ITNEXT Magazine December 2013

INTERVIEW | Raju Vegesna, Chairman, Sify technologies | Pg 40

“Need for CIOs to transform into BIOs”

f o r th e n e x t g e n e r at i o n o f ci o s

tECHNOLOGY
IN ACTION:
LESSONS
from
rEAL
LIFE
BossTalk

Be Calm to
be Creative
Pg 06

Plus

SDDC:
Design the
DC on Your
Terms
Pg 32

Best technology deployments and
business practices of senior
Ranganathan N
ITDMs boost business Pg 12
Head-IT, Mahindra &
Mahindra Insurance
Brokers Ltd

December 2013 | `100 | Volume 04 | Issue 11 | A 9.9 Media Publication
@itnext_magazine
www.itnext.com | facebook.com/itnext |

Lalit Kaushik
Senior Manager-IT,
JBM Group

Manish Israni,
Vice President -IT
Infrastructure and Data Center,
Vodafone India

Editorial

Pushing the
Boundaries
Irrespective of the slowdown, every
business across industries is experiencing
a surge in activity, and needing a working
solution fast that can drive great change. IT teams are
expected to build solutions to cope with rapid sales growth. The
need has kept senior IT decision makers on their toes, constantly
working on reconfiguring, re-building IT platforms to drive maximum
business value.
Contrary to industry expectation, senior IT decision makers are no
longer confined to their core functions, but are getting aggressive in terms
of assessing the processes and approaches in enterprises and identifying
several ways to improve throughput within the business environment.
The real sense of aligning business with IT and operations is getting to
be a reality, and without an iota of skepticism, one can boldly vouch that
IT is helping business reduce the addressable cost base significantly and
helping business in diverging business strategies.
It is heartening to watch that these senior IT decision makers are
pushing the boundaries, by extending their frontiers and going boldly to
experiment and transform business.
Well, all this is not just utopian statements or wishful thinking.
IT Next’s cover feature, ‘Case Study Special,’ in its current edition has
showcased the best technology implementations by senior IT decision
makers across various industry verticals. The case studies were focused
on emerging technologies and trends including cloud, enterprise mobility,
virtualisation, end-to-end connectivity and Business Intelligence.
Each situation and technology requirement was different; and it was
interesting to find out how the IT teams maneuvered the entire technology
implementation and deployment process as also the initial plan of
understanding the business requirement. The difference one observes
is how well the IT teams leveraged technological trends to drive business
interests while truly aligning business with IT and also buying in the
business with ease by showing them an effective and practical RoI.

“Senior IT decision
makers are pushing the
boundaries, by extending
their frontiers and going
boldly to experiment and
transform business”
Geetha Nandikotkur

Blogs To Watch!
Let’s Not Talk About Cloud,
Let’s Talk About Virtualisation
http://www.forbes.com/sites/
sungardas/2013/11/22/letsnot-talk-about-cloud-lets-talkvirtualization/
Enterprise Mobility Must be
Planned Ahead of Time
http://www.qrcodepress.com/
enterprise-mobility-mustplanned-ahead-time/8524359/
How to manage data protection
and disaster recovery in the
cloud
http://www.theguardian.
com/media-network/medianetwork-blog/2013/oct/21/
data-protection-disasterrecovery-cloud
The Future of Your Business:
Transparent, Decisive,
Personalized
http://www.gartner.com/
technology/summits/na/
business-intelligence/

d e c e m b e r 2 0 1 3 | itnext

1

Content
Fo r t h e l at est t ec h n o lo g y u P DATES G o to i t n ex t. i n

deceMBER 2013

Volume 04 | Issue 11

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

TECHNOLOGY

IN ACTION
LESSONS
from
REAL
LIFE

cover story

15 Vodafone Drives Virtual Communication

boss talk

Page

12
interview

Virtualisation has helped Vodafone to centralise applications and
have better control and flexibility

18 JBM puts DR on Cloud for Better Savings

Reduction in cash outflow prompted the IT team to opt for a cloud
based service model

21 ING Vysya Bank Encourages Mobile
Savvy Customers

Enterprise mobility soluitons were opted to enrich customer facing
applications and enhance user experience

28 Better Intelligence+Better
Insights=Better Profits

Mahindra Finance bets big on business intelligence to gain fast and
accurate insights to solve complex business problems
INTERVIEW | RAJU VEGESNA, CHAIRMAN, SIFY TECHNOLOGIES | Pg 40

“Need for CIOs to transform into BIOs”

F O R T H E N E X T G E N E R AT I O N O F C I O s

TECHNOLOGY
IN ACTION:
LESSONS
from
REAL
LIFE
BossTalk

Be Calm to
be Creative

Pg 06

Plus

SDDC:
Design the
DC on Your
Terms

Pg 32

Best technology deployments and
business practices of senior
Ranganathan N
ITDMs boost business Pg 12
Head-IT, Mahindra &
Mahindra Insurance
Brokers Ltd

cover
Design: PETERSON PJ
Photo: SUBHOJIT PAUL & Jiten Gandhi

Lalit Kaushik
Senior Manager-IT,
JBM Group

Manish Israni,
Vice President -IT
Infrastructure and Data Center,
Vodafone India

December 2013 | `100 | Volume 04 | Issue 11 | A 9.9 Media Publication
@itnext_magazine

2

itnext | d e c e m b e r 2 0 1 3

06 T D Chandrasekhar, Leadership Guru, Facilitator and
Coach advises ITDMs to practice being calm to be creative

40 Sify’s Chairman Raju Vegesna,
lays emphasis on the need for
CIOs to transform into BIOs as
they are no longer the IT people

Tackling the
biting bytes!
IT managers
grapple
with big data
challenge

itnext.in

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

EDITORIAL

Page

Group Editor: R Giridhar
Editor: Geetha Nandikotkur
Senior Asst. Editor: Subhankar Kundu

36
Insight
32 Design the Data Center on
Your Terms I IT managers can
implement Software-defined
data center architecture to
design a flexibile and agile
data center

