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boss talkPine Labs’ CEO on PoS Innovations

Feature Apply right controls to prevent risks PG 24

strateGY Easy Steps to Implementing BI

ON A TEST DRIVE

ON A TEST DRIVE

ITDMs are harnessing the benefits of big data through a pilot program to

help businesses Pg 10

Editorial

Blogs To Watch!The CXO in the Next-Generation Enterprise https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter/entry/the_cxo_in_the_next

CXO Expectations Still Clouded on Virtualization http://meship.com/Blog/2011/06/14/cxo-expectations-still-clouded-on-virtualization/

The NEXT Quality professional http://nareshchoudhary.blogspot.in/

Information Optimized http://informationoptimized.com/blog/tag/cxo/

Professional Network for CIOs and IT Professionals ...

http://www.ciozone.com/index.php?option=com_myblog&show=Open-Season-on-CIOs.html&Itemid=713

1m a r c H 2 0 1 3 | itnext

G e e t H a N a N d i k o t k u r

“If big data has to be a clear winner, IT managers are the ones to call the winning shot”

Big Data--The Clear WinnerHow so? While indian companies are still in pilot mode developing various prototypes to use big data in an

effective manner, there are several used cases available globally on how big data has been leveraged to the fullest extent to gain competitive advantage.

One big case for big data is the recent 2012 US election, where big data was declared winner. The Obama Campaign stirred up the motion of big data by driving a multi-pronged approach to seek necessary information. As per the CITO Research, the Obama campaign initiated a sophisticated use of social media; the refusal to leave any assumption unverified was unprecedented. The strategy encouraged supporters to volunteer personal information, comments, post photos and videos, donate funds, and importantly, to galvanise others. The result: 33 million Facebook “likes,” 240,000 YouTube subscribers, and 246 million YouTube page views. The campaign hired data scientists 5x larger than the 2008 campaign and mobile app users to give 4x more and the expanded program.

Why am I saying all this? Because it is clear that the big data trend is a reality and that it is not only for a select few, but for everyone. Then what role does IT play and how can IT set a big data strategy?

The current edition of IT Next’s cover feature on ‘Big data’ does throw light on a few interesting scenarios where IT teams are gearing up to derive value out of big data and making a big deal out of it. While the sponsor of a big data project is obviously from a business group, IT managers are the most sought after for applying appropriate methodology and tools to extract unstructured data from vast data sources and integrate it with structured data using the required tools. If big data has to be a clear winner, IT managers are the ones to call the winning shot.

2 itnext | m a r c H 2 0 1 3

ContentmarcH 2013 V o l u m e 0 4 | I s s u e 0 2

10Page

For tHe l atest tecHnology uPDates go to itnext.in

cover story

12 All about the 4 VsBig Data’s 4 Vs are measured and mined by customers for RoI Calculation

16 Pilots, Now ProjectsQ&A with Akbar Ladak, Senior Consultant & Innovation Evangelist, CTO Office, Wipro Ltd

18 Right Big Data strategyBeyond Hype, vendors have explored big data to drive big deals

20B Making a big deal out of big dataSenior IT Managers are harnessing the big data and seeing value

20C Big Mandate for Big data Create a prototype using best practices

06 Pine Labs’ ceo Lokvir Kapoor on Pos innovations making the online transaction easy

boss taLK

30 attachmate Group cIo Dohsung yum on how to build a smart It using a collaborative approach

IntervIew

Facebook:http ://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=195675030582

Twitter :http : //twitter.com/itnext

LinkedInhttp://www.l inkedin .com/groups?gid=2261770&trk=myg_ugrp_ovr

coverDesign: Manav Sachdev

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boss taLKPine Labs’ CEO on PoS Innovations

FeatureApply right controls to prevent risks PG 24

strateGy Easy Steps to Implementing BI

ON A TEST DRIVE

ON A TEST DRIVE

ITDMs are harnessing the benefits of big data through a pilot program to

help businesses Pg 10

IT decision-makers are harnessing the benefits of big data to help businesses make intelligent decisions

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InsIGhts24 right Gear shift | Sivakumar Krishnan on how to apply right IT controls to mitigate core banking risks

15-MInute ManaGer35 Fitting steps to bI | Sunil S Ranka, BI Professional advises IT managers to be cautious while choosing a BI vendor and bet on solutions which suits the best

36 trips & tricks | How to speed up your browsing using App Managemen

brocaDe Post event rePort 28 unclogging the Data

center | Panel Discussion on

how Fabric architecture can

boost performance, simplify

management and deployment

capabilities

Post event rePort sIGMabyte 42 wiring the Data center |

Panel discussion on integrated

solutions to enhance data center

efficiency

cube chat46 experiment to Innovate

| Atul Viz, VP-IT Systems &

Improvement cell), Uno Minda

Group on how IT should challenge

the status quo and think out of

box to drive innovations

24Page

28Page

Apply right geArs| IT managers must apply right levels of controls in the IT systems and processes to mitigate risks in core banking system

reGuLarsEditorial _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 01

Letters _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 04

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Open Debate _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 45

My Log _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 48

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iBM 5, iBC

Gartner 7, 19

Patel india 13

Cisco 15, 41

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Bry air asia 21

trend Micro 23

schneider 27

Blue Coat 39

Microsoft 21-a, BC

itnext.in

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INBoX

4 itnext | m a r c H 2 0 1 3

The Vegas ExperienceIt all began when we heard the news of Technology Premier League (TPL) advertising the Las Vegas trip for winners of the competition. Five of us rep-resented our company based on the criteria provided by the organisers. We started preparing ourselves and landed at the beautiful resort “The Retreat” for the event. It was a sight worth seeing-- with stalwarts of IT from many top corporate present. The atmosphere around promised tough competition but we stayed focussed. Two days of hard work and determination left us with no time to realise the fact that we were declared winners.With all focus now on Las Vegas, we found ourselves at the US consulate for the Visa interview. Prince was the first to go and got through in two minutes. Kamlesh was next and he was rejected (empty passport…no visas…you know

the reasons for rejection). Tabrez was third in line and when the consular officer heard Las Vegas as the desti-nation for the third time, he became curious and checked whether we were travelling together. And then we found ourselves in a group inter-view rather than individual! The consular officer then reversed Kam-lesh’s rejection and granted him a visa. Kamlesh thus became an excep-tional case--of having a rejection letter but being granted a visa. Rajen-dra went to another counter but got his visa within no time although he had a blank passport. Rahul already had a valid US visa.Visa in hand, we set forth on a 36-hour flight eagerly waiting to land on American soil for the first time (except Rahul). We travelled in four different flights till we were at Casino land. The lights of Las Vegas simply mesmerised us. We had never seen a city so well lit, with musical fountains and foreigners from different lands and at untimely hours like 3 am. Casinos were open 24 hours. We tried our hand at some of the casino games, won a few and lost a lot, but it was an experience. Las Vegas is a small city by size and the open deck buses that took us through it gave us an overall glimpse of this happening place.We then boarded a bus on a five-hour journey that traversed through the desert region till we finally arrived at the man-made “Hoover Dam,” and later at the natural won-der, “The Grand Canyon”. It took us a whole day to complete this visit.Time ran so fast that it was pack up time. We decided not to sleep the last night as we had a flight to catch at 7 am. All of us were awake; imag-ine Tabrez and Kamlesh buying an Xbox at 1 am. That is Las Vegas for you. We made it back to Mumbai with cherised memories. Thanks to TPL to for this opportunity.

raHul maHajan and team

K raheja corp

February 2013

www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=

2261770&trk=myg_ugrp_ovr

300 members

NEXT100 Process: I found the entire NEXT100 process to be excellent. It was indeed a very rigorous process and well thought out. I applied for the awards for various reasons: one was for self-evaluation, for my professional growth, for public recognition in the industry and for peer recognition. While the application was very simple, the most difficult aspects were the personality and management style tests; also, the jury interview which was difficult, but interesting.The jury interaction was provoking and in-depth. The jurymembers possessed sound technical expertise and domain knowledge and gauged the candidates with expertise. The discussions on leadership and business skills were quite good.VinayaK laud

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IT MANAGER’S GUIDE TO

FORMULATING EFFECTIVEVENDOR MANAGEMENT

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22 06 26INTERVIEW:Emerson’s Khuti on the need for an aerial view of a DC

BOSS TALK:How to be a business Advisor

BIG Q Auditing is critical in Cloud Pg 35

FEATURE: Game Changers for a Cool Data Centre

(note: Letters have been edited minmally, for brevity and clarity)

Boss talk | LOKVIR KAPOOR

SuggeStion BoX

6 itnext | m a r c H 2 0 1 3

Understanding Digital Marketing: Marketing Strategies for Engaging the Digital Generation

Writer: Damian ryan, Calvin JonesPublisher: Kogan PagePriCe: `1,250

“With FDI in retail, PoS solutions see new opportunities on the horizon. But the key will be innovation”

F i n a n c E M a n a G E M E n t

innovation through PoS

A growing population, rising incomes, urbanisation, the advent of modern retail, and a consumption-driven society present tremendous opportunity

for growth for the payment technologies industry.

Payment solutions: then and now The payments industry is continuously seeing rapid growth and technological advancements as the market demands are increasing. The payment industry is utilising new technologies to become more dynamic, efficient and cost-effective.

Unlocking the challenges Before the new age innovative Point of Sale (PoS) systems were introduced, payment processing was a long, tedious and cumber-some process. Payment is a unique opportunity where retailers can make a connection with their customers. Lack of PoS systems affected customer service adversely. Multiple bank EDCs were required by the cash counter to process respective bank cards.

Positive PoS StridesPoS solution providers are now creating a conducive environment for retail and enabling the service sector to grow. The edge lies in reduced cost of transaction processing, reduced cost of training of cashiers, offer loyalty programmes without incremental cost in infrastructure.

Benefits for SMEsPoS solution providers provide SMEs with a competitive advantage through the enhancement of customer service. A PoS solution can give them the strategic edge to meet challenges posed by their bigger competitors. Due to their small size and constraints in skill resources, SMEs often fail to expand offerings like loyalty or gift cards. PoS

vendors can facilitate hosted service, which means that SMEs gets customised solutions.

new PoS drives better valueA modern PoS solution facilitates much more than just transfer of money from one account to another. It facilitates not only a redundancy at every step of the payment process but also specialised MIS / specialised information. A new age PoS solution can facilitate rich MIS on: 1. Central aggregation of credit card transactions--transactions from all PoS terminals are all stored / archived in a central server and helps in the transaction reconciliation process.2. Facility to upload bank Payment Advice file3. Automatic bank reconciliation and transaction dispute management4. Proactive alerts for better operational efficiencyOver the next 10 years, several possible scenarios could set the stage for emerging payments technol-ogies--innovative mechanisms like online, mobile and prepaid card payments--to redefine the pay-ments technology landscape. With FDI in retail, PoS solutions see new opportunities on the hori-zon. But the key will be innovation. Lokvir Kapoor, CEO, Pine Labs

Gartner IT Infrastructure Operations & Data Center Summit 201313 – 14 May | Mumbai, Indiagartner.com/in/datacenter

Save INR 5,500 off the standard conference rateRegister using the promotion code DCI2AD1

Accelerate Innovation. Drive Transformation. Achieve Operational Excellence.Agenda Tracks:A Enable Business Growth, Productivity and Continuity

B Data Center Technologies — Achieving Higher Levels of Efficiency and Flexibility

C Delivering IT Operational Excellence and Driving Business Value

HOT TOpICS•Managingdatacentercostandsustainability•Mobileandbigdataimpact•Cloudandvirtualizationbestpractices•Convergence:nextgenerationserver,storageand

networkingtechnologies•Datacentersecurity,risk,andcontinuity•IToperations:trendsandfutureoutlook•ITleadership:howtoengagewithbusinessandCIO

© 2013 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Gartner is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. or its affiliates. For more information, email info@gartner.com or visit gartner.com.

trendsdealsproductsservicespeopleUpdate

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TEcH TrENDS | EMC Corporation announced EMC-sponsored IDC Digital Universe study, Big Data, Bigger Digital Shadows, and Biggest Growth in the Far East--India”— which revealed that the digital universe in India will grow 23-fold between 2012 and 2020. The digital bits captured or created each year in India are expected to grow from 127 EB to 2.9 ZB between 2012 and 2020.

