IT NEXT DECEMBER 2011

IT managers boost security and improve integration to enhance the e-commerce user experience Pg 14

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35 08 42BOSS TALK:People Management: Tips on Team Management

INTERVIEWVMware’s Douglas Smith on Cloud Innovation

BIG QDesktop Virtualisation: Desktops Sans Pain? Pg 47

STRATEGY: Various Stages to becoming a Leader

Editorial

1D E C E m b E r 2 0 1 1 | itnext

Just deploying certain tools around security, servers, ERP systems, etc, will not suffice, as there is a lot more that is required to be done to ensure a smooth and successful transaction. As such, tighter integration of various enterprise applications along with security systems is the priority for IT managers.

But why am I saying all this? In the current edition of IT Next, our cover story, ‘Buying by Wire’,

highlights the inherent challenges that online shopping can throw up at IT managers and what they need to do in such a scenario. One of the IT managers mentioned how each transaction failure or dropout may cause a huge business loss for the company. And mind you, for every transaction loss it is the IT manager who is accountable, if it is due to a technical error. For end users it may sound and look easy to get a product delivered to their doorsteps, but the agony that an IT team goes through to ensure this smooth delivery, is immense. However, IT heads are all geared up to tighten the system and create the right ambience for a smooth user experience.

As part of its content policy, IT Next has tried to focus on a subject which can help IT managers exploit their inherent potential and escalate it.

As part of our ongoing effort, it is time now to unleash the hidden potential of IT heads across the country and bring it to light. The January edition of IT Next will showcase the inherent talents of IT managers who were honoured with the Next 100 Award which recognised them as future CIOs.

“Tighter integrationof various enterprise applications along withsecurity systemsis the priority for IT managers ”

E-Commerce & the IT Manager

Blogs To Watch!Ecommerce-blog http://www.ecommerce-blog.org/

Forrester Blogs http://blogs.forrester.com/category/ecommerce

Sectors benefitting from blogging? http://www.linkedin.com/answers/technology/blogging/TCH_BLG/931463-48589957

Challenges and Opportunities for Operators http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/693300/e_commerce_challenges_innovations_and

G E E t h a N a N D i k o t k u r

With the number of internet users predicted to reach about 70 million in the next three to five years, the percentage of online shoppers will grow equally in a geometrical progression. The trend has a cascading effect on IT, which is the backbone of the online buying phenomenon. The result: IT managers have a huge task ahead to create a reliable, scalable and secure user experience by making online shopping hassle free.

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Cover Story

18 Case Study: Amway India20 Contactless Payment: the Next Wave23 Security Check in e-tailing

INSIghtS

32 Jobs: Innovator the World LovedSteve Jobs did not bring the change, he was the change that the computing world witnessed and reckons

25 Ubuntu on the CloudWhile Ubuntu has been most closely associated with the desktop, the project’s server variant has grown more prominent in recent years, particularly in the context of cloud computing

08 team Management tips| Amit Madan, CMD, OnDot Couri-ers & Cargo, on knowing your team’s strengths & weaknesses

boSS tAlk

42 Douglas Smith | Vice Presi-dent, Global Partner, Strategy & Operations, VMware, on IT man-agers adopting cloud for agility

INtervIeW

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buyingby Wire

it managers boost security and improve integration to enhance the e-commerce user experience

3D E C E m b E r 2 0 1 1 | itnext

15-MINute MANAger35 unlearn to learn | Every phase of the leadership journey involves steps of learning, un-learning and re-learning

36 Seven Steps to better Sleep | Feeling crabby lately? Perhaps the solution is better sleep

39 tech is topical | Hot tech themes fuel CIO\CTO interest in customer conclaves

the bIg Q47 Managing Desktops Sans Pain | We all know it’s a growing headache to manage PCs. Read on for our expert panel’s views before reaching for a tablet of aspirin

Cube ChAt56 Serving better with It | Ravish Jhala, Systems Man-ager, Trident Hotel, Mumbai, on bringing efficiency

off the Shelf51 firefox 8 | Yes, it now comes with integrated Twitter search

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Increased InnovatIon, absorbIng ap-plIcatIons and enriched 3D gaming built around Flash and HTML on the cards

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INBoX

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I have been a regular reader of IT Next. I find the magazine well focussed on second level CIOs. Its content, which is different from other publications, is very interesting and makes for a very good read. I would like to mention that the cover story topics are interesting and effective, but inclusion of more case studies, specific to varied industry verticals can make them even better.

Going forward, IT Next could deal with issues like ‘how to improve the business process by implementing CRM’ and ‘what kind of benefits can the IT manager derive with this streamline process’, which will interest many readers. Besides, while speaking largely about success stories, it would be ideal to simultaneously share certain insights into the projects that failed and the reasons for the same. Such stories will create more excitement and help IT managers to evaluate and analyse projects better. Some features or stories around IT trends and implementations in the industries such as manufacturing, tex, pharma etc., will be welcome.

RatnakaR nemani, ciO, Himatsinka Seide Ltd

Compelling ReadIT Next has very attractive covers, which trigger readers’ inter-

est and compel one to go through the inside pages as well. The suc-cess stories around virtualisa-tion are very interesting. I would be happy if the editorial provides the contact details of those quoted in the stories and case studies, as it would enable us to tap the right source for information. The sto-ries should have the right mix of successes and failures, wherein IT managers have played a role.

SDPL naRayana, asst Gm (it), neuland Laboratories Ltd

Good InitiativeIT NEXT is a good initiative to cover technology, as part of its content. The issue that carried the cover story on cloud was insightful and the articles were a good read. The legal aspect of the cloud by two prominent legal experts was extremely interesting and informative. However, the application details were missing in the story and IT managers will be keen on knowing about new releases and its benefits on the cloud. For instance, I would be keen about latest trends in DB2 or other databases and their features and benefits. As a reader, I would like to read more industry-specific case studies which will help us gain deeper insights into varied technology implementations.

aRun kumaR SHetHHead, Software development, Gati Ltd, Hyderabad

ErratumChips in the Cloud in the

15-Minute Manager section of IT Next, November 2011 edition has been inadvertently credited to Berjes Eric Shroff. The feature is by Chris Preimesberger, Senior Writer, eWeek.

—eDitOR

(Note: Letters have been edited minimally, for brevity and clarity)

November 2011

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IT Next is the appropriate magazine for IT managers. In my opinion, more of implementation case studies, involving IT managers will be of great help. The cover story on ‘Open Source’ was a good read as it focussed on various developments that are impacting industry. Business Intelligence was a good topic too, and very relevant. DineSH Stechnology Head, SJm technologies, Bangalore

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IT_Next(magazine)_1201_11475p.indd 1 11-11-10 上午9:26

SIGMA-BYTE, a pro-vider of network cabling, audio-visual solutions &

safety & security solutions, recently celebrated 20 years of bringing value to its cus-tomers. To celebrate this momentous occasion with

their long standing part-ner CommScope, Sigma-Byte hosted a gala event at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Mumbai.

The event brought together various partners, customers and beneficiaries of Sigma-Byte – those who

hold a special place with the company. The celebration was kicked off with a performance by Aman and Ayaan Ali Khan, who along with Gino Banks, entertained the attendees. The event also featured Bharat Dabholkar, famous for his advertising work with Amul and various productions.

The high profile event was hosted by Diana Hayden, Former Miss World and featured speeches from Sigma-Byte and CommScope executives detailing their future plans.

CommScope and Sigma-Byte have had a long-standing relationship in bringing solutions with great value to their customers and both hope to continue to bring their efforts to them.

In an interview with ITNEXT, Ketan Kothari, MD, Sigma-Byte; Dr. Ispran Kandasamy, vice president, Enterprise sales, Asia-Pacific, CommScope; and Stephan Kowal, vice president, Global Partners,

Sigma-Byte Celebrating 20 Years of Bringing Value to Customers

From left Dr. Ispran Kandasamy, VP, Enterprise sales, APAC, CommScope, Mr. Ketan Kothari, MD, Sigma-Byte and Mr. Stephan Kowal, VP, Global Partner Organization, CommScope.

ADVERTORIAL | SIGMABYTE

6 ITNEXT | D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 1

Sigmabyte_advertorial.indd 6 12/9/2011 12:07:31 PM

CommScope took a few minutes and spoke about the future and how they plan to take their services to the next level for their customers.

As one of the key integra-tors/partners of Comm-Scope’s solutions what are some the of the chal-lenges that you face today from the customers?KETAN KOTHARI: Custom-ers require connectivity that is foolproof. In India, the tendency is to get the solu-tion at L1 (i.e., the best price possible). Obviously the best solutions and services are not available at the lowest price. Customers acknowl-edge the need for products and services that are bet-ter than what is available in the market; however, there is always a tendency to lean towards the most competi-tively priced solution, which is not necessarily the best. Another challenge we see is there is a lot of misinforma-tion on what products and services are available in the market. In India, there is no guiding agency that recom-mends solutions or sets stan-dards. It makes it difficult to convince customers towards a particular solution being better than another. If there is no government or regu-latory agency setting stan-dardization guidelines, then things are very challenging for us.

How can you move beyond these challenges?DR. ISPRAN KANDASAMY:

CommScope is a global entity and leader from a tech-

nology perspective in this entire marketplace. We help set many of the global stan-dards. So we try our best to educate our customers. We try to create awareness with respect to global standards. That’s important to do at this point of time.

KETAN KOTHARI: The chal-lenge in India is that because things are state driven you know when centre says something the state more or less opposes it. This makes it even more difficult to help in building standardization into our practice.

DR. ISPRAN KANDASAMY: I think Ketan’s point regard-ing the establishment of a standardization process is important. At the rate that India is growing, infrastruc-ture build is going to become uncontrollable without stan-dards and the problems will erupt when customers are looking to scale up.

STEPHAN KOWAL: There is also a human safety perspec-tive that comes into place. In the United Sates and Euro-pean Union, there are safety guidelines and ratings for cables. The government said that you need to use cables that do not burn or produce smoke. What you do not see is that there is no consistency in what should or shouldn’t be used. So when people use the most economical solu-tion it may not be the safest solution. We actually have partners who are educating customers about standards and how investment in our

cables can help from a safety and quality standpoint. These are things that need to be taken care of immediately.

DR. ISPRAN KANDASAMY:

We try and educate our cus-tomers. We work actively with our partners to accom-plish this; however, the chal-lenge becomes when the customer is in a competi-tive environment and their competition does not have the same standards require-ments. Competitors imple-ment low-cost solutions all to save the customer money. This becomes an issue where you can rapidly lose market share.

Describe some of trends you are seeing in the con-nectivity space.STEPHAN KOWAL: We are trying to find people who do not necessarily buy or sell our solutions but have a lot of influence over our solutions. What I see is the networks are becoming more of a central backbone for communications—hav-ing increased security of the network including heating, ventilation, access controls as well as controlling light-ing. There is a movement towards lighting itself by using a low voltage system. Companies like Cisco are putting energy management policies into the networks. So CommScope has teamed up with Cisco to include these energy management policies into network infra-structures by helping them design in-building intel-ligent networks. It is our

responsibility to go out into the industry and partner with companies that are cre-ating disruptive technologies and, at the same time, work with our partners to ensure that solutions customers want can be implemented.

DR. ISPRAN KANDASAMY:

We are also seeing the pen-etration of fiber into net-works. Bandwidth and the distance data needs to travel today is pushing technology to move into more of a fiber-dominant space. So the issue in a fiber-intensive network is the quality of the installa-tion associated with that goes up. It is so important that we have high-quality partners like Sigma-Byte with us where they can make a big difference in shaping how customers adopt technology.

Sigma-Byte has been in the business for 20 years now. So what is next?KETAN KOTHARI: We want to build on the credibility we have built over the last 20 years and the skills we have developed and go into the next phase. The market is converging towards IP and our partnership with Com-mScope will assist us with obtaining a larger piece of the solution building busi-ness. We are expecting a lot of excitement in the coming future, especially given the nature of the amount of work that needs to be done on the standardization front. We are also always looking to acquire new customers. All I can say is its only going to get better from this point on.

SIGMABYTE | ADVERTORIAL

7D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 1 | ITNEXT

Sigmabyte_advertorial.indd 7 12/9/2011 12:07:31 PM

8 itnext | D e c e m B e R 2 0 1 1

Boss talk | Amit mAdAn

“Leadership is about knowing your team’s strengths and weaknesses, and taking them into confidence to share the vision that the company carries for their growth”

Of all the tasks a leader must per-form on a day-to-day basis, the most complex is managing people — the aspect that plays a vital role in business continuity. People

management, or team management, so to say, is directly proportional to the growth and success of the organisation. In most cases, team manage-ment success depends entirely upon the cohesion prevalent in the organisational structure. Team leaders need to a take a structured approach with appropriate communication methods and prac-tices, if they want to win over their teams.

For instance, as the head of the organisation, the challenge I face is dealing with senior people in the team, be it in the form of providing guidance, career satisfaction, meeting their expectations, addressing professional conflicts, ego conflicts and so on. However, the point of contentment would be to find that the applied formula works well in nurturing the team and its aspirations.

Inherent RequisitesWhile there is no rule of thumb or best practice prescribed, I believe that sharing one’s vision as a manager with the team is the key which allows him or her to work on autopilot, rather than giving instructions all the time. Having a good management degree is an added advantage to becoming a successful team leader. It enables the individual to observe the human factor in one’s area of business. Half the battle is won if the IT manager is able to sharpen his/her people man-agement skills, irrespective of the chosen field.

Situational CompulsionsCrisis is not new and is always unexpected — a situation that demands the individual manager have high-level leadership qualities. One can lay down many procedures — the best of the best systems of the world and the perfect machines

Tips on Team Management

PeoPle ManageMenT

to monitor performance — but in the end it is people who handle the crisis, and it is their trust in the leader that pays rich dividends.

Leadership is about knowing your team’s personal and professional strengths and weaknesses, and taking your staff into your confidence to share the vision that the company carries for their individual growth. Transparency is of utmost importance in driving effective team-management process, particularly when the organisation is small and new.

When I took over the operational rights from the earlier management, my experience was almost nil. In this successful seven-year journey, it is the team which mattered most. With business expanding, team management skills enable one to collaborate and form a structured hierarchy which facilitates individual growth. Team management is a skill that a leader must perfect as he executes his professional journey up the corporate ladder for only an effective leadership can help you win.

The author is cmD, OnDot couriers & cargo Ltd

“I liked the success formula for achieving harmony, success and balance in personal and professional life”

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JN_IN_IT_Next_205x280_V1.0.indd 7 11/20/2011 6:44:48 PM

update

1 0 itnext | D E C E M b E r 2 0 1 1

trendsdealsproductsservicespeople

TECH TrENDS | IDC annual study, Data Centre Opportunities in India, 2011, covering 10 third-party providers and 1,156 large and medium businesses for captives across verticals including manufacturing, BFSI and retail, has revealed that the third-party data centre services market clocked revenue of $360 mn for the 12-month period ended March 2011. The study is an attempt to assess the potential of data centre outsourcing market in India as well as to understand the dynamics of this market. The study findings are of immense benefit to

India DC Services may Reach $617 mn by 2011

various stakeholders within the ecosystem in terms of current state and future evolution of data centre market in India. “Adoption of third-party data centre services has been on the rise by large as well as medium businesses, driven both by the need to cut costs as well as to lower the risks associated with investing in data centre equip-ment and technologies that face ever shortening refresh cycles,” said Jaideep Mehta, Country Manager, IDC India.

“While the majority of the third-party data centre services revenues come from co-location and hosting services, the managed services component is steadily rising,” adds Mehta.

The key verticals for third-party services have been manufacturing and IT/ITeS.

A growing need to focus on core business; lack and retention of skilled human resources for in-house management of data centre operations and rising power, cooling and real estate costs have remained the major drivers for adoption of third-party DC services.

Telcos will continue to hold the largest market share with Reliance Communications being the market leader (in revenue terms), followed by Tata Communications. Among the pure-play service providers, Netmagic has consolidated its position, with a healthy and growing focus on managed services. Going forward, Tulip Telecom would be a player to watch out for as it builds its mega data centre facility of 900,000 sq ft in Bangalore.