Update
08 How HP is helping IT
decision makers to monetize
big data using its HAVEn
solution

DESIGN
Sr. Creative Director: Jayan K Narayanan
Sr. Art Director: Anil VK
Associate Art Director: Anil T
Sr. Visualisers: Manav Sachdev, Shokeen Saifi
& Sristi Maurya
Visualiser: NV Baiju
Sr. Designers: Shigil Narayanan, Haridas Balan
& Manoj Kumar VP
Designers: Charu Dwivedi, Peterson PJ, Pradeep G Nair
Dinesh Devgan & Vikas Sharma

Insight
36 Tackling the Biting Bytes
| IT managers grapple with the
challenge of unprecedented data
explosion, while finding right
solutions to handle big data

MARCOM

Designer: Rahul Babu

Open Debate

STUDIO

Chief Photographer: Subhojit Paul
Sr. Photographer: Jiten Gandhi

51 Three Expert Panel |
Debate to find if Hadoop
is sufficient to do business
analysis

sales & marketing
Product Manager: Shreyans Daga (0999949343)
Senior Vice President: Krishna Kumar (09810206034)
National Manager -Print , Online & Events:
Sachin Mhashilkar (09920348755)
North: Deepak Sharma (09811791110)
West: Samiksha Ghadigaonkar (+91 9833608089)
Brand Manager: Varun Kumra
Assistant Product Manager: Kshitij Garg
Assistant Product Manager-Digital: Manan Mushtaq
Ad co-ordination/Scheduling: Kishan Singh

cube chat
44 Passion for New
Technologies I Ravi Prakash,
AGM-IT Infrastructure,
Himatsingka Seide on his passion
for learning and how to keep the
team motivated

RegulArs
Editorial _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 01
Letters_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 04

Production & Logistics

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Published, Printed and Owned by Nine Dot Nine Mediaworx Private
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3

INBoX
INTERVIEW | HU YOSHIDA, VP AND CTO, HITACHI DATA SYSTEMS | Pg36

“ITDMs should collaborate & strategize”

art Of VIruaLISIng DESktOp | cover story
F O R T H E N E X T G E N E R AT I O N O F C I O s

Ashish Khanna
AVP-IT, EIH Ltd

BossTalk

5 laws and 5
corollaries

Pg 06

Plus

ART OF

Big Data:
Right Approach,
Right Solution

VIRTUAL
DEPLOYMENT

Pg 26

IT decision makers bring in innovative best practices in deploying
desktop virtualisation technology to enhance productivity Pg12

November 2013 | `100 | Volume 04 | Issue 10 | A 9.9 Media Publication
@itnext_magazine

November 2013
it decision makers bring in innovative
best practices to make desktop
virtualisation easy to deploy so as to
enhance productivity and reduce cost
By Su B h a n k a r k u n d u & n G eetha
Design by hariDas bal an | il lustrati on by shi gi l narayanan

IT NEXT thanks
its Readers
for the warm
response

innovations in desktoP virtualisation are being increasingly leveraged by

inside Pages
15 | Easy Steps to Virtual Deployment
19 | BYOD & VDI: Harmoniously aligned
21 | DaaS is taking Baby Steps
24 | VDI’s Licensing cost justification

12

itnext | n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 3

business functions and units to make the processes effective and efficient, which in
turn results in enhanced productivity. Senior IT managers at large are working on
use cases around quick IT infrastructure delivery time for service centres in order
to put business-critical plans in place. Manufacturing plant users are hopping on
to the desktop virtualisation platform over WAN to enable cost saving through
procurement of thin clients rather than desktops or laptops.
There is little doubt that desktop virtualisation is making inroads across
enterprises and IT heads are ready to embrace the technology so as to drive down
cost and enhance productivity; this, despite the fact that the acquisition cost on the
desktop virtualisation is considered to be high.
However, the key difference here is to find out if IT managers are taking the right
approach to meeting their business demands and boosting productivity.

n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 3 | itnext

13

IT NEXT values your feedback

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

An Interesting Read
I found the interview with Stallman very interesting. He has
been an inspiration from my college days and open source is a
topic that is very close to my heart.
I liked the overall insights that the features provided and the
view points of the peer groups on various topics.
An avid reader & writer for ITNext, it was a welcome change
for me to educate myself about OSS – Something not spoken of
too often. I look forward to some more in-depth case studies and
technical articles.
OSS adoption is often hampered due to a lot of poor historic
assumptions by ITDMs. OSS is now no longer looked upon a
‘cheaper alternative’, but as a holistic and long term solution,
with cost benefits.

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

read this
issue online
http://www.itnext.
in/resources/
magazine

Dhananjay Rokde, Cox & Kings

360 Degree approach makes IT Next unique
IT Next magazine stands out from rest on the content that it delivers
to the readers which is a 360 degree coverage spanning all aspects of
Information technology. I personally benefited a lot from these content
which cuts across emerging trends, technology, strategies, people
management, case studies, interviews along with the events that are
organized which is a beautiful platform to learn and share ideas with
peers across industries and geographies.
The opinions shared by various senior colleagues gives a great
insight and act as a guidance to the budding managers. The NEXT 100
programme of identifying new talent and bringing them to the limelight
is quite commendable.