India’s digital information explosion is being driven by proliferation of devices such as PCs and smartphones worldwide, increased Internet access

India’s Digital Universe to grow to 2.9 ZB

within emerging markets and the boost in data from machines such as surveillance cameras or smart meters. Other contributing factors include increasing machine-to-machine communication (M2M), falling cost of technology, and digitization of TV, among others. Over time, the distribution of the bits within the digital universe by country of origin will more and more closely mirror the distribution of population.

Key findings of this India-specific study include:

Less than half a percent of all digital information is analysed today while 36 per cent would provide valuable insights making Big Data a significant opportunity for India.

By 2020, India will see 25-fold growth of useful information, which should be an inspiration for the adoption of Big Data technologies and practices.

Cloud adoption is growing fast and by 2020, 42 per cent of all digital information will be “touched” by the cloud

While India’s digital universe is expected to grow by 50 per cent every year through 2020; the number of IT professionals managing it is estimated to grow in single digits only. Although cloud computing is at a nascent stage in India, it is already having an impact on the digital universe. The study reveals that 22 per cent of the digital universe in the country in 2012 was in some way “touched” by the cloud i.e. stored, transmitted, or processed. This is estimated to almost double by 2020 with 42 per cent of digital information to be touched by cloud, the highest in the world.

Digital infor-mation in 2012

equaled a stack of

5100 32 GB iPhone 5s

SOURce: GARTNeR’S cIO

Such a prolonged and substantial decrease in spam levels is unprecedented. The main reason behind the decrease in spam volume is the overall heightened level of anti-spam protection.

Spam levels at a five-year lowThe latest Kaspersky Lab data indicated the share of spam in email traffic decreased steadily throughout 2012 to hit a five-year low.

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AA 100 MUltiMediA PlAYeR With the a100 multimedia player, the new-age

variant of the 70s’ boom box, the firm has

brought a worthy contender to the shelf and

a useful companion for all kinds of music

lovers. Priced at

rs 1285, the a100

is a good buy.

OCUlUS Rift a virtual reality headset, the Oculus rift

from Oculus. Vr is a giant visor that straps

to your head. It is at

720p HD resolution,

exact specs have not

been decided.

aPPLIcaTION TrENDS | Bombay Dyeing, India’s linen brand has deployed Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 to gain business insights, ensure better inventory and stocks management, trend analysis and share unified experience to custom-ers across its stores. With deploy-ment of Dynamics AX 2012 under the nomenclature ‘Project Disha’, Bombay Dyeing has enhanced its operations, bringing in manage-ment efficiency that helps in effec-tive and on-time business decisions. Phase I of the project has been rolled out in 9 company outlets with POS solutions providing walk-in customers a “complete shopping experience.” Phase II of the project

Bombay Dyeing deploys Microsoft Dynamics AX

empower enterprise and midsize retailers around the world by delivering a complete shopping experience. Working with our retail customers, we provide a seamless and differentiating end-to-end solution for point of sale (pos) multichannel management, store operations, e-commerce, merchandising, financials, supply-chain and more. This enables retailers to gain insight, operate with agility, exceed consumer expectations, and build enduring loyalty with superior time to value. In other words helping them become a ‘Dynamic Retailer.”

Bombay Dyeing wanted full visibility of stock data and had to manually manage most of its business processes. “we have witnessed productivity gains across various departments,” said Durgesh Mehta, Joint MD Bombay Dyeing.

ERP system to enhance op-erations and management efficiency

Ramco Systems, an enterprise software company focused on next generation Cloud ERP products has observed an uptake in the ERP business in the global markets and its revenues from overseas business stood at $ 12.36 million. P. R. Venketrama Raja, Vice Chairman & MD, Ramco, said, “Globally, we have started getting some very good market recognition for our Cloud offerings. Our future focus will be to build futuristic enterprise solutions for customers.

AROUNd The WORLd

Ramco finds ERP uptake in global markets

PeteR COChRAne, ceO & chairman at cochrane Associates Ltd

“The ratchet of change just went ‘click’ and is the new stable, the new economy, and there is no going back, and what is in store is even more radical.”

will be rolled out in Mar-May 2013 that will connect 332 franchise out-lets nationwide.

Kirill Tatarinov, President, Microsoft Business Solutions Division said, “Our vision is to

qUIck byTe

RAzeR edge gAMing tAblet a mobile device touted to have the power

of a full fledged Pc desktop. Priced at $999

the razer Edge, it will be shipped with Win-

dows 8, a 3rd

Gen Intelcore

i5 for i7 cPU.

IT decision-makers are harnessing the benefits of big data to help businesses make intelligent decisions

by N Geetha illustration by maNav sachdev

Design by RaJ veRma

ON A TEST DRIVE

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Senior IT decision makers are always on the thresh-old of being bombarded with various innovations, be it about technology or market related. After the Cloud, the next hype has been around big data,

which refers to the new universe of data being created by web interactions, social media, mobile and others.

The obvious question from IT heads or senior IT managers have been ‘how relevant is big data and how does it matter to me?’ And it is encouraging to find that senior IT managers are in sync with the fact that big data affects everyone. However, there’s one aspect that’s clear, that the big data project obviously is not driven by IT.

IT NEXT embarked on a cover story to analyse the big data trend and its impact on senior IT managers and their role in making a big deal out of big data. Most vendors say that big data is definitely considered to be a big deal by IT managers, without whose help the big data puzzle cannot be resolved. Most agree that IT teams are the support systems which extract value of big data using the necessary analytical tools, making it a structured form that enables businesses to use it for their competitive advantage.

big data at WorkIT managers do agree that big data is being harnessed; and there is hope, with big data analytic discovery vendors sup-porting the big data trend with the tools necessary to discover and co-relate with the structured data. However, skepticism prevails because of the data warehousing projects in the past that never provided the promised business outcome. In some cases, IT managers are relatively leery of making additional investments in big data and advanced analytics because of the complexity of their current analytics program.

According to Balasubramaniam Vedagiri, VP & Head - Enterprise Technology Solutions, Mphasis, and Next100 win-ner, using modeling tools and algorithms to harness the big data predictive analytics will define the winners in the next few years. “Big data is being used in supply chain management to understand a car maker’s sudden increase of defect rates in the field. Similarly, healthcare practices of millions of people are continually scanned and intervened as part of customer service,” says Vedagiri.

IT teams argue that in order to be a true differentiator, the right data set needs to be chosen, on which the models that predict and optimise business outcome can be built. In this context, Vedagiri believes that even before bringing the analyt-ics flavour to the fore, identification of the right business unit as a pilot is the first step. With the ability of big data to achieve optimised reports/dashboards on large data sets with many petabytes, the right business opportunities can be spotted by challenging the key functions.

While finding insights that can improve business decision-making is not without inherent challenges, the first step that Ramendra Mandal, Country Manager, QlikTech India Pvt. Ltd, recommends is to isolate the area that the business is interested in. ‘Big data users need to focus on the specific slices of the origi-nal diverse data sources which are useful for answering specific business questions, without losing sight of the bigger picture,” says Mandal. According to Mandal, the role of IT heads in this process is critical. Not only does he or she need to amplify the value of data, he or she also needs to understand how to unify the business around it. “CIOs also need to fine-tune their approach to technology and a big data technology strategy should generally follow a portfolio approach,” says Mandal.

According to Qlik Tech, a portfolio approach means that CIOs don’t just use one technology to solve all their problems. For CIOs who are looking at big data, and who feel it’s impor-tant to their business, there must be tools in their tool box that enable them to search, understand, analyse and model the data.

“Big data users need to focus on the specific slices of the original diverse data

sources to answer specific questions”

Ramendra mandalCountry Manager, Qlik Tech India Pvt. Ltd.

1 1m a r c H 2 0 1 3 | itnext

All About

All AbOuT

the 4 VsThE 4 Vs

Advocates of big data often argue that the big data has transitioned beyond hype and that it is for everyone. However, the value it brings in is to analyse how it matters to the user and how the traditional three Vs

of big data--such as volume, velocity, variety--add value. Most vendors believe that volume is of less importance; what mat-ters is the variety of data generated and the value it ushers in.This is what big data vendors have to say…

Deepinder Singh Dhingra, Head of Product & Strategy, Mu Sigma, says value, one of the ‘V’s, has been added recently; this indicates mining valuable pieces of data from the other data that does not matter; as a corollary to this, measurement of big data is relative as it indicates how well one can handle these three big data activities. These include:

Store: Can you store all the data, whether persistent or tran-sient? Process: Can you cleanse, enrich, calculate, translate, or run algorithms, analytics, or otherwise, against the data? Access: Can you retrieve, search, integrate, and visualise the data?

Ramendra Mandal, Country Manager, QlikTech India Pvt. Ltd finds that customers are laying more thrust on the variety aspect of the data, which would help their business. Mandal reiterates that variety--and how to integrate varied data from different sources pose the greatest challenge to companies now. “The recent US elections have been a testimony to how big data is effectively generated and harnessed with a wide section of data scientists hired to generate the massive data in various forms and through varied sources,” says Mandal.

“The value is measured taking into account both the cost of technology and the value derived from big data used”maneesh sharmaHead - Database and Technology, sAP India

Big data’s four ‘Vs’ are Being measured and mined By customers for roi calculation

1 2 itnext | m a r c H 2 0 1 3

The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that data volume is growing 40 per cent per year, and will grow 44X between 2009 and 2020. Although volume of data is the most visible parameter, it is not the only characteristic to measure big data. Sheshagiri Anegondi, Vice President, Technology, Oracle India, echoes the industry opinion: the four key characteris-tics that define Big Data are the 4 Vs which are measured by their capacities and performance.

Volume: Machine-generated data is produced in much larger quantities than non traditional data. For instance, a single jet engine can generate 10TB of data in 30 minutes. With more than 25,000 airline flights per day, the daily vol-ume of just this single data source runs into Petabytes.

Velocity: Social media data streams--while not as massive as machine-generated data--produce a large influx of opinions and relationships valuable to customer relationship management. Even at 140 characters per tweet, the high velocity (or frequency) of Twitter data ensures large volumes (over 8 TB per day).

Variety: Traditional data formats tend to be relatively well described and change slowly. In contrast; non-traditional data formats exhibit a dizzying rate of change.

Srikanth Karnakota, Director Server & Cloud business, emphasises that big data is getting to be a reality to be reck-oned with Data explosion is driving the need to measure data, which is increas-ing by 10X in every 5 years. “IT heads face the task of using the volume of unstruc-tured data and allocate it logically to make it structured information,” says Karnakota.

Measuring OpportunitiesAccording to Maneesh Sharma, Head - Data-base and Technology, SAP India, big data presents a number of opportunities, with the optimists maintaining it has the power to revo-lutionise business and drive growth over the next decade; the more cautious claim that com-panies who successfully mine big data stand to derive significant business benefits. However, there are fundamental obstacles that must be surmounted. “Firstly, big data calls for new infrastructures that can store data differently and process it regardless of the format--infrastructures that allow you to slice the data in dif-ferent ways. Secondly, big data requires specific tools that can search, understand, analyse and model the data downstream from the system,” says Sharma.

“The second most important measurement is to understand the combination of data sources and formats which matter to determine the validity of an application to be put under the big data bracket,” Sharma opines.

Another measuring capsule is the speed at which infor-mation arrives and is analysed and delivered. The velocity of data moving through the systems of an organisation var-

ies from batch integration and loading of data at predeter-mined intervals to real-time streaming of data.

“The value is measured tak-ing into account both the cost of technology and the value derived from the use of big data; the cost variable is impor-tant because it is a key defining

factor of what’s new with big data,” says Sharma.Vivekanand Venugopal, Vice President and General Man-

ager of Hitachi Data Systems India, points out that performance characteristics differ based on data types and storage infra-structure needs to be fast enough to manage and process this data regardless of its type.“The true Value of big data comes from the analysis of data across disparate types to generate a competitive advantage for organisations,” says Venugopal.