Third party data centre

in India growing at

37 per cent, reports IDC

Updatei n d u s t r y

source: internet World stats

The demographic numbers from the US Census bureau globally amounts to 2,095,006,005 as on March 31, 2011

internet users Across the Globe The chart below shows distribution by world regions in 2011

internet

Asia

Europe

North America

Lat Am/Caribb

Africa

Middle East

Oceania/Australia

22.7%

44%

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1 1D E C E M b E r 2 0 1 1 | itnext

Android ice creAm sAndwich The newest flavour of

Android 4.0 was released

recently with a face rec-

ognition unlock, NFC, new

user interface and camera

capabilities. It is designed

to work without buttons.

cortex-A7 Processor unveiled The chip that powers

most future smart-

phones was unveiled

recently. It uses a 28

nm fabrication process,

is one-fifth the size and more energy ef-

ficient, by 70 per cent than the current A8.

ubuntu 11.10 is here The much-anticipated Ubuntu 11.10

Oneiric Ocelot is finally

here. It is more polished

and packs in a large

number of improvements

over its predecessor.

Stretch your IT budget.

TECH TIDINGS | India is set to have 121 million internet users by end of December, becoming the world’s third largest internet market after China and the US. This means one out of every 10 Indian will be an internet user. The figures were revealed in the annual report, I-Cube, jointly published by IMRB and the Internet & Mobile Association of India (IMAI).

According to the report, the internet population is likely to rise from 100 million users ( as in September this year) to 121 million by December, 2011. In addition, out of 121 million, some

India to have 121 Million Internet Users by Year End, says Study

landmark for the country. With this internet use in India is expected to enter a critical period of growth with the possibility of becoming the largest internet using country in the world in this decade,” says the study. The study also shows the evolving profile of users. It says that internet has deeper penetra-tion in small towns and also among the less affluent sections. It is becoming highly popular among children, with school-children making up more than a fifth of the users. More than one in 10 users hails from the lowest socio-economic groups. The report further highlights that emails, social networking and chatting are some of the most popular online activities among the urban users. The us-age pattern differs among rural and urban users.

India will become the world’s third largest inter-net market

Internet titan Google Inc has acquired two start-up firms — Apture and Katango — for an undisclosed amount that would help it enhance the user experience of its browser and social networking services. Google buyout of Apture is expected to bolster the firm’s Chrome browser. The acquisition of Katango will help over 40 million users of internet search giant’s social networking platform, Google Plus, to organise their circles.

around the World

Google Buys Two Start-ups to Enhance User Experience

Anand mahindra, chairman, tech mahindra says,

This year saw recovery from a severe slowdown in the telecom vertical. Our growth is due to an unwavering focus on customer centricity and the ability to challenge conventional logic to better serve our customers

97 million users will be active internet users, who use internet at least once in a month.

“A 100 million internet users is considered a critical

quick byte

update

1 2 itnext | D E C E M b E r 2 0 1 1

TECH TrENDS | Mahindra Satyam’s merger with parent firm Tech Mahindra will take place in 2012, its chairman Vineet Nayyar said recently while declaring Q2 results of the company.

Nayyar recalled that after winning the bid for the company in April 2009, Tech Mahindra had indicated its intention to merge. “That intention remains,” he said.

In May this year, he hinted that the merger may be delayed as it is a legal process which has to go to two high courts. Tech Mahindra had acquired Satyam Computer in April 2009, a few months after Satyam was rattled by India’s biggest corporate fraud.

Tech Mahindra, Satyam Merger Likely in 2012

Satyam was subsequently renamed Mahindra Satyam. Nayyar said the firm had resolved almost all cases in the US, which arose because of the fraud committed by the earlier management.

The company has already paid $10 mn to settle the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s suit over the fraud. It paid $125 mn to settle class action suits and another $70 mn to settle the unresolved case.

On the IT Departments’s notice to pay Rs 616 crore tax, Mahindra Satyam CEO CP Gurnani termed it as unreasonable.

Source: Timesofindia.com

The Chinese Tianhe-1A system

at the National Supercomputer

Centre in Tianjin has taken the top

spot in the Top500 supercomputer

list. The 2.57petaflop/s (quadril-

lions of calculations per second),

Nvidia-powered Tianhe-1A knocked

Cray’s XT5 ’Jaguar‘ system at the

US Department of Energy’s (DOE)

Oak ridge Leadership Computing

Facility off the top spot. The Cray

ranked in second place, with Jag-

uar achieving 1.75petaflop/s.

Third place is now held by a

Chinese system called Nebulae,

located at the National Supercom-

puting Centre in Shenzhen. Nebu-

lae performed at 1.27petaflop/s.

Tsubame 2.0, at the Tokyo

Institute of Technology, came

in fourth with a performance of

1.19petaflop/s. Tsubame is the only

Japanese machine in the TOP10.

The fifth most powerful super-

computer was Hopper, a Cray XE6

system at DOE’s National Energy

research Scientific Computing

(NErSC) Centre in California. Hop-

per just broke the petaflop/s bar-

rier with 1.05petaflop/s, making it

the second most powerful system

in the US.

netWorking

china bags top spot in super computer listMahindra

resolved all cases in the US

GOOGLE LaunchEs GOOGLE+ PaGEs FOR BusInEssEs and BRands tO nEtwORkThis Will help Companies inCrease Communication With Their Audiences

Google has finally started rolling out its social networking service Google+ to businesses and brands, allowing them to set up their own Google+ pages. Google says the Google+ pages will help companies increase communication with their audiences. Google+ pages are pretty similar to Facebook page services, which also allows businesses to promote themselves.

NEwS @

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TECH TrENDS | IBM has unveiled what it says is the world’s first solar array designed specifically for high-voltage data centres at its software development lab in

Bangalore. Specifically configured with the needs of servers and cooling infrastructure in mind, the company will eventually make the technology available to clients seeking green data centre power alternatives.

The 6,000 sq ft rooftop system is capable of providing a 50 kW supply of electricity for up to 330 days a year, for an average of five hours a day, IBM says.

IBM plans for the system to connect directly into the data centre’s water-cooling and high-voltage DC systems. By employing unique high-voltage DC power conditioning methods and reducing AC-DC conversion losses, the company claims that the array can cut energy consumption of data centres by about 10 per cent.

TECH TIDINGS | Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has won its second-biggest outsourcing contract worth $2.2 bn from UK-based pension firm Friends Life, providing positive forecast for India’s technology sector complain-ing of shrinking contracts and delays in decision-mak-ing by top customers.

The contract, TCS’s second biggest deal after the company won $2.8 bn order in 2008 from Citigroup, is based on a model wherein the company will be paid for each insurance transaction and will add another 3.2 million policies to the existing Diligenta platform owned by its UK subsidiary.

“According to our records, this is the largest private sector deal in the UK, at least since 2005,” said Ed Thomas, an analyst with UK-based outsourcing advisory Ovum. “And that it comes from the insurance sector that has been depressed since the beginning of the slowdown in 2008, makes it even more important.” TCS will now manage some eight million policies in the UK using the same platform, increasing the company’s share of revenues earned without hiring additional staff. Around 1,900 staff of Friends Life will get transferred to TCS.

IBM Unveils First DC Solar Array

TCS Bags $2.2 bn Deal

source: ibm

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Buying

1 4 itnext | D e c e m B e R 2 0 1 1

By Wireit managers boost security and improve integration to enhance the e-commerce user experience by N Geetha

IllustratIoN by shIGIl N

e-commerce | cover story

1 5D e c e m B e R 2 0 1 1 | itnext

It would not be an exaggeration to say that IT managers are going overboard in tightening security, application integration and payment gateway to make e-tailing easy for internal business groups as well as external stakeholders.

A testimony to this change is Amway’s e-tailing platform initiative that caters to its one million business users who depend on the technology and the company’s IT managers’ effort in putting together a robust e-commerce framework in place. (Read the case study)

However, given the scope of e-tailing and the growth opportunities therein which are throwing up newer challenges for IT managers, IT Next embarked on a study to analyse how they have been leveraging

technological innovations and carrying out application integration to catch up with this e-tailing revolution.

e-tailing at its BestBeyond doubt, e-tailing has changed the way of doing business across B2B and B2C space. The major drivers for this shift have been the low cost of PCs and the growing use of the internet. As Ravish Jhala, Systems Manager, Trident, Bandra Kurla, observes, the stock exchanges now provide online stock port-folios and periodic status of prices that have added to the scope. He says that in the next three to five years, India will have 30 to 70 million internet users which will equal, if not surpass, the number of users in many of the developed countries.

ave you bought stuff online? If you have, you’d probably know that the e-tailing landscape is replete with horror stories ranging from receipt of defective or wrong products and delayed deliveries to online payment discrepancies and information gaps. However, all this is changing, thanks to IT managers who have stretched themselves to automate the e-commerce

platform to the fullest extent possible. Surely, even if slowly, they are working on e-tailing plans that absorb new business models, tech innovations and so on.

cover story | e-commerce

1 6 itnext | D e c e m B e R 2 0 1 1

Global Head, Information Security, Cox & Kings Ltd, Dhananjay C Rokde talks of the fact that e-tailware has a huge success in the middle segment, as it provides easy integration, quick promotional campaigns, centralised database and dashboard, real-time analysis and reporting and so on.

The $10 mn e-tailer India Plaza is aligned with the market growth and its Founder and CEO, K Vaitheeswaran is putting his best foot forward in leveraging the technology innovations to meet future growth.

Prabhu Kannan, Director, SapientNitro, finds convenience and cost to be the main drivers for e-tailing in India considering that there are 100 million internet users who spend 16 hours per week online, with over 80 per cent researching online and 19 per cent buying online.

“Online retail is projected to grow approximately 32 per cent this year in spite of the fact that not all retailers are online yet,” says Kannan and adds, “a number of retailers are present on social networking sites such as Facebook and use their presence to just surface deals or deep link into e-commerce websites for transactions or for browsing the catalogue of products.”

E-Marketer forecasts say that globally online sales will more than double by reaching $168.7 bn in 2011, and the increased share is moving towards Australia, India and China.

What does this growth indicate? Obviously, a lot would depend on how IT managers cope with this growth and enable a robust platform to run the show.

Challenges in e-tailingWhile the IT heads have been at the threshold of challenges all along, e-tailing is throwing up new ones with unbridled growth in consumer shopping online and technology posing even greater threats.

“As part of e-selling, we have integrated our eRP with that of our dealers and

distributors and our stock points, via e-payment gateway

for order fulfilment”Pertisth Mankotia

Head, IT, Sheela Foam India Pvt. Ltd

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The Rs 2,400 crore FmcG com-

pany, Amway India enterprises

Pvt Ltd is cruising at great speed

on its e-tailing platform to cater to its

one million business users who depend

on the technology.

Pawan Bakshi, manager, Infrastruc-

ture & e-Biz, Amway India, finds the

model to be a big hit given the fact that

the website is contributing more than 20

per cent to the overall sales monthly, as

against just one per cent till recently.

Bakshi and team set up a robust

e-commerce framework for Amway to

cash in on.

technological AdvantageAs the IT manager, Bakshi ensured the

integration of the website with multiple

payment gateways in order to main-

tain redundancy and high availability,

and also to encash the competitive

advantage through better negotiations

with banks to drive business. Besides,

he initiated online reconciliation process

deployment with banks to minimise

cancellation of orders due to online

payment challenges. “We made sure to

reduce the turnaround time for payment

refund in case of transaction failure and

advised the banks to expedite the proc-

ess,” says Bakshi.

e-tailing is set be a major hit, considering that it is going to be the next big revenue earner

cASe Study: AmwAy indiA

e-tailing a Profit Storm

Pawan bakshimanager, Infrastructure & e-Biz, Amway India enterprises Pvt Ltd,

Most IT managers opine that commercial challenges such as taxation and Octroi have bulldozed the e-tailing model, which then returns to IT heads as the pain point in the ERP system.

tense Application integrationEvery consumer transaction, irrespective of the product or item, depends on how IT heads have built the platform and integrated it with necessary enterprise applications. India Plaza’s Vaitheeswaran recalls that India’s first e-commerce platform was built on open source in 1999, with the availability of engineers around Unix platform, and was later scaled up to use Solaris.

Vaitheeswaran’s 16-member IT team at India Plaza ensured that they had a scalable platform to create the shopping experience. “We have just migrated to Microsoft Azure platform to streamline our online transaction process and have deployed catalogue system, VISA payment system and fulfilment module to make the transaction easy.”

India Plaza is now looking at a cloud model for its online transaction based on Azure platform, which is being hosted at Reliance data centre. “By moving to Azure which offers cloud services, we expect to carry out two million shipments in the next one year in India,” says Vaitheeswaran.

“We have integrated the e-commerce platform with different applications including supply chain management and ERP, and have built inventory

The one big challenge for the IT heads, says V Srinivas, CIO, Nagarjuna Fertilzers and Chemicals Ltd, is, “the primary connector”. The challenge for IT heads in this web-enabled marketer-to-consumer interactive shopping platform is the ability of both the parties to process ‘information on fingertips’. While this ability increases transaction comfort for the consumer and business volumes for the marketer, there remain serious concerns on both sides, on use and protection of customer-centric information by the other.”

Shashank Mehrotra, General Manager and Business Head, BigRock, admits, “While there are several providers of payment gateway such as CCAvenue, EBS, Billdesk, etc., who provide access to online payment, the challenge for IT heads is to make this transaction platform robust and enable the company to increase the percentage of successful transactions.

Jhala attributes infrastructural barriers to the slow growth of e-tailing in the country. For an IT head the primary task is to ensure that transactions do not get dropped or turn out to be insecure. “Supply chain management plays a critical role in ensuring that the product is delivered safe and secure in the right frame to the right owner,” admits Jhala. “The most critical aspect is the vendor management to drive efficient system for inventory management which itself is driven by digital data,” he adds.


1 8 itnext | D e c e m B e R 2 0 1 1

management alongside to work out better logistics using Microsoft tool,” points Vaitheeswaran.

Retailer SheelaFoam has been driving the e-selling concept in both B2B and B2C platforms. The objective according to its Head, IT, Pertisth Mankotia, is to create visibility, consumer experience, ensure speed and accuracy in delivery models and drive efficient logistics.

“To ensure that every objective is met, we have integrated our ERP and inventory management

using PSP language and thus have control over the transactions,” claims Mankotia. He adds, “As part of e-selling, we have integrated our ERP with that of our dealers and distributors and our stock points, via e-payment gateway for order fulfilment.”

Cox & Kings Rokde says that as technology undergoes a service portfoliofication, e-tailing and e-commerce too, began to be sold as services or packaged products. “We have witnessed a surge in e-tailware application suites which are software

“Supply chain management plays a critical role in ensuring that the product is

delivered safe and secure in the right frame to

the right owner”ravish Jhala

Systems manager ,Trident, Bandra Kurla

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To protect data, Amway ensures

secure payment gateway communication

with SSL certificate, firewall and IPS,

besides undertaking frequent audits.

Bakshi went in for microsoft commerce

Server platform to run the e-tailing initia-

tive which is integrated with eRP using

microsoft Biz Talk Server tool. However, the

challenge for Bakshi and team is regarding

discrepancy in the payment gateway where

the customer transaction gets dropped ow-

ing to technical issues. “Such transactional

drops mean a great loss to the business

and we have regular meetings with banks,

financial institutions and security players

to ensure smooth flow,” says Bakshi. The

other challenge is finding a service provider

that can integrate all their backend, secu-

rity and e-tailing platform, and facilitate

faster transaction and support.

multiple Payment Options conventionally, a company would go for

cash on Delivery mode, but Amway has

come up with a new payment mode in

association with key banks. called the Pay

By challan, under this method a customer

places online order choosing payment mode

Pay by challan, and gets an order reference

number and other details on the screen. An

SmS is also sent on his mobile number.

The customer visits the nearest associ-

ated bank branch and deposits the amount

and the reference order. The bank updates

the Amway system about the payment

in real time and order shipment process

starts. This method avoids overhead cost of

handling cash and also enhances customer

confidence by sending SmS payment alerts.

