the management increased considerably.”

Some CIOs, like Arvind Saksena, group CIO, Consilium Software, say that enterprise architects should come from outside in the form of consultants because they bring more best practices with them. Others, like Singh from UCB use senior IT-business relationship managers and still others fill the role with a group of IT and business leaders.

EA Goodies: If CIOs can’t agree on the form EAs should take, they do agree on the benefits of the role. New Holland Fiat India, for example, gained from the group’s move to form a team of IT leaders from each of their geographies to create a single architecture. “When we all assembled, I remember we listed around over 700 apps in different regions, 1,700 interfaces and four ERPs,” says Avinash Arora, director-IS (India & S.E. Asia), New Holland Fiat India.

That’s when they realized the complexity they had put in place. “We were lost,” says Arora. After trying portfolio management and realizing that they had too many duplicate business processes, they decided to involve the business and enterprise architecture took shape. “We decided what architecture we should have, which technologies to give up and which to adopt,” says Arora.

Their savings are not negligible. Arora says that the company saved $13 million (about Rs 65 crore) just in 2008 by consolidating and abandoning duplicate processes. The new blueprint also helped the company save another $8 million (about Rs 40 crore) by merely consolidating 1.2 lakh mail servers in a server farm.

As convincing an argument as financial benefit is, it is not the only factor that drives enterprise architecture. Complexity is another reason. At MindTree, an important job for IT is to restrict the proliferation of applications, says Reddy. “I get told ‘you’re the CIO, your job is to build apps and I always say ‘I beg to differ. My job is to contain them’.”

Globalization and the increase in M&As is another motive. Take for instance i-Flex, now part of Oracle. When i-Flex started “everyone knew everyone. Everything was hunky dory,”

says S. Hariharan, Sr. VP, infrastructure solutions and services group, Oracle Financial Services. But as the company grew, it started to acquire smaller companies. Suddenly revenue reporting — with multiple systems — became very hard. “We also wanted to be a billion dollar quickly and at that point everyone said ‘this simply won’t do’,” recalls Hariharan. And this, he says, drove them to enterprise architecture.

There are benefits for global companies including being able to re-use applications in different geographies, like what ING does, says ING Life’s Subramanian.

Structural Challenges: It isn’t easy come by these advantages. Enterprise architecture is hard because the constant change in business keeps pulling the rug from under an architect. “Developing software and walking on water are both easy when they are frozen, but in the real world business requirements are never frozen and managing change is important,” says V. Subramaniam, CIO, OTIS.

And that’s not the only challenge. The nature of the role poses problems. “When it works, it's fantastic, but typically enterprise architecture becomes an ivory tower activity,” says Reddy.

Another challenge is the lack of worth attached to the role. Saxena says that business expansion is in conflict with enterprise architecture because both are vying for the same funds — which normally go to business. “You can have a blueprint, but once you start implementing it, you have to take shortcuts,” says Saksena.

The other option is to run business the same way, even as the world around us changes. Like Subramanian says “the only legacy we have is the legacy that we create.” Now think twice. CIO

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Outside of the world of CIOs and other communities that are intimate with IT, a question along the lines of ‘what is cloud computing?’ is sure to give you answers akin to

what happens in the tale of the The Six Blind Men and the Elephant. What is broadly accepted however, is that the collective term ‘cloud computing’ encompasses the concepts and the implementation of virtualization (server or otherwise), SaaS, IaaS (infrastructure as a service), PaaS (platform as a service) — basically computation and applications that are virtualized and ‘served’ according to demand rather than physical hardware that is wholly-owned with applications running on them.

The term ‘cloud’ is derived from the cloud diagram commonly used in network diagrams to represent a complex interconnect between various servers and datacenters. It makes data — or a service — that is hosted on one machine accessible from anywhere else, often via a web browser. In this oft-used representation, what does not matter is how data finds its way to an intended recipient. That process is transparent and the end user can use the service or data without worrying about what’s happening in the background.

Sounds familiar? Of course, because that’s pretty much the way the Internet, as we know it, functions. And others say it sounds like more current technologies. “What’s the difference between cloud computing, virtualization, software as a service?” asks Tarun Pandey, VP-IT, Aditya Birla Financial Services. “The concept came about because owning and maintaining hardware and scaling it up whenever demand increased was becoming a challenge for many enterprises.” Subodh simplifies the concept of cloud computing by comparing it to Gmail: you can access e-mails from pretty much anywhere so long as you have an Internet connection. “You do not need to know where your mail resides or how it reaches your device,” he says.

But cloud computing, as applied to enterprises today, promises to deliver substantial financial benefits. It does this primarily by eliminating much of the upfront capital expenditure needed to keep servers ‘on the bench’ in case of a demand spike. And also by allowing enterprises to pay for services and even CPU cycles ‘as they use’.

Between these cost benefits and the hassle-free future that cloud computing promises, a growing number of CIOs are

More CIOs are under pressure to bring the benefits of the cloud to their enterprises. In the way are unknown challenges that the platform could introduce. Can internal clouds, driven by virtualization, be a start?

Taking Off

“Virtualization is about sharing resources and cloud computing is about getting rid of geographical boundaries. Virtualization has the potential to be an enabler in implementing cloud computing.

—Dhiren SavlaCIO, Kuoni Travels

Being a bank, the information risk function falls under an

independent body. So where our IT blueprint is concerned we are not

jumping into a new technology.

—C.V.G. PrasadCIO, ING Vysya Bank.

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beginning to field questions about the technology from their senior brass. After all, it is hard to argue with near zero capex, the flexibility to expand at will (you just ‘buy’ more of a service as you need it), and the elasticity to return to your most optimal usage after a spike. But is it too good to be true? Is there a catch? What are the concerns?

Grey Skies: When data is hosted off-site, can CIOs hit the sack at the end of the day without nightmares of data security? “Being a bank, the information risk function falls under an independent body,” says C.V.G Prasad, CIO, ING Vysya Bank. “Our processes have to be certified. So where our IT blueprint is concerned we are going to stay current generation minus one. We will not jump and adopt a new technology.”