Venugopal reiterates that data is becoming more complex today, and current storage architectures are unable to sup-port these evolving user requirements. In order to extract true ‘value’ from data, organisations will need to adopt new approaches.

vivekanand venugopal Vice President and

General Manager of Hitachi Data systems India

“The true Value of big data

comes from the analysis of

data across disparate types”

cover story | The big daTa journey

1 4 itnext | m a r c H 2 0 1 3

Pilots, nowPIlOTS, NOwProjectsPROjEcTS

customers process data at each scale and distriBute insights

Q: Is big data justifying its value?A: Big Data is absolutely delivering on value. Our customers who have chosen Hadoop, NoSQL and associated tools have managed not just to save substantially vis-à-vis traditional IT, but also to enable functionality that was earlier not possible from a commercial standpoint. With big data, we have enabled customers in Telecom, Insurance, Banking and Retail to deploy analytics capabilities at a fraction of the price of traditional IT

systems. We also empower them to process data at each scale and distribute insights to each decision-maker on the field. Big data has freed data-driven insights from the confines of the corner office.

Q: do customers consider big data to be a big deal?A: We have had resistance from customers initially – especially in India. However, that has reduced substantially in the past two quarters. Of late, customers approach us themselves, con-vinced about big data and the need to deploy it. They now want us to formulate their big data strategy and transform their key business processes, including the insights that big data deliv-ers. Earlier the discussion focused on “What is Big Data?” Now, customers talk about the timelines and deliverables of big data.

Q: Is big data just another analytical tool?A: Big data is not just another analytics tool. However, it allows analysis of data on a scale which was not possible earlier. Data collection has become easier and cheaper. Cost of data storage has also decreased. Big data enables reduc-tion in the cost of data processing and analysis to gain business insights. This completes the missing link that truly enables a data-driven enterprise.

Q: Is big data on pilot mode or is it being exploited?A: Pilots that have been going on for the last 2-3 quarters are being transformed into projects and are going into production.

Q: has it made a significant difference to It decision-makers?A: It has absolutely made a significant difference to IT deci-sion-makers. Decision-makers who are ahead of the curve are convinced of cost savings that big data could fetch, almost up to 50 per cent. They come to us after carefully analysing the nuances of big data, and our discussions centre around which business processes should be transformed first and how.

This is a sea-change from the norm. It is fair to say that big data is changing the face of IT and the thought process of IT decision-makers.

akbar Ladak senior Consultant & Innovation

evangelist CTO Office | Wipro Limited

1 6 itnext | m a r c H 2 0 1 3

Set Right Big Data

SET RIghT bIg DATA

StrategySTRATEgyBeyond the hype, Vendors haVe explored

Big data to driVe Big deals

Most vendors who are betting on big data agree that big data does make sense and that enter-prises truly find meaning in big data. Having said that, the strategy they set and the architec-

ture they deploy to harness big data in a meaningful manner is also key.

Analysts firm CITO Research indicates that there’s a mess of data out there, which can help IT heads build a more accurate model of their world; but without the right tools, it’s just that—a mess. There has been much discussion of the various platforms and mechanisms needed to process big data, but compara tively little discussion of how business people can actually explore it and gain insights. Vendors discuss what kind of strategies and architectures are being used to derive better results.

Vishnu Bhavaraju, Regional Manager-Sales, EMC Greenplum, firmly believes that big data tactics need to be adopted by business stakeholders in any organisation and IT would support them in deploying the right architecture. According to him, there are pertinent questions which stakeholders must consider:

a) Should I consider big data in expanding my warehouse?b) Should I use big data for information discovery?c) Should I use it for an archival platform?d) In case of a banking environment, should big data be

used to resolve capital adequacy issues? e) In case of telecom, should it be used to gain insights into

varied customer experiences and so on?“While there are vertical specific needs that big data would

cater to, I would strongly recommend a unified analytical platform with which to harness big data in the most appropriate manner,” says EMC’s Bhavaraju.

“This is to say that structured data would be a part of the RDBMS and unstructured data can be placed on the Hadoop analytics platform which would be co-related with the stored data to make it structured, for to use by business groups,” he adds.

“IT managers need to maintain a log of

important data required by the business”

srikanth KarnakotaDirector server & Cloud business, Microsoft India

1 8 itnext | m a r c H 2 0 1 3

UPHOLDSBIG DATA

Srikanth Karnakota, Director Server & Cloud business, Microsoft India, affirms that verticals such as banking, manufacturing, retail, environmental sciences, healthcare and a few others are gaining valuable insights about the their organisations and customers, based not only on unstructured data that is outside of the cleansed data in a structured database, but also on data which was hitherto unknown using both on-premise and cloud based modules.

According to Karnakota, algorithms suggest most customers are using SQL data base server as the backend to port their structured traditional data and the Azure cloud platform to deploy unstructured data. “Customers are increasingly using Excel platform to power big data for intelligent deposition of unstructured data and Hadoop open source to integrate it with the main data,” says Karnakota. According to him, as part of the

integration process, Hadoop Adapter is built in to create the necessary interface with BI tools.

“It is important for IT managers to keep a log of important data required by the business during the integration process in both on-premise and cloud, and leverage predictive intelligent tools and search engines effectively,” says Karnakota.

direct benefitsQlik Tech has made a few strides in simplifying the user experience using big data. Ramendra Mandal, Country Manager, QlikTech India Pvt., maintains that by directly querying big data sources without a complicated ETL process, IT managers can open up vast information sources to business users who can leverage insights to create strategies that are more informed and make better decisions.

cloud computing offers a relatively

quick entry into big data analysis for

customers who wish to experiment with

this technology; they need to be careful not

to create more silos in the process that will

cause issues over time

cloud is another way of keeping

your data with the additional flexibility of

virtually unlimited storage space. in

addition, the data processing infrastructure

can be used from the cloud. google’s big

Query is an attempt towards that

the need for real time functionality

is both significant and growing; 80 per cent

of companies have plans to move their big

data to the cloud or are considering the

option. With cloud computing able to offer

unlimited resources on demand, it certainly

is a very great enabler to expand big data

analytics into the cloud

infrastructure cloud, content

cloud and information cloud that build on

existing it investments to provide a single

virtualisation platform for all data, is

another booster to big data

content cloud--a well-managed

software and hardware stores that

searches both structured and unstructured

content to make sense of the ‘variety’ of

big data

cios looking at the cloud for big

data need to carefully consider how much

of risk they are putting their data to before

deciding

what aspects of big data to put

on the cloud

it managers can put unlimited data

resources of big data on the cloud and use

dynamic provisioning

big data as a service on the cloud is

emerging fast and there are industry

specific service providers who offer the

services

Pay as you use model is emerging

as the trend in big data as you put

unstructured data on the cloud

While elasticity of the cloud makes

it ideal for big data analytics, there may be

some disadvantages with the cloud--its

abstracted distributed backend can

sometimes be problematic for big data

analysis

many cloud providers are focused

on working towards improving perfor-

mance to provide customers greater

computational capabilities for big data

analytics. besides, cloud providers do also

provide a comprehensive suite of security

measures to safeguard their clients’ data.

as an enaBler, the cloud helps customers in making a quick entry into Big data

CloudclOuDuPhOlDSbIg DATA

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The big daTa journey | cover story

use standard BI techniques to uncover business insights. In other words, they have focused in on this data area and created an app around it; there’s nothing special about big data anymore because IT managers have already focused in on a specific area,” says Mandal.

Mu Sigma, the big data vendor, argues that distributed computing has a big role in big data management.

Deepinder Singh Dhingra, Head of Product & Strategy, Mu Sigma, says that the data sources themselves that are initially required come from disparate sources being both structured and unstructured. Handling this amount of data on a single stand-alone server or “scaled-up” servers using traditional database management systems will not only increase costs significantly, but also make analysis of the data all the more

complex and time consuming. As a result, a distributed architecture generally built on NoSQL data stores is recommended to derive best benefits. The emergence of “Distributed” in-memory distributed computing for big data is a rising trend with up and coming technologies like Spark and Shark which helps to gain traction. However, newer architecture would not only contain batch-based infrastructures like Hadoop, but also different tools for different types of data and analyses; for example:

1) Hadoop/HDFS with Hive -> for batch unstructured/structured flat files

“Big data tactics needs to be adopted by business stakeholders

and IT will bring in right tools”

vishnu bhavarajuregional Manager-sales at

eMC Greenplum

mandal recommends three ways to harness big data benefits:

Leverage any data useful for analysis without scalability limitation via unified analysis

Develop the capability to link data loaded in memory with big data sources for rapid, associative visual analysis using unique hybrid approach

Deploy direct discovery tools for easy implementation, rapid app development experience to big data

Mandal explains, “One of our customers, Autodesk, took a hybrid approach to pull data from 30 different data sources and created 11 dashboards to help business groups make real time decisions.” “IT managers’ task begins once businesses have isolated the slice of data they are interested in; they can

source: CITO research

cover story | The big daTa journey

2 0 itnext | m a r c H 2 0 1 3

2) Flume/Avro/Strom with NoSQL DBs like HBase, Cassandra, MongoDBs -> for real time data

3) R/Mahout/DSL languages like cascading/scalding, python, shell scripts -> for advance analytics

4) GPUs/CPUs -> for powerful computationAccording to Sheshagiri Anegondi, Vice President,

Technology, Oracle India, some critical areas that IT executives should keep in mind while approaching big data are:

Aligning big data initiatives with specific business goals to create value through low-density and high

“Ensure centralised IT strategy to buy in for standards and

governance, as users will want the other way round”

sheshagiri anegondiVice President, Technology, Oracle India

volumes of data: this is critical to ensure sponsorship and funding for the long run. “Ensure centralised IT strategy to buy in for standards and governance, as user departments may be tempted to buy in decentralised fashion (which can result in IT standards and governance being compromised). It is critical, therefore, that IT heads insist upfront on standards and governance not being compromised, while at the same time promoting agility,” elaborates Anegondi.

Anegondi points out that the infrastructure required to support acquisition of big data must deliver low, predictable latency in both capturing data and in executing short, simple queries; handle very high transaction volumes, often in a distributed environment; and support flexible, dynamic data structures. He agrees that NoSQL databases are frequently used to acquire and store big data as they are well suited for dynamic data structures and are highly scalable. The data stored in a NoSQL database is typically of a high variety because the systems are intended to simply capture all data without categorising and parsing the data.

Maneesh Sharma, Head - Database and Technology, SAP India, believes that big data needs to be viewed in the back drop of the challenges it poses to IT. According to him, IT is challenged by the high costs associated with the purchase and maintenance of hardware needed to accommodate large data volumes, while business users need quick, often real-time access to analyse this information in order to respond to ever-changing market conditions.

“Customers need to adopt a new approach to Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence - one that enables them to analyse data from any source in real time to determine actionable patterns and trends,” explains Sharma.

According to Sharma, customers are leveraging SAP HANA database, a state-of-the-art in-memory platform, which allows enterprises to cut out the complexity that has crept into IT environments. For example, Usha International Ltd (UIL), a multi-product consumer durable manufacturing, marketing and distribution company, has chosen SAP HANA™ on Business Warehouse (BW) to gain real-time visibility into its businesses, to improve operational excellence and achieve better business outcomes. Essar Group has chosen the SAP HANA platform and the 4.0 release of business intelligence (BI) solutions from the SAP Business Objects portfolio to strengthen its existing investments in SAP software and gain real-time visibility into businesses across all verticals. Hitach recommends a scientific method with regard to the conversations that surround Big Data. Vivekanand Venugopal, VP & GM of Hitachi Data Systems India, says,”Real time analytics are carried out by ‘Complex Processing Engines’ that help us understand customer issues.”

The big daTa journey | cover story

2 0 Am a r c H 2 0 1 3 | itnext

senior it managers haVe started harnessing the Big data trend

and seeing Value

Senior IT managers firmly believe that big data solutions are in pilot mode, and most companies have developed prototype and used cases to extend big data visualisa-tion. senior IT managers definitely are making a big

deal of big data, making all efforts to capitalise on the big data wave. Besides possessing a deeper understanding of big data and its benefits, they are leveraging analytics and a well-defined architecture to make complex things simpler. Here is what they think of big data’s perils, promises, and ways to fetch greater value out of it.

CASe StUDY | mphasis

MAkINg SENSE Of bIg DATA

Big Data driven solutions are in the pilot stage and in some cases, we have developed a prototype and used Proof Of Concepts for extending big data into data visualisation space. Web crawlers are also used as web analytics/text analytics tools to aid in unstructured data analytics in retrieving context specific information from social media. The web scraping technique is used to extract data from web logs, Clickstream and other sources in analysing customer sentiments and behaviour patterns. In short, wherever large volumes are processed in streams it requires a differentiated approach to come up with a big data driven solution.