Leveraging new Business modelsBakshi finds new business models

opening up greater buying options that

invariably also increase IT managers’

responsibility for enabling transactions.

“In e-tailing, per order cost of process-

ing and fulfilling is very low compared to

conventional sales methods,” says Bakshi.

Given the advantages, enterprises are

investing in setting up e-tailing platforms,

and, more importantly, in creating aware-

ness, educating customers and buying

mindshare of internal business owners.

However, despite the many advan-

tages, customers used to conventional

methods of buying and selling are proving

tough to convert to e-tailing.

trends and trialsThe trend of youth using mobile devices

for communication and transaction is a

challenge — since the payment options

on mobiles are limited and not real time.

Another trend is to virtualise the e-

commerce platform and make it service-

enabled. But it will take time for business

owners and companies to take the risk of

putting user and buyer related data on a

cloud-based platform.

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packages or hosted services offering brick and mortar retailers an online interface in a matter of minutes and helping them get started with ease. These applications require minimum to no coding experience and provide very user-friendly interfaces and wizards to get your e-store running in minutes.

Rakesh Aerath, Director, Telecom and Innovation, Logica India, finds IT managers majorly leveraging platforms such as Web Portal including product catalogue, shopping cart, etc, payment interface integrated with payment gateway, applications around order management and product shipping and customer analytics and care.

According to Aerath, developing a robust e-tailing platform requires considerable investment in servers, databases and software licenses. “IT managers can consider SaaS model if they do not want to invest upfront in the platform,” he adds.

Sapient’s Kannan opines that enhancing and integrating enterprise applications with e-commerce platforms is imperative for a multi-channel presence. A single version of the product, customers and their orders, promotions as well as a consolidated view of inventory, will be necessary to provide a seamless experience for a multi-channel customer. “Existing custom-built legacy applications need to be changed or a new breed of applications such as Sterling commerce for order management, product information management systems such as Stibo, need to be introduced to achieve a single view of orders, product, etc,” says Kannan.

Arun Chandramohan, Founding Partner Jade eServices, e-commerce platform service provider informs that the IT managers are struggling with challenges around website downtime, inability to adapt to emerging technologies, securing personal information of customers and the growing threat of cybercrime. “There is increased focus on inventory management and customer relationship management solutions in the e-tailing space, which are a major cause for concern,” says Chandramohan.

Leveraging innovations While new business models are escalat-ing IT managers’ challenges in creating a

Retail payments are undergoing tremendous

change due to the combined effects of tech-

nological innovation, security improvements

and the increased emphasis on spatial and temporal

customer convenience. contactless payment tech-

nologies and payment innovation are steadily gaining

customer acceptance.

While TSPs (telecom service operators), banks and

third party service-providers pilot their offerings, the

hurdles are immense and offer no assurance of suc-

cess. In the meantime, the potential that contactless

payments hold, if unleashed, will enable micro-pay-

ment transactions to a point where cash transactions

will cease to prevail.

Paradigm Shift in Payment modulesThe payments industry has undergone radical change

in the past decade. The manner in which transactions

are undertaken across the world continues to show

an affinity towards non-cash methods. While the use

of cheques continues to decline, transactions involv-

ing online, mobile and other contactless methods are

gaining momentum.

Payment Systemscontactless payment is a transaction by the customer

using an embedded, contactless chip on a reader/

writer terminal via card or mobile. Such payments

leverage NFc (near field communication) technology,

a specific standard of radio frequency identification

(RFID) technology, which enables secure wireless data

transmission over short ranges between electronic

devices. In combination with an embedded electronic

wallet on a mobile phone or a smart card, NFc enables

a wide range of transformative monetary and non-

monetary transactions.

Factors Fuelling ‘no Contact’Developments of new technologies like NFc and

handheld smartphones have led to the introduction of

Stakeholder ecosystem


2 0 itnext | D e c e m B e R 2 0 1 1

innovative payment methods like contact-

less payments and e-wallets. cutting-

edge R&D and increasing technological

awareness have made the adoption of

new systems easier.

Innovative business models neces-

sitate new payment technologies. The

payment industry is witnessing an era of

collaborative ecosystems, with customer

at the loci. “Transactional convenience”

is of paramount importance. micropay-

ments, which were earlier unprofitable for

merchants due to the card interchange

fee, will become a reality with payments

of less than Rs 500 being easily made

using the cards.

Path to Contactless Payments acceptance – contactless payment

methods have been successfully de-

ployed in many parts of the world, with

South-east Asia being the most success-

ful example.

ubiquity – The transactional convenience

offered by contactless payment systems

has made many retailers install them at

their outlets.

Growth opportunity – mobile phone-

based contactless payments are forecast

to facilitate over $36 billion of worldwide

consumer spending by 2011.

Stakeholders’ ecosystemAny new application, when conceived,

needs only an enterprising firm to develop

it. However, the widespread deployment

and adoption of contactless payments

requires support and collaboration from a

complex ecosystem of organisations.

The biggest challenge in this eco-

system is to have a clearly defined and

articulated business model and an un-

derstanding of revenue sharing, financial

incentives and value propositions.

the PositivesSome benefits of contactless payment:

consumer convenience in terms of time

and ease of payment

Reduced queuing times

Low-value payments through card

instead of the need to carry cash

The first benefit for merchants is

faster transactions, resulting in higher

revenues

Increased billing and transaction speed

competitive differentiation due to

improved service delivery

Better customer insight (through cap-

ture of transaction-level data)

Banks could increase revenues by

charging premium fees as well as creat-

ing a service differentiator

Handset manufacturers would find an

increased demand for contactless chips

equipped phones

the Operating modelThe application developers and ap-

plication aggregators are involved in

developing the mobile applications which

are distributed by mobile operators in col-

laboration with banks. customers using

contactless card or contactless mobile

will just have to tap at the merchant’s

POS (point-of-sale) terminal to make the

payments which will be directly credited

to the merchant’s bank.

At this stage, the exact revenue

sharing model is hard to predict as the

interplay of forces between the various

stakeholders will determine the direction

of contactless payment.

Going Contactless - the indian wayWith internet and mobile penetration

rising exponentially, customers in India

are becoming increasingly receptive

to the adoption of new technologies.

The burgeoning Indian urban youth

population will be the target segment

for contactless payment models as a

huge percentage of urban youths are

accustomed to e-commerce. contact-

less payments, though only introduced

as a pilot project in India at this stage,

have the potential to become a preferred

means of payment.

ChallengesThe introduction of contactless payments

systems has its own set of hurdles. These

payments must be made simple and pro-

vide greater speed, high security against

fraud and more control. The other chal-

lenge is in terms of acceptance amongst

customers. Here, payment systems-oper-

ators and banks must avoid charging high

fees to early consumers and merchants

and find other ways to fund the substan-

tial infrastructure investments.

technology as a driverNFc has made contactless payments

faster and more secure and provides

a clear advantage over existing mobile

payment systems. commercial contactless

technologies will require different

stakeholders to collaborate onto a single

platform to club and deliver their services.

When combined with biometrics,

the mass transit and air travel stand

to gain the most from improvement in

contactless technologies as bookings,

check-in and airport security transit

points will become automated. The only

problem which remains is ISO/Iec

14443 standards need to be agreed and

complied with by different stakeholders.

By Krishna chaitanya, consultant, BTP; Snigdha Kulshreshtha, consultant, BTP; and Sujay maskara, consultant, GRc, all from Wipro consulting.

Technological evolution is enabling a paradigm shift in payment structures, making the “buy-via-wire” concept a reality

cONTAcTLeSS PAymeNT: the next wave



robust platform, they are also increasingly lever-aging the evolutions to their advantage. From a product perspective, Jade eServices Chandramohan says, about 15 per cent of the products sourced are IT related and 20 per cent of revenues come from mobile sales. The apparel market will see a 25 per cent growth by 2015 in online transaction revenues, from the current 11 per cent.

The e-procurement by IT managers is minimal at the moment. But going forward, the e-tailing industry will see a major revenue share coming from e-procurement with organisations across verticals going for it. Sheela Foam’s Mankotia is working out an e-procurement model and has registered vendors who are ready to bid to meet his IT requirements online. Sheela Foam is currently investing Rs 30 lakh on building IT infrastructure for e-selling and will increase the budget going forward.

“I am also planning to drive e-freight concept as part of the e-tailing strategy and will enable the platform with necessary tools and payment gateway,” informs Mankotia.

Vaitheeswaran opines, “Mobile e-commerce is catching up rapidly and would soon see 15 per cent of our traffic coming from the smartphone users. We are working on our back-end systems to enable this.”

Trident’s Jhala is enabling his team to leverage the new business models in e-tailing and putting best practices in place. According to Jhala the trends which can influence his team would be collaborative click and brick, a hybrid online and offline business model incorporating both physical and online business practices, B2B net markets, where business to business applications are deployed which could result in corporate procurement portals, virtual distributors, industry consortiums and collaboration hubs.

“the challenge for it heads in this web-enabled marketer-

to-consumer interactive shopping platform is the ability of both parties to process ‘information

on their fingertips”V srinivas

cIO, Nagarjuna Fertilizers and chemicals Ltd

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ncover story | e-commerce

2 2 itnext | D e c e m B e R 2 0 1 1

Digital products and mobile portals are a trend besides, new platforms for digital media delivery that are evolving; a wireless revolution is intensifying the movement towards mobile commerce.

“IT managers will look at embracing new programming languages, platforms and protocols to make it a reality,” says Jhala.

BigRock’s Mehrotra finds mobile commerce still in its infancy, while technologies like NFC (Near Field Communication) are being touted as drivers in in enabling payment gateways.

As a technology trend, Logica’s Aerath finds social media and Web 2.0 technologies creating major impact on e-tailing. Many e-tailing sites enable users

e-payment gateways are a driving

force behind the e-tailing busi-

ness and the IT manager has

the additional responsibility of ensuring

a strong security framework to bring in

transparency in transaction.

Srinivas Nidugondi, Vice President,

mobile Business Solutions, comviva,

admits that metro transport projects

are gearing up for contactless pay-

ments and banks have been advised to

facilitate only electronic transactions,

whereby RFID tags are placed for elec-

tronic Toll collection (eTc) on national

highways.

Ravish Jhala, Systems manager,

Trident, Bandra Kurla, opines that while

the whole process of making a payment

seems very simple, the processes that

run behind the system are actually very

complex and involve a series of steps.

Jhala says that IT managers should

create differentiators to drive success.

certain critical steps are

necessary for this

including setting

up of e-commerce

website hosting

company; tak-

ing credit card

payments online; internet merchant

accounts for e-commerce websites

and PayPal-type solutions; shopping

cart set-up on e-commerce websites;

e-commerce website set-up using open

source software and designing it accu-

rately; search engine optimisation (SeO)

on the website; SSL, two-way authen-

tication and cyber security framework,

among others.

V Srinivas, cIO, Nagarjuna Fertilisers

and chemicals Ltd, believes in putting

in place a data protection system before

flipping the switch, rather than having to

carry out a major post-disaster clean-up

after a breach occurs.

With increased online and netbanking

transactions happening, Vishal Salvi,

cISO, Information Security Group,

HDFc Bank, is all geared up to provide

necessary security to the payment

gateway. According to Salvi, corporate

certificate-based multilevel authentica-

tion for corporate bodies is critical to

ensure smooth transaction.

As a banker, Salvi ensures that the

merchant platforms are secure with

appropriate security policy frameworks

and the infrastructure is ready. “We use

RSA security solutions for online bank-

ing which is a defence-in-depth solution.

Dhananjay c Rokde, Global Head,

Information Security, cox & Kings Ltd,

opines that most of the run-of-the-mill

e-tailware lead to a lot of risks. They

are often non-compliant to local and

international laws and standards like

PcI-DSS or local regulatory standards

(like the IT Act for India and the DPA

for UK). According to him the top four

information security concerns in any e-

tailing initiative are: a) authentication; b)

privacy and protection of information; c)

fraud, misrepresentation and relying on

third party and; d) technology risks.

Vishak Raman, Senior Regional Direc-

tor, Fortinet, India and SAARc, highlights

that in a typical e-tailing set-up, security

administrators focus mostly on network

perimeter and front end web servers, often

neglecting or ignoring database security.

Some of the security mistakes made by

database administrators, security person-

nel, and application developers are:

a) Poor configuration management

b) Poor patch management

c) Application-Layer Attacks

d)Trust issues, especially when the

database environment is left unmoni-

tored or uncontrolled

e) Lack of database security expertise

However, the need of the hour, as

Raman observes, is to have a secure da-

tabase, real time monitoring, structured

vulnerability assessment practices and

strong configuration/change manage-

ment controls.

contactless payments need to be secure. And this means a lot of work for the IT manager

Security Check in e-tailing

“corporate certificate-based multilevel authentication for corporate bodies is critical to ensure smooth transition”Vishal salvi, cISO, ISG, Information Security Group, HDFc Bank

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“by moving to Azure which offers

cloud services, we expect

to carry out two million shipments in the next one year

in india”K Vaitheeswaran

Founder and ceO, India Plaza.in

to provide reviews and comments on the products and rate the them based on their experiences. Websites also indicate the current trending products and let users compare two or more products based on price, features and user recommendations.

“Using BI and analytics tools, many e-tailing sites up-sell and cross-sell products by suggesting other products based on user’s interest,” says Aerath.

Aerath also finds increasing uptake of tablets and mobiles changing the e-tailing trend. “This trend is enabling custom application of mobile platforms that helps in easy navigation process and m-commerce transactions.

Cloud-based delivery platforms will act as enablers for e-tailing by allowing small and medium retail enterprises to expand their market reach via e-tailing and also reduce the opex, as against

traditional capex platform that entails setting up of an e-commerce portal.

Usage-based pricing model facilitated by the cloud reduces the entry barrier and enables retailers to start small and scale up based on demand.

Ankur Dinesh Garg, CMD, Wirefoot India Technology Ltd, believes that IT managers are bringing in greater reliability into the e-payment gateways by writing applications in good programming frameworks which have the capability of processing high volume data streams, run time filtering, flagging, and transaction routing switches that can interact with sophisticated bank transaction processing systems for authentication and act as secure communication layer.

Inputs from manu Sharma

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ncover story | e-commerce

2 4 itnext | D e c e m B e R 2 0 1 1

Ubuntu

CloudAspires to

Own the

While Ubuntu has been most closely associated with the desktop, the

project’s server variant has grown more prominent in recent years, particularly in

the context of cloud computingBy Jason Brooks

UBUNTU ON ClOUd | insight

2 5D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 1 | itnext

though, I recommend sticking with the previous LTS edition of Ubuntu Server, version 10.04.

Ubuntu Server 11.10 is available for free download from www.ubuntu.com/download/server/download, in separate versions tailored for the x86 and x86-64 processor architectures.

Ubuntu Server in the LabI tested the Ubuntu Server 11.10 on a white-box server powered by AMD Opteron 4000 Series processors on Amazon EC2 and a handful of VirtualBox virtual machines running on my desktop. I used that handful of VMs to test Ubuntu Server’s automatable network installation toolkit, Orchestra, following the tutorial at tinyurl.com/3qgz77a and deploying OpenStack private clouds.

Orchestra brings together a few pre-existing open-source projects — chiefly the Cobbler installation and Nagios monitoring servers — to provide an automated way of deploying. Ubuntu servers on bare metal or VMs. Ubuntu wraps these components into a single install command.

I was able to quickly bring up an Orchestra server and install a managed Ubuntu instance via PXE boot. Next

Based on my tests of Ubuntu Server 11.10, the project’s cloud attractiveness shows no sign of abating. The new version, which shipped alongside its desktop-oriented sibling two weeks ago, is packed with tools for building, orchestrating and running on clouds — private and public. Version 11.10, also known as Oneiric Ocelot, is one of the project’s fast-moving, short support-term releases. It includes more than a few rough edges in its new features, which I hope to see smoothed out for the next Long Term Support (LTS) edition of Ubuntu set to arrive in the spring. In particular, what I found lacking was the documentation for 11.10’s key new features, such as deploying OpenStack private clouds. For now, most Ubuntu private cloud documentation refers to the now-deprecated Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud feature based on Eucalyptus’ open-source EC2 workalike.