4


I would personally want to see
a section dedicated to the CEO/
CFO/CMO of an organisation to
get their view and expectations
of their IT teams and also a Q&A
section whereby readers can post
questions in various topics of IT
but didn’t know whom to ask.
IT Next can get these questions
answered by the experts
Ravi Prakash, Himatsingka Seide

Changing Dimensions with
Open Challenge:
The Indian IT industry has been
impacted significantly by the
software licensing cost. Open source
is being looked as an alternate
option to address the cost factor.
The fact around how open
source is addressing the IT
managers’ budgetary challenge
and how it preferred to be a viable
model is well addressed in the
article. The need of the hour is to
develop a comprehensive strategy
that addresses the limitation
of budget to IT is well covered in
the issue.
It is really a big leap in
transformation. Is it the best route?
Well presented in every aspect
which will help IT departments to
think over.
This issue is unleashing the
power of Open Challenges we
have. Thanks a lot for taking
valuable time in preserving and
referential issue.
It is all about providing benefits
to business as cost savings, ease of
management and flexibility.
Sharat Airani,
INFOSEC & Strategic-IT Luminary

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

56 78
76
*Special rates apply

Excellent Editing
All kudos to your and your
team for the excellent editing of
my feature on big data that was
published in the November edition
of IT Next.
Sunil Ranka, BI Professional
—Editor
(Note: Letters have been edited minimally,
for brevity and clarity)

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Centralized Reporting

Boss talk | T D Chandrasekar

Leadership Management

Be Calm to
be Creative

A

leadership coach, I have been
interacting with IT managers over
the past few years. I finds them
sharp, and aspirational even as
they want to add value and work
hard. However, because of the changes in domain
and evolving new technologies, it goes without
saying that they need to catch up with the changes
and stay abreast of recent trends. The stress of constantly being in vigilant mode often takes a toll on
them, specially the fact that if anything goes down,
they will be held responsible. Things are not getting simpler; things are only becoming more complicated with new technologies coming in. Now,
what does this cost them? Creativity and Innovation. Even as, most importantly, they need to have
fun at work. I am trying to interact with them on
how they can have more creative and effective
lives as managers. It is important for them to come
up with creative ideas, not just for themselves but
for their teams as well.

Best cultural practices
I believe that if CIOs are conducive to new
ways of thinking, it’s great. But IT managers, as
individuals, should have individual practices.
That’s what I concentrate on in my coaching. IT
managers can practise figuring out their own ways
of stimulating their creativity. Currently, they join
a company and are influenced by the same way of
working, same culture, firefighting and the like;
it robs them of their creativity. It’s important for
IT managers to be calm and think about what
degrees of freedom they have. For example, they
need to come to office half an hour early and have
a relaxed state of mind which would help them be
more composed in their thought process; ideally,
they must avoid firefighting for the first half an
hour. So, they need to follow a practice that calms
their brain, and helps them analyse a situation.

6


“One way of dealing with stress is to
understand the importance of being calm
and the degrees of freedom they have”
Skills that need sharpening

•

Suggestion BOX

This is about how
we should think
better and how
to delve deeper
into how the brain
functions and
makes decisions.
Author: Daniel Kahneman
Publisher: Allen L ane
Price: 299 INR

Communication skills are vital. These fall under
managerial skills. IT managers need to sharpen
managerial skills which is critical. For example,
say, a critical IT investment plan is placed on
the corporate table and examined by the CFO
and CEO. But a lack of effective communication
results in a situation where IT managers may
not be able to explain the requirement or the
rational behind the suggestion. IT managers
who are looking to become CIOs later certainly
need this ability to translate complex IT ideas
into simple resolutions.
• Secondly, getting into the shoes of business
people is also important; so also, being more
rational in analysing a decision that does not
align with theirs helps.

One rule of thumb
I would recommend that they should know how
to manage the expectations of a CIO, or their boss,
inside out. They should ensure the CIO achieves
his goals. I have observed many a time that IT
managers are not aware of the top 5 strategies
and the business expectations of the CIO.
T D Chandrasekar, Leadership Guru, Facilitator & Coach

Update
I n d u s t r y

Helping ITDMs
Monetize Big Data
tech trends | With the buzz around Big Data, HP is constantly trying

to help customers and partners with adoption and monetisation of big
data. Aligning with the strategy around big data, HP has announced
HAVEn, a set of core technologies that form a big data analytics platform, enabling organisations to create next-generation applications and
solutions to accelerate the adoption and monetisation of big data.
The growing volume, variety, velocity and vulnerability of informa-

BYOD

Source: Workshare

8

Technologies
that enable
use of nextgeneration
applications
and helps in
monetising
big data

The Battle Continues Between IT and Users in a Workplace

According to a report
released by Workshare,
almost 81 per cent of
employees access work
documents on the go.
Yet in the absence of
an enterprise-grade file
sharing alternative, 72
per cent are resorting to
unauthorized, free filesharing services.


Users Vs IT: Who Will Win?

81%
of employees
access work
documents
on the move

62%
of employees
use their own
device for work

trends
deals
products
services
people

69%

28%

of employees
use free file
sharing

of employees
claim their IT
department are
aware

tion— big data—present challenges and opportunities for
organizations. Organizations need
secure solutions that can scale
while sourcing data at high speed.
HAVEn claims it combines
the proven technologies from HP
Autonomy, HP Vertica, HP ArcSight and HP Operations Management, as well as key industry
initiatives such as Hadoop, to
create next-generation, Big Dataready analytics applications and
solutions.
“The value of Big Data comes
from the ability to analyze all
information in real time, so decisions that accelerate growth or
improve services to customers and citizens, can be made
quickly,” said Amit Chatterjee,
Country Director, HP Software
India. “Only HP has the intellectual property in technology,
services and partnerships to truly
make data matter.”
How HAVEn has been positioned
to help HP clients and partners?
• Avoid vendor lock-in with
open architecture that supports a broad range of analytics
tools, including major Hadoop
distributions, programming
languages, and an ecosystem of
business intelligence (BI); visualization; and extract, transform and load (ETL) solutions.
• Protect investments with support for multiple virtualization
technologies, such as VMware,
Amazon and OpenStack, as well
as varied deployment methods,
including on-premises, private,
managed or public cloud
• Time to value with highly optimized hardware solutions, such
as HP AppSystem for Vertica,
HP AppSystem for Apache etc.

Ferrari T350 by Logic 3

Olympus E-Pl5

Looking for great audio along
with a bit of brand fuelled
panache should seriously
consider Ferrari T350 by Logic
3. The T350 is an active noise
cancellation set and three
separate fiber sheathed cables.

The Olympus E-PL5 has a sensor and
image processing chip is an excellent
performer. Shooting in low light on ISO
1600 and then 3200
wasn’t an problem or
even shooting in very
low light.