“Big data is bundled with CRM, mobility, Enterprise

App and cloud”balasubramaniam vedagiri

VP & Head - enterprise Technology solutionsMphasis, Next100 winner

out of big dataOuT Of bIg DATA

MAKING ABIG DEALMAkINg AbIg DEAl

2 0 B itnext | m a r c H 2 0 1 3

measure 4 ‘v’sIn an era of information explosion, over a billion bytes of data is generated daily--and this number continues to increase with each passing day. While big data has existed in different contours for quite a while, the dimensions of data have undergone a drastic change in recent times, thus making the entire process daunting.

The volume of data is increasing every day and measured in Kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte, petabyte, Exabyte, zettabyte and yottabyte (10 to the power of 24 bytes). With the advent of smarter devices like RFID and Smart meters, there is increase in the speed, number and frequency of transactions.

Velocity is measured at xTB/second or yyy microseconds as patterns are detected from a few thousand transactions occurring per second.

Information Convergence is the need of the hour since there exists a Variety of data sources. More and more types of data are being integrated and analyzed every day--both structured and unstructured. Variety measures include text, sensor data, audio, video, click streams, log files and more.

Value is the new differentiator for big data. With new data integrated into the ecosystem for analysis, the Value of data has really grown to be a critical element as it directly impacts the insights, benefits and business processes within organisations.

setting Right strategies The trend towards big data is growing so rapidly that we cannot afford to dismiss it as hype. However, the need is to understand why traditional business intelligence/data warehousing cannot solve a given problem, as big data is not necessarily the only answer. Develop a minimal set of big data governance directives upfront. Big data governance is a chicken-and-egg problem--you can’t govern or secure what you haven’t explored. However, exploring vast datasets without governance and security introduces risk, and firms must address this. When launching big data initiatives, avoid getting too complicated too fast, and be prepared to scale once a solution catches on: keeping big data as small as is reasonable, reducing scope to the simplest, most valuable objectives.

gather business requirements

before gathering data and define a clear

objective

evaluate data requirements. this

process usually requires inputs from all

business stakeholders; analyse and

ascertain what data is crucial and what is

not, for any given use-case

big data is never an it driven

project; identify a business sponsor for the

project

big data is required to solve

business problems

allow data scientists ‘room to

breathe’ to construct their data experi-

ments and prototypes using their

preferred languages and programming

mobility to enable quicker data compiling

methods

it teams need to take a holistic

approach to big data pondering over how

to evolve their core it infrastructure to

facilitate large big data projects

For instance, discussions with it

heads on how to approach delivery of a big

data reservoir would be beneficial.

“Allow data scientists ‘room

to breathe’ to construct their data

experiments and prototype”

deepinder singh dhingra Head of Product & strategy,

Mu sigma

environments. then, after successfully

executing such Pocs, these can be

operationalised in production using

altogether more professional it methods,

modifying and optimising as required

avoid data duplications as much as

possible; when it comes to big data, every

redundant duplication incurs an incremen-

tal cost

sandboxes for experimenting must

not be frowned upon because while

digging for useful/actionable insights in

big data, we often don’t know a-priori

what it is that we are looking for until we

find it; allow for experiments without a

clear sense of direction

it should be ready with data sets

and recommended solutions once

business groups come up with their needs

it should make big data a

self-sustainable model where additional

investment is not required to generate big

data

it managers need to build special

capabilities collaborating with enterprise

critical Best practices that it managers need to Bear in mind in

creating a prototype

Big Mandatefor Big databIg MANDATEfOR bIg DATA

cover story | The big daTa journey

m a r c H 2 0 1 3 | itnext2 0 C itnext | m a r c H 2 0 1 3

big data, big dealsBig data is now being bundled with other technology domains like mobility, Customer Relationship Management, Cloud, Enterprise Applications, etc. Thus, any combination of one or more of these to create data sets drives the deal size to be larger than a big data requirement alone.

Recently, we received an inquiry to provide some of the outcome from big data solutions to be made available on the mobile platform. With the Data Visualization layer on top of the Analytics engine, customers show more and more interest to have m-enabled versions. In similar vein, implementation criteria for large data sets interaction using Cloud (with the help of products like Cloudera) are also gaining a lot of traction.

sync with vendorsThe logical sync among IT managers/developers and big data vendors is definitely in a phase which cannot be termed as ‘common ground’. With big data analytic discovery vendors like Datameer and Hadapt still in the process of being invented and have competing goals among them, IT managers are not sure when that would evolve. While Hadoop developers are trying to bring the big data platform to a broader user base, IT leaders are exploring options as they are unsure about how to proceed. Skepticism abounds based on past data warehousing projects that never provided the promised business outcome.

Key benefitsWe can derive benefits from improved performance with predictive analytics, if the mechanism to source data from multiple locations and channels are properly planned by any organisation planning to launch big data initiatives. The infrastructure and IT architecture need to be upgraded for easy merging of data. Models built with an equal balance of complexity and ease of use would succeed. Finally, the processes and tools need to be simple and updated so as to enable proper use by the entire organisation. It is also very beneficial if the learnings and findings are amplified across the organisation for future rollouts.

Some issues that restrict the full potential of big data need to be addressed. Policies related to privacy, security, intellectual property, and even liability would need to be addressed in a big data world. Once reliability, manageability and performance improve, companies will increasingly need to integrate information from multiple data sources, often from third parties. Enabling access to data is critical for success.

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2 1m a r c H 2 0 1 3 | itnext

“On the systems design side, a 360-degree view of key

entities of your business, like a customer or a loan account in financial services, would be the basic considerations which would help in defining products

appropriately and finding the risk profile of a customer”

subhamoy chakrabortiGM-IT, Magma Fincorp Limited, Next100 winner

be a differentiating factor for service providers who have an urban/semi-urban client base with expendable incomes. On the systems design side, a 360-degree view of key entities of your business, like a customer or a loan account in financial services, would be the basic considerations.

This would help in defining products appropriately, and finding the risk profile of a customer from different knowledge bases. Further, most importantly, it requires a complete solution instead of half-hearted effort to tackle big data.

The attention has been on the analysis process once we capture the data. Considering the diverse data sources including unstructured data and its volume, network and infrastructure plans also need to be designed in detail.

CASe StUDY | magma

MAkINg SENSE Of bIg DATA

It’s a universal truth that data is getting bigger and more complex with every passing day. Financial Institutions (FI) have been handling huge data since long, and utilising their customer data to make decisions on customer profiling and take many more important strategic decisions, even if not termed big data.

New 4 vs (volume, velocity, variety etc) Volume, Variety and Velocity have been considered the three parameters of big data for some time. Apart from these, there are many other keywords which are contenders for the 4th V. However, “Value” largely remains the winner amongst them and it surely needs to be considered as the 4th V.

Reduction in complexityLet’s look at the scenario in financial institutions. Prospects traditionally are used to walking in to banks or financial institutions to seek loans. So far, it has been assumed that the borrower would explicitly state his/her need, based on which the decision to grant the loan or not is taken. Once the customer reaches out to the FI, the institution would initiate the next steps of collecting the KYC (Know Your Customer) documents. Based on the customer’s previous track records, institutions take a call as to whether to approve the required loan. Once the loan is disbursed, the recovery team would make timely calls or send field executives to collect the necessary EMIs for the pre-defined period till the loan is closed.

However, with the change, the process has become simpler as the number of channels has increased. The customer can access the institution through its online portal or through its Facebook page, raise a request through the toll-free helpline for a loan, or even send out a Direct Message at Twitter. A customer may not be able to convey his/her needs explicitly in terms of loan amount, rate, tenure etc. To enable the predictive behaviour about the customer, to know him/her even before he/she has approached you, it would definitely require more data, and importantly, more information out of that data. Fortunately, most FIs have not been lagging behind in opening up multiple channels. However, the challenge would be to extract useful information out of that data.

As Social and Mobile movements pick up speed among FIs, pretty soon they would find themselves submerged under a huge data pile, some of which not so useful. To make sense of the unstructured data, new strategies like big data would be necessitated as the relational database would not be able to create decisions from such a volume of data.

big data, big dealsBig Data and Cloud would provide the computing power to handle Social and Mobile data. The Social presence would soon

cover story | The big daTa journey

2 2 itnext | m a r c H 2 0 1 3

hanks to the technological evolution, Indian Banks have not only been enabled to change the mode of transactions, but also drive the transactions at an alarming speed and in dif-ferent formats. The trend applies to all banks and branches (over a lakh) including Scheduled Commercial Banks, Regional Rural Banks (RRBs) and Urban Cooperative Banks (UCBs). The new channels such as ATMs, Net Banking, Mobile Banking, Cards, IVRs and Branches, and surround systems like Treasury, DEMAT, NEFT, RTGS are leveraging the core banking services (CBS) systems.

As the volume of transactions skyrocket through multiple channels, the environment gets exposed to various technologi-cal risks which cannot be ignored; hence, IT managers’ role in mitigating the risks by applying imperative controls becomes even more crucial. They face Herculean tasks and challenges in

streamlining the process and ensuring a risk free transaction. It has become imperative that IT managers idendified the critical challenges of core banking, besides enhancing the necessary skills and expertise to tackle crisis management and deploy best practices to make effective use of core banking services.

Core (Banking) risksAmid increasing threats and security risks, IT managers need to work towards keeping the lights on and systems running, and work out an effective mitigating plan by putting in sufficient compensating controls. The key concerns that the IT manager has to confront would be:

To ensure that the systems and services uptime are kept at near 100 per cent, the integrity of the systems and data are main-tained at all costs; and last but not the least, the confidentiality of customer centric data is maintained by securing the data across the transaction life cycle.

Understand the nuances of the Core Banking system to be able to launch new products successfully. The challenges arising out of some changes in the interest rates would also call for a shuffle in the testing wherein the system date in the test bed has to be taken forward at least by one quarter, to validate the accu-racy of the system in computation of monthly interest accruals and the interest compounding.

To manage the project team, provide quality assurance and manage stakeholder expectations amid tight deadlines. He should have a clear understanding of all the areas of Project Management namely, Project Integration Management,

“iT managers play a vital role in mitigating the core banking risks by applying imperative controls which is very crucial and this calls for streamlining the process and ensuring a risk free transaction”Sivakumar Krishnan, CISA Head – IT and OperationsBhartiya Samruddhi Finance Limited, BASIX Group Company

2 4 iTnexT | m a r c H 2 0 1 3

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IT managers must apply the right levels of controls in IT systems and processes to mitigate risks associated with the core-banking environment

by SivaKumar KriShnan

Shifts to mitigate Core Banking Risks

rightgear

Apply

Scope Management, Time Management, Cost

Management etc.,To ensure that the CBS and other sys-

tems within the bank’s perimeter are protected by strong firewalls to prevent any unauthorised access and to keep hackers at bay. He is also responsible for monitoring the honey pot, kept as a surveillance and early-warning tool to check any attempts/patterns of unauthorised use by hackers.

To ensure that he has put policies and controls for access on BYOD devices when employees bring their own devices like tabs, mobiles and try to access the bank systems on wi-fi, etc..

To ensure capacity planning. The increasing volume of trans-actions on the CBS generates a huge amount of data and puts a

great deal of pressure on its storage and retrieval. The IT man-ager is responsible for capacity planning with enough storage devices to take care of the exponential growth of data.

To ensure that proper daily data backups are taken for CBS and the backup media is transported off-site in a secured man-ner. If the bank has implemented mirroring of the production data at the DR/backup site, then he has to ensure that it hap-pens normally. He has to periodically (at least once a year) con-duct mock BCP ( Business Continuity Planning) testing from the DR Site to check preparedness, in case of a DR-like situa-tion. He has to mobilise the Operations and business teams for conducting this exercise fruitfully. The Recovery Point Objec-tive (RPO) and the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) are tested against the agreed objectives with the stakeholders, analysed

2 5m a r c H 2 0 1 3 | iTnexT

CORe BANkING IT RISkS | insight

and measures taken to correct any anomalies in the processes. He is responsible for ensuring that the fine-tuning of the database happens periodically, the historical data is moved to another location/ archived for better system performance.

To make sure that all changes (fixes/patches) moving into CBS production systems are approved by the Change Management committee; the down time, if any, is communicated well in advance to stake-holders and custom-ers, if necessary; . proper rollback pro-cesses are in place in the event that the change has to be rolled back. Even emergency changes already applied have to be passed through the commit-tee subsequently and ratified.