Having said this, the Ubuntu Server 11.10 has me looking forward to spring’s LTS version and I have been impressed enough with the current state of its management tools to keep an example of it running in our lab, to help with server

and middleware installs for our tests. For

p r o d u c t i o n p u r p o s e s ,

“We opted to implement our payroll packaged on Linux, and it is running satisfactorily for past eight years” Vinay Mehta, cIO, escorts construction equipment Ltd

With no licence fees and a focus on cloud features from primary sponsor, Canonical, Ubuntu has flourished in the cloud. Ubuntu has become a popular guest operating system on Amazon EC2 and other infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) options, and the reference OS of choice

for OpenStack and Cloud Foundry projects. The cloud attractiveness of Ubuntu Server 11.10, remains undiminished and comes bundled with a plethora of tools for running on clouds — private and public, though it does have a few rough edges

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I turned my Orchestra server toward a pairing with a second new system deployment feature in Ubuntu Server — ‘juju’, a facility aimed at streamlining the process of deploying multi-component workloads. For instance, a WordPress blogging instance consists of database and web server components.

Juju enables administrators to store the deployment steps for particular components for fast, consistent reuse in recipes called Charms. The process for deploying services with juju calls to mind the procedures for using a platform-as-a-service.

Deploying WordPress, for instance, involves deploying database and WordPress application components and adding a relation between them. I set up juju environments for Amazon EC2 and for the Orchestra server I’d set up. The EC2 process is better-documented (and simpler overall, as Amazon handles the VM provisioning parts of the process). However, after spending a few hours debugging my Orchestra-juju installation, I was able to deploy services on that foundation as well. As it stands now, JuJu is a fairly server-hungry affair. A simple WordPress installation requires three servers: one for the MySQL database, another for the Web server and a third for controlling the juju environment.

Work is under way to use juju alongside the Linux Containers (LXC) functionality built into the Ubuntu Server. LXC, which is similar to the Solaris Containers feature, provides a way to divvy

up a single VM or physical machine among OS instances that

are lighter-weight than a full VM.Also on the cloud computing

track, I tested the Ubuntu Server’s OpenStack private cloud functionality

in the lab by installing a single-node OpenStack deployment. The install went smoothly, although not quite as smoothly as during my OpenStack tests with the purpose-built StackOps distribution earlier this year. I missed StackOps’ configuration helper, particularly when setting up the networking

for my private cloud. In my search for documentation for OpenStack on the Ubuntu Server, I noticed references both to installing OpenStack via juju and via Orchestra. In addition to the fuller documentation, I hope to see a simpler OpenStack installation option. Ubuntu’s earlier Eucalyptus-based effort benefitted from an install disk menu option for spinning up a new cloud. It would be great to see a similar option for OpenStack. The most mature element of the Ubuntu Server cloud computing feature list involves the product’s suitability as a guest OS for cloud or virtual environments. For Amazon

Version 11.10 is packed with tools for building, orchestrating and running on clouds — private and public

Ubuntu Server 11.10 demonstrates that the project’s cloud attractiveness shows no sign of abating

Most Ubuntu private cloud documentation refers to the now-deprecated Ubuntu enterprise cloud feature based

on eucalyptus’ open-source eC2 workalike

Orchestra brings together a few pre-existing open-source projects — chiefly the Cobbler installation and nagios monitoring servers

the most mature element of the Ubuntu Server cloud computing feature list is the product’s suitability as a guest OS for cloud or virtual environments

Feature Rich

“Open Source software procurement has become

part of the IT strategy within Sheela Foam Ltd”

Pertisth Mankotia, Head, IT, Sheela Foam Pvt Ltd

EC2 users, there’s a handy AMI locator for finding Ubuntu images in the version and regional zone one desires, and the cloud images available at http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/ work well within most virtualisation platforms.

The Ubuntu Server is also the reference OS for VMware’s Cloud Foundry project, and the client packages required for using Cloud Foundry are now available in the 11.10 repositories.

The server packages for Cloud Foundry haven’t yet made their way into the release’s official repositories, but they are available in a Personal Package Archive at https://launchpad.net/~cloud foundry.

Labs editor in chief Jason brooks/eWeek

UBUNTU ON ClOUd | insight


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Increased innovation, absorbing applications and

enriched 3D gaming built around Flash and HTmL on

the cardsBy Darryl K TafT

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adobe suPPort | insight


hen it comes to Web application d e v e l o p m e n t , particularly as it applies to creat-ing rich internet

applications and sites, developers are often faced with a question: Should they use the Adobe Flash Platform or HTML5, which continues to mature and gain the acceptance and support of key software vendors? At its recent MAX 2011 conference, Flash-maker, Adobe, addressed the issue by stating that it plans to continue to support both plat-forms with equal commitment. Adobe officials said they plan to lead with Flash in terms of pushing the envelope in innovation, by adding new elements and features the company can then

bring back to standards bodies such as the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for inclusion in HTML5.

Adobe has been contributing actively to HTML5 through the W3C and through contributions to WebKit, to enable new expressiveness in HTML. The Adobe contributions include CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) Regions, which give designers more control over the flow of text in HTML by letting them wrap text around graphics and custom shapes. CSS Regions, which brings magazine-like layouts to the Web, is available in the latest versions of Chromium and Internet Explorer 10.

Adobe has proposed CSS shaders to the W3C as a contribution to HTML, with the goal of enabling rich, animated effects for the HTML5 content elements through CSS. CSS shaders are based on Adobe Pixel Bender technology, but the submission to the W3C was co-edited by Opera and Apple. Adobe officials said, “We’ve been able to advance Flash and gather learning from Flash Player being available on 98 per cent of computers, and then take those learnings and bring them back into HTML and into the standards.”

Danny Winokur, VP and GM, Platform at Adobe, said in a session with press and analysts at Adobe MAX 2011, “Pixel Bender is a great example of where we’ve already done that, where we had a pioneering technology in Flash, and we leveraged that as the basis for the work that we contributed to

insight | adobe suPPort

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the W3C for CSS shaders. We are going to continue to do that.”

Absorbing AppsThe new releases of Adobe Flash Player 11 and Adobe AIR 3 enable the next generation of immersive application experiences for gaming, rich media and data-driven apps. In addition, native extensions for Adobe AIR provide developers with easy access to device-specific libraries and features.

“I like native extensions a lot in AIR 3,” said RJ Owen, a senior software architect at Effective UI, in an interview with eWeek. “I like having the ability to customise your code.”

“Flash is good at the visual layer. It is awesome at that, but if I want to do image processing on a phone, which is already low power, I want to do that in native code and be as efficient as I can. So the ability to divide up the responsibilities between the places where it will run best, that’s amazing,” said Owen.

Jesse Redniss, Vice President of digital strategy and development at cable TV’s USA Network, said, “We build with Flash and AIR because it provides us ease of development process on one platform, and also ease of cost and development timeline.”

Paul Gubbay, VP, Web and Interactive at Adobe, said that to do great web developments you need three things: great browsers, great frame-works and great tools.

Regarding the tooling, Adobe announced the

pre-release versions of Flex 4.6 and Flash

Builder 4.6, which will provide new components,

access to the latest platform and device capabilities and

native install experiences. They will support apps running on tablets

to take advantage of the larger-than-phones factor, and they are targeting Android, iOS, PlayBook and whatever else is coming in the future, including (Microsoft’s Windows 8) Metro,” said Gubbay.

Meanwhile, at MAX 2011, Adobe announced its intent to acquire Nitobi, the maker of the popular PhoneGap cross-platform mobile application development environment. Industry analyst James Governor, Co-founder of RedMonk, told eWeek that he believes the Nitobi acquisition is huge in terms of the company’s future focus on HTML5.

“We have looked at the numbers and, if you look at real activity where developers are, PhoneGap is crushing everybody else in terms of HTML and JavaScript-based tools for mobile app-developers, Governor said.

Created by alternative Platform, Tanki Online is a free 3D action multiplayer game available for Internet-connected desktops via flash Player 11

“The next release of Flash

Professional code named ‘Reuben’, would support the

Starling enhancements ”—emmy Huang

Product manager, Adobe

adobe suPPort | insight


Adobe is looking at the PhoneGap HTML5 application platform to accelerate the creative tool giant’s HTML5 and web standards strategy, which the company says will run in parallel with its strategy to continue to evolve and innovate around the Flash platform and Adobe AIR. “There are more JavaScript and web developers than any other developers out there,” Andre Charland, co-founder and CEO of Nitobi, said. “It is more about choosing the right tool for you.”

Adobe’s Winokur says that, when it comes to Flash and HTML, it is not even one or the other. “There are a huge number of projects that I can think of where HTML and Flash get combined in a single project,” he says. “The key message is we are all about giving the content creator or developer the richest toolbox. The person to decide which tool to use is the content creator. We lay out the tools for you, and you can pick and choose whether you want to use one tool or mix those tools,” added Winokur.

There are many projects on the web that use HTML and then plug in some Flash, Winokur said. “There are AIR applications that plug in HTML and there are PhoneGap applications that are pure HTML,” he said. “There are AIR applications that have some native code mixed in. The point is, there are many combinations and it would be a mistake for us to try to prescribe one technology or one solution per category or application.”

Wi n o ku r ad de d that there is no one-size-fits-all project. For general-purpose applications, business, information-based and companion applications, branded micro-sites, advertising or general rich interactivity, HTML5 has advanced to a point at which it is capable of delivering on those kinds of experiences. He says it is a good choice because HTML5 has the advantage of being supported broadly across all browsers in both the mobile and desktop space. Indeed, HTML5 has the ability to be packaged in application form with technologies such as PhoneGap. “So

the experience is one in which, for that general purpose, it is a great choice,” Winokur says. He explains that, so far, HTML5 is mature for use only in places where it has been consistently implemented, such as for websites and mobile apps.

One area in which HTML is not mature enough, Winokur says, is in some of the most demanding, high-end entertainment experiences, such as streaming movies and videos.

3D GAMeS enRiCHeDAdobe invited developers to experience 3D games with Flash Player. As the game console for the web, Flash Player 11, along with AIR 3, allows game publishers to instantly deliver console-quality, immersive 3D games with the broadest reach. Stage3D APIs make it possible to deliver sophisticated, high-performance 3D experiences across almost every computer and device connected to the internet with hardware-accelerated GPU-powered performance.

Adobe officials say that the Starling framework extends this work by enabling developers to write fast, GPU-accelerated 2D applications without having to touch the low-

level Stage3D APIs.Emmy Huang, Adobe’s product manager

for gaming solutions, calls Starling an open-source 2D framework. She

says the next release of Flash Professional, code-named

‘Reuben’, would support the Starling enhancements. Huang demonstrated the Epic Games Unreal engine running in a web browser

using Flash Player.Meanwhile, Andrew

Stalbow, GM, North America for Rovio, the

maker of the hugely popular Angry Birds engine, says his

program is built on Flash Player 11. “Flash is important to us because it is going to help us run on social networks,” Stalbow said. “And it helps us better use the 2D graphics of the CPU to enhance our user experience.”

Senior Writer, eWeek

Adobe plans to continue supporting both Flash and HtML5, giving equal commitment to both of them

Adobe contributions include CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) Regions, which give designers more control over the flow of text in HtML

Adobe’s Flex 4.6 and Flash Builder 4.6 will provide new components, access to the latest platform and device capabilities, and native-install experiences

Flex versions will support apps running on tablets and take advantage of the larger-than-phones factor

target Android, iOS, PlayBook and whatever else is coming the future, including Microsoft’s Windows 8 Metro

Plans

“HTML5 has the advantage of being

supported broadly across all browsers in both mobile

and desktop space”—Danny Winnokur

VP & Gm, Platform, Adobe

insight | Steve jobS

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When Apple Co-founder Steve Jobs’ life ended on October 5, 2011 at age 56, the event marked the passing not only of an international icon, but also of a man people felt they knew well — even if they had never met him. Every device Apple made was designed to become a trusted friend to its user. However, Jobs’ life was a series of dichotomies. He was a micromanager with huge ideas. He co-created Apple, was fired by his own people eight years later, and returned 11

years after that to save the company and build it into one of the most successful businesses in the world. President Barack Obama, who was given an iPad 2 by Jobs in February before it was released worldwide, remembered Jobs as one of America’s greatest innovators. “Jobs was brave to think differently, bold to believe he could change the world and talented to do it,” Obama said. He opined that Jobs exemplified the spirit of American ingenuity. In a personal Twitter message, Obama said, “There may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented.”

Jobs was an intensely a private man, yet he was one of the most famous people in the world. Because of his extremely high standards, he could be hell to work with as a colleague or a manager, yet he was kind and generous with family, friends, and others he loved and respected. Though he had no formal business education or training, Jobs was one of the savviest people ever to run an American company because he understood what customers wanted. He was able to take the highly technical task of aggregating digital files of all kinds and make them

“Do you want to

spend rest of your

life selling sugared

water or do you want

a chance to change the

world?”

“jobs was brave to think differently, bold

to believe he could change the world and

talented to do it” —Obama

Steve jobS | insight


accessible in an intuitive, non-technical way for Apple’s customers.

When thoughts and products in which Jobs truly believed were involved, he was stubborn and virtually immovable. Yet when he recognised a significant business trend or idea outside one of his companies, he was agile enough to incorporate it.

Jobs was the ChangeJobs directly helped change and improve not only the PC business (Macintosh, iMac, MacBook Air, iPad), but also the music (iPod, iTouch, iTunes), smartphone (iPhone), movie (Pixar Animation Studios) and online retail (App Store) industries. The rest is business and cultural history.

However, not everything that he created or produced turned out to be

successful in the market as he had hoped. His Lisa personal computer, the Newton handheld pad PC, the eMate PC, a Macintosh television and AppleWorks business software were

InnovatorThe World Loved

Steve JobS: 1955-2011

Steve jobs did not bring the change, he was the change that the computing world witnessed and reckons

By Chris PreimesBerger

“the world lost a visionary leader, the technology industry lost an iconic legend,

and I lost a friend and fellow founder” —michael Dell

“He always wanted to be an important

person in the world, and he wanted to do it

with a company” —steve Wozniak

either flawed or way ahead of their time.But Jobs was not deterred by failure.

When he suffered a setback, he took notes and simply went on to produce the next idea on his agenda. In a message

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to Apple employees on the day of Jobs’ death, CEO Tim Cook wrote: “Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple.” Steve Wozniak, with whom Jobs co-founded Apple in 1977, said that Jobs was “probably the great technical leader of our time.

Apple on its ComebackA Hometown Boy Jobs grew up as an adopted child in what was to become Silicon Valley, Sunnyvale, California, and one town over from Cupertino, where he eventually located his company’s headquarters.

As a big-picture product visionary and marketer, Jobs was involved in every aspect of Apple’s products, from early development, to design, to the finishing touches. His personality affected every part of Apple. “Apple’s products always looked futuristic,” one longtime Apple customer, Dot Carlyle of Menlo Park, Calif., told eWEEK “The products themselves just begged you to use them.” In what is almost a homage to Jobs’ ability and dedication, Apple was recognised as the most valuable IT company and the second most valuable company in the world at $360 bn (as of October 10, 2011).

Jobs had left Apple for 11 years (from 1985 to 1996) after being fired by his own board of directors following a long internal battle. In the interim, he learned more about how to be a CEO and went on to work on other major projects, including NeXT Computer and Pixar Animation Studios. “I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me,” Jobs said in a June 2005 commencement address at Stanford University. “The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.” By the time he returned in late 1996, Apple was nearly bankrupt, having fallen way behind IBM, Compaq and others in the PC sales wars. Sun Microsystems was very close to announcing the purchase of the company, but legal red tape held up the deal. In 1997, Jobs engineered a deal with Microsoft to enable its software to run on the Mac operating system.

It was a move that ultimately saved the company from either bankruptcy or a buyout. A year later, Apple came out with the revolutionary iMac desktop computer.