Plantronics ML2
Bluetooth Headset
The Plantronics ML2 has a
very simple and straightforward design, with the one key on
the face being the multi-purpose one. It’s
well built, comfortable for long duration calls
and simple to set up and use. Price: ` 1199

IT Managers’ security focus
shifting to FUD
tech trendS | Fear of attacks on
enterprises is sifting focus from
tried and true risk-based tactics
The worry lines on the
forehead of CIOs and CISOs seem
to be deepening with the rising
cyberattacks and data security
breaches that have increased IT
risks. Gartner’s 2013 Global Risk
Management Survey has come
out findings that fear of attack
is causing security professionals
to shift focus away from
disciplines such as enterprise
risk management and risk-based
information security to technical
security. This shift in focus is
driven by what Gartner analysts
refer to as fear, uncertainty and

Fear, uncertainty and
doubt is forcing security
professionals
to shift focus

doubt (FUD), which often leads to
reactionary and highly emotional
decision making.
“While the shift to
strengthening technical security
controls is not surprising given

Around The World

the hype around cyberattacks and
data security breaches, strong
risk-based disciplines such as
enterprise risk management or
risk-based information security
are rooted in proactive, datadriven decision making,” said
John A Wheeler, research director
at Gartner. “These disciplines
focus squarely on the uncertainty
(as in, risk) as well as the methods
or controls to reduce it.”
Gartner lists out five functions:
• Technical security
• Risk-based information security
• IT operations risk — formalized
risk management
• Operational risk — IT
operations risk plus business
operational risk, supply chain
risk
• Enterprise risk management
— operational, credit and
market.

quick byte

Apple iPad Leads the
Tablet Market Worldwide
According to Research Analyst, Oliver
Rowntree at Futuresource Consulting, there
is a continued growth in the worldwide tablet
market. Futuresource research shows 96
million tablets were shipped in the first half
of this year and around 35 per cent of this
can be attributed to Apple products. Total
retail value is at around $31 billion, with Apple
maintaining profitability in an increasingly
competitive market.

Tim Cook, CEO, Apple

“For too long, too many
people have had to hide
that part of their identity
in the workplace. Those
who have suffered
discrimination have paid
the greatest price”


9

ASK THE EXPERT
Energy Efficient Tips for a
Profitable Server Room/
Data Center

Proper
management,
combined
with best practices in
design and improved
architecture of the
existing IT infrastructure
will drive efficiency,
maximise capacity and
improve its reliability

What are the challenges IT managers face with
regard to energy efficiency in an IT room?
Energy efficiency is a key issue today with companies
seeking methods to save both energy and money.
This problem intensifies as the need for proper cooling in IT rooms increases with data growth. Tens of
thousands of data centers exist to support the blast of
digital data, yet at the same time, they try to maintain
“sleek efficiency and environmental friendliness. One
of the famous data center designers, Peter Gross
from New York Times states that a single data center can take more power than a medium-size town.”
Therefore, the focus is on tackling energy issues with
modern solutions.

dossier

Amod
Ranade
General Manager,
Datacenter Business Development,
Schneider Electric
IT Business opines
that
metering, assessing and auditing
the data center to
determine its efficiency and profitability is critical

work at their best practices to become more sustainable. It is also said that digital warehouses consume
30 billion watts of electricity worldwide, with the US
being responsible for one-quarter to one-third of that
amount. Of that, about more than 50% of the energy
consumed is wasted. All in all, the energy wasted is
twice the amount of electricity used for basic data
center purposes. In the US,the data centers used
about 76 billion kilowatt-hours or 2 per cent of all
electricity in 2010. By implementing efficient solutions,
executives can, not only lower their environmental
impact, but also make their businesses more profitable with usage cuts.

Is it possible to account for the energy wasted
and energy saved in an IT environment?
Reducing electrical power consumption for better efficiency is important for your business. Analysts stated
that companies could face a shake-up unless they

10

Can you elaborate on the solutions that would
drive energy efficiency and the kind of benefits
that can be accrued?
Digital data growth spurs companies to seek efficient
cooling solutions for reduced power consumption.
Your business can achieve long-term improvement


ask the expert
CUSTOM PUBLISHING

“IT managers can save upto 30% in power consumption
tackling DC inefficiencies”
through proper management and design best practices. When you improve the architecture of your existing
IT infrastructure, you also improve its efficiency, maximise its capacity, and improve its reliability. By tackling issues that cause inefficiency and by optimising
your IT rooms, you can save up to 30 per cent in power
consumption as compared to traditional designs.
It is assumed that you are already metering, assessing, and auditing your data center to determine its
efficiency and profitability. The next step is fixing the
basics and optimising by:
• Implementing hot and cold aisles
• Moving floor titles and updating design of the center
• Thermal containment
• Right sizing the infrastructure
• Using high-efficiency UPS systems
Afterwards, continue to monitor and control by
implementing data center infrastructure management
(DCIM) and by using monitoring standards and procedures. Besides saving on electric bills, the reputation of your business will improve and you can count
on greater reliability. Additionally, implementation of
these changes will lead to greater efficiency, lower
capital expenditures and faster speed to market.
Keeping up with trends is today’s challenge, but simple adjustments can be paramount when it comes to
business profitability and that’s the key to a profitable
data center.