At Kuoni Travels, CIO Dhiren Savla agrees. He feels that in industries like BPOs, client acceptance is a concern. “Clients may not accept a BPO going the cloud way with their data.”

Another position those opposed to cloud computing take is: with CPU prices falling by the month and those of storage even more frequently, are the cost benefits of cloud computing justifiable enough to rely on a third party for an organization’s storage and computational needs? And what happens to existing IT infrastructure? More importantly, what about the complexities of marrying cloud computing with legacy infrastructure?

And then there’s the CIO bogeyman: regulation. Few CIOs are sure about how moving to the cloud will affect their compliance stance. “Anything with regulatory and compliance can be very costly for us at Vodaphone,” says Sridar S., Head IT, Vodaphone.

Virtualization’s Half Way House: Admittedly, the cloud isn’t the first new technology to meet opposition. Like most new technologies it has its challenges — and its workarounds. Many forward-looking CIOs say it is only a matter of time before the cloud becomes mainstream and are preparing for it. They are doing this by implementing cloud computing within the enterprise itself: an internal cloud. While there is no third party involved and the enterprise has to own all the required hardware, the immediate advantage is the effective use of IT resources within the enterprise (read, virtualization). Apart from the cost benefits of marshalling a company’s IT infrastructure for optimum use, an internal cloud, depending on how it is implemented, will allow an enterprise to take applications and data beyond PCs in a physical boundary (think access from a remote location or handhelds).

But in an internal cloud architecture, the server’s role is even more critical. Desktop virtualization, for instance, shifts the computation on the user machine to a server. Applications and data are ‘served’ to user machines rather than residing there. So, does an internal cloud mean that organizations have to buy more servers to handle computing demand? Not necessarily. Pretty much every enterprise has unused computing power across the servers it deploys. Server virtualization can put all those unused

CPU cycles to good use, saving organizations the cost of acquiring new hardware.

“Virtualization is all about sharing resources optimally and cloud computing is about getting rid of geographical boundaries to access applications and data. Thus, virtualization has the potential to be an enabler in the implementation of cloud computing,” says Savla.

So what really is the role of virtualization in all of this? For most CIOs, unutilized resources, the increase in mobile workers and governance and risk compliance form three important pain points. The easiest issue to tackle is underutilized resources. Take your existing resources and virtualize them to meet your existing and ongoing demands. There are a lot of tools in the market from different vendors to do a ‘sizing’ of your existing resource utilization and create a workload profile. And then you can decide which workloads to virtualize. There are certain kinds of workloads that are more suitable for virtualization than others. But, experts suggest caution in choosing what kind of workloads to virtualize.

Virtualization can also help in other ways. Here’s a common IT set up: CIOs have servers on different floors or even in different data centers. With virtualization they can slowly consolidate these. Then they can have a single point of control and all their compliance and auditing needs can be controlled from a single point.

And there’s more that virtualization can do. The next level of virtualization is orchestration. The biggest advantage of virtualization is the ability to move workloads. For instance, you can move workloads to a single physical machine to shutdown other machines and save power. Next, you can think of how you can take your services and make them available externally to the marketing force or sales people who are on the field. It may not always be possible for them to go through a VPN. Or people external to your company may need access to your applications. That is when you need to think about making your applications accessible anytime, anywhere.

But virtualization can’t be the end all. As technology marches forward, you need to start thinking cloud computing. But it could be a start. CIO

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Reader ROI:

How server and desktop virtualization differ

Why desktop virtualization isn't as easy

The benefits

Desktop virtualization could improve security

and manageability for IT departments.

With virtualization, CIOs can extend the life of desktops to

five years, instead of three.

Desktop virtualization can be costly upfront and doesn’t provide the quick benefit CIOs

normally expect from virtualization.

Unlike servers, you have plenty more desktops, which can be

more complex.

Virtualization


Virtualization

Virtualizing your desktops isn’t a hop, skip, and jump. Nor is it an extension of the more familiar server virtualization. But it has its benefits. We weigh the pros and cons. By Denise DuBie

Successful server virtualization deployments lead many IT leaders to believe desktop virtualization could provide the same benefits. While that is true in part, companies need to increase their awareness of how the two technologies differ.

"Desktop virtualization is a very different beast and should not be treated as simple enhancements to the server strategy," says Natalie Lambert, principal analyst at Forrester Research. "The drivers are entirely different and it will present new challenges to those experienced with server virtualization."

For instance, desktop virtualization doesn't offer the near-immediate cost benefits many cite with virtual server rollouts. And while virtual servers present new security and management challenges, many argue that in the desktop realm, virtualization improves security and manageability for IT departments. In addition, the sheer numbers involved can be strikingly different.

"IT managers could be taking on 500 virtual servers, and that is a lot, but it is nothing compared to 10,000 desktops," Lambert says.

According to industry experts and IT pros, there are some similarities and many differences between virtual servers and virtual desktops. Here are the key factors that could help avoid major desktop virtualization headaches.

Complexity intenSifiedMost IT departments at enterprise companies have exponentially more desktops to support than servers, virtual or otherwise. The sheer volume of desktops should be one of the first criteria IT managers consider when making a move to a virtual platform.

With more than one billion PCs in the world, there's a huge opportunity for virtualization, but "all the requirements of the PC world need to be maintained as you migrate into the datacenter," says Mark Margevicius, vice president and research director at Gartner. "The desktop realm represents

a lot more moving parts, considering that all the uniqueness that happens on a PC needs to be maintained."

Server virtualization teams are unlikely to be responsible for desktop infrastructure, beyond the servers that host the virtualization platforms. That means desktop groups need to rethink patch management, software distribution and other functions when applying them to a centralized system rather than a slew of disparate desktops.

"Desktop teams know how to manage 100,000 machines so the practices and policies are completely different. In the virtual realm the desktops come back to the server environment but cannot be thought of in the same terms," Forrester's Lambert says.