It’s hard to overestimate the effect that former Apple ceO Steve Jobs had on

the technology industry as a whole. His company’s innovations in tablets and

smartphones kicked off the current rush towards mobility.

Jobs co-founded Apple with Steve Wozniak in 1976, only to leave following a bitter

internal dispute in 1985. In mid-1997, however, Jobs returned to seize Apple’s reins

and launch a string of innovative products — starting with the imac and iPod — that

revived the company’s then flagging fortunes. Over the past decade, a series of sub-

sequent hits, including the iPhone, macBook Air, iPad and an ever-more-improved

series of iPods, helped elevate Apple to one of the most valuable companies

in the world and assured Jobs’ legend. Although Apple products were primarily

geared toward consumers, enthusiasm for the iPhone, iPad and macs — coupled

with businesses’ increased willingness to accept employees’ personal devices into

their IT ecosystem — led to the company’s increasingly significant presence in both

the enterprise and in small and midsize businesses (SmBs). During a July earnings

call, Apple executives claimed that some 86 per cent of the Fortune 500 had either

tested or deployed the iPad.

In conjunction with Senior Vice President of Industrial Design Jonathan Ive,

Jobs pioneered a sleek design aesthetic for Apple products, with its later itera-

tions emphasising glass and brushed aluminum. This design attracted imitators,

but it was Apple’s melding of hardware and software — including mac OS X and

the mobile operating system iOS — that truly set the company apart from those

rivals. In recent quarters, the mac OS X operating system, geared for the com-

pany’s mac line, had begun adopting elements originally created for the mobile

iOS. This again highlighted the company’s fast drift toward a mobility-centric

mentality. Apple’s iPhone supercharged the smartphone industry. A number of

companies rushed to adopt the iPhone’s touch screen, which helped to launch a

series of fierce intellectual-property battles between Apple and its rivals — bat-

tles that continue to this day. On October 4, a little more than 24 hours before the

announcement of Jobs’ passing, Apple unveiled its latest device in the line, the

iPhone 4S. Jobs’ impact on the tech sphere will be analysed for years to come.

What is indisputable is that he changed it his way.

—Nicholas Kolakowski

Jobs, a Mobile Maniac

He always wanted to be an important person in the world, and he wanted to do it with a company. “He did it many times over — not just with Apple. Look at the music company [iTunes] and the movie company [Pixar]. He wasn’t just Apple, [but] at Apple he built the products that stand the test of time.”

Longtime friend and fellow entrepreneur Michael Dell told eWEEK: “The world lost a visionary leader, the technology industry lost an iconic legend, and I lost a friend and fellow founder.”

3 5d e c e m B e R 2 0 1 1 | itnext

Strategy: Leadership this page

Review: Choosing the Right Mobile PC page 38

Trends: Conclave Theme page 39 Training Calendar: TOGAF Training page 40

Every individual’s jour-ney up the career lad-der is in a state of flux, involving various stages of learning, unlearn-

ing and re-learning that finally culminate in a leadership role. The IT manager’s role is not an excep-tion to this rule of professional life. An IT manager too has to struggle through the various phases in this journey before s/he can sail through to become a leader in his/her particular domain. Besides, one has to learn appropriate leadership skills on the way up and imbibe virtues that help bolster this journey. The leadership journey also involves learning of effective leader-ship models for self-actualisation and personal growth.

Thoughts around self-realisation with regard to learning, unlearning and re-learning were endorsed in a statement made by actor, Aamir Khan when he famously commented: “There was too much skill in me; I wished I could lower my skill a bit, and in my next film I am going to try to unlearn a few things that I have learnt and relearn a few aspects which are good and natural.”

This statement is testimony to the fact that to acquire new skills, one has

trainingeducationworkplace

compensationworkforce trends

skills developmentpersonal development

seven steps to

better sleeppage 36

leadership

Unlearn to learn

every phase of the leadership journey involves steps of learning,

unlearning and re-learning

15minutem a n a g e r

BY Kumar EKamBaram

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15-MInUte ManaGer

Feeling crabby lately? Or simply worn out or

suffering from insomnia? Perhaps the solu-

tion is better sleep. Start with these simple

sleep tips.

no. 1: Stick to a sleep schedule: Go to bed

and get up at the same time every day, even

on weekends, holidays and days off.

no. 2: Pay attention to what you eat and

drink: don’t go to bed either hungry or

stuffed. Your discomfort might keep you up.

Nicotine, caffeine and intake which takes

hours to wear off — can wreak havoc with

quality sleep.

no. 3: create a bedtime ritual: do the same

things each night to tell your body it’s time to

wind down. This might include taking a warm

bath or shower, reading a book, or music.

no. 4: Get comfortable: create a room that’s

ideal for sleeping. Often, this means cool,

dark and quiet.

no. 5: Limit daytime naps: Long daytime

naps can interfere with nighttime sleep —

especially if you’re struggling with insomnia

at night. Limit it to about 10-30 minutes.

no. 6: Include physical activity in your daily

routine: Regular physical activity can pro-

mote better sleep, helping you to fall asleep

faster and to enjoy deeper sleep.

no. 7: manage stress: When you have too

much to do — and too much to think about —

your sleep is likely to suffer.

Sound sleep is necessary for a healthy start to a long working day: so work on it now

SEVEN STEPS TO BETTER SLEEP

healthY haBits

to step back a bit, undo and then relearn the skill. Quite often we face scenarios where senior managers find it difficult to adapt to an organisation’s best practice or even to the culture followed in a particular company.

Hence there has to be an extensive training and development module that allows our leaders to cope with internal and external changes. Imparting quality training to senior management is imperative as members represents an organisation at a global level, interacting with existing and potential clients, and it is the senior management team which inspires the younger workforce. Hence there must be a well-structured, holistic training programme that aims to provide a new dimension to the leader’s role.

Why is this imperative?Our managers bring experiences not just from different organisations but also from different cultures. It therefore becomes imperative for an organisation to develop a training module that helps people unlearn a bit to make space to absorb new information and then re-learn the latest operating fundamentals. However, this is a challenging task as it involves training and nurtur-ing veterans, who come with so much knowledge and experience that it can take them a while to adapt to change. So it is best to structure a module in a manner that allows leaders to unlearn and then update their learning. This updated learning contextually becomes the phase of re-learning.

learn to UnlearnThere is always debate about what has to be unlearnt as far as leadership train-ing and development is concerned. As a process, unlearning has to be regu-lar. While unlearning sounds tough psychologically, in training language it only implies that we update the learnt concepts and do away with redundancy. The idea of unlearning is to help trainees widen their horizons by help-ing them accept newer ideas, newer concepts and, most importantly, new methodologies of learning. For example,

stress factors leading to insomnia Evaluation of these is critical:

Jet lag

Physical discomfort

Working different shifts Stressful life situations

Illicit drug use

cigarette smoking

caffeine intake before bed

Alcohol intoxication

certain medications

source: www.mayoclinic.com

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learning to communicate better over networking sites and passing instruc-tions over emails and other electronic forms of communication is quite a task for earlier generations.

The unlearning phase is when managers are trained to clear the clutter of information and see what they truly

need and what can be deleted. This phase is crucial for those who need to work on articulation and effective communication. We often get feedback that c-suite managers spoke non-stop at a seminar.

This is a classic example of a manager having garnered a lot of experience

but not learnt how to structure their thoughts. Once the thoughts are structured, then re-learning happens seamlessly.

back to basicsRe-learning is the phase in which train-ees are required to look back on what they have learnt and how best they can impart this knowledge to peers. How do we do this? Usually the trainees are asked to find someone who can be a true critic and help them work on behavioural and attitudinal aspects of their manage-ment approaches. It is imperative to help them articulate their thoughts bet-ter and impart knowledge around soft skills. This also makes room for peer-to-peer training and is a win-win situation for both the trainees and the trainers.

Components of leadership trainingA leadership-training module should aim at enhancing the leader’s behaviour and allow them to update learnt facts.

It is imperative to develop training modules that help staff unlearn a little, to absorb new information and then re-learn the latest skills

“technologists need to understand that there are no individual heroes; it is the team that makes winners”ravinder Jain, cIO, Aircel

“Smart managers spend time on a few vital projects that’ll make a difference” vishnu gupta, cIO, calcutta medical Research Institute

HOw TO facTOR iN LEadERSHiP

create a reliable, robust and

attractive vision of the future that

people will respect and believe in

communicate your vision

Grow your self-confidence

Build a reputation for expertise and

a track record of achievement

make good decisions under

pressure, with the confidence

Build a strong, flexible and highly

effective team

develop the sureness of touch

shown by the best leaders, and build

the empathic, mutually trusting

relationships

enjoy mutually rewarding, co-

operative working relationships with

team members and peers.

Keep people on target and

performing well together

Learn to inspire and motivate team

source: mind tools

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Thinking of buying a new mobile PC, but not sure how to choose the best one? This article can help you make the right decision.

mobile pC ChoiCes

Notebooks: Notebooks are popular because they’re available in a wide range of sizes and options to accommodate almost any lifestyle. Maybe you only need to do a few activities with your notebook, such as reading and writing email, browsing the internet, storing pictures, and writing documents.

Tablet PCs: Tablet PCs have something extra: a screen that you can write on or interact with by using a tablet pen instead of a standard keyboard and mouse. On some Tablet PCs, you can also interact with the screen by using your finger. There are two types of Tablet PCs: slates and convertibles.

Slate Tablet PCs: Slate Tablet PCs have no lid or keyboard, which makes them slimmer and lighter in weight than most convertible Tablet PCs. If you want to use an external keyboard and mouse, you simply attach them to the Tablet PC.

Convertible Tablet PCs: Convertible Tablet PCs give you the best of both worlds: You can use them either in tablet mode or laptop mode. In laptop mode, you can use the integrated keyboard and mouse or the tablet pen to navigate and write. To use it in tablet mode, you rotate the screen and lay it flat over the keyboard so that you can write on it like a clipboard.

Ultra-mobile PCs: If you’re looking for something smaller than a notebook or Tablet PC and yet powerful enough to get your tasks done while on the road or in tight quarters, consider a UMPC. Just like other mobile PCs, UMPCs run the full version of Windows and any other Windows-compatible software. UMPCs with Windows Vista come with Origami Experience, which gives you easy access to your music, videos, pictures, and programs. source: microsoft

It should be crafted based on the indi-vidual’s personal aspiration and plans towards getting to the leadership role, while laying emphasis on business acu-men aspects, team synergy and strategy planning. Simultaneously, attitudinal aspects such as customer relationship manage-ment, counselling skills, presentation skills, neuro-linguistic programming and decision-making are touched upon in a training period that usually needs about 16 hours and can span two to three months.

These two to three months are what we call a ‘transformative phase’ for our leaders. Once they are through with a 16-hour module they are advised to constantly upgrade their knowledge and facts through the resources provided by the organisation.

Each of the attitudinal aspects, as well as the material on business acumen, should be fragmented into learning and re-learning. This will help the trainees retain what they need to know and filter out what is not essential.

I would like to recall a statement made by the Minister for Human Resource Development, Communications and IT, Kapil Sibal, who announced that India will account for 20 per cent of the world’s global workforce in the 2020s. What is more striking here is that the average age of Indian workforce will be 29 years compared with 37 years in the US and China and 45 years in Europe.

This is a huge opportunity for trainers to help our leaders take on the responsibilities of grooming the next generation. Our leaders have a lot to do in a limited time, hence as trainers, we should be able to inspire them to do more, to be more creative and more articulate in dealing with peers.

Instead of having conventional models that tell them what they already know, trainers need to evolve new methods to acquire leadership tools based on practical experience, and design them as the situation demands.

Kumar ekambaram is chief People Officer at cSS corp.

cHOOSiNG THE RiGHT MOBiLE Pc

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Hot technological themes fuel cIO\cTO interest in customer conclavesBY N GEEtha

in business. The organiser of iStorm, S Sriram, CEO, iValue Solutions believes that information technology plays a pivotal role in creating business differentiators across vertical organisations and in driving revenue growth and profitability.

“Technological innovations are driving value creation, as IT heads are now given the task of managing both cost and revenue and are addressing profitability and business issues,” says Sriram.

He maintains, “The themes are designed based on an understanding of customer pain points and enlightens them on the changing trends and innovations in technologies that can address these challenges.”

technological themes matter mostIn the past, one observed that most customer conclaves turned out to be vendor sales pitch platforms to woo favourite customers. While the trend cannot be ruled out totally, the platform enablers are driving certain

tech IstopIcal

technologY

The IT industry worldwide is witnessing an increasing number of customer conclaves, and India is no exception to

the trend. It can be observed that IT heads across industry verticals are part of some strategic forum or conclave or another, with the objective of getting more exposure to the trends and developments.

IT Next participated in a customer technology conclave — iStorm 2011 — recently at Bali in Indonesia to understand as to what really triggers IT heads’ interest in associating with such congregations. Unlike the popular

assumptions, it is not just the overseas travel, fun, frolic or networking that drives their interest. IT heads see beyond all this and participate with the core motive of meeting their business objectives. No wonder, organisers pull out all stops to align the theme of such conclaves to the expectations of the participants.

it’s all in the themeThe fact cannot be ruled out that the first interest of the participants lies in the theme that the conclave addresses. Be it technology or business. In this case, it is more to do with technology as an enabler driving IT heads’ growth i

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differentiators. Currently, one can see more of case study based approach to such gatherings, where technology innovations and its value additions top the agenda. iStorm which was attended by 100 CIO/CTOs brought forth the hot technologies on which customers intend spending in the next few months. They included areas like application, information intelligence, data protection and storage management, network infrastructure, security, DR, etc.

Berjes Eric Shroff, Senior Manager, Information Technology, Tata Services Ltd, had been keen on getting a deeper insight into the information security storage trends with data centre consolidation on cards. “The key attraction for me was the discussion around cloud security, web filtering, data leakage, backup and recovery, which have been challenging areas for me. Post the conclave, I could get detailed understanding and work out a deployment strategy around this,” remarks Shroff.

Arup Mukherjee, AVP, IT Projects, SPCTG, Dhanalakshmi Bank, maintains that if the theme is catchy, it is the first step towards generating interest. “My objective is to watch out for a new technology or solution which meets my future requirements, besides understanding the techniques and process of implementation during such informal summits, rather than sitting face-to-face with the vendor.”

“About 20 per cent of our IT spend is going into storage and about 20 per cent on security. A deeper insights into DR, cloud storage, end-point security, data base management, etc., trends will enable me to lay out my investments properly for the future,” says Mukherjee.

tech With a twist Virendra Singh, Manager, IT, HCL BPO clearly states, “I would be part of only such a summit that is not trying to re-invent the wheel. Rather, it should be introducing technologies that will help reduce my capex and opex which is around 18 per cent and five per cent respectively.”

He reiterates, “My interest is driven by virtualisation and consolidation

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related solutions around storage and security, which can help me meet the next level requirement.”

Another interesting perspective of these conclaves that Amit Phadke, Head, Systems & Technology, Kale Consultants, acknowledges is that the technology related discussions trigger interest in associating with more such summits, as was in his case.

‘I was purely interested in learning about new technologies. At the conclave the technologies discussed threadbare fall under my six to nine month game plan,” says Phadke.

“I decided to be part of iStorm to take a deep dive into the data domain’s de-duplication technology, as my data related challenges are escalating,” says Phadke.

iValue’s Sriram finds increasing interest amongst the CTOs around digital asset protection, application delivery models and in working out an effective proof of concept.

Sanovi Technologies’ President, Global Sales Ashish Gupta, finds increasing DR challenges amongst the CTOs chief concerns and in this the key issues have been around reliability, scalability, easy maintenance, security and access controls in a DR system.According to Gupta, the new DR

solutions have been complementing the existing applications. The trends that are absorbing CTO interest are with regard to recovery health monitoring, real-time RPO monitoring and deviation alert, replication monitoring — relate replication lag to application recovery, exception reporting and policy driven actions, and identifying incompatibilities between primary and DR as passwords are different.