Can you elaborate on the energy usage costs
as well as current and historical energy
efficiency analysis for a facility? Also, on and in
identifying efficiency losses?
Energy Efficiency analysis software provides current and historical Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE)
values, enabling a fact-based understanding of how
much power is devoted to driving installed IT-equipment compared with the total facility consumption. It
provides a detailed insight into how effectively energy
is utilised down to the subsystem level, as well as an
understanding of how to improve energy efficiency and
power conservation. Subsystem data can either be
measured or estimated, also allowing customers with
few power meters to benefit from the application. The
web-based dashboard view includes efficiency data on
current and historical PUE, as well as detailed subsystem cost analysis. The benefits of this measurement
would drive various benefits such as:

Customizable user interface, enables the right information to the right team

Availability

30%
reduction
in data
center power
consumption
compared to
traditional
design

• No measured data required - Utilises measured or
modelled data, allowing for usage with few or no
power meters
• Power dependency editor - Provides an overview of
the power path through the facility, including a hierarchical break-down of the power flow from where
the power enters the building down to the main
Power Distribution Unit (PDU)

Convenience
• Easy deployment - Reduced installation time and
costs with a minimum number of power meters
required for deployment
• Live dashboard - Gain transparency to DC key
performance indicators through easily configured
web dashboards
• Multi-vendor data integration - Enables integration
with 3rd party enterprise and building management
systems, using industry standard protocols for data
gathering, customisation, and integration of PUE/
DCiE calculations
• Web-enabled interface - Created for easy
integration with 3rd party web page through an
open platform.

Protection
• Multi-user access - Enables several users to carry
out work on the application simultaneously and
merging changes from different users seamlessly
• Password Security - User-selectable password
protection prevents unauthorised access, authorised against LDAP and Active Directory servers.

Total Cost of Ownership
• Carbon footprint - Shows the CO2 footprint for
each energy sub-system
• Energy efficiency analysis - Provides current and
historical PUE and DCiE values based on the
current IT-load for a fact-based understanding
of energy efficiency at the subsystem level
• Capacity Management tools, provide insights for
optimizing current operation, and helps simulate
future scenario
The section BROUGHT YOU BY


11

CASE
cover story | STUDY

SPECIAL

TECHNO

IN ACTI
LESSONS
from
REAL
LIFE
Best technology deployments and business
practices of senior ITDMs boost business
by team IT Nex t

12

itnext | d e c e mb e r 2 0 1 3

LOGY

ON
Antony Thomas
CIO,
Vodafone India

Manish Israni

Vice President -IT
Infrastructure and Data
Center, Vodafone India

V Ranganathan Iyer
CIO,
JBM Group

Lalit Kaushik

Senior Manager-IT,
JBM Group.

INSIDE
Aniruddha Paul
CIO,
ING Vysya Bank

Suresh A Shanmugam
Head--MMFSL BITS
(Business Information
Technology Solutions)

Ranganathan N

Head-IT,
Mahindra & Mahindra
Insurance Brokers Ltd.

15 | Virtualisation
18 | Cloud based service model
21 | Enterprise Mobility
24 | END TO END CONNECTIVITY
26 | Business Intelligence

d e c e mb e r 2 0 1 3 | itnext

13

decision makers across industry verticals
eternally face the challenge of proving their stand
and finding ways to convince the top management
and business function that they always made a
difference to the business. This is possible only by
showcasing use cases where the technology has
impacted the business significantly.
technologies that would make an impact would be: Cloud,
History has proved that ITDMs are working out ways
Business Intelligence/analytics, Virtualisation, Enterprise
to extend their frontiers, boldly experimenting with
Mobility andNetwork Infrastructure, among others. IT teams
various technologies to transform business and proving that
have been very clear about what they want and how it can
they mean business.
transform business. These unsung heroes have been real
Against this backdrop, it is critical to showcase real facts
transformers who dare to deploy these technologies, using the
about how the ITDMs have put the technologies into action
right approach and right methodologies.
and using the learning from real life implementations to
The study depicted how a telecom player like Vodafone
the best way possible to boost business. The IT Next team
leveraged virtualisation technology to centralise applications
understood the criticality of showcasing the best technology
from different centres to ensure
implementations and how IT
better control and flexibility of the
managers have shared their learning,
data center.
which, in turn, can be an example for
Another interesting study showed
the IT fraternity. We embarked on a
how a manufacturing company like
study for the cover story, ‘Case study
the JBM Group observed a reduction
special,’ to bring to light the unique
in cash flow by using the cloudtechnology implementations across
based service model in setting up its
various technologies that impact IT
• The banking sector observed a
disaster recovery centre on cloud. Yet
heads at large.
user-rich experience with the
another telecom solutions provider,
capability of analysing customer
Tata Communications, enabled last
Technologies in Action
usage patterns and understanding
mile connectivity, ensuring good
Our study found that IT teams have
financial health by using enterprise
resilience, and quality with real time
judiciously tracked new technologies
mobility tools
secure data at Formula 1.
and made all efforts to implement
The telecom sector saw faster
With enterprise mobility being
them within their enterprise to drive
•
turnaround time and made replicathe hot trend, the banking vertical
business benefits. The interesting
ble solutions across circles, with
has been leveraging this with ING
insight is that the IT teams do not have
better reporting or analysis using
Vysya bank going in for enterprise
a lackadaisical attitude or approach
virtualisation techniques
mobility tools to enrich customer
when it comes to new technologies or
facing applications and enhance
even experimenting with new trends.
• The manufacturing sector obuser experience.
Contrary to popular belief, IT teams
served its business groups being
So also financial services company
are no longer confined to their core
able to show business sustenance
Mahindra & Mahindra Financial
functions to keep the lights on. They
to its customers against any disasServices Ltd. deployed Business
are all ears and eyes, tracking the
ter with DR on cloud
Intelligence to enable fast and
changing dynamics of the industry
The financial sector was able help
accurate insights to solve complex
and business needs.
•
its top management in getting
business problems, react quickly to
Our case study special proves
insights into the current state of
changing market trends, improve
that IT teams are truly aligned with
its metrics, systems, people, and
financial exposures, drive change
business and leave no opportunity
management, and define a vision of
and thereby gain real-time insight
unturned to leverage technology to
its future.
into customer and market trends.
help business.
Read Inside: Technologies in Action.
Analysts have forecasted that the

A Clear Case of
Business Benefits

14


CASE sTUDY SPECIAL | cover story

Virtualisation

Vodafone Makes Virtual
Communication Possible
Virtualisation has helped the organisation in
centralising applications from different circles and
having better control and flexibility
by subh a n k a r k un d u

V

odafone India, India’s leading telecom player
with a subscriber base of more than 150 million customers serviced through a network
of over 115,000 sites, has been growing since
it took over from Hutchinson Essar.
As telecom in India has been growing
multi-fold, telcos are constantly sprucing up IT to support their
spreading presence, transforming networks, business models
and core value propositions. With the upsurge in the growth in
the number of subscribers and new service offerings, CIOs and
Senior IT managers carry the mandate of deploying the best
technologies to enable the business and operations in achieving
the desired goals.