For Jake Seitz, expanding his company's VMware server virtualization deployment to include desktops was driven by compliance requirements and a move away from supporting desktop hardware. The enterprise architect at The First American Corp. says his group may be supporting less desktop hardware, but now they are responsible for maintaining "all these unique virtual machines." With 22,000 desktops, Seitz says the plan is to migrate 3,000 to 4,000 per year as hardware comes off its lease or as it fails — a plan that will help his team stay on top of the new virtual environment as well.

"The desktop has its own challenges, including the uniqueness of images personalized by end users. With a ‘patch once and push many' approach, the risk of breaking software goes up exponentially," Seitz says. "We have one-off machines in legal or finance, for instance, and we patch them ad hoc as needed. We realize we can't do desktops in a big bang move; it has to be an incremental move."

double the CoSt, half the RoiWhile server virtualization virtually guarantees a speedy ROI, desktop virtualization can be cost-prohibitive to start and deliver a somewhat less immediate and difficult-to-quantify return on the substantial investment.Il

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Analysts estimate choosing virtual desktops can cost 150 to 250 percent more than traditional PCs — and that's just for the direct cost of acquiring the technology. Savvy IT managers realize when pricing out a project they need to also calculate indirect costs.

"Desktop virtualization is a lot like hybrid cars. No one disputes the value and they love the idea, but it is just too expensive to write a check and pay a lot when the traditional version is cheaper and already paid for," Gartner's Margevicius says.

Yet for some organizations the benefits are enough to warrant the investment. For Kevin Nolan, the potential cost, time and labor savings associated with virtual desktops is driving his organization to evaluate the technology. Nolan, manager of systems engineering at Mohawk Industries, a manufacturer of carpet, rugs, hardwood floors, laminate and ceramic tile among other things, says his company is expanding their use of virtualization technology beyond the 500 VMware virtual servers his group supports. Nolan says adopting virtual desktops would enable his company to extend the refresh cycle on PCs.

"If you have a virtual desktop, you can stretch hardware for more like five or six years, rather than the standard three-year refresh cycle," Nolan says. "With a lot less hardware, there are a lot fewer opportunities to break and have-to-fix machines."

Considering the cost, Nolan says his desktop and server team are working together to evaluate several vendors, including VMware and Citrix. Nolan realizes the desktop realm requires expertise in managing multiple PCs, which Citrix is great at, but because the technology will reside in the datacenter and involve the server group, VMware might be a better option.

Analysts say customers could realize price cuts if they did add desktop technology from their virtual server vendor. "Definitely, the more customers buy from one vendor, the more discounts they will receive and the lower the cost per seat could be," Forrester's Lambert says.

For John Turner, desktop virtualization isn't the right move yet. The director of networks and systems at Brandeis University, says his group evaluated the possibility of extending their successful server virtualization implementation to the desktop and the argument didn't stand up. For one, being a university it would be a challenge to lock down a PC image for the majority of students, faculty and others to use. And without solid support for streaming video across the virtual PCs, Turner says he couldn't sign on just yet.

"From a university perspective, we have such a diversity of functions and we can't dictate too much to the end users. And without gigabit to the desktop, performance would be poor," he explains. "We imagined replacing only computers that fail, stretching the refresh cycle, going back to dumb terminals,

but we have to also provide what people want with a powerful operating system."

First American's Seitz agrees that many virtual desktops need to be cloned from one golden image, with some changes applied depending on groups. But most desktops incorporate "Microsoft Office and some basic functionality because that is all they need," he says. While First American uses VMware VDI because it was "the most cost-effective option," Seitz is also realizing benefits not directly related to costs.

"The number of help desk calls drops substantially because they related to hardware and we threw that out, and business continuity plans are more easily implemented," Seitz says. "Auditors are happier that our data doesn't leave our datacenters and go overseas. The end user on a virtual desktop only sees a representation of the data and not the data itself, which simplifies a lot of what we do."

don't foRget netwoRk and StoRageIT leaders must also look closely at network and storage requirements in their virtual desktop environment because if they don't, what is already an expensive endeavor will become too costly to continue deploying.

"Typically when doing an ROI against desktops, you don't factor in network and storage costs. You need to break that all down in a per-virtual-machine model," Seitz says. "But storage could be a big cost; shared storage is not cheap."

Storage is a lesson already learned by server teams deploying virtualization, says Andi Mann, vice president of research at Enterprise Management Associates. For that reason, desktop groups should depend upon the experience of their peers when considering storage. For instance, 5,000 desktops each with a 60-gigabit drive built-in could prove to be cost exorbitant. But by bringing those storage requirements back to the datacenter, Mann says, via thin provisioning and data de-duplication, desktop teams will lower their costs and optimize resources.

"Storage management is one of the biggest concerns about desktop virtualization. A lot of resources can be wasted if not managed properly," Mann says.

He adds that the network is another area of concern, though it's not typically on desktop managers' minds. While Gigabit Ethernet is a standard for datacenters, it has yet to be widely deployed to the desktop.

Determining network capacity and understanding if an upgrade is in order could help IT leaders decide on virtual desktops, Seitz says. "The network needs to be able to handle aggregate traffic from many desktops to one location in the datacenter, so an upgrade from 100MB Ethernet to Gigabit might be necessary," he says. CIO


Virtualization

41%Of IT departments

have already invested on desktop virtualization and 22 percent more see it as a

critical priority.source: IDg Research


Feature_1_Desktop Virtualization.indd 42 7/28/2009 4:53:33 PM

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Feature_2_Network.indd 44 7/28/2009 4:57:25 PM

IT Management

rimming network redundancy at the University of Connecticut's School of Business was certainly not COO Michael Vertefeuille's first choice to save money. However, as the college faces a 10 percent budget shortfall this year, falling on the heels of last year's 5 percent cutback, he's

had to dig deep."We already have datacenter consolidation and

virtualization projects underway, but this budget deficit is more severe than that and we needed to do more," says Vertefeuille, who is based in Storrs, Connecticut.