To assist in Post Implementation Review (PIR). Once a major CBS proj-ect is rolled out into production, he is responsible for assisting in the PIR to gauge whether the benefits derived by the organisation are as per the quantified benefits initially projected by the business.

righT ConTrols for risksDeploying certain best practices would help IT managers to overcome the challenges associated with core banking services. These are the key imperatives that they can use to miti-gate risks and the controls they need to put in place:

Embrace COBIT and ITIL frame-works for best practices

Compliance to SOX, if any Ensure that the Service Delivery team/ outsourced vendors are able to deliver as per defined SLAs Develop a team for IS security management, form a committee for IT strategy Implement Sigma to ensure Quality ManagementPerformance Optimisation & Sourcing Practices IT Balanced Scorecards and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) End User training of all new systems moved into production environment Segregation of Duties for reducing or eliminating business risks through the introduction of compensating controls. For example, a voucher in-putter cannot authorise a high value transaction. A separate authoriser role should be created Introduce stringent physical access controls, software access controlsPeriodic change of passwords

Disable all USB, CD drive to prevent data leakage and intro-duction of any infections/ worms into the system Set policies on Usage of IT Assets and BYODSet policies on email usage Have set policies on OS Patch management, Endpoint secu-rity updates

Be an experTIt is a pre-requisite for IT managers to possess good banking domain knowledge and be conversant with the features available on the CBS. He should have knowledge of IT audits with Risk assessment techniques to determine whether the information systems are properly protected and controlled and provide value to the organisation. Likewise, an IT manag-er should also have an understanding of the organisation and its environ-ment, and of factors which can affect the entity, both external and internal. Certain insights into how each of the systems/ applications within the ecosystem talk and exchange information with CBS is necessary. Familiarization with when and how the off-line files/data exchanges oc-cur, their frequencies and duration; as also how the off-line transaction takes place in the CBS

Another very critical aspect is to be aware of resource management

- management of people, resources, vendor, hardware and com-pliance. He also needs to have adequate knowledge of Cloud offer-ings and create opportunities to leverage the benefits of Cloud by moving non-critical data from CBS to Cloud, thus freeing system resources and thereby ensuring enhanced performance.

adopT righT aTTriBuTesWhile it is mandatory to have been certified in the core security space, IT managers should carry the mandate of possessing good interpersonal skills to deal with team members and also peers for ensuring proper closure of tasks. Sometimes, it will be necessary to align the team and re-shuffle members to different projects within the CBS as per the management’s priority needs. With the handful of resources at his disposal, he has to balance day-to-day functions plus additional work loads of taking up project execu-tion. With his domain knowledge, he is also looked upon at times to bring in operational process efficiencies/improvements and automation in processes.

He also has to handle challenges of unsched-

uled power-cuts by taking steps to ensure

uninterrupted power supply and uptime

He must handle dR like situations and timely

escalations to stakeholders.

He must also ensure timely management of all

issues relating to in Firewalls, IdS/ IPS etc.

errors associated to production, frauds,

hardware or program failure and malicious

attack or damage by hackers, vendors and third

party mishandling data could result in a major

crisis. Frauds happening in the system can make

a bank defunct or can cause loss of goodwill. In

the event that a fraud is detected, the IT

manager has to take strong measures to contain

the fraud, by putting in adequate controls from

both the system perspective and process

perspective. He will be responsible for providing

all relevant information to the internal audit

team for further investigation.

The IT manager sometimes also has to control

crises arising due to outsourcing of IT support

functions or IT systems. It may be due to vendor

failure, non-compliance with legal and regulatory

requirements, contract terms not being met,

disgruntled employees leaking customer data.

Handling Crisis in Core Banking

2 6 iTnexT | m a r c H 2 0 1 3

Easy to install

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Simple: We are committed to making our solutions the easiest to install, configure and integrate into either existing IT infrastructures or new build-outs. We ship our products as ‘ready to install’ as possible and with this you can focus on more pressing issues such as network threats. You can now turn to our one-vendor solution backed by a trusted brand.

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IT_Next_0301_48451y_IN.indd 1 2/27/2013 3:11:34 PM

2 8 itnext | m a r c H 2 0 1 3

event RepoRt | simplifying dc management

Fabric architectures boost performance, simplify management and deployment

Many organizations have expanded at a rapid pace over the last few years. They have been adding new employees, office locations, products and services. To

keep pace with organisational expansion, investments in IT infrastructure have also increased—from servers and storage, to network equipment and applications. However, managing this complex infrastructure, and

Unclogging the Data Center

a rapt audience pays close attention to the speaker as he describes the emerging challenges that will confront the it infrastructure manager.

making sure that the various components are performing reliably and optimally takes considerable time and effort.

The biggest challenge confronting IT leaders is the need to ensure that the infrastructure can cope with the demands of tomorrow—while remaining agile and flexible to meet business needs.

So, how to prepare for the next evolution of the data center architecture—and keep pace with the growing

2 9m a r c H 2 0 1 3 | itnext

simplifying dc management | event RepoRt

SAARC for Brocade, clarified some misconceptions about the proprietary nature of Ethernet fabrics, and emphasised how the technology is based on industry standards, is backward compatible with existing network devices, and will be inter-operable with products from multiple vendors..

need to deliver more computing power, greater storage capacity and higher network performance?

To discuss issues like these, IT Next and Brocade jointly organized a roundtable event in Bangalore themed “Breaking Boundaries: Boosting Data Center Performance with Fabric Architectures.”

Orcun Tezel, Director for Sales Engineering at Brocade outlined the technology trends that are putting pressure on the existing data center infrastructure, and the technical challenges involved in boosting performance using conventional network components.

He pointed to the fact that while trends like virtualisation and cloud are improving compute and storage utilization, they are also making it necessary to have high speed switching architectures in the data center to support throughput and ensure performance. He explained how traditional tree topologies used in data centers to connect switches induces limitations, and how Ethernet fabrics could deliver higher levels of performance, utilization, availability, and simplicity.

In fact, he demonstrated how an Ethernet fabric makes perfect sense when you deploy server virtualization or storage networking using an Ethernet transport, since it eliminates the management of multiple switching layers, and enables scaling of network bandwidth without manual reconfiguration of switch ports and network policies.

Following the presentation, there was an active discussion between Tezel and the other participants about the use, deployment and management of Ethernet fabric devices.

Edgar Dias, Regional Director Sales- India &

orcun tezel, director for sales engineering at brocade and edgar dias, regional director sales- india & saarc answer questions from the round table participants about the benefits of ethernet fabrics

Jethin chandran, aVp for infrastructure management serVices at hexaware technologies, describes the growing performance and management problems, and the need for improVed net work technologies in the data center.

decision-makers and senior professionals paying all attention to understand and grab the nuances of building effectiVe net works and addressing the challenges

orcun tezel, director for sales engineering at brocade congratulating the participant who won a ipad in a lucky draw during the eVent

3 0 itnext | m a r c H 2 0 1 3

Dohsung Yum | interview

3 1m a r c H 2 0 1 3 | itnext

Collaborative approaCh to Smart it

as the Cio of such a large entity, which has

gone through several mergers and acquisitions, what are the inherent challenges such situations throw up? how can the it team address these?Every new acquisition throws up a huge challenge to the IT team in its initial days.

Th e At t ach m at e G r o up s mergers have been very different and unique. Each company has its own scope of operations and complexity with regard to the IT framework. The four entities are a) Novell - offers solutions in the collaboration, data management and end-point management space with its unique set-upb) SUSE – the Linux Platform for both enterprise server and desktop c) NetIQ – includes the entire group’s offering in terms of Secu-

As the CIO of a large merged entity, Dohsung Yum, CIO, The Attachmate Group, had the tough task of ensuring a smooth IT integration of four businesses. As a veteran of the IT industry, Yum advises senior IT executives on how to plan IT strategy and work out an effective collaborative approach and a smart project plan in a merger scenario

rity & Compliance, Identity & Access, Disaster Recovery etc, and has its critical IT infrastruc-ture in place and d) Attachmate – includes offerings in terminal emulation, legacy mod-ernisation, managed file transfer and enterprise fraud management.

In driving the integration, the role of IT is not just complex, but also an expensive proposition. In my opinion, it is not about tech-nology alone, it is about the team’s adaptation to the business and cul-ture of the enterprise.

It is critical to understand what the business needs are and get the required coherence in the enterprise to drive smoother integration of IT processes and systems. In any large merger and acquisi-tion, IT is put to a litmus test as the situation is chaotic, with sev-eral unknown factors and out-

comes. The primary reason is that most IT teams are caught up with short term gains and support and focused on core activities. What’s missing is a broad vision. What most IT managers forget is to reach out to the business part-ners and manage relationships, to make their task easier.

I found that the only way to address challenges was to encourage my team to work closely with the business groups individually, wherever IT could be of use, whether finance, sales and marketing, HR or operations and understand the nuances.

After the assessment, I brought in the required changes in the support system, technological deployment and processes. The biggest initiative that helped was a two way communication process between employees and IT, which helped us win half the battle.

interview | Dohsung Yum

3 2 itnext | m a r c H 2 0 1 3

“The most pertinent question that the IT team faced was how to device a common IT strategy for the merger activity to streamline operations and make it agile”

how does an it team decide on investment priorities during the integration process in any acquisition period?In any merger scenario, 100 per cent of the investment made is tied to the success of the company from a global perspective. In general, IT also gets a boost in terms of investment and the team plays a vital role in working out the investment modalities. Some of the key areas the IT team should focus on are:

Taking into account all the neces-sary support activities for the busi-ness groups

Fixing all the support and infra-structure tools necessary and work-ing out training modules

Getting a quick insight into the various barriers and work out ways to phase out

Formalising and bringing in certain standardisation within the enterprise that can support hierarchy

Collaboration among teams, which will help in working out bet-ter investment procedures

how do you think collaboration helps in effective integration of processes and systems and standards?In the case of any large integration, such as ours, bringing in certain standardisation is a Herculean task. There are a few aspects that IT heads need to remember when it comes to evolving standards. They would include:

It is not just IT infrastructure that calls for an effective integration strategy, it’s also about people.

There are several IT heads with varied backgrounds

The most pertinent question that my team faced was how to device a common IT strategy for all of the merger activity that can streamline the IT operations and framework and make it agile

The question was about how save cost using core technologies while

empowering the team and employ-ees to make decisions in real time

It was critical to make the sys-tems more flexible and scalable for a clear interface with the existing IT platforms

We also worked towards having a very scalable architecture and replaced many applications over the legacy ones.

While some applications were integrated with the legacy ones, some were left unchanged, as they were very customer focused and operated as a standalone. For instance, the running CRM system Siebel, was integrated with the common system to enable sales teams to leverage this, as we decided not to have four different CRMs. Novell was running SAP CRM which continued from an ERP stand

point; we decided to migrate to SAP. In the process, several costs had to be written off, despite the fact that a huge investment had been made in them. It was essential to drive down the cost of operations and capex as we moved ahead, as supporting the old applications was expensive.

What kind of project implementation strategy should one look for in such a scenario?

Dohsung Yum | interview

3 3m a r c H 2 0 1 3 | itnext

The most important aspect is to make sure to design a well thought out plan. A few stringent plans would help the IT heads in having an edge. some of the best foot for-ward in such a scenario would be:

It is important to have a proj-ect implementation plan which helps in sustaining and creating sufficient agility in the architec-ture to cater to the future expan-sion needs

Having the right processes to imbibe the culture of every BU is mandatory - an aspect of project management

It is critical to have stakeholders from the business group in the proj-ect, which can help devise a better project plan

IT teams need to ask the stake-holders more questions if they have

to build a smart project. It also depends upon the

technologies that both the business group and IT is betting on to drive better value and RoI. It is essential to follow these principles before embarking on a huge project plan:

Align a basket of requests from the stakeholders

Formalise the process of seek-ing inputs from the stakeholders

Work out ways to analyse the responses\ information sought from the stakeholders

Not to hesitate to ask questions about the costs, technologies, need and outcome of the project

Call for a high-level meeting with the top management

Work out cost benefit analysis to discuss how much IT’s support system would cost to meet the requirement

as a contributing member of the leadership team, what according to you are the leadership skills necessary for budding Cios?While IT managers need leader-ship skills if they need to scale up in the career, a mergers and acqui-sition scenario makes it manda-tory to develop these skills at a faster pace. The reason is that IT managers need to be capable of addressing global challenges and drive global operations and, in some cases, handle global teams, which is quite a big task. They should develop the habit of addressing the team concerns and handle crisis management at vari-ous junctures and not just IT alone. Moving out of the core job of keep-ing the lights on, or keeping up the uptime, they ought to get into stra-tegic mode and think at a macro level to run a global enterprise.To be a leader and build a vision of growth, IT managers should:

Imbibe different cultures of a multi-national company

Evolve an effective commun-cation tool and policy with the

staff of all BusUnderstand competitive environ-

ment of the organisation Pick up market intelligence of the

best practicesLearn to process new ideas and

be prepared to have open dialogues with the business teams

Embrace vulnerabilities in ITDevelop a collaborative frame-

work to support all the communities spread across globally

Start aligning with partners to leverage infrastructure support to make the task easy

What are the technologies that your group would be focusing on in this year?We would be laying thrust on cloud and social media platforms. For instance, one of our BUs launched CloudAccess soluiton, which is a self-contained virtual appliance that enables the IT team to extend a user’s single sign-on experience to SaaS or other cloud applications while keeping the access secure. It allows IT team to ensure that only appropriate users access information is protected while meeting compliance demands.