Business Need that the IT team observed

Thomas adds, “The biggest project would be virtualisation
implementation on application based on circles which were,
earlier, scattered in 23 different circles.”
It was a mix of intelligent implementation to bring together
24 applications which were running in silos and were purely
used by the circle teams to run operations in various circles.
The biggest challenge in centralisation was to ensure that
the circles got access to the servers and let them do what they
had to. Often, it has been observed that centralisation disallows
them that freedom. The business challenge was also to let these
businesses to react quickly to the market.
Thomas says, “Although we could have controlled a lot of
it in terms of policies, at the end of the day, when people have
administrative rights of the local servers, the issues that crop
up are: what has been installed and by whom?”
Thomas points out three cardinal requirements to have
ensured freedom in such a scenario: 1) Access to servers; 2)
Access to resources; and 3) Access to operational services.

The IT team at Vodafone in India observed that the
organisation had grown its presence with 23 circles across
the country, and there was a need to centralise IT management
into one core data center, to drive better collaboration among
the circles in a controlled environment. Antony Thomas, CIO,
Technology Solution
Vodafone India, and his team had one solution on the table –
The project had two phases to it – one was to ensure that
going big on virtualisation. Thomas and his
Vodafone had the best platform in place
team have been instrumental in planning
which was available for everyone to use. The
the IT infrastructure in Vodafone’s two large
second step was to identify the applications
businesses – enterprise business and mobile
that could be taken in and the third was
money business. All these businesses were
to migrate one application after the other
scattered and running as independent profit
without any disruption into the virtual
Applications which
centres. Each of these centres had its own set
environment.
were running in
of applications and own set of servers. The
VMware is strategic partner to Vodafone
silos were brought
goal was to centralise them without taking
globally. So, the experience of working
under a single
away the freedom of operations or the agility
with VMware and its proven record did
virtual framework
they were looking for.
not leave Vodafone with much to evaluate.

24


15

CASE
cover story | STUDY

SPECIAL

Making a difference
to the Business
• Centralised solution for 23 circles
• Faster turnaround to businesses
• Replicable solutions across circles
• Better reporting or analysis
• Eliminated duplication of development cycle
• Better utilisation of space
• Cost effective implementation
Manish Israni, Vice President-IT Infrastructure and Data
Center, Vodafone India, says, “When we identified the 30
applications for migration, we realised that we needed a
product or landscape that would provide us Wintel, Linux,
Oracle or SQL combination to be running on a platform where
ease of elasticity is required—not only for these applications
but any other function we want to perform in this specific
capacity. So, based on our internal thought process and
internal assessment, we found that VMware VSphere or
VMotion combination was not only helping us to create this
platform, but also helping us to migrate the data without the
circle application.”

The telco explored all the options available and was in
several internal discussions. It was decided to take Wintel to
virtualisation or cloud on a VMware platform, which could
be also get extended to some of its proprietary servers which
are not part of this platform. A cost effective solution was a
priority and a major factor. Thomas says, “Cost is definitely a
factor in any decision we make, because at the end of the day,
we have to have a positive business case for anything that we
do. What we looked at was total cost of ownership (TCO) over
a period of time. Earlier, circles were procuring differently, in a
non standard way. Once we centralised it, there was a standard
way of procuring in place with better utilisation of space.”

Existing Framework
The way Vodafone has architected it was predominantly based
on the type of application, usage of application by the end
customers across different circles and required replication.
The whole idea was not to bring all the applications to a central
point but to create a platform which was more scalable, more
elastic and more reliable from the perspective of availability.
Israni says, “Before we started migrating or even planning, we
had done an internal assessment. There was a strategic program
which was continuously going on for a prior two and a half years
to analyse the capacity and virtualise as much as we could. Either
it was a logical partition base or product base. When we were
doing the virtualisation, there was a lot of compute power that
came as spare. We created a segregated cloud for applications.”
There were two phases: the first one was to migrate the 12
applications which were largely similar across the circles; it took
about 7 months to complete the migration, including the platform
set-up. Anthony says, “The time we took was not necessarily
from the technical perspective. The pre-migration analysis took
time as it was most critical to understand the requirements well.”

Why Virtualisation?
The team was all for virtualisation technology after evaluating
multiple solutions as this ensured the right level of control.
As the servers were located in scattered locations, the level of
controls needed to be tightened with respect to the security and
with respect to access to systems. The servers get connected
to central systems in the main data centre, which means they

“The objective of deploying
virtualisation was also
to give the businesses a
faster turnaround time and
to make replicable solutions
across the circles”
Antony Thomas, CIO, Vodafone India

16



would have access to data as well. Thomas says there were a few
questions that popped up in his mind, such as, “Would we want
to give people access to data that is critical to our business when
we don’t have a full set of controls over them?”
The implementation was carried out in a cost effective manner.
There were idle capacities in various circles running around and
it was vital to ensure there were no unnecessary idle capacities.
Antony points out, “There are cases where people bought
specifically for local requirements, they bought for their own
need and these lacked visibility. We kept on buying for local circles
and couldn’t manage capacities effectively.” The instantaneous
provisioning was also critical. The decision to procure a server
goes through several layers of approval like Capex considerations,
procurement lifecycle which could be as long as 8 weeks.
Israni says, “We can now cut down that time and provide
instantaneous access.” These were the main business drivers.
Also, when the cost benefit analysis was done, it made cost sense,
it made logical sense and it ensured better control.
Israni says, “The first phase was about looking at all the
applications and figuring out how effectively all the 24 applications
could be brought into the cloud and make them available to all the
circles to benefit from them.”
Now, with the virtual environment, when business wants to
deploy an application, all they need to do is make a request and
the provisioning of the compute power has become completely
instantaneous. The mindset change in the organisation is IT-isslow to Hey! things-are moving-faster-now and this has happened
because of virtualisation. Thomas asserts, “The strategy was
also to give the businesses a faster turnaround time and to make
replicable solutions across the circles. Now, the inception of an
idea happens in one circle and it’s replicated in other circles for
the betterment of reporting or analysis.”