This has meant going over his network architecture with a fine-tooth comb and making the difficult decision to cut the redundancy — and the ability to immediately come back quickly after a disaster or outage — from his multi-link infrastructure.

"The service contracts on our routers are astronomical — especially when we already paid a premium for carrier-grade," he says.

The school is now relying solely on its primary routers, which feature built-in redundancy and have a four-hour parts replacements contract. "We know we're moving back to a single point of failure, but the cost savings are worth it. The assessment shows that since it would take a catastrophic failure to keep those routers down, we don't feel we're putting ourselves in jeopardy. It's a risk tolerance we have to take," he says.

Vertefeuille and his public-sector peers, who even in a good year have to make tough budget calls, are not alone in having to weigh these drastic trade-offs, according to Jim Frey, research manager at IT consultancy Enterprise Management Associates. As the economy tightens its grip on IT budgets, public and private sector IT teams alike are being forced to consider cost-cutting strategies that would otherwise have been verboten.

IDC predicted in February that year-over-year growth in IT spending this year will only reach 0.1 percent, down from the November 2008 forecast of 0.9 percent. Translated into IT budgets, this means IT teams have to come up with the money for new projects with a bent toward the creative.

"There is definitely a trend toward non-traditional thinking right now. People are scrambling to figure out how to fund projects for the next six months to a year, rather than farther out," Frey says.

Buying iT gear on eBay

While Vertefeuille tussles with his architecture to eke out those funds, Charleston Southern University CIO Rusty Bruns turns to eBay to drum up equipment savings.

"I don't have an enormous budget on a regular day — only US$2 million (about Rs 10 crore) — and most of that is spent on maintenance costs. So in this economy, I have to do even more to save money where I can," he says.

Bruns has bought everything from Packeteer packet shapers, which enable him to apply policies to optimize network traffic flows, to digital phones from the online auction house — and the payback has been tremendous. He bought his first packet shaper brand-new from Packeteer for $13,500 (about Rs 6.7 lakh). "A few months later I needed another one, so I went online and got it from eBay for $2,500 (about Rs 1.2 lakh)," he says.

While he's had great luck with the quality of the technology he's purchased online, he admits that he uses gear bought on that venue to equip his secondary, tertiary and test networks. "We don't use eBay buys for parts of the network where if it goes down, the whole network goes down. We need the maintenance contracts for those and we're not willing to gamble on that," he says. For instance, he picks up secondary routers and servers on eBay, but not the primary ones. He also doesn't use eBay for security devices such as firewalls.

To avoid the horror stories of purchases gone bad, Bruns has developed standards for his team to follow when shopping on eBay— such as making sure that vendors have a 97 percent or higher positive customer satisfaction rating and that they've carried out several hundred transactions. "Knowing how to work with eBay is very important so that you don't get stiffed," he says.

Bruns also buys second-hand technology from corporate peers who are on faster refresh cycles. "IT executives come to me when the lease on their technology, which is still relatively new, is up. It costs me pennies on the dollar and it saves them the time of having to get rid of it themselves,"

he says.For instance, he recently bought 50

desktops (from a law firm) that would have retailed at $550 (about Rs 27,000) each — for $89 (about Rs 4,400) each. "I put them in the university's computer labs and will get at least another two to three years out of them," he says.


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Reader ROI:

Where you can save on your network infrastructure

the dangers of creative cost cutting

the role of collaboration and timing

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He advises IT executives to tap into their peer networks at local trade associations and conferences to find out about similar deals. "Some people might shy away from saying they buy second-hand equipment, but I have no problem with it. Any time I don't have to go to the university cabinet and ask for money that is otherwise earmarked for students, that's a good thing," he says.

Saving Money wiTh SofTware

David O'Berry, director - IT systems & services, South Carolina Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services, is targeting software and collaboration to reduce operating costs going forward.

O'Berry is partnering with South Carolina's State Information Technology Planning team to create a software and reusable code repository for more than 70 state agencies. "Though government IT is not always known for its ability to collaborate, it's where we're going to realize the most cost savings." he says.

To that end, O'Berry is tapping into the state's SAP enterprise resource management system community Web site." He plans to use the database and the site's social network features to catalog each agency's stockpile of software licenses, developer code and project knowledge.

The goal is for agencies to search the database whenever they start a new project to see if there are appropriate tools, expertise and even hardware readily available. In addition, O'Berry's team will enter detailed information and code that came out of a recent switchover from PowerBuilder/Sybase to .Net/SQL architecture so that if another team wants to do such a project, they will have code and knowledge at the ready. "That way, others won't have to reinvent the wheel if they start a similar technology effort. We're all trying to solve the same problems," he says.

IT Management


For groups looking to roll out a similar repository project, For groups looking to roll out a similar repository project, he recommends setting ground rules for community he recommends setting ground rules for community

participation. Among other issues: make sure participation. Among other issues: make sure information is flowing bi-directionally. "Explain to information is flowing bi-directionally. "Explain to

participants that the effort will fail if they don't share participants that the effort will fail if they don't share the knowledge they have," he says.the knowledge they have," he says.

TiMing iS Key

Allen Gwinn, senior director of technology at Allen Gwinn, senior director of technology at Southern Methodist University's Cox School Southern Methodist University's Cox School

of Business, agrees that now is definitely of Business, agrees that now is definitely the time to think counter-culture and to the time to think counter-culture and to

challenge vendors, especially on pricing.challenge vendors, especially on pricing."In normal times, the philosophy

is that we can use collective buying is that we can use collective buying power to leverage good prices. But unfortunately, that has led us to an

economy where we're in restrictive, binding agreements that are bad for us," he says.

For instance, a few years ago, Gwinn researched the cost of a mobile phone upgrade through the university's chosen vendor, only to find that the bottom line was quadruple what he could get with a competing vendor. He had to convince the university's stakeholders to let him out of the sole-source contract so he could pursue the better deal. "Wireless is at the commodity level, so this is definitely an area where vendors should compete against each other based on price," he says.