What are the customer concerns with regard to cloud and how can it be resolved?

Cloud-based applications and services contracted by business users usually circumvent existing IT access controls, making it diffi-cult to ensure and certify that ac-cess is limited to approriate users.

Unlike other cloud single sign-on products, Cloud Access in-cludes an advanced provisioning engine that will automatically cre-ate, manage and disable accounts on supported applications. As us-ers onboard, change roles, require additional access or depart the business, Cloud Access ensures that IT can secure and manage access to cloud based applica-tions to prevent unauthorised ac-cess to services.

Find other inter-views online on

the website www.itnext.

in/resources/interviews

3 5m a r c H 2 0 1 3 | itnext

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Before initiating a BI project, it is crucial to understand that a well-implemented BI project never results in failure; and this is an

established fact. It is just that RoIs are difficult to establish during the inception of the project. However, whatever the hiccups may be, the key imperative for IT managers is to initiate moves which are thoughtfully planned and suit enterprise needs. It revolves around right sizing of the solutions, having a structured vendor management policy in place to evaluate appropriate vendors, articulating the Service Level Agreements (SLA) unambiguously by using experts, and clearly spelling out the legal terms in the document, among others.

Size it RightMost IT managers always face the chal-lenge of choosing the right tools and solutions which can meet their specific requirement. Many times, business expansion and growth does put them in a situation where the assessment becomes difficult, as a CIO cannot approve a strat-egy deploying all solutions available.

IT managers could be overwhelmed by the idea of choosing a BI solution. The key is to choose a solution that can not only address the current need but also has the

TECh STRATEgy

Fitting StepS to Bi

IT managers have to be cautious while choosing the BI implementation vendor

and bet on solutions that can fit the needs

15minutem a n a g e R

Tech Strategy: Fitting Steps to BI ThIS pAgE

Tips & Tricks: Speed Up Browsing pAgE 36

Product Review-Dell Latitude 10 pAgE 38

Form IV-IT Next publication details pAgE 40

TRAININgEdUCATIONwORkpLACE

COmpENSATIONwORkfORCE TRENdS

SkILLS dEvELOpmENTpERSONAL dEvELOpmENT

incReaSe youR

bRowSing SpeedpAgE 36

By Sunil S Ranka

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with built-in support to connect and access Google+, Facebook, YouTube, Gmail, Flickr, GitHub, Vimeo and Google Drive account all through its console.

Install and access the Nexos app through a new tab.

Its home screen shows management options like apps and Extensions, Bookmarks, Images, Videos, etc.

click on the Settings gear wheel on the top-right.

You will now see the connections view of Nexos, handling your Facebook, Flickr, Gmail, Google+, etc., connections.With Nexos installed in your chrome browser, you can pick and choose which apps and extensions you want to keep active or disable. and also its connections menu feature lets you easily access data from your various social network and email accounts in one convenient place. Give this a try and see if it adds to your browsing experience.

Use secure, automatic passwords - If your browser offers a master password option, use it.

Speed up browSingTIpS & TRICkS

scalability to adapt to changing needs and future business expansion and upgrades. Depending on the maturity of the organisation, pre-packaged Business Intelligence solutions give a good head start in most cases. In a packaged model, customisation is made possible to meet business expectations and increase efficiency. Experience shows that using a pre-packaged solution along with customisation requires business users to spend much time in applying the BI to churn out the required information and bring out customised reports.

don’t go by the Low Hanging FruitThe first pre-requisite for selecting an appropriate BI solution or a vendor is to map the enterprise’s need. The selection would need IT heads to invite each ven-dor for an onsite presentation to explain their capability and features. After map-ping current needs and tool/solution, an RFP should be sent out for selected ven-dors. A clear RFP with intricate details would win half the battle. A precise RFP must have the following elements:

Introduction and Overview of the organisation

Clear objective of RFPDescription of desired solutionsKeys dates (Date of proposal presenta-

tion, Pre-Proposal conference for clari-fication etc.)

Solution/Vendor Evaluation criteriaProposal Delivery Instructions and

key contactsProposal Package Checklist Pre-requisites for submitting the pro-

posals Based on the response, vendors should

be shortlisted to the semi-finalist level; they should be given a detailed agenda with proven cases to demonstrate tool/solution capability, spanning a few days in an onsite meeting. During the meetings, IT heads, key decision makers, business users, technical and functional architects should be involved. The agenda should be drafted clearly, allowing each key individual to interact with the vendor teams. In most cases, a good vendor is key to the success associated with a good vendor management policy.

App mAnAgementJust what do you do when you have too many apps and extensions installed on your chrome browser? You install another extension called Nexos (from the webstore) to make sense of all the other plugins installed and available on your Pc.Nexos is an offline app which helps you organize everything from your bookmarks to your extensions and apps. Not only this, it also comes

15-MINUTE MANAGER

3 7m a r c H 2 0 1 3 | itnext

best Foot Forward by the bi VendorAnalysts such as Gartner, too, vouch that the CIO’s primary challenge is selecting an appropriate vendor who has the capability to address the pain points. Gartner’s CIO survey indicated, “Most of the CIOs believe their competitors make better use of information,” and strength-ening the ‘information value chain’ is their number one challenge, and Busi-ness Intelligence tops priority.

The presentation or skill of the people in the room should not mesmerise the IT teams; rather, they should provide greater insights into resources, processes, methodologies and, most important, implementation strategies.

Templates of past work could establish vendors’ work details and knowledge. At times, vendors do showcase similar case studies, but organisations should pay attention to the size of the client presented, scope of work and, most importantly, the vendor’s role.

There have been cases where vendors have done just a staff augment in a similar industry, but ptroject a glorified industry-use case, just to get an edge. Reference calls with the customer mentioned in the case is important to understand the detail of the work actually done. IT heads should question themselves or visit vendor websites to eliminate the most obvious misfits.

A good BI implementation vendor should bring in the following:

A comprehensive experience in integrat-ing silo technology components into a suc-cessful and usable BI platform

A comprehensive understanding of Busi-ness Intelligence solutions

Domain and functional expertise in the desired BI solution

Implementation processes, approaches, methodologies and accelerators

Programme governance frameworkProject implementation methodologiesTest and Quality Assurance processes Change management processes

Communication plan details for execu-tive briefing on a weekly, monthly and daily basis

do not Succumb to arm-twistingVendors tend to put in a lot of smaller clauses to cover any future liabilities, but enterprises should review the contract in detail and insist on periodic renewal rather than a long-term contract to avoid contract negotiation mistakes.

Putting in place a vendor risk management policy is mandatory. There are no set rules or guidelines for any contract terms.

Always have direct communication and channels open with all the key people involved. Acommon failure of vendor relationship is lack of communication and high expectations.

Once the relationship is in place, don’t assume everything will go according to plan and be executed exactly as specified in the contract.

“There have been cases where vendors have done just a staff augment in a similar industry, but project a glorified industry use case, to just have an edge”— Sunil S Ranka, BI professional

“Reference calls with the customer mentioned in the case is important to understand the detail of the work actually done in Bi” — Sunil S Ranka, BI professional

bi & AnAlySticS to be fourth lArgeSt ApplicAtion Sw Segment* Business Intelligence (BI) software

revenue will reach $13.8 billion by 2013

* BI to grow by 7 per cent

* BI and analytics have grown to become

the fourth largest application software

segment as end users continue to prioritise

BI and information-centric projects and

spending to improve decision making and

analysis

* cIO appetite for BI is complemented by

more-tactical buying in business units for

departmental and workgroup analysis as

well as for personal BI

* The flip side is that in the near term,

growth will be hampered by sluggish macro

indicators, as well as by slowing sales cycles

of multimillion-dollar end-to-end BI deals.

15-MINUTE MANAGER

3 8 itnext | m a r c H 2 0 1 3

probably the first Windows 8 Pro tablet that you shall see in the Indian market,

Latitude 10 is aimed at the corporate users who want to experience the best of both

worlds - modern UI for media consumption and the Desktop UI for work.

The Latitude 10 comes in an all-black body with a glossy front-finish and a matte-

finish on the rear side. a 2.5 cm thick bezel surrounds the actual 10.1-inch display.

There is a single Windows logo button sitting at the bottom-centre of the bezel and a

decent 2.0 mP front-facing camera at the top. The corning glass used for the display

is scratch-resistant.

Latitude 10 weighs around 658 grams, almost matching the iPad 4th gen in terms

of weight (652 grams for the Wi-Fi version and 662 grams for the Wi-Fi+cellular ver-

sion). an 8.0mP camera is housed at the top edge and it also comes with a flash unit

beside it. The 2-cell battery on its rear side is swappable thanks to a notch just below

it. The speaker section of the Dell Latitude 10 is located on the left and right hand

bottom edges on the rear side.

The Latitude 10 houses an Intel atom Z2760 dual-core processor clocked at 1.8GHz

and has 2 GB of ram. The unit we got had an SSD of 64GB capacity, but this can be

upgraded to upto 256 GB. The USB port on the Latitude 10 allows you to connect

your keyboard or mouse and use it as a regular laptop/desktop. It also comes with

a stylus for those planning to use the touch interface on the desktop mode. The pen

has a capacitive tip and a button on its side for emulating right click.

The HDmI out port is a boon for corporate users who have to give presentations.

The Latitude 10 can be connected to any HDTV which takes in an HDmI port and you

can duplicate your tablet’s screen onto a bigger display.

The battery life on the Latitude 10 is quite impressive. While performing our video-

on-loop stress test we noticed that the tablet lasted for a good 5 hours. On normal

usage, you can easily extract over 8 hours from the Latitude 10. This is again a plus

point for corporate users on the move.With a price tag of rs. 40,000, Dell Latitude 10

is targeted at business users on the move. It makes perfect sense for them. But the

tablet is also great for someone who wants a device for media consumption as well

as to do work. Source: Thinkdigit.com

dell lAtitude 10 - for thoSe on the move

pROdUCT REvIEwThe vendor’s performance must be

monitored constantly in the beginning. This should include requirements that are most critical to your business. The time, money and energy used to nur-ture a positive vendor relationship cannot be measured directly against the compa-ny’s bottom line. The vendor management process begins by selecting the right vendor for the right need. Squeezing a vendor on the price point would mean embarking on a journey where the vendor either provides low skilled talent or leaves the project halfway to accept a new project for a better deal.In either case, the enterprise would lose out. A periodic review of plans and deliverables with assured quality would always save the embarrassment of a failed relationship. At any point, organisations should not allow vendors to take the driving seat. There should be proper governance and periodic checks to validate the vendor’s work, responsibility and quality of delivery. Usually, organisations put in all efforts in selecting the vendor, but minimal or no effort in maintaining the relationship. It is incorrect to assume it’s only a vendors’ responsibility to keep the organisation happy; for a successful collaboration, it must be two-way. More importantly, it’s not just about the SLA and business delivery: organisations must look at the real value vendors bring.

Depending upon the size of outsourcing, having a Vendor Management Office (VMO) would be a good idea.

If not prepared for a full-scale VMO, you can establish an IT governance or standards body of employees from across the company to oversee purchasing policies and assess new vendor technologies and other offerings.

nuts & bolts of an SLaSLAs are a contractual agreement between the Vendor and Client Com-pany detailing the level of services which would be provided.