Implementation process
There was architecture environment design where Vodafone’s
strategic outsourcing partners, IBM and VMware, played
a vital role: to come with the final design and bill of material
architecture which they had implemented.
VMware consulting helped Vodafone in validating and
ensuring that best practices were followed.
Israni says, “We worked with Application OEMs too, but it
was IBM and VMware who primarily played the vital role to
design, formulate and implement this platform.”
Vodafone uses some of IBM orchestration software on top
of this cloud. IBM runs the managed services and provided the
human intelligence to implement the virtualisation.
IBM Service Delivery Manager (ISDM) component has
been used in the virtualisation implementation. There were
proprietary servers as part of this strategy, used to support some
of the applications which had a large compute requirement.
Israni says, “VMware is not new to us. Prior to this
implementation, we had done virtualisation with individual
applications—the applications that needed test and

Manish Israni, Vice President -IT
Infrastructure and Data Center, Vodafone India

“Based on our internal
thought process and internal
assessment, we found that
the VMware VSphere or
VMotion combination was not
only helping us to create this
platform but also to migrate
the data without the circle
application”
development, staging and production. We understand the
application architecture behaviour.”
The involvement of Vodafone in this entire implementation
was not solely in terms of leadership but also in designing as the
IT team had a thorough plan with vendors.
Vodafone is yet to carry out the post-investment review on
the payback of the implementation. What Antony looks at is
the business case which includes investment return period and
ROI. Both results showed a positive trend.
Thomas says, “The investment return payback period has to
be less than three years before I even take on a project.”
The company has a concrete strategy for BYOD. Again, in
both scenarios, the applications have been centralised with the
agility that virtualisation has provided.


17

CASE
cover story | STUDY

SPECIAL

Cloud based service model

DR on cloud spelt big

savings for JBM
Reduction in cash outflow prompted JBM Group’s CIO
and team to opt for a cloud based service model
by N g e e t h a

N

ew Delhi-headquartered $ 1.2 billion JBM
Group, a diversified conglomerate with
presence in automotive, education, engineering services and renewable energy sectors in India, has 33 manufacturing plants,
5 Engineering & Design centres across 19

locations globally.
With only B2B customers such as OEMs like Ashok
Leyland, Bajaj, Fiat, Ford, GM, Hero, Honda, JCB, Mahindra,
Maruti Suzuki, Renault-Nissan, TATA, Toyota, TVS, VECV,
Volkswagen, Volvo and many more, and alliances with
more than 20 renowned global companies like Arcelor
Mittal, DassaultSystemes, Sumitomo Corporation, Magnetto
Automotive etc., the IT team faced a huge challenge: creating a
single access sourcing point and business need to ensure that
the supply chain is streamlined and effective with no downtime.

Business Need Fuelled Cloud Deployment

production lines,” says V Ranganathan Iyer, CIO, JBM Group.
Besides, a cloud DR set would help stakeholders repose greater
faith in the IT team.

Why Cloud—Solutions Evaluated?
Cost was the primary factor that prompted Iyer and team to
look at cloud. JBM’s IT team compared the CAPEX vs OPEX
option very seriously, but never told the vendors that it was
the key reason to evaluate cloud option; this was because the
team wanted to ensure the solution identification was done
right for DR.
Once the solution was identified and finalised, Iyer and
his team worked on the opex model, outlined the challenges,
analysed cloud options and understood the different modules
and differences each one brought in, before putting it across to
the management.
The team identified IBM as its cloud service provider. Iyer
says, “A team of two from IT, one from purchase and one from
accounts looked at various options and carried out serious
negotiations before zeroing in on IBM,” says Iyer.

There was a profound need for the IT team to ensure that the
OEM’s production lines were up and running. Any deviations
or downtime had a huge impact on the cost as the customers
would charge if there is a delay in the supply.
DR on Cloud Implementation
“Having so many customers, we must
The whole of DR will be on a cloud service
ensure delivery within a specific window
model. The team’s agenda was to have 100
of time. Normally, the DR (Disaster
per cent usage of the DR by the teams. “One
Recovery) structure is planned for natural
of our objectives of having a cloud based
calamity but we opted for DR on cloud as
model was to provide a sustained tool for
success through
a precautionary measure. For, if, for some
business transactions,” says Lalit Kaushik,
cloud based service
reason, our primary DC site is not up and
Senior Manager-IT, JBM Group.
running for more than 90 minutes, we will
There was a profound need for the IT
model for DR was
move to cloud-based DR. This is because of
team to ensure that the OEM’s production
initially a doubt
our requirements to send the goods to feed
lines were up and running “We listed out

100%

18



various issues and points for action. As part of the cloud
service offering, IBM had to procure the hardware, including
service, networking equipment, security equipment including
storage,” points Kaushik.
This hardware will be used for multiple customers and a
minimum configuration is committed where DR is not invoked.
Maximum configuration is committed when DR is invoked.
“The entire data centre, SAP application software, security
arrangements along with back-up will be IBM’s responsibility
and the service provider will install the application software
and data guard to enable DR,” says Kaushik.
According to Iyer, JBM will be responsible for providing
all non AIX operating system, all application software
including back up software and licenses including the data
guard. During the implementation process, the IT team
decided to provide access to DC in a controlled fashion, while
also providing the media for back-up.

Impact of DR on Cloud
• There was a profound need for the IT team
to ensure that the OEM’s production lines
were up and running

• For, if, for some reason, if primary DC site is

not up and running for more than 90 minutes,
we will move to cloud-based DR

• The team identified IBM as its cloud service
provider.