The same applies to service contracts, according to Ben Hansen, assistant director for information technology at BendLa Pine Schools in Oregon. "What we're doing is examining every single service contract we have and making sure they are appropriately priced," he says.

Buyers should be savvy about vendors' business model, he says. "We turn up the heat on our providers toward the end of each quarter because that's when they need to show their investors good numbers and are much more willing to negotiate," he says.

Just as important is giving them insight into your business so they know your budget goals. "We tell them straight out that we have x amount of money to spend because of economic realities and this is what we need to get done. We also let them know that there is no exclusivity and they are competing against other vendors," he says.

So far, it has worked to his advantage, helping him significantly drive down telecom, hardware service and equipment costs alike. In the last six months he has been able to drive already low acquisition costs down by an additional 20 percent or more. "We may go back to a redundant router architecture someday, but for right now we're finding we can successfully go without," University of Connecticut's Vertefeuille says. CIO


s the economy tightens its grip on IT budgets, public

and private sector IT teams alike are being forced to consider cost-cutting strategies that would otherwise havebeen verboten.

is the keyThe economic slowdown has adversely affected the growth of many businesses. However, thenascent signs of an upturn are now in view. This calls for organizations to reassess and streamline their businesses in order to achieve cost benefits and increase operational flexibility.

EvEnT REPORT

New Delhi-26th June, 2009 | Bangalore-10th July, 2009

The recent slump in economy has forced many businesses into a state of hibernation, with risks taking a backseat. However, going by a popular adage, it would be wise

to sail on the tides, in order to move forward, rather than wait for calm seas. Bharti Airtel's business leaders recently shared their thoughts and insights on how organizations could achieve cost benefits and increase operational flexibility.

Speaking on the 'Changing Paradigm of Enterprise networks' Argha Basu, vice President, Global Data Business, Enterprise Services, Bharti Airtel, said, “The growing expectations of organizations have made the task of the enterprise network manager more complex and challenging. The emergence of converged networks has loaded existing networks with a large number of applications.”

Basu further said, “In the process of convergence and integration, you will realize that you have lost productivity. So in place of traditional networks, it’s time we shift to business-oriented SLAs. A business-oriented network reduces the response time of applications and gives precedence to the more important process at any given point of time. That’s the kind of control that Airtel’s application performance management offers.”

Talking about another feature of the network, he said, “When the load on an application is excessive, application quality management ensures that an organization is able to accelerate the application through network operations simplification service. This helps optimize the network, and, in turn, cuts costs for

the organization.”Elaborating on this, Kunwar Kishore Arora, Head Datacenters,

Managed Services and Security, Enterprise Services, Bharti Airtel, said, "These days the priorities for organizations are managed security, hosting, storage backup and vaulting, along with superior database services.”

He observed that with the emphasis on networks and the colocation of managed services, organizations can better manage their operations through datacenter capacity planning. Airtel he said had built datacenter capacity for switch sites, such as Tier 3-plus datacenters. This helps organizations reduce their local access costs substantially, aiding organizations by providing a suite of services across technology platforms, like passive infrastructure and managed infrastructure.

Talking about the need of a secure infrastructure, Arora said, “The managed security services that we offer ensure that your security is going through continuous prevention, protection and detection checks. Thus, the costs that you are currently incurring on your security products are also optimized.”

Explaining how ‘using technology would improve productivity’, Divya Sethi, GM Conferencing & vSAT Solutions, Enterprise Services, Bharti Airtel, said, “There are three aspects that can help with being productive and effective. The first being to impact

“In place of traditional networks, it’s time we shift to business-oriented SLAs.”

ArghA BAsuVice President, Global Data Business, Enterprise Services, Bharti Airtel.

“Organizations can better manage their operations through datacenter capacity planning.”

KunwAr Kishore ArorAHead Datacenters, Managed Services and Security, Enterprise Services, Bharti Airtel.

“winners don’t do different things, they do things differently.”shiv KherAMotivational Speaker and Bestselling Author

EvEnT REPORT

inners don’t do different

inners don’t do different winners don’t

do different

Lightening the mood of the entire assembly, Shiv Khera, a motivational speaker, advised the audience on how to become achievers. He pointed out that there are no ideal conditions in life for success and that true winners could turn dreams into realities, even in adverse conditions. He also mentioned that positive thinking, clubbed with earnest effort, increases one’s probability of winning.

Giving practical insights on how to make one’s dreams come true, Chetan Bhagat, bestselling Indian author, talked about the key milestones in the journey of his success. He said, “Although people persuade you to focus on goals, achievements don’t come with focus alone. There are other factors that influence the demeanor in life. A lot of personal struggles need to be overcome before meeting success. Whenever one tries to do something new, he will always face resistance.”

He added, “To get the most out of life, one needs to achieve a balance between internal and external growth. Usually a loss of judgment occurs when one’s external growth is not matched by his internal growth.” He suggested, “To achieve your goals you don’t have to be serious, but need to be sincere.”

business while we go mobile, second, to reduce travel while we still continue our business processes, and finally to virtualize operations.” He also pointed out that organizations need to fine tune their business applications to make them work with mobile applications.

He explained the case of a media application module and a health application module provided by Airtel. He said, “By using these modules customers can interact through different layouts that are enabled by the web interface. The application is independent of the transport layer and operating systems, and helps integrate intranet with the extranet.”

Adding valuable points to the discussion, Rajiv Sehgal, vice President, Head-Mobile and value Added Services, Enterprise Services, Bharti Airtel, said, “Call centers are facing a lot of challenges with rising customer expectations, profit pressures on business, and with existing technology proving to be inadequate. Airtel offers hosted solutions to call centers that can be outsourced and allow customers to concentrate on the key activity of generating business.”

Talking about audio and video conferencing solutions, Sehgal said, “Apart from ensuring scalability of network and security, we also ensure interoperability between networks, equipment, solutions and hosting."

Talking about telepresence or real presence solutions that Airtel has developed through HD studio, he said, “Experience of talking to each other has really been eased out and we provide a similar experience by creating the same background and ambience on both the sides.”