For instance, if bugs are not responded to within four hours of opening, there could be an escalation channel; if it continues to remain open with no activation even after 24 hours, a vendor company could be monetarily penalised. I

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1. Place of publication Nine Dot Nine Mediaworx Pvt. Ltd., A-262, Defence Colony, New Delhi-110024

2. Periodicity of its publication Monthly

3. Printer’s name Vikas Gupta

Nationality Indian

(a) Whether a citizen of India? Yes

(b) If a foreigner, the country of origin N.A.

Address C-5/10, Safdarjung Development Area,

New Delhi-110024

4. Publisher’s name Vikas Gupta

Nationality Indian

(a) Whether a citizen of India? Yes

(b) If a foreigner, the country of origin N .A.

Address A-262, Defence Colony, New Delhi-110024

5. Editor’s name Geetha Nandikotkur

Nationality Indian

(a) Whether a citizen of India? Yes

(b) If a foreigner, the country of origin N.A.

Address A-262, Defence Colony, New Delhi-110024

6. Names and addresses of individuals who own the newspaper and partners or shareholders holding more than one per cent of the total capital

Pramath Raj Sinha

N-154 Panchsheel Park, New Delhi 110017.

Vikas Gupta

C-5/10 Safdarjung Development Area,

New Delhi 110016

Asheesh Kumar Gupta

103, Tower II, The Palms, South City-1,

Gurgaon 122001

Anuradha Das Mathur

C-144, Sarvodaya Enclave, New Delhi 110017

Kanak Ranjan Ghosh

BH-44, Sector II, Salt Lake City, Kolkata 700091

Helion Venture Partners India II, LLC

Les Cascades Building, Edith Cavell Street, Port Louis, Mauritius

TVS Shriram Growth Fund I

JE JayaLakshmi Estate # 29, Haddows Road, Nungambakkam, Chennai 600006

And Others

Form iVStatement of ownership and other particulars about the

publication, IT NEXT as per rule 8

I, Vikas Gupta hereby declare that the particulars given above are true to the best of my knowledge and belief. Sd/-Dated : 1st march, 2011 (Signature of Publisher)

Writing an SLA could be a daunting task; most vendors have their own SLA templates, but the IT leaders should form a council and review all the details.

At times, companies want an unrealistic and non-required SLA, causing higher costs and maintenance.

For example, at one of the high tech network clients, the SLA council wanted the highest level of SLA with less than 8 hours of bug resolution time with each step documented with the root cause analysis (RCA) details.

Adding such a demanding SLA to a non mission-critical application not only cost the client more, but maintaining the required documentation was overkill.

So, there should not be a generic SLA for an entire organization; SLAs should be drafted carefully based on the need and importance of application.

Also, all the required performance parameters with detailed individual party responsibilities should be documented and agreed upon.

A typical SLA would include:* A statement on the expected

duration of the agreement* A description of the applications

and services covered by the agreement* Procedures for monitoring service

levels* A schedule for remediation of

outages and associated penalties, and* Problem-resolution procedures* Along with defining performance

parameters, a set of metrics needs to define and measure the quality of vendor’s work.

With Business Intelligence applications, quality measures could include data quality, rate of data load success, rate of defect resolution, and customer satisfaction, among others.

What is important?IT heads or IT managers do face

challenges while dealing with BI vendors. But making a detailed attempt in

choosing a BI solution or vendor, based on that which best suits the business requirement with a detailed vendor management process and methodology would build a good relationship between organisations and vendors, leading to long-term success.

ci sco c to f cu s tom s e r i e s

37 07 february 2013 cto forumThe Chief

TeChnologyoffiCer forum

ci sco c to f cu s tom s e r i e s

Next Gen UCS servers for Next Gen ComputingIn a series of interactive articles, Cisco will shed more light on its Unified Computing System (UCS), thereby enabling CIOs to better manage their IT infrastructure

How has Cisco made server I/O more powerful and

much simpler?Answer: One of the key differentia-tors of Cisco UCS (Unified Comput-ing System) with Intel® Xeon® processor is the way in which high-capacity server network access has been aggregated through Cisco Virtual Interface Cards and infused with built-in high performance virtual networking capabilities. In “pre-UCS” server system architectures, one of the main design considerations was the type and quantity of physi-cal network adapters required.

Networking, combined with comput-ing sockets/cores/frequency/cache, system memory, and local disk are historically the primary resources considered in the balancing act of cost, physical space and power consump-tion, all of which are manifested in the

various permutations of server designs required to cover the myriad of workloads most efficiently. Think of these as your four server subsystem food groups. Architec-ture purists will remind us that everything outside the processors and their cache falls into the category of “I/O” but let’s not get pedantic because that will mess up my food group analogy. 

In Cisco UCS, I/O is effectively taken off the table as a design worry because every server gets its full USRDA of net-working through the VIC: helping por-tions of bandwidth, rich with Fabric Extender technology vitamins that yield hundreds of Ethernet and FC adapt-ers through one physical device.

Gone are the days of hemming and haw-ing over how many mezz card slots your blade has or how many cards you’re going to need to feed that hungry stack of VM’s on your rack server.

This simplification changes things for the

better because it takes a lot of complication out of the equation.

There is also a need for higher processing power for bringing

new choices for design optimization. What is happening on this front?Answer: Cisco has been working hard making server networking better with improved and optimized efficiency.  With the advent and advance of multi-core pro-cessing, the workhorse two socket server has become a real performance monster. In fact, for some applications the amount processing power required, relative to the other food groups I mentioned in my previ-ous answer, is outstripped by the capabili-ties of the mainstream processor family, which in today’s incarnation is Intel’s Xeon E5 2600 series.

In response to this phenomenon, Intel subdivided the Xeon lineup to include a new “EN” class of processors, the E5-2400 series, which ease back on the gas pedal of Moore’s law for designs that don’t require as much processing power in relation to local storage and memory. This creates a new class of cost & performance optimized systems for lighter workloads or for stor-age heavy systems (think big data) at the entry end of the portfolio.

Three of our new UCS M3 series systems fall in this category:  the B22, C22 and C24.  At the same time, Intel has brought four socket server options, formerly the prov-ince of the mission critical, “EX” end of the spectrum, down into the mainstream.  An example of this is our new UCS B420 blade.  So if you want four socket core count and performance but don’t necessarily need the comprehensive RAS features of an EX class system, you now have a price/performance optimized solution for that need.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY

Intel, the Intel logo, Xeon, and Xeon inside are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries

For any queries regarding UCS, please send them to yashvendra.singh@9dot9.in

4 1m a r c h 2 0 1 3 | itnext

CISCO | IT NEXT CUSTOM SERIES

4 2 itnext | m a r c H 2 0 1 3

event RepoRt |dc efficiency through cabling

Cabling systems are the key to performance, efficiency and flexibility

New technologies such as mobile computing, BYOD, virtualization, and cloud computing are putting increased strain on data center operations, demanding greater

availability, reliability, and higher speed connectivity to meet business objectives. At the same time, data center managers increasingly face mandates to reduce costs, increase efficiency, and provide additional capacity to meet business needs.

However, the performance of the data center depends on a complex inter-relationship between space utilisation, power management, cooling optimisation, and high-performance connectivity, all of which are essential to getting the maximum performance and

nikhil banka, technical manager-west, panduit explains the imporatnce of creating a unified physical infrastructure approach to boost dc performance

s Vasunandan regional sales

director-india & sw asia, panduit

elaborating the need for

innoVatiVe cabling panelist along with r giridhar, group editor, 9 .9 media, the moderator for the eVening

Wiring the Data Center

4 3m a r c H 2 0 1 3 | itnext

dc efficiency through cabling | event RepoRt

Participants in the deliberations included Kaushal Shah, Head-IT, Privi Organics; Niraj Godiwala, Deputy VP- IT Infrastructure, Capital First; Victor R Salve, Head – IT, Future Value Retail; and Shabbir Badra, Head–IT & GM, SI Group India. The panelists discussed the impact of trends like virtualisation, consolidation and cloud on data centers—and concurred that the trend was towards more compact and efficient facilities.

uptime from critical systems and applications. Often the physical elements at the foundation of your IT infrastructure determine the data center’s performance, reliability, and success. To examine these issues, IT NEXT magazine, in partnership with Panduit and Sigmabyte Computers organized and event titled “Integrated Solutions for Data Center Efficiency” for IT infrastructure managers.

S Vasunandan, Regional Sales Director for India & South West Asia for Panduit kicked off the session with an introduction to the company and its long history of delivering innovative cabling solutions. He also described the company’s extensive and tightly integrated portfolio of innovative physical infrastructure solutions, and mentioned the fact that Panduit collaborates closely with industry leaders like Cisco Systems, IBM, HP, Rockwell Automation and Johnson Controls to deliver comprehensive unified physical infrastructure-based solutions. He concluded his talk by pointing out that a robust IT infrastructure was necessary manage costs and meet sustainability goals, while reliably and cost-effectively addressing challenges across business and technology domains.

Nikhil Banka, Technical Manager–West for Panduit made a presentation on “Creating a Unified Physical Infrastructure”. He explained how trends like data center consolidation, server virtualization, and private cloud initiatives make silo-based approaches to designing, deploying, and managing the physical infrastructure a costly and time consuming process, and spoke about the need to adopt best practice methodologies that deliver robust, scalable physical infrastructures. He recommended that IT infrastructure managers look for integrated physical solutions that provide: Visibility and control for managing and automating real-time data processes Convergence of new technologies and high-speed data applications

Operational efficiency through process improvement and IT initiatives, such as cooling conservation through energy efficient data cabinets

Capacity management for greater real estate utilization Modular pods for high-density applications and reliable deployments

Drawing on more than 20 years of personal experience in the cable installation business, Ketan Kothari, Managing Director of Sigma-Byte Computers explained the myths and facts of cabling. His talk was peppered with interesting anecdotes, and provided revealing insights about the wrong practices, design flaws and poor decisions that often compromise the proper functioning of network infrastructure and lead to sub-standard network performance. The session came to a close with a panel discussion on how to make the data center ready for the future.

ketan kothari, managing director, sigma-by te computers pV t. ltd, elaborating on the my ths and facts of cabling technology and sharing some interesting anecdotes with the participants

a rapt audience comprising senior it managers paying complete attention to the panel discussion on ‘integrated solutions for data center efficiency’.

one of the participants of the eVent in a dialogue with nikhil banka of panduit to seek deeper insights into the technical aspects of cabling technology.

update

4 4 itnext | m a r c H 2 0 1 3

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

Manish sinha Senior iT MAnAger, AMTekIT managers can definitely

contribute and sustain the

winning culture if they pay

attention to some of the key

areas: Helpdesk call Track-

ing and analysis- it gives

the understanding about

the setup, service quality

offered by team members,

equipment conditions which

are being used for provid-

ing services and based

on this a manager could

streamline routine issues.

The other aspect is budget

monitoring on a monthly

basis with respect to capex

approval as generally peo-

ple prepare budget annu-

ally and but never monitor

it monthly and reconciling

it gives them a control on

the budget.

Manish shahgM-iT, induSfilAThe first and foremost thing

that IT managers need to

do is to get away from keep-

ing the lights on activities.

appropriate use of tools,

policies and processes can

ensure maximum automa-

tion of these activities. IT,

is by now, the back bone of

nearly every organisation,

and 24/7 availability, is a

necessity and a given fact.

The key focus should be on

three areas such as

a) Enhancing the user expe-

rience for both internal as

well as external customers,

b) Simplifying and increas-

ing the robustness of the

existing process flow,

c) creating additional

revenue streams for the

organisation. Be more agile

being connected with all.

V sUBRaManiaMdirecTor - iT & cioindiA & gulf AreA,oTiS elevATor coM-pAny (indiA) lTd OTIS Elevator company

(India) Limited

How do the IT managers

contribute to bring in a

winning culture in the enter-

priseis is first by creating

a winning attitude followed

by winning team having fo-

cussed on common goal and

duly aligned with high level

of commitment, responsibil-

ity, accountability and sense

of ownership in making

things happen beyond

barriers and limitations by

maximizing their collec-

tive strengths as a winning

Team. It is imperative and

important to ensure the

goals are clearly articulated

and well defined.