• A team of two from IT, one from purchase

and one from accounts looked at various
options and carried out serious negotiations
before zeroing in on IBM

• The entire data centre, SAP application

software, security arrangements along with
back-up will be IBM’s responsibility and the
service provider will install the application
software and data guard to enable DR

• As part of the SLA, irrespective of whether

disaster strikes or not,the DR drill is a must
for 8 hours in a year; normally, the DR cloud
is used for data access twice a year

• Cost was the primary factor that prompted
the team to look at cloud

• Once the solution was identified and finalised,
the team worked on the opex model, outlined
the challenges, analysed cloud options and
various modules

• As part of the cloud service offering, IBM had
to procure the hardware, including service,
networking equipment, security equipment
including storage

V Ranganathan Iyer, CIO, JBM Group

“During the implementation
process, the IT team decided
to provide access to DC in
a controlled fashion, while
also providing the media
for back-up”

• The entire data centre, SAP application

software, security arrangements along with
back-up will be IBM’s responsibility and the
service provider will install the application
software and data guard to enable DR

• During the implementation process, the IT
team decided to provide access to DC in a
controlled fashion, while also providing the
media for back-up.


19

CASE
cover story | STUDY

SPECIAL

“One of our objectives
of having a cloud based
model was to provide a
sustained tool for business
transactions”
Lalit Kaushik,
Senior Manager-IT, JBM Group.
The entire cloud model was implemented in five weeks.
Modus Operandi of Cloud DR
The DR site would also have BCP for SAP ERP, BIW and
Business Objects of only productive systems on the cloud.
IBM has placed its DC at Tulip data centre in Bangalore,
where the proxy servers are also placed. Almost 6 terabyte of
data is stored on the DR site.
As part of the SLA, irrespective of whether disaster strikes
or not, the DR drill is a must for 8 hours in a year; normally,
the DR cloud is used for data access twice a year. As part of
the DR exercise, the RPO and RTO activities are also carried
out. “During this drill, we will assume that the DC is down
and we will switch off the DR. End users will not be informed
about this in advance. The service provider is responsible for
bringing back the DC. The basic understanding between the
supplier and us is that no other SAP production instances will
be put on this machine to ensure access,” says Iyer.
“We also ensure that the customers in the DR server are
not from the same region. This is to observe if customers
from other regions are able to access the data from the cloud
DR site. It will ensure the availability of hardware resources
when DR is invoked. The purpose of such requirements is
with regard to the understanding we have with the service
provider that itwill charge us for minimum capacity from
a compute aspect; this clause will help us get the desired
resources,” says Kaushik.

Cost for Cloud
Payout is generally done once in a quarter after the production
drill is done. As it is on a service model, the cost would be
in a few lakhs only. A little over Rs 1.0 crore would be paid
as subscription fee once in 5 years to IBM for the cloud
services. In an earlier model the cost would go up as besides
the licensing cost of the software, the IT team had to pay
out AMC charges to the service partner which turned out to
be huge.

Technological Challenge
The technical challenges that Iyer and team face are that there
are no PoCs in this sort of deployment, and decision making

20


is based purely on the negotiations that they had with the
service provider. “We were initially skeptical about the DR
deployment on cloud in a multi-tenancy situation, given that
IBM was also new to this,” says Iyer. Another area of concern
was security, as the team was not sure about the precautions
to be taken given that the same servers were being used for
many customers. There was an iota of doubt whether 100 per
cent success would be achieved.

Payback
Being a public limited company, compliance needs had
been met with this technological deployment. Stakeholders’
confidence has improved.
The tangible benefit is that the business development team
will be able to ensure business sustenance to the customers
against any disaster. Besides, cash outflow is reduced as the
payment is on a quarterly basis.
The IT benefits are factored around cost saving, as no
internal DR expert is required to manage it. Maintenance is
with the service provider, so the hassle of logging calls for
outages reduces the workload. As the drill is also planned for
twice a year, the responsibility of the internal team is reduced.

Key Learnings
The project gave an opportunity to do right kind of planning
in terms of identifying right people, spend more time on
analysing various critical aspects and also in taking right
decisions. “The uniqueness of the project was that there were
no reference customers and internal resources too did not
have any prior exposure to DR and we had to entirely depend
on the technology provider.”


Enterprise Mobility

ING Vysya Made its
Customers Mobile Savvy
Effective enterprise mobility tools were preferred
to enrich customer facing applications and
enhance user experience
by Su bh a n k a r k un d u

T

he Rs 600 crore ING Vysya Bank Ltd. is a premier private sector bank with retail, private and
wholesale banking platforms that serve over
two million customers, formed from the 2002
acquisition of an equity stake in the Indian
Vysya Bank by the Dutch ING Group. The bank
has over 80 years of history in India and leveraging ING’s global
financial expertise, the bank offers a broad range of innovative
and established products and services across its 530 branches.
With about 10,000 employees, the bank has the greatest
challenge of increasing competition and the need to build an
effective eco-system for its customers to enhance interactions
with multiple access channels.

Business Need that fuelled Mobility

use. So, mobility by definition is agnostic. We don’t talk about
whether our customers have got an iPhone handset or Android
handset. We basically accept the fact that there will be a plethora
of handsets and devices and that we needed to have a technology
that is agnostic to that and focus more on the functionalities
or business benefits that can be provided to customers at their
fingertips,” says Aniruddha Paul.
With over 530 branches across India servicing more than two
million customers, ING Vysya Bank required an application
development platform that could quickly and securely build
new mobile banking solutions.
Further, mobile banking would allow the bank to further
differentiate itself with better, more personalised services.
ING Vysya Bank needed a solution to quickly deliver
compliant and secure mobile banking apps, as well as effectively
manage the whole app development life cycle.

The banking sector saw most forward-thinking organisations
had started to adopt alternative channels like mobile and the
Internet for banking services.
The Solution
To be at a par with its peer groups, ING Vysya