“To get the most out of life, one needs to achieve a balance between internal and external growth.”CheTAn BhAgATBestselling Author

“Outsourcing allows one to concentrate on the key activity of generating business.”

rAjiv sehgAlVice President, Head-Mobile and Value Added Services, Enterprise Services, Bharti Airtel.

“Business applications need to be fine tuned to make them work with mobile applications.”

DivyA seThiGM Conferencing & VSAT Solutions, Enterprise Services, Bharti Airtel.

EvEnT REPORT

“To get the most “To get the most “To get the most “To get the most “To get the most out of life, one “To get the most out of life, one “To get the most out of life, one

Discerning CIOs understand that

technology can help diligently cut down their organization’s

energy consumption and result in hard

cost savings for the enterprise.

Walking thegreen Mile

Presenting PartnerEvEnt REPORt

it energy usage ranges between one to 10 percent of a company’s power consumption, and is feared to double in the coming years. Reduction of operational expenses by improving the energy-efficiency of computing infrastructure has been a hot topic of discussion among the top management of many organizations. Most CIOs realize

that making their enterprise greener isn't a very daunting task. Some companies have proactively adopted alternate energy sources, datacenter consolidation, virtualization, and other environmentally sustainable computing technologies to reduce their carbon footprint. Organizations look at sustainability from several varied angles, including hard cost savings that accrue from increased energy efficiency. All this and more was discussed at the symposium on deriving better energy efficiency through enterprise It.

Giving some compelling reasons to seek energy efficiency in It, Laurent vernerey, President and CEO, APC, began by saying, “India’s energy consumption is fast multiplying

and the only hope is that renewable energy and alternate energy sources will help in the long run. However, with the best efforts, best governance support and even the best legislation we will be faced with the carbon footprint challenge, because most energy resources are not environment friendly.” He further said, “Responding to rising energy consumption is not the only concern; to control it is also our social responsibility.”

vernerey observed that in India power outages and the rising cost of energy are important issues to tackle, as they have a direct impact on businesses. In view of these problems, the need for energy-efficient infrastructure in India is massive. He added, “the mandate is to make energy accessible to people, assuming that power will continue to be scarce, and we will rely on the traditional sources of energy. We believe that energy challenges cannot be solved by more energy generation. they have to be resolved through better energy efficiency and by saving energy. If we don’t do something just before additional power requirement, it would double in the next few years.”

Pointing to APC’s mission to help CIOs and facility managers resolve this energy challenge, he suggested that the energy usage in datacenters needs to be reviewed and cut down by simplifying the manner in which datacenters are designed, operated and managed. talking about APC products, he said, “All our products are labeled for energy efficiency and comply with global standards. We believe that customers should be able to assess and compare the efficiency of products. this is how we intend to deliver value to our customers.”

Further explaining APC’s presence in the energy management sector, vernerey said, “We play three distinct roles in this domain. the first being thought leadership, where we believe our responsibility is to invest in the science of datacenters and imparting education and information related to it. Our second role is solution leadership in innovative technologies and it is about providing a solution that’s easier to install and shortens the cycle time for the next investment. the third role is market leadership that involves offering products that would not lock the customer to one platform and help them collaborate with other technologies.”

Ramesh K.v., Regional Manager - Workplace Resources, Asia South and India, Sun Microsystems, shared his experiences on creating datacenters, managing their energy efficiency and the challenges across the APAC region. He said, “With Moore’s law in action, computing capabilities are increasing drastically and so is the hunger for energy. With chip designers becoming increasingly efficient and packing better stuff in smaller boxes, the challenge of managing these products is also assuming vast proportions.”

talking of legacy systems he said that there is a need to lower the power consumption of legacy systems. He opined that the need of the hour is to get equipped with new technologies and adopt a smart approach in building the datacenter space.

He informed that Sun Microsystems formed a group called GDS (global lab and datacenter services) that helped make datacenters more efficient, scalable and flexible. the group devised pod architecture and acted as a bridge between It and facility. “the architecture uses the closely coupled cooling approach to make datacenters more efficient in terms of operation. Power distribution and networking is pretty much distributed in this architecture,” he said.

Ramesh also talked about another project wherein Sun consolidated 13 datacenters and brought the number down to four, one of which is running at 13000 sqft and is one of APC’s largest installations. By saving the effort and energy required for shifting the datacenter to another location, Sun reduced its footprint by 51 percent. He said, “We also got reduction of 17 percent utilities because we had 104 percent increase in compute capacity. So we significantly reduced OPEX by about 30 percent. We have also built modularity in our datacenter design. Earlier business units were working as silos, but now it’s like a furnished apartment wherein any business unit can plug in at any location.”

He also talked about the BOYD program that emphasizes on removing resources that are not being utilized. He informed that Sun pulled out about 600 servers and tons of monitors that were not being utilized properly. Discussing some other approaches for reduction of datacenter energy usage he said, “there's a real good opportunity to cut costs in datacenters, by making them more efficient. to be efficient is also a mandate and in order to do that you will have to adopt new technologies.”

“responding to rising energy consumption is not the only concern; to control it is also our social responsibility.”Laurent VernereyPresident and CEO, APC

“to cutto cutt costs in datacenters, you will have to make them efficient and adopt new technologies.”ramesh K.V.Regional Manager - Workplace Resources,Asia South and India, Sun Microsystems

EvEnt REPORt

enterprise 2.0 | When enterprise 2.0 vendors (who sell social networking technologies) convened for their annual industry conference this past June, they knew they were at an inflection point. Analysts say the number of competitors will consolidate in the coming year as Microsoft captures greater market share. The start-ups that will survive must carve out a long-term place for themselves by building applications that are far more innovative and cheaper than those of the incumbent software giant. In addition, they must convince businesses that Microsoft SharePoint's ‘good enough’ strategy is not, in fact, good enough for today's enterprise collaboration needs.