Shibu Paul, Country Manager, Sales, Array Networks, finds customers seeking application delivery infrastructure solutions

which can enable them to scale up the performance when they move to the cloud. “Customers can look at all-in-one solutions combining application delivery, universal access under SSL VPN and cloud gateway, which help them take full control of their infrastructure lifecycle,” says Paul.

Another technology trend that is giving sleepless nights to IT heads is storage management, in particular issues regarding backup, recovery, data deluge, data protection and infrastructure shift that result in huge budget dilemmas.

Shreekumar Nair, Partner Director, Backup & Recovery Systems, EMC Data Storage Systems, observes that customers are aggressively looking at reducing costs and transforming backup effectiveness with target and source-based duplication. “Backup around legacy applications has been a major challenge for IT heads, and as a trend, I can see increasing interest in absorbing data de-duplication tools to reduce the data size and save more.

Summit iStorm highlights top IT priorities for the customers and vendors which includes 30 per cent increased use of server virtualisation, 24 per cent priority over managing data growth, 22 per cent focus on data backup and recovery.

With the consumerisation of IT across devices, the storage, security and application delivery related challenges are further going to escalate.

“technological innovations are driving value creation, as it heads are now managing both cost and revenue”s sriram, ceO, iValue Solutions

iSTORM TEcHNOLOGiES iN fOcuS

Digital asset management

It aligned with Business for Growth

Dr solutions-rPO, rtO, monitoring tools

Data Leakage Protection

application Delivery on SSL

Cloud Security

Backup and recovery Solutions

Data De-duplication technology

Storage tiering and Dynamic Provisioning

35.2 ZB

of data by 2020

4 2 itnext | D E C E m b E r 2 0 1 1

Douglas smith | interview

4 3D E C E m b E r 2 0 1 1 | itnext

Virtualise to innoVate on the Cloud

What are customer priorities with regard to

virtualisation solutions?Industry is abuzz with the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) trend, with users running operations on personal devices. In this scenario, the IT managers’ task is more of managing user data and not just the device/s. Access to VPN becomes a challenge, more so when the applications are on the cloud. The customers’ priority is to understand how virtualisation can help them address application deployment challenges and which tools can be used to drive higher flexibility while reducing the cost of deployment.

how does VMware help customers with Business Continuity planning and what is the rate of its adoption by enterprises?Our approach impresses upon customer orientation towards

virtualisation. Customers are thinking of how and what to virtualise to drive operational efficiency and ensure business continuity. They are thinking about virtualising mission-critical applications such as Oracle and SAP, without disrupting operations. The priority of IT heads has been to maintain the uptime which is the main criteria for implementing virtualisation tools. With regard to deployment, the first movers in the enterprise space, which would be about 30 per cent of the total customer segment, have gone in for complete virtualisation. About 70 per cent of them have deployed virtualisation partially.

Please elaborate on the customers’ journey to the cloud and the role of VMware’s vis-à-vis this movement?Our customers’ current agenda is to maximise IT agility in order

to drive business, as the focus is on creating opportunities for growth. If you look at a typical enterprise, nearly three-quarters of IT resources are spent on managing complex infrastructure which leaves little time and budget to focus on innovation. Our customers are finding cloud computing promising a more agile and efficient IT environment which replaces traditional, costly and inefficient computing silos with elastic, self-managed and dynamic IT infrastructure. We recommend virtualisation first, and then adoption of cloud. As part of their journey to the cloud, customers need to identify and adopt impactful innovations, execute projects rapidly, ensure dynamic scale capacity, maintain flexible architecture to support changes and decommission obsolete systems. As per our annual cloud m at u r i t y i n de x st u dy

Douglas Smith, Vice President, global Partner, strategy & operations, Vmware, in conversation with n Geetha explains how it managers are adopting cloud models in order to drive information technology and business agility, and innovate for future growth

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“As part of the cloud journey, customers must identify and adopt impactful innovations, execute projects rapidly, ensure dynamic scale capacity, etc ”

commissioned in association with Forrester Consulting, India, at 90 per cent, leads the region in cloud relevance alongside Japan, China, Malaysia and Thailand. Understanding of cloud computing is higher here than in markets like Singapore and Malaysia. Adoption of cloud computing is also on the rise with 77 per cent companies indicating that they would do so in the next six to 18 months.

However, data privacy was highlighted among the key concerns by enterprises, besides vendor lock-in, interoperability issues between different clouds factor and so on. I see hybrid clouds on the rise and becoming a reality and not the hosted SaaS model. About 30 per cent of our customers are going for the hybrid cloud model.

However, IT heads should initiate a few processes before moving to a private, public or hybrid cloud. They need to analyse the portfolio and prioritise applications that will benefit most from a cloud approach. It is vital to virtualise all the workload targeted for the cloud. They must define the standard services required with associated service levels and optimise architecture, infrastructure and organisation policies to support a service consumption model. Outlining security protocols and compliance requirements are a must. Methodology to manage resources, perform chargeback and handle change management as one moves to a cloud model, must be checked.

In India, I find sectors like financial services, healthcare and banking moving to a hybrid model. BFSI, manufacturing, government and SMB segments seem to have gone in for private cloud model in a big way. The idea around customers opting

for hybrid cloud is to get the best of both the worlds, such as improving IT agility and increasing enterprise-class software for performance, security and control, as they allow IT managers to deliver the right workload in the right environment at the right cost.

You have been speaking of hybrid cloud going the open way, what does this mean to it managers?The key to enabling enterprise hybrid cloud deployment is the standardisation of frameworks and infrastructure across the public and private clouds, which include a common platform, management and security.

The premise of a hybrid cloud can hold true only if a cloud infrastructure can seamlessly integrate with other cloud infrastructures, internal or external. Open source provides the ability to not only create these interfaces and integrations, but also allows creating a hybrid cloud with applications that can interact seamlessly across clouds.

We enable our customers to deploy application servers,

Douglas smith | interview

4 5D E C E m b E r 2 0 1 1 | itnext

Find other inter-views online on

the website www.itnext.

in/resources/interviews

load balancers and performance management tools at the infrastructure level, while deploying applications such as messaging and collaboration, based on open source technologies, through our vFabric, cloud foundry, Zimbra, etc. We are doing pilots around the hybrid open cloud model with some service providers.

What innovations or emerging trends have you observed that may benefit it heads?Mobile virtualisation is evolving with users putting several applications on the mobile platform. I see rules being changed in the virtualisation

environment and business-critical applications being virtualised increasingly, which is currently 20 to 30 per cent. The matrix of decision-making amongst IT managers changes as they begin to categorise and think of separating logical from physical servers with regard to virtualisation. Gartner predicts that CIOs will virtualise the environment when it is fully automated and the access rates through a virtual environment will be at an all time high.

What are the steps taken up by VMware to ease licence procurement?We have migrated to vRAM (measure to the power of VM) model and made changes in the licensing model in an effort to align costs with the benefits of virtualisation rather than with the physical attributes of each individual server. Some of the discussions with the customers were regarding the confusion over the changes to the Vsphere 5 licensing model, which we brought in based on customer feedback. They include:

Increased vRAM entitlements for all vSphere editions, including the doubling of the entitlements for vSphere Enterprise and Enterprise Plus

Capping the amount of vRAM we count in any given VM, so that no VM, not even the ’monster‘ 1TB vRAM VM, would cost more than one vSphere Enterprise Plus licence

Adjusting the model to provide flexibility around transient workloads and short-term spikes that are typical in test and development environments

In this model, the licensing is not linked to physical hardware and upfront licensing remains the same as that of variable pricing. The new model aims at giving customers the opportunity

to move to a more cloud-like ‘pay for consumption’ approach to IT. The licence is based on per processor and this removes all restrictions on physical cores and RAM. Licence procurement is made easy as this eliminates barriers to deploying Vmware’s Vsphere on new multicore server configuration, which allows customers to choose best-fit server hardware.

how has virtualisation provided better roi and lowered tCo?We have implemented virtualisation tools across varied industry verticals including banking, IT\ITeS, financial services. For instance, virtualisation enabled a cooperative bank to provide a dynamic platform for its core banking system and support business growth of 22 per cent, while improving efficiency and availability of IT resources. VSphere was deployed to run virtualisation across two clusters: the first comprising three servers, supporting 20 virtual machines running head office applications. The second is a six-server cluster supporting 15 virtual machines running the core banking application, which is accessed by about 1,000 staff. The platform included IBM blade servers, Netapp storage and Microsoft Windows 2008. Virtualisation technology enabled the IT manager to reduce the physical server fleet from 90 to nine as a first step towards cloud computing. It also enabled the creation of cloud environment to provide banking applications as managed services to upto 25 banks. The power consumption lowered by 25 per cent, thus lowering the cost it by 15 per cent. The IT industry customers saw a server consolidation ratio of around 30:1 and reduced server and storage hardware cost by 50 per cent.


thebig

Your responses count. Log on to www.itnext.in/bigQ to submit your replies. The best entry will be published in the next print edition.

THE SITUATION......Will the initiative to switch to desktop virtualisation help Pawan Gupta, Senior it Manager of a large manufacturing industry, lower desktop tCO? Various research groups surveys have found that it costs nearly $6,000 per year to maintain a PC for its two-to-three year lifespan. For IT managers, beleagured by rising costs of IT infrastructure and maintenance, security threats and BYOD among other issues, desktop management throws up several challenges. Maintaining desktops at the workplace in the face of increasing cost of IT infrastructure, is a battle that many of them are fighting.

Pawan Gupta, too, is fighting a losing battle with desktop maintenance. Additionally, he has to face a series of gruelling interrogations from the senior management over the rising IT cost.

Gupta’s company has a more than 2,000 desktops, and as the IT manager, he finds himself struggling to curtail the large spending on main-taining this huge infrastructure. Not only this, he

also has to contend with the rising demand for desktops as the business is expanding and so is the employee count. With the increasing desktop volume, the pressure on him is at an all time high to cut down costs and lower capex.

While the agenda is to eliminate the TCO (total cost of ownership), Gupta also has the task of driving better desktop performance, ensuring high security, greater flexibility, simplified and streamlined management, reduced support cost, improved compliance and improved SLAs among others issues.

With all the industry buzz surrounding virtuali-sation and cloud, Gupta is in a dilemma —whether to go in for cloud or look at virtualisation of desk-tops. Gupta has tracked various server virtualisa-tion solutions being implemented across organisa-tions and is convinced about its virtues.

However, desktop virtualisation or VDI, tech-nology is still in the nascent stage. Gupta needs assurance of expert advice, as to whether the technology will address his business needs and if the cost benefits would justify its adoption.

SHIVA SHANkAr, VP & HeAD, IT INFrASTruC-Ture, reLIANCe TeCH SerVICeS

V SrINIVAS, CIO, NAGArjuNA Fer-TILISerS AND CHeMICALS LTD

VINAYAk kHADYe, CTO, INDIA FIrST LIFe INSurANCe COMPANY LTD

eXPerT PANeL

NeXt

DeSkTOP VIrTuALISATION

maNagiNg Desktops saNs paiN

Cu

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Fr

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He

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the big q

FiRSt AnSWeRPawan Gupta is facing a classic IT burst syndrome. The demand always fluctuates with added load because of the constant pressure to maintain low TCO.

In the past, the situation would have demanded implementation of multiple solutions from different vendors, but with virtualisation options, IT shall be able to deliver different types of virtual desktop — each specifically tailored to meet the performance, security and flexibility requirements of end users.

Gupta can go in for a virtualised desktop environment, but needs to consider a few aspects before jumping into it. They include: a) Solution adaptability to meet the needs with right applications for each user considering the security and ease of management aspects. b) He must consider solutions that are elastic in nature and scalable. C) Ensure ease of management and self-sustenance, which do not carry operational overload.

SeCOnd AnSWeRTypically, different employees across the enterprise need different types of desktops. Some require simple and standard tools, while others require high performance and personalisation tools. A single solution is required which can meet all requirements.

Compared to traditional distributed PC with locally installed applications, desktop virtualisation improves manageability, flexibility, security, compliance and costs associated with providing and maintaining the desktop infrastructure.

The cost benefit depends on the service types Gupta intends to sign up. For instance, server-based virtual desktops are unmatched for their ease of endpoint device management. With this approach, one can keep the operating system, applications and data in check.

Client-side virtual desktops enable full PC-like performance while reducing the need for additional server investments. IT team creates, manages, and updates these in the data centre, then either streams them for local execution or delivers them as client side virtual machines (VMs) to the device.

On-demand applications can reduce application management costs by up to 50 per cent, accelerate application delivery and can help optimise delivery for any user, anywhere, on any device.

Options are available to pay only for the compute power you use. Better security of content, easy adaptation and implementation of corporate policies and security compliance requirements, anywhere and anytime workforce access to data and resources, besides reduced device repair requirements are some of the benefits of desktop virtualisation.

THE bIg qUESTIONS...? DO PAWAN GUPTA’S NeeDS JUSTIFY DeSKTOP VIrTUALISATION\

VDI? WHAT FeATUreS\ASPecTS DOeS He NeeD TO LOOK AT IN DeSKTOP VIrTUALISATION\VDI?

? WILL GUPTA be AbLe TO AcHIeVe ALL THe bUSINeSS AND cOST beNeFITS THAT He SeeKS AND LOWer THe TcO? PLeASe eLAbOrATe HOW?

HErE ArE THE ANSwErS...

Shiva Shankar

VP & Head, IT Infrastructure,

Security, Operations and engineering, reliance

Tech Services

about me: Technology/business solutions

architect with over 18 years of experience

in optimising IT performance and

profit gains in start-ups and established

environments

SCALAbILITY, ELASTICITY AND EASE

4 8 itnext | D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 1

the big q


FiRSt AnSWeRThis is the best time for Pawan to implement VDI solutions. The compelling reason for him to look at desktop virtualisation should be increased security threats, centralised hardware management capabilities with respect to maintenance, centralised application upgrades and patches installation, hardware resource pooling along with application sharing and so on. Since the volume of desktops used are big, it is ideal to take up a pilot project to virtualise a few desktops before tapping the entire volume. However, the challenge that Gupta has to face is selling virtualisation concept to his top management, with security of data and applications being the major concern. Given the challenges and increasing maintenance cost, I would recommend that Gupta takes up a phased approach and works out a plan to virtualise 250 desktops to observe the desired result and address initial concerns. He should not go in for higher desktop virtualisation, as it may disrupt operations. The existing desktops can be used as virtual desktops and it would take about three to six months to run the pilot. After using it as virtual desktops, he should replace them with Thin Clients and then enter into a good SLA with a vendor for implementing desktop virtualisation solutions. It will enable faster provisioning. Gupta needs to look at a hybrid model allowing existing infrastructure to virtualise. Once the desired result is observed, he can think of virtualising another 1,000 desktops. With the hybrid cloud model emerging, I would recommend that about 50 per cent go the cloud way and the remaining 50 per cent through the traditional method of deployment.

SeCOnd AnSWeRThe answer to the question as to how soon Gupta can achieve the desired result, will depend upon the applications that are used and the cost involved in maintaining them. Virtualising 250 desktops can bring in the RoI (Return on Investment) in a year’s time. However, a hybrid cloud model with the existing desktops and adding new Thin Clients, would assure RoI in about two years time. The results that Gupta can be sure of are much better user experience, and centralised data security and backup. It would be an ideal case for green initiatives in the future.

v SrinivaS

cIO, Nagarjuna Fertilisers and chemicals Ltd

about me: Technocrat with over 19 years of cross-functional experience with key

exposure to IT domain including erP-SAP

system implementation with bPr initiatives, etc

IMPLEMENT VDI IN PHASED MANNEr

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Vdi adoption rates across industry verticalsVdi Government sector has done maximum implementations on VDI

with 40% market share

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the big q

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FiRSt AnSWeR Virtualisation of desktops can deliver benefits in terms of security

with tighter control of organisational data, compliance, enforcing of company policies and also from an audit perspective. Manageability of desktop support and maintenance is another advantage. Faster provisioning of desktops resulting in lower time to market desktop implementation for business expansion is critical. It facilitates convenience and flexibility with BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) concept, and all of these will result in significant savings in endpoint security software licences cost, power and floor space related costs, and desktop maintenance costs. However, implementation of this initiative will require significant investments in licence procurement costs, server and storage infrastructure costs for the primary and DR data centre, and clients. Gupta may have to incur largely opex cost and very little capex cost. There may also be regulatory issues in opting for hosted model. Considering the number of desktops

involved, there may not be a very strong financial business case for him to consider desktop virtualisation, although there may be high IT benefits.