Ways to Create a Winning Culture in Your Enterprise

open DeBate

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

Book FoR yoU

Market YourWay to Growth:8 Ways to Win

Star Value:

TITLE: markET YOur WaY TO GrOWTH: 8 WaYS TO WIn auTHOr: mILTOn kOTLEr PHILIP kOTLErPuBLISHEr: TImES GrOuP BOOkSPaGES: 240PrIcE: ruPEES 385

IT NEXT VeRDictThe chapters are pretty focussed and present

the eight growth strategies in a systematic

format. But it is also true that we can’t have one-

size fits all approach to international business.

most cIOs are natural entrepreneurs. In

today’s mercurial economic environment,

when there is slump in the economy

and the regulatory environment is far

from clear, cIOs are expected to come

up with IT solutions that can lead to

more efficiency and lower operating

costs. This book by milton kotler and

Philip kotler can be of interest to the cIO

community as it presents eight effective

ways through which companies can

ensure growth even in the slowest and

the most mercurial economic environ-

ment. It has tips on how to increase your

market share, develop a sizeable base

of enthusiastic customers, build your

brand, innovate, expand internationally,

acquire other businesses, carve out a

reputation for social responsibility, and

achieve much else. The book has special

section devoted to global companies

that have decided to set up shop in India,

Brazil and other high-growth economies.

Ideas for those who have moved in these

economies through m&as.

ASK THE EXPERT

Dr Mahipal Sachdev Founder, Centre for Sight

Q: Centre for Sight is India’s second-largest ophthalmology chain with 44 centers across the country. We expect a turnover of more than ̀ 125 crore this fiscal. The company has successfully leveraged private cloud to achieve real-time multi-location, multi-business integration. We are now looking up to our IT team to further strengthen this initiative and make Centre for Sight a more resilient organisation. What solutions can I expect from my IT team when it comes to business intelligence, asset management and new-age disaster management?

A: There are many resilient and robust applications that are available on a cloud model including ERP, DW/BI and Disaster Recovery (DR). Disaster Recovery organisations can also look to deploying a public cloud, because they will not have to invest in trained manpower. As the DR datacenter can be owned by service providers to run these services, there will be no investment on the setting up of the DR datacenter. For the rest of the applications, the existing environment needs to be examined. If the current running applications have additional modules available, which are well tested and integrated for BI, CRM, SCM etc., they would enable easy integration. Many other standard applications are also available that can help get the datacenter upto speed on these aspects.

Ashish WattalNational Product Manager– UCS Cisco India & SAARC

ADVERTORIAL

ci sco c to f cu s tom s e r i e s

37 07 february 2013 cto forumThe Chief

TeChnologyoffiCer forum

ci sco c to f cu s tom s e r i e s

Next Gen UCS servers for Next Gen ComputingIn a series of interactive articles, Cisco will shed more light on its Unified Computing System (UCS), thereby enabling CIOs to better manage their IT infrastructure

How has Cisco made server I/O more powerful and

much simpler?Answer: One of the key differentia-tors of Cisco UCS (Unified Comput-ing System) with Intel® Xeon® processor is the way in which high-capacity server network access has been aggregated through Cisco Virtual Interface Cards and infused with built-in high performance virtual networking capabilities. In “pre-UCS” server system architectures, one of the main design considerations was the type and quantity of physi-cal network adapters required.

Networking, combined with comput-ing sockets/cores/frequency/cache, system memory, and local disk are historically the primary resources considered in the balancing act of cost, physical space and power consump-tion, all of which are manifested in the

various permutations of server designs required to cover the myriad of workloads most efficiently. Think of these as your four server subsystem food groups. Architec-ture purists will remind us that everything outside the processors and their cache falls into the category of “I/O” but let’s not get pedantic because that will mess up my food group analogy. 

In Cisco UCS, I/O is effectively taken off the table as a design worry because every server gets its full USRDA of net-working through the VIC: helping por-tions of bandwidth, rich with Fabric Extender technology vitamins that yield hundreds of Ethernet and FC adapt-ers through one physical device.

Gone are the days of hemming and haw-ing over how many mezz card slots your blade has or how many cards you’re going to need to feed that hungry stack of VM’s on your rack server.

This simplification changes things for the

better because it takes a lot of complication out of the equation.

There is also a need for higher processing power for bringing

new choices for design optimization. What is happening on this front?Answer: Cisco has been working hard making server networking better with improved and optimized efficiency.  With the advent and advance of multi-core pro-cessing, the workhorse two socket server has become a real performance monster. In fact, for some applications the amount processing power required, relative to the other food groups I mentioned in my previ-ous answer, is outstripped by the capabili-ties of the mainstream processor family, which in today’s incarnation is Intel’s Xeon E5 2600 series.

In response to this phenomenon, Intel subdivided the Xeon lineup to include a new “EN” class of processors, the E5-2400 series, which ease back on the gas pedal of Moore’s law for designs that don’t require as much processing power in relation to local storage and memory. This creates a new class of cost & performance optimized systems for lighter workloads or for stor-age heavy systems (think big data) at the entry end of the portfolio.

Three of our new UCS M3 series systems fall in this category:  the B22, C22 and C24.  At the same time, Intel has brought four socket server options, formerly the prov-ince of the mission critical, “EX” end of the spectrum, down into the mainstream.  An example of this is our new UCS B420 blade.  So if you want four socket core count and performance but don’t necessarily need the comprehensive RAS features of an EX class system, you now have a price/performance optimized solution for that need.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY

Intel, the Intel logo, Xeon, and Xeon inside are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries

For any queries regarding UCS, please send them to yashvendra.singh@9dot9.in

cube chat | Atul Vij

4 6 itnext | m a r c H 2 0 1 3

“i prefer to ensure that the next step is not taken unless the technology has been fully imbibed by the entire business ecosystem,” says Atul Vij, Vice President (Systems, IT & Improvement cell), Uno Minda Group

For Atul Vij, IT is not just a profession. It is passion. He believes that if IT were harnessed properly in the country, India could be -come a much better place for its citizens. He dreams of being able to

work with the Government to be able to influence policy and making the fruits of IT spread far and wide across the country.

He is of the belief that IT person has to think and act like any quintessential entrepreneur. An IT professional also has to be like a scientist, who has an open mind and is ready to experiment with new ideas. He has to be like a thinker wearing different hats of devil’s advocate. Atul started his career in Management Consulting, specialising in strategy and implementation. It is here that he developed his passion for IT, which he used to the hilt for getting high levels of improvements in short durations of time. After joining the industry 10 years back, his

strategy has been to focus on shop floor improvements for gaining the strategic edge.

“At work I am inspired by the idea of dreaming and planning for transformations. I love to experiment with new innovations, so that I can be instrumental in bringing about the change in a sustained manner,” says Atul.

For Atul, it is a matter of pride that the organisation (Uno Minda Group)that he is a part of has grown very fast during the last few years. Uno Minda Group is known for its systems and shop floor practices. The group has been aspiring to be a pioneer in new technology. However, Atul does not believe in implementing new technology blindly. He says, “I prefer to ensure that the next step is not taken unless the technology has been fully imbibed by the entire business ecosystem. Being the first one to test the technology can, at times, become a cause for more pains than gains, as the new technology might not

Impossible is not a fact,

it’s just an opinion. chal-

lenge the status quo

My success

By ASIT VerMA

Experiment& Innovate

Mantra

cube chat

4 7m a r c H 2 0 1 3 | itnext

PH

OT

O: J

iT

en

Ga

nd

Hi

have been sorted out by the suppliers and other stakeholders.”

As the head of the Group Systems, Atul leads the team that deploys SAP across all Minda / JV Plants.

To an extent, Atul has a stoic attitude towards life. He thinks, that big or small, ultimately you have to overcome each and every challenge that life throws at you. One challenge that he likes to talk about is the one that he faced in 2008. In his own words, “We were in midst of blue print finalisation with IBM, when due to hard cost cutting measures we faced a directive to close down of all activities for an indefinite period, with team going back to original Units. We had a team of functional – non SAP trained persons. We got the go ahead to do local pilot on SAP Go Live with Consultant. The challenge was

to stabilise SAP, resolve all post Go Live issues in 4 months, without any Consultant support/ AMC. The subsequent Go Lives had to be done with in house team.”

With pride apparent on his face, he adds, “I feel proud that we have done fresh SAP Go Lives across new Businesses/ managed amalgamations with own Team.” IT is not the only thing that keeps him engaged in the professional sphere. He also likes to get involved with shop floor persons engaging in their manufacturing activities. A people’s man of sorts, he likes to associate with his colleagues working in different departments. He loves to pick up techniques that will enable him to understand people better, and at the same time make himself understood better. He is also delving into things like handwriting analysis, Neuro Linguistic Programming and the like to develop his people skills.

Fact FIlE

Full name aTul ViJ

CurrenT desiGnaTiOn ViCe PresidenT (sysTems, iT & imPrOVemenT Cell)

CurrenT rOle CiO, HeadinG sysTems, leadinG saP dePlOymenT and OTHer iT enabled auTOmaTiOns, sysTem’s and TeCHniCal audiTs aT uniTs, wOrkinG wiTH THe uniT’s Teams FOr CaTalysinG imPrOVemenT iniTiaTiVes FOr PrOduCTiViT y imPrOVemenT, COsT reduCTiOn, qualiT y and deliVery imPrOVemenTs

exPerTise dePlOymenT OF sTraTeGiC iniTiaTiVes FOr OPeraTiOnal exCellenCe and business resulTs, leVeraGinG iT in THe PrOCess Fully (and COnCurrenTly TOuCHinG THe liVes OF all inVOlVed in OPeraTiOns, FinanCe, COrPOraTe)

wOrk exPerienCe 23 years

FaVOuriTe bOOk auTObiOGraPHy OF a yOGi

FaVOuriTe FOOd

PunJabi sPiCy FOOd

FaVOuriTe desTinaTiOn Hawaii

FaVOuriTe GadGeT FOr wOrk

laPTOP

FaVOuriTe GadGeT FOr PersOnal mObile

“An IT manager should have strong team building abilities. He

should encourage team members to think out of the box to drive innovation”

my log

4 8 itnext | m a r c H 2 0 1 3

Sangita thakur varma managing Editor, india now

Women may have stormed every citadel worth its name and broken every venerable glass ceiling, yet the debates surround-ing them in the workplace refuse to die down. There are a number of studies that either deify or denigrate women manag-ers. Biases exist undeniably, and women are as much to be blamed for feeding fod-der to this gross mill.

If we are to believe a study published in the Social Science Research Journal, women managers who have moved up the corporate ladder are the biggest obstacle in the path of their female subordinates and co-workers! Worse, they have a marked preference for male subordinates and support them. Since I am not a misandrist and have rather liberal views, I am all for this bonhomie at the workplace. In another vein, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has unleashed the same old debate with her famous quote women “still can’t have it all.” This coming from a woman, who one would have imagined had the world on her platter, can’t be dismissed as so much ‘woman talk’. Sandberg blames women’s conditioning that leads them to make early choices which do not end up in the boardroom.

Personally, I cannot agree with either of the two views expressed above. The first seems to thrive on the stereotype of the envious --“Uski sari meri sari se safed

Beyond the Glass Ceiling?a myth, Just Break it! This International Women’s Day, let’s actually do away with ‘man’ made jargons

Ill

us

tr

at

Io

n: r

aj

ve

rm

a

3 EssEntial rEads

Attachment's CIO Dohsung Yum on Approach to Smart IT Pg 30

How to mitigate risks in core banking scenario using right set of IT Controls Pg 24

Atul Viz's success mantra lies in challenging the status quo Pg 46

kaise?” syndrome? While Sandberg seems to imply that women in 21st century are still being led unconsciously by the choices of their grandmothers. I think both are guilty of generalisation. While it is true that circumstantial evidence points to both situations being present still even in most advanced pockets of the globe, at the same time emerging nations like India are throwing up more women at the top of the corporate ladder than before. IT and finance, traditionally the two citadels that had fewer women at the top, have now a liberal sprinkling of women right from bottom up.

It is typically a case of how you view the glass. Women today take informed choices and chucking career for family is a choice most make happily. But more than that today’s companies value what women bring to the workplace. From flexi-hours, second career options for women who have taken breaks for family, to extended maternity and paternity leaves—workplaces have become sensitised and accommodating. As a male manager what you must realise is that each woman is a powerhouse with a leadership spark waiting to be ignited. Just be that light and see the difference. Rest, as they say, is all heresy. And if you are the woman manager well: Does the glass ceiling really exist?