Enterprise 2.0 vendors continue to fight the complacency of businesses who prefer to use Microsoft as a default choice for all their enterprise collaboration needs. SharePoint, an application that started as a document management system to store (among other items) Microsoft Office files, has since added social features, including profiles, blogs, and wikis. Although Microsoft's smaller, more nimble competitors have built more sophisticated social

For several years, Microsoft's

SharePoint has looked dysfunctional

and pricey compared with

innovative packages from start-ups. But it has a new

version en route. Will the Enterprise

2.0 market win over buyers, or be beaten

by SharePoint ?

technologyEssEntial From InceptIon to ImplementatIon — I.t. that matters

Clash Over Enterprise CollaborationBy C.G. lynCh

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REAL CIO WORLD | a u G u s t 1 , 2 0 0 9 5 3Vol/4 | ISSuE/18

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networking applications for businesses, analysts say SharePoint has been good enough for many companies.

"Microsoft is turning social collaboration into a commodity pretty quickly," says Oliver Young, a senior analyst at Forrester who follows the Enterprise 2.0 market. "Social collaboration through an app like SharePoint is a given, since so many companies already have SharePoint. They can leverage social features at no or very little extra cost."

In addition, industry experts predict the quality of the social applications in SharePoint will improve drastically next year when the vendor releases SharePoint 2010. It will represent a

significant upgrade to the product, which last enjoyed a major iteration nearly three years ago — an eternity in Web years, though normal for Microsoft's traditional, multi-year R&D cycles. "From everything we know, SharePoint will get better," says Susan Scrupski, an Enterprise 2.0 and collaboration expert who pens the ITSinsider blog. "It's likely going to be more social, collaborative, and easier to use."

Young predicts SharePoint 2010 will be nothing short of a 'day of reckoning' for the Enterprise 2.0 vendors, making this year's conference an important benchmark. As potential business technology buyers battle difficult budgets and examine their existing IT systems, when it comes to social software, many will decide between SharePoint or a cheaper alternative — and, in some cases, a bit of both.

Dancing with SharePointThe Enterprise 2.0 market poses a tricky dynamic. For the start-ups who sell social

software, they must not only compete for business with Microsoft SharePoint, but also build out their products to complement it. Because the SharePoint server is utilized by more than 17,000 organizations, and caters to 100 million users, its brute market strength cannot be ignored. Thus, top Enterprise 2.0 vendors such as Socialtext, Jive Software, Newsgator and Atlassian have built their social applications to play nicely with SharePoint. The thinking: a company might use SharePoint to manage their documents as in years past, but use one of the Enterprise 2.0 vendors' apps for social collaboration.

"These vendors have to dance with the elephant," says Rob Koplowitz, a Forrester

analyst. "Over time, they want to be your social networking and social computing vendor, but at the same time, they partner with Microsoft to work with SharePoint."

For better or worse, many large companies have come to rely so heavily on SharePoint because it was rolled out to be a kind of glue to hold together documents and applications all over the enterprise. While SharePoint is, on one hand, an application and an accompanying server, it's also a platform on top of which companies can build custom software specific to their business. As those custom apps become entrenched in the enterprise, any social software that gets added must communicate nicely with SharePoint.

During the past year, the Enterprise 2.0 vendors have tailored their products to mirror that reality. Newsgator, for example, has had particular success embedding its Social Sites product on top of SharePoint. Social Sites allows companies to build a corporate intranet on top of SharePoint.

When implemented, it behaves much like Facebook's News Feed — information about what actions an employee performs is streamed into a centralized homepage. Universal McCann, a communications and marketing firm, used Social Sites (with SharePoint) on its intranet.

But as the feature set for SharePoint improves in 2010, customers say it will be a harder choice to buy from the Enterprise 2.0 vendors. Customers say they could go either way, depending on how much the Microsoft app actually improves.

"If SharePoint has what I need, and I have lots of freedom to configure, that would certainly be attractive, but there is no limit to the number of use cases out there," says Jason Harrison, senior vice president and director of digital solutions for Mediabrands (the parent entity of Universal McCann). "We paired Newsgator with SharePoint originally because of RSS and content syndication this time around. I'm sure there will be a whole raft of [new] capabilities out there the next time around."

Out-Innovating Microsoft Enterprise 2.0 and social software start-ups have thrived in large part because they have been so much more innovative than Microsoft — an advantage they say will

Experts predict the quality of the social apps in SharePoint will improve drastically next year when MS releases SharePoint 2010. It will be a day of reckoning for Enterprise 2.0 vendors.

74% the number of

organizations that are using

sharePoint for collaboration.

source:Oracle state of the ECM

industry 2009

ESSEntIal technology

Vol/4 | ISSuE/185 4 a u G u s t 1 , 2 0 0 9 | REAL CIO WORLD


continue during the coming years. These Enterprise 2.0 vendors have succeeded by observing what's occurring on the consumer Web, and then making it palatable for business use. According to Enterprise 2.0 vendors, they catch enterprises up to those innovations faster than Microsoft.

"The features Microsoft comes out with in 2010 are the features that were in-demand in 2007 and 2008," says Dan Short, director of product marketing at Jive Software. "The pace at which things are evolving in the consumer space is very fast. We [Jive] can have an increasingly deep integration with SharePoint, but we believe the social nature of interactions and the speed at which technology is evolving to

meet those will outpace SharePoint [and its social features]."

Socialtext started in 2001, specializing in enterprise wiki technology. It has employed a similar innovation strategy to keep ahead of Redmond. Over time, Socialtext followed the consumer market and developed new social features on top of its product. It added social networking profiles that allowed companies to build their corporate intranet with a Facebook-like design. Most recently, it launched Socialtext Signals, a technology that creates an internal Twitter-like experience for the enterprise, where employees share their actions with colleagues.

"It takes Microsoft a long time to deliver software to the market," says Ross Mayfield, Socialtext's president and chairman. "A year ago, the idea of having micro-blogging and activity streams for the enterprise was a new concept. Well, that's around

the time they probably froze the spec for SharePoint 2010. Overnight, the demand for social software changed, and it will change again."

When enterprise demand changes, Mayfield says that he and many of his contemporaries can adapt much faster than Microsoft. In addition, he claims the cost of implementing his software for internal collaboration comes to a tenth of the price of SharePoint's roll-out cost.

The Stability CardBut cost and innovation aren't the only characteristics businesses, especially large ones, look for in their software, says Michael Sampson, a collaboration expert who has

written a book on SharePoint. Other issues that customers consider include vendor stability, partner ecosystems and appetite for risk as it concerns new technologies.

"Companies want to know of the other vendors, 'how long have they been around?' And 'how long can they go forward?'" Sampson says. "Microsoft will be here forever and a day, so they win in that criteria."

Microsoft has also nurtured hundreds of thousands of mom-and-pop support shops that have made it their business to implement SharePoint. For the Enterprise 2.0 vendors, this makes it hard to compete. They can focus on implementing their start-up wares for some of their bigger customers, but many smaller companies will be forced to go it alone.

"It's one thing to say I have this great tool, but it's another look through a phone book and find someone who has

experience implementing it," Sampson says. "Microsoft and IBM will both win on that criteria as well. They've had historical success with clients. They've got examples. The Enterprise 2.0 vendors have to find the renegades who are willing to take risks."

Microsoft Has Little SaaS When it comes to choosing between SharePoint and a newer vendor, customers can go either way, says Stowe Boyd, an expert in social technologies who conducted this year's Open Enterprise Study.

"Some companies say, at the big downturn, that we're not going to do anything and we'll make do with what we've got," Boyd says. "So if they have SharePoint, they're not going to build something new. Other companies say, because we need to re-evaluate everything we're doing, it might be that the way we've been spending money on these technologies just doesn't make sense. Maybe we should try something new."

Boyd also says that enterprises are moving away from a document-centric world — which SharePoint largely remains a conduit for in the enterprise. Rather than constantly spend your entire day in a Microsoft Word file or Outlook e-mail, you might collaborate trading short messages in real-time with streaming technologies, like a Twitter for the enterprise.

Software delivery models may matter significantly as well. As companies try to contain costs, they will increasingly buy applications in a software as a service (SaaS) model instead of hosting them in-house. While Microsoft has launched a SaaS version of SharePoint, it lacks many of the features of its older, on-premise brother. Most of the Enterprise 2.0 vendors offer fully-featured SaaS products.

"Apps that are natively SaaS will have a natural advantage for that delivery mechanism," Mayfield says. "We've developed a way to deliver it on the cloud that works for enterprises." CIO

C.G. lynch writes about consumer and social

technologies, and tracks their migration into the

workplace. send feedback on this feature to [email protected]

Enterprise 2.0 companies have thrived because they have been so much more innovative than Microsoft. they have succeeded by observing what's occurring on the consumer Web, and making it palatable for business use — faster than Microsoft.

ESSEntIal technology

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Pundit

Storage | Most organizations are being overrun with data — or, more accurately, with the storage required to house and protect the many redundant copies of data that continue to be generated unabatedly.

In these times of cost reduction and consolidation, we must ask ourselves whether there are better ways to manage the glut. Unfortunately, companies have been grappling with this issue for more than a decade. And thus far, the technology options have come up short in addressing the

core issues plaguing storage management: unbridled data growth, poor resource utilization and ineffective planning. The latest technology with promise is cloud storage. Will it work any better than the others?

Thinking back to the early days of SANs, one of the primary justifications for moving away from siloed direct-attached storage in favor of storage arrays and SAN infrastructure was the promise of greater efficiency through improved resource utilization. While SANs might have brought other benefits, such as improved availability and recoverability, utilization continues to be less than optimal in many environments.

The next big initiative was information life-cycle management. By devising a strategy for storage allocation and distribution based on the business value of data, the theory went,

we could reduce quantities of expensive high-end storage and thereby shrink costs. The result: A lot of organizations bought additional tiers of storage, but not a lot of savings materialized — at least not nearly the amounts anticipated.

A more recent technology enhancement is thin provisioning, which although promising remains a somewhat niche technology because of current application and operating system constraints. Another is data de-duplication, which was designed

primarily to achieve a more favorable cost point for disk backup compared with tape. Both thin provisioning and data de-duplication will help drive storage efficiency in the future.

Let's not lose sight of the fact that while organizations have been struggling with storage efficiency issues, the cost of an actual device to store data has continued to fall, and fall fast. So why is it so difficult to get our arms around this problem?

The answer lies in the continued lack of comprehensive storage management policies — and data management policies — within most organizations. That problem is exacerbated by the lack of metrics and reporting about data and storage usage, and trending. Consider, for example, data purging. A piece of data, once created, is

forever. It is typically stored, backed up, replicated and, perhaps, archived. But the likelihood that it will actually be purged is very low.

Interestingly enough, the sad state of storage management might represent a significant opportunity for cloud storage. The cloud could serve as a secondary or, more likely, tertiary tier of storage. Unstructured data could then be relegated to the cloud, either manually or with an automated data mover based on aging and access policies. In

addition to freeing up capacity and slowing the rate of equipment acquisition, this data would no longer need to be backed up or replicated. Furthermore, if cloud service providers are truly service-oriented, they might well provide more-comprehensive SLAs and reporting metrics on this data than is available internally.

Clearly, moving data into the cloud isn't something to be undertaken lightly. There is much to consider, including security, availability, access and control. And it's important to keep in mind that although the cloud might offer attractive pricing for some classes of data, to drive more systemic changes in cost, cloud storage must be accompanied by a well-formulated storage and data management strategy. CIO

Send feedback on this column to [email protected]

The sad state of storage management might represent a significant opportunity for cloud storage.

essenTial technology

Wisps of Hope We’ve tried to fix the storage glut with sans, information life-cycle management, thin provisioning and data de-duplication. nothing worked. Can the cloud come to the rescue?By JameS DamoulakiS

Vol/4 | issUe/185 6 a u g u S t 1 , 2 0 0 9 | REAL CIO WORLD

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