SeCOnd AnSWeRGupta should opt for virualisation in a phased manner. He may initially virtualise only new infrastructure to support business expansion. This will deliver quick time to market as well as protect his investment in current desktop infrastructure. He may then opt for desktop virtualisation of existing desktops as and when they retire from service.

More resourcesVirtual Storage Platform anniversary: http://blogs.hds.com/hu/2011/09/happy-birthday-vsp.htmlHow to avoid information overload: http://marksblog.emc.com/2011/09/episode-108-.html

SECUrITY & TIgHTEr DATA CONTrOL

vinayak khadye

chief Technology Officer, India First Life Insurance company

about me: About 17 years of experience

in delivering IT & Process Improvement

initiatives in industries

nOteS

update

Firefox 8 ReleasedThe software was released with integrated Twitter search, other improvements

off The shelf A sneak preview of enterprise products, solutions and services

NEW OS SOFTWARE | Firefox 8 has officially been released. It comes with the usual slew of security and stability updates, but also has numerous new features.

One of the most interesting new features is a check Firefox performs after installation, where it lets you see the status of your add-ons’ compatibility with the new version, letting you enable/disable add-ons as desired.

Additionally, Firefox 8 now automatically disables any add-ons installed without the user’s permission. Many applications such as Free Download Manager, BitComet, Skype, etc., include add-ons for better integration with Firefox, but not all of them ask for your permission before installing the add-on, nor do they let you opt out of such an installation. For some users this can mean forced add-ons, impacting the performance and stability of Firefox. Such add-ons will now default to disabled, and the user will have an option to install such an add-on on launch. Another feature of Firefox that can have a huge impact on power surfers, is a new load-on-demand feature for tabs.

Fujitsu India has announced the launch of

the new PRIMEQUEST 1000 series, high-

performance mission-critical x86 server

for enterprise database, application, cloud

and virtualisation environments.

Fujitsu PRIMEQUEST Servers have won

accolades worldwide for their highest

availability. With 2000+ installations in

over 24 countries worldwide in demand-

ing industries like Banking & Finance,

Telecom, Manufacturing & Utilities,

PRIMEQUEST is proving to be the best

choice ever for database servers, ERP

platforms, legacy modernisation, virtu-

alisation platforms and HPC.

Speaking on the occasion, Mark Wilson,

Senior Vice President, Fujitsu Technol-

ogy Solutions, said, “PRIMEQUEST is

the ultimate in open mission critical x86

servers. So far it is unmatched in the

market.”

The PRIMEQUEST 1800E2 features the

latest Intel Xeon processor E7 family.

This cutting-edge server is certified for

Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux

Enterprise Server, Oracle Solaris, Ora-

cle Virtual Machine, Microsoft Windows

Server, and VMware vSphere. It meets

Fujitsu’s stringent green environmental

assessment standard and has been cer-

tified as a “Fujitsu super green product”.

Fujitsu Rolls Out PRIMEQUEST

ProducT feaTures

* Reliability and Availability

* Hardware Redundancy

* Performance and Scalability

* Eco-Friendly ICT

key feaTures * Integrated Twitter search

* Lets you enable/disable add-ons

as desired

* Simplified features

* Helps perform much faster

5 1d E C E M B E R 2 0 1 1 | iTnexT

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key advanTages* 1.2 GHz dual-core Cortex-A9

CPU

* Android OS, v2.3.5 (Gingerbread)

* Weight: 127 gm

* Super AMOLEd capacitive

touchscreen

Lenovo C320 all-in-one desktop PC now in India

Aircel

launched the

long-awaited

iPhone 4S

last month

as per

schedule

announced

on its official Facebook page. Airtel

also launched the device at the same

time. The 16 GB variant of the iPhone

4S has been priced at Rs 44,500. The

launch of the iPhone 4S comes nearly

a month after Apple launched the

device in the US. Earlier, Apple had

launched the iPhone 4 in India nearly

a year after its launch in the US.

The iPhone 4S comes with a dual-

core processor, an 8 MP camera

and intelligent voice recognition

software Siri. It also features a

PowerVR SGX543MP2 GPU, which

according to benchmarks is the

fastest handset in the market where

graphics are concerned.

The iPhone 4S’ popularity has been

marred by its battery issues. Apple

recently released iOS 5.0.1 after a

number of iPhone users complained

about its battery life.

Apple iPhone 4S Launched in India

MOBILE | Motorola’s Droid Razr XT910 is now avail-able in India via online retailers like Flipkart.com for Rs 33,990. Dubbed as the world’s slimmest smartphone, the Droid Razr XT910 runs on Android 2.3 Gingerbread operating system and features a 1.2 GHz dual-core Cortex A9 processor.

The Droid Razr XT910 comes with a 4.3-inch AMOLED capacitive touchscreen with 540 x 960 pixels resolution. It has 8 MP primary and 1.3 MP secondary cameras. It has a 16 GB of internal storage, which can be expanded up to 32 GB via microSD card. For connectivity, the device supports WiFi, GPRS, 3G and Bluetooth. The

dESkTOP PC | Lenovo India has announced a new addition to its All-in-One (AIO) desktop PC lineup — the Lenovo C320. The sleek built of the device is a big space saver. The Lenovo C320 is also more affordable and comes with a host of other multimedia functions. “We create technology tools so users can do more. Our lat-est all-in-one desktop gives consumers just that by combining strong performance in a compact and affordable PC,” says Rajesh Thadani, Director, Consumer Seg-ment, Lenovo India. “We’ve infused the C320 AIO desktop with leading technol-ogy, resulting in brilliant images, rocking sound, and touchscreen technology for a great entertainment experience,” he adds.

The C320 AIO has a large 20-inch LED-backlit display with optional multitouch touchscreen support, which is supposed to make the computing experience more interactive. The device is powered by second generation Intel Core i3 processor with Intel Turbo Boost Technology 2.0. Users can watch DVDs using the AIO’s DVD player/optional burner, or stream movies through the WiFi connection. For an even bigger screen experience to watch videos, consumers can hook up an HDTV or monitor via the PC’s HDMI port (not part of the unit).

feaTures* 20-inch LEd-backlit display

* 2nd generation Intel

Core i3 processor

* Intel Turbo Boost

Technology 2.0.

* dynamic Brightness

System software

Motorola Droid Razr XT910 Available Online

Droid Razr also comes with a 1,780 mAh Li-On battery.

The device has various preloaded apps including MotoCast, YouTube, Google Talk and Google Search.

Now that the Droid Razr XT910 is available online, we can expect Motorola to formally introduce the device in India anytime soon. The gadget-happy can look forward to another ‘sharp’ device.

update


A platform to air your views on latest developments and issues that impact you

Upasna salUjaOperAtiOnAl resiliency MAnAger, prOd-uct & infrA-structure risk MAnAgeMent, thOMsOn reutersearlier, cIOs and IT

teams brought in innova-

tions and designed the

IT landscape; today it is

users. BYOd has brought

increased challenges for

IT managers, essentially

on two fronts — increased

risks of exposing com-

pany data and operational

hassles in managing

different types of devices.

Once BYOd policy and ac-

cess to employee-owned

devices has been enabled,

the other nightmare that

IT managers will face is

covering risk of informa-

tion loss through these

multiple devices.

U arUn KUmar shethheAd, sOftwAre develOpMent, gAti ltdBYOd does provide

certain benefits but also

throws up many chal-

lenges. Smartphones and

tablets have contributed

to the trend. However,

BYOd creates a hetero-

geneous environment

and the integration proc-

ess will challenge the

internal security system.

data protection becomes

a priority for the IT

manager and this calls

for increased backup

frequency. constant anti-

virus updates become the

need of the hour. BYOd

should be restricted to

accessing emails. BYOd

may not be a smart con-

cept (barring laptop it is

not very user-friendly).

Dharmaraj ramaKrishnanheAd, cOre BAnking, ing vysyA BAnk ltdIn a short time, BYOd has

become a jargon. But for

businesses, simply allow-

ing access to personal

devices isn’t the answer.

It’s a question of enabling

relevant, secure access

across the entire network,

while protecting corpo-

rate assets and delivering

an optimal user experi-

ence. This places a huge

pressure on networks and

IT managers, who need

to identify and provision

access for a multitude of

devices, while maintaining

a high level of security,

performance and control.

BYOd is about creating a

user-focussed network

that supports next-gener-

ation mobility experience.

Will BYOD increase IT managers’ challenges?

open Debate

Your views and opinion matter to us. Send us your feedback on stories and the magazine to the editor at [email protected]

booK For yoU

Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Bio

STar ValuE:

IT NEXT VERDICTthe book is a great accomplishment; there is lots to enjoy in the amazing life that walter isaacson has recounted.

TITle: STeve JOBS: THe excluSIve BIOgRapHY

auTHOR: WalTeR ISaacSOn

puBlISHeR: lITTle BROWn

pageS: 627

pRIce: RS 799

RevIeWed BY: anOOp veRma

Steve Jobs is easy to glamorise. His death is being treated as the loss of technology’s messiah. The biography of the man who has played a stellar role in bringing digital culture into the mainstream, reads like the history of modern digital revolution. The book is based on more than 40 interviews that Steve Jobs gave to the author. Jobs, who was 56 when he died, told Isaacson he wanted “the truth out”. There are no punches pulled, and Jobs gets described as a charismatic and inspiring leader, tech-visionary, and also as a man who could be very tough and even mean, when situations called for. There is no dearth of moments in the book that make you go ‘wow.’ There is the story of the turnaround that Jobs engineered in the company after he returned as the ceO in 1997. In the previous fiscal year, apple had lost $1.04 bn, but he returned it to profit in the first quarter. The launch of iTunes store is a story by itself — the store was expected to sell a million songs in six months, but it sold a million songs in just six days.

5 4 itnext | D E C E M b E r 2 0 1 1

HOT rEAD

CIOs losing control of IT budgets: GartnerGartner predicts CIOs will lose control of 25 per cent of IT spending to the CMOs by 2014. But that’s not all — things seem to get scarier (from the perspective of the IT guys at least). By 2017, the research firm estimates that CMOs will have a larger IT budget than the CIOs. These findings and other trends were shared by Peter Sondergaard, Senior VP, Global Research, Gartner recently.

OPINION

Getting Media Savvy to Grow “IT heads do get several insights into the various aspects of life with the help of the media,” says Vinay Dhumale

It is interesting to watch how colours, shapes, forms, gestures, pictures, spoken words, calligraphy, beats, rhythm and music, give life to human expression.

The capability of human mind to arrange each element of life, based on several permutations and combinations, will drive the evolution of any kind, technology not being an exception. This is a sure sign of an evolving human mind. The combination of the above-mentioned elements could be broadly termed as what we now know as ‘media’.

While the term media is not related to the IT managers or their roles in particular, it is critical to find how it can be leveraged by IT heads for growth in career or in expanding their knowledge.

TOP DISCUSSION

Can Sabeer Bhatia Do a Hotmail to SMS?

If you believe the promise made by Hotmail’s Co-founder in his press

announcement, he may as well. Called Jaxtr Inc, the new venture is founded by

Bhatia and Yogesh Patel. It is a cross-platform, open texting application to

send free SMSes to anyone in the world.

TOP bI NEWS

How Big is BI in India?The market for business intelligence (bI) software in

India is forecast to reach revenue of $81.5 mn in 2012, a

15.6 per cent increase over 2011, according to Gartner,

Inc Worldwide bI software market revenue is forecast to

grow 8.7 per cent to reach approximately $12.7 bn in 2012.

Gartner says demand drivers include consumerisation of

bI and support for extreme data performance.

http://www.itnext.in/content/how-big-bi-

india-about-81-mn-2012.html

MOrE LAY OFFS

Nokia Siemens to cut 17,000 jobsNokia Siemens Networks (NSN), the

world’s second-largest maker of

mobile phone network equipment, is

axing 17,000 jobs, nearly a quarter

of its workforce, to help save about

$1.35 bn a year. The cut is reportedly

to ready the firm for an IPO.

the webf r o m

www.itnext.inread IT Next stories published online. The links of these stories

can also be accessed through your mobiles/smartphones using Qr code.

http://www.itnext.in/

content/nokia-siemens-

cut-17000-jobs.html


content/getting-media-

savvy-grow.htmlhttp://www.itnext.in/content/can-sabeer-

bhatia-do-hotmail-sms.html


content/cios-losing-con-

trol-it-budgets-gartner.

html

from the web

5 5D E C E M b E r 2 0 1 1 | itnext

TOP HONOURS

Bharat Goenka gets Nasscom Lifetime Award Bharat Goenka, 50, Co-founder and Managing Director of Tally Solutions, the company that is synonymous with accounting software in India, has been honoured with the Life Time Achievement Award by NASSCOM. This is the first such award from the premier software association of the country. The award recognises Goenka as the ‘Father of the Indian software products industry’. “Receiving this award has been an overwhelming experience. Recognition from your peers and contemporaries is very special. The award really belongs to my father, Mr SS Goenka, to all our

customers, partners and Tally family,” said Goenka in a company release.

PROfIlINg

MC Srivastava: An Out-of-the-Box ThinkerThe senior IT manager of Systems at IFFCO wants to implement cutting-edge technology and provide ‘good services’. An ardent follower of Captain GR Gopinath and Ratan Tata, Mahesh Chandra Srivastava, Senior Manager

HOT PRODUCT NEWS

New LED Printers from EpsonEpson has launched the company’s first range of high performance LED printers that will replace

its entry-level laser printer device range. The new range comprises monochrome, colour single-

function and all-in-one devices and features a high-performance LED technology

that produces high-quality, high-speed prints with space and power savings.

GREEN NEWS

Wipro tops Greenpeace list of Indian firmsGreenpeace has released a new and upgraded version of its Guide to Greener Electronics wherein Wipro retains the top slot followed by HCL Infosystem in the Indian version. The international version ranks the IT manufacturing company HP at the top slot, taking the lead over Dell and Nokia. Three new companies are included in the latest version of the guide. Research in Motion, manufacturer of BlackBerry phones, is included in the international list, while Chirag Computers and SAI InfoSystem are in the Indian guide.

TOP TELECOM NEWS

Telecom to Rule Indian IT Spend at

$54 bnGartner estimates that out of the total spending of $79.8 bn in 2012, IT services will be No. 2 at $11 bn.

IT spending in India is projected to be $79.8 bn in 2012, a 9.1 per cent increase over the 2011 spending

of $73.1 bn, according to Gartner, Inc. Despite global economic challenges, enterprises will

continue to invest in IT.

(Systems) at Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Limited (IFFCO), admires the outside-the-box ideas that these two business luminaries have made a reality.

Srivastava says not many Indian business people qualify for the title of great dreamers. Most are dynastic successors. “But these two, are different. They have not only come up with new visions but also driven them to reality,” he says.

http://www.itnext.in/content/wipro-tops-greenpeace-list-indian-firms.html

http://www.itnext.in/content/telecom-rule-indian-it-spending-54-bn.html


content/mc-srivastava-

out-box-thinker.html

http://www.itnext.in/content/bharat-goenka-gets-nasscom-life-time-award.html

http://www.itnext.in/content/new-led-

printers-epson.html

cube chat | Ravish Jhala

“I feel proud that I was one of the first engineers in the country to install blade servers,” says Ravish Jhala, Systems Manager, Trident Hotel, Mumbai

Serving better with It

Ravish Jhala gamely agrees that much of what a hotel does seems to happen offline. After all, you can’t deliver room service or make beds with the click of a mouse or with a

few taps on the keyboard. However, he emphasises the fact that an IT backbone has a crucial role to play in ensuring that the various tasks get executed with perfection. He says, “I believe the foremost task of the IT team should be to create simple and workable solutions; increase efficiency of routine tasks and reduce operating costs. It should never shy away from bringing in all possible innova-tions, even if they are saving the company very small sums of money,” he adds.

In college, Jhala planned a career in automobile engineering. Eventually he opted for electronics on his father’s advice. He landed in an IT job after his education which commenced

his IT journey. “All credit goes to my father for gently nudging me into the this space,” he says. He draws inspiration from Subroto Bagchi and Narayana Murthy. “I admire Narayana Murthy for the great values he brings in.” Subroto Bagchi’s Go Kiss the World: Life Lessons for the Young Professionals, is one of Jhala’s favourite books.

Currently, Jhala manages IT related infrastructure at Trident, the plush 435-room hotel located at Bandra Kurla in North Mumbai. He says that as hospitality industry in the country is growing at a healthy rate, it is imperative for top-notch hotels to focus on IT for bringing in efficiency into their operations and improving their overall quality of service. Some of the innovations that he, along with his team, has implemented at Trident hotel include Visitor Management Systems, GoConceirge.Net, A&G software, Guest History Software, and a few others. Be strong to be useful

My sucessMantra

By Anoop VeRmA

5 6 Itnext | D e c e M B e R 2 0 1 1

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On a more personal level, Ravish is responsible for creating the platform called HOSPITECH, which is short for Hospitality Technology Leaders Forum. He says, “Being the founder and advisory committee member of HOSPITECH, the onus lies on me to drive the IT think-tank for the industry’s success.”

His real IT journey started with his stint at Compaq/HP. HP assigned the task of installing Blade servers at Reliance facility in Mahpe. His greatest challenge was to ensure the smooth deployment prompt response time in coordination with HP’s technical team from Mumbai and Bangalore. With the successful implementation of this project, Ravish Jhala became one of the first engineers in India to install blade servers.

His journey led him to take up a career at the sunrise hospitality sector. He joined Hyatt Hotels and Resorts at their regional office in India. Jhala experienced a complete transformation in the nature of the work that he had been doing so far. In his new role, he called the shots with regard to the IT deployments and vendor products.

As the field of IT is being constantly wafted by winds of change, Ravish Jhala keeps himself up-to-date with constant research, important journals, websites and interactions with industry experts. He likes to track evolving technologies. Besides work, he is keen on watching movies along with his wife, Tejal, and son, Siddh. When asked about his idea of a dream vacation, he answered promptly, “I would like to take my family on a world tour.”

Fact FIle

nameRavish Jhala

CuRRent designation systems manageR

CuRRent Rolemanaging it foR tRident hotel, BandRa KuRla, mumBai. PRovide woRld-Class seRviCe exPeRienCe to ouR inteRnal and exteRnal guests. develoPing team foR futuRe

exPeRtise develoPing new solutions; ReseaRCh on new teChnologies, hosPitalit y teChnologies solutions; teleCommuniCations; leadeRshiP; CReating Knowledge PlatfoRm foR industRy; wRiting aRtiCles on iCt

woRK exPeRienCe 12 yeaRs

favouRite quote “Knowing is not enough, you must aPPly. willing is not enough, you must do.” –BRuCe lee

favouRite destination goa

favouRite gadget foR woRKmy mind and heaRt

favouRite PeRsonal gadgetmy Pen

“It is imperative for top-notch hotels to focus on IT for bringing efficiency into their operations and improving

their overall quality of services”

cube chat

5 7D e c e M B e R 2 0 1 1 | Itnext

Lamborghini aventador LP

700-4 You can own Robert Gulpen’s

handcrafted gold, platinum

and 2,000 precious stones

studded lamborghini.

hot

Price: ` 24 crore

Jarreaerodream one

Who said Ipod docks need to be

compact? Well, not Jean Micheal

Jarre for sure? With 10,000 rms

power, most delivered by 18 inch sub,

it stands 11 foot tall and weighs 400

kgs and costs a little over half a

million US dollars.

hasseLbLad h4d-200ms

A 200 MP camera from Hassel-

blad stables, it can capture single

shots at 50 MP of still subjects

and six shots of very still sub-

jects of 200 MP resolution.

neW

Price: $45,000

update

5 8 itnext | D E C E M b E R 2 0 1 1

Here is a preview of some tech toys and trends to help you make up your mind before you go splurging on one.

Like something? Want to share your objects of desire? Send us your wish-list or feedback to [email protected]

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

my log


Ubuntu

CloudAspires to

Own the

While Ubuntu has been most closely associated with the desktop, the

project’s server variant has grown more prominent in recent years, particularly in

the context of cloud computingBY JASON BROOKS

uBuntu on ClouD | INSIgHT


though, I recommend sticking with the previous LTS edition of Ubuntu Server, version 10.04.

Ubuntu Server 11.10 is available for free download from www.ubuntu.com/download/server/download, in separate versions tailored for the x86 and x86-64 processor architectures.

Ubuntu Server in the LabI tested the Ubuntu Server 11.10 on a white-box server powered by AMD Opteron 4000 Series processors on Amazon EC2 and a handful of VirtualBox virtual machines running on my desktop. I used that handful of VMs to test Ubuntu Server’s automatable network installation toolkit, Orchestra, following the tutorial at tinyurl.com/3qgz77a and deploying OpenStack private clouds.

Orchestra brings together a few pre-existing open-source projects — chiefly the Cobbler installation and Nagios monitoring servers — to provide an automated way of deploying. Ubuntu servers on bare metal or VMs. Ubuntu wraps these components into a single install command.

I was able to quickly bring up an Orchestra server and install a managed Ubuntu instance via PXE boot. Next

Based on my tests of Ubuntu Server 11.10, the project’s cloud attractiveness shows no sign of abating. The new version, which shipped alongside its desktop-oriented sibling two weeks ago, is packed with tools for building, orchestrating and running on clouds — private and public. Version 11.10, also known as Oneiric Ocelot, is one of the project’s fast-moving, short support-term releases. It includes more than a few rough edges in its new features, which I hope to see smoothed out for the next Long Term Support (LTS) edition of Ubuntu set to arrive in the spring. In particular, what I found lacking was the documentation for 11.10’s key new features, such as deploying OpenStack private clouds. For now, most Ubuntu private cloud documentation refers to the now-deprecated Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud feature based on Eucalyptus’ open-source EC2 workalike.

Having said this, the Ubuntu Server 11.10 has me looking forward to spring’s LTS version and I have been impressed enough with the current state of its management tools to keep an example of it running in our lab, to help with server

and middleware installs for our tests. For

p r o d u c t i o n p u r p o s e s ,

“We opted to implement our payroll packaged on Linux, and it is running satisfactorily for past eight years” Vinay Mehta, cIO, escorts construction equipment Ltd

With no licence fees and a focus on cloud features from primary sponsor, Canonical, Ubuntu has flourished in the cloud. Ubuntu has become a popular guest operating system on Amazon EC2 and other infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) options, and the reference OS of choice

for OpenStack and Cloud Foundry projects. The cloud attractiveness of Ubuntu Server 11.10, remains undiminished and comes bundled with a plethora of tools for running on clouds — private and public, though it does have a few rough edges

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CUBE CHAT | rAVisH JHAlA

“i feel proud that i was one of the first engineers in the country to install blade servers,” says Ravish Jhala, Systems manager, Trident Hotel, mumbai

Serving Better with IT

Ravish Jhala gamely agrees that much of what a hotel does seems to happen offline. After all, you can’t deliver room service or make beds with the click of a mouse or with a

few taps on the keyboard. However, he emphasises the fact that an IT backbone has a crucial role to play in ensuring that the various tasks get executed with perfection. He says, “I believe the foremost task of the IT team should be to create simple and workable solutions; increase efficiency of routine tasks and reduce operating costs. It should never shy away from bringing in all possible innova-tions, even if they are saving the company very small sums of money,” he adds.

In college, Jhala planned a career in automobile engineering. Eventually he opted for electronics on his father’s advice. He landed in an IT job after his education which commenced

his IT journey. “All credit goes to my father for gently nudging me into the this space,” he says. He draws inspiration from Subroto Bagchi and Narayana Murthy. “I admire Narayana Murthy for the great values he brings in.” Subroto Bagchi’s Go Kiss the World: Life Lessons for the Young Professionals, is one of Jhala’s favourite books.

Currently, Jhala manages IT related infrastructure at Trident, the plush 435-room hotel located at Bandra Kurla in North Mumbai. He says that as hospitality industry in the country is growing at a healthy rate, it is imperative for top-notch hotels to focus on IT for bringing in efficiency into their operations and improving their overall quality of service. Some of the innovations that he, along with his team, has implemented at Trident hotel include Visitor Management Systems, GoConceirge.Net, A&G software, Guest History Software, and a few others. Be strong to be useful

MY SUCESSMANTRA

BY ANOOP VERMA

5 6 itnext | d e c e m B e R 2 0 1 1

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On a more personal level, Ravish is responsible for creating the platform called HOSPITECH, which is short for Hospitality Technology Leaders Forum. He says, “Being the founder and advisory committee member of HOSPITECH, the onus lies on me to drive the IT think-tank for the industry’s success.”

His real IT journey started with his stint at Compaq/HP. HP assigned the task of installing Blade servers at Reliance facility in Mahpe. His greatest challenge was to ensure the smooth deployment prompt response time in coordination with HP’s technical team from Mumbai and Bangalore. With the successful implementation of this project, Ravish Jhala became one of the first engineers in India to install blade servers.

His journey led him to take up a career at the sunrise hospitality sector. He joined Hyatt Hotels and Resorts at their regional office in India. Jhala experienced a complete transformation in the nature of the work that he had been doing so far. In his new role, he called the shots with regard to the IT deployments and vendor products.

As the field of IT is being constantly wafted by winds of change, Ravish Jhala keeps himself up-to-date with constant research, important journals, websites and interactions with industry experts. He likes to track evolving technologies. Besides work, he is keen on watching movies along with his wife, Tejal, and son, Siddh. When asked about his idea of a dream vacation, he answered promptly, “I would like to take my family on a world tour.”

FACT FIlE

nAmerAVisH JHAlA

Current DesiGnAtionsYstems mAnAGer

Current rolemAnAGinG it For triDent Hotel, BAnDrA KurlA, mumBAi. proViDe WorlD-ClAss serViCe eXperienCe to our internAl AnD eXternAl Guests. DeVelopinG teAm For Future

eXpertiseDeVelopinG neW solutions; reseArCH on neW teCHnoloGies, HospitAlit Y teCHnoloGies solutions; teleCommuniCAtions; leADersHip; CreAtinG KnoWleDGe plAtForm For inDustrY; WritinG ArtiCles on iCt

WorK eXperienCe12 YeArs

FAVourite Quote“KnoWinG is not enouGH, You must ApplY. WillinG is not enouGH, You must Do.” –BruCe lee

FAVourite DestinAtionGoA

FAVourite GADGet For WorKmY minD AnD HeArt

FAVourite personAl GADGetmY pen

“It is imperative for top-notch hotels to focus on IT for bringing efficiency into their operations and improving

their overall quality of services”

CUBE CHAT


4 2 itnext | d e c e m B e R 2 0 1 1

DouGlAs smitH | INTERVIEW


ViRtUALiSe tO innOVAte On tHe CLOUD

What are customer priorities with regard to

virtualisation solutions?Industry is abuzz with the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) trend, with users running operations on personal devices. In this scenario, the IT managers’ task is more of managing user data and not just the device/s. Access to VPN becomes a challenge, more so when the applications are on the cloud. The customers’ priority is to understand how virtualisation can help them address application deployment challenges and which tools can be used to drive higher flexibility while reducing the cost of deployment.

How does VMware help customers with Business Continuity planning and what is the rate of its adoption by enterprises?Our approach impresses upon customer orientation towards

virtualisation. Customers are thinking of how and what to virtualise to drive operational efficiency and ensure business continuity. They are thinking about virtualising mission-critical applications such as Oracle and SAP, without disrupting operations. The priority of IT heads has been to maintain the uptime which is the main criteria for implementing virtualisation tools. With regard to deployment, the first movers in the enterprise space, which would be about 30 per cent of the total customer segment, have gone in for complete virtualisation. About 70 per cent of them have deployed virtualisation partially.

Please elaborate on the customers’ journey to the cloud and the role of VMware’s vis-à-vis this movement?Our customers’ current agenda is to maximise IT agility in order

to drive business, as the focus is on creating opportunities for growth. If you look at a typical enterprise, nearly three-quarters of IT resources are spent on managing complex infrastructure which leaves little time and budget to focus on innovation. Our customers are finding cloud computing promising a more agile and efficient IT environment which replaces traditional, costly and inefficient computing silos with elastic, self-managed and dynamic IT infrastructure. We recommend virtualisation first, and then adoption of cloud. As part of their journey to the cloud, customers need to identify and adopt impactful innovations, execute projects rapidly, ensure dynamic scale capacity, maintain flexible architecture to support changes and decommission obsolete systems. As per our annual cloud m at u r i t y i n de x st u dy

Douglas Smith, Vice president, Global partner, strategy & operations, Vmware, in conversation with N geetha explains how it managers are adopting cloud models in order to drive information technology and business agility, and innovate for future growth

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Yahoo! and the HouyhnhnmsWith its unmatched patent portfolio, there are many a Houyhnhnms eyeing Yahoo!'s hot seat

Anoop VermAConsulting editor, next Connect

3 EssEntial REads

Douglas Smith, VP, VMware, on virtualisation to opitimise & innovate on cloud Pg 36

Ubuntu Server 11.10 tests prove that it's cloud attractiveness is still going strong Pg 28

Ravish Jhala, Systems Manager, Trident, Mumbai, dishes up IT in hospitality Pg 56

In his famous novel, Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift has described the Yahoos, as savage creatures resembling human beings far too closely. So closely, in fact, that they are complete yokels, with filthy and rather boorish habits. Complete opposite of the Yahoos, are the Houyhnhnms, caricatured in the book as a rational society of intelligent horses. Perhaps it is due to Gulliver’s Travels that the term Yahoo started being commonly used to signify an unsophisticated hooligan. In the 1960s' Bollywood blockbuster, Junglee, we had Shammi Kapoor dancing to, 'Yahoo! Chahe koi mujhe junglee kahe'.

Yahoo! began its journey towards becoming a global brand in the 1990s; one that would change the way computer users communicate with each other and find and access information on the internet. As Yahoo! rose in popularity and power, the inimitable savage humanoids, the Yahoos of Gulliver’s Travels faded from public memory. The term 'Yahoo' became associated with excellence in the field of IT and a flawless corporate culture. But the two founders of Yahoo!, David Filo and Jerry Yang, insist that they picked up the name as they thought that Yahoo stands for the rude, unsophisticated and uncouth.

In 2008, Microsoft tried to buy its way into the 21st century by dangling a bait of $45 bn in front of the Yahoo! board. The bid was rejected and Carol Bartz took over as the new CEO. Yet, the company’s

performance continued to hit new lows. Eventually Carol Bartz was sacked for non-performance, and she raged, “The company’s board was trying to show that they’re not the doofuses that they are.” Dan Loeb, the hedge-fund investor who recently purchased five per cent stake in the company, is now openly calling for Jerry Yang, Yahoo’s founder, to be deposed.

Yahoo! has clearly lost its way. It seems most likely that the company will get sold. But there are too many contenders for the post of Houyhnhnms, or the rational and intelligent horses, who might eventually take over the beleaguered company. Is the Yahoo! Co-founder, Jerry Yang, a potential buyer or a seller in any deal? It is being reported that Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and Softbank are in talks with private-equity funds to make a hostile bid for all of Yahoo!. Microsoft continues to have designs on Yahoo!. If Microsoft manages to acquire Yahoo!, it will be able to take on the competition from Google and Facebook.

Yahoo! is receiving very little attention in the area of patents. It owns 1,100 patents in the USA, and has 2,661 applications pending! It is unclear, but if the rates that Google has paid for Motorola Mobility’s patents are anything to go by, then it is surmised that Yahoo’s patent portfolio has quite a huge value apart from its overall business. Did someone say Yahoo!

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Bridging the Business Communication Challenge

IT NEXT DECEMBER 2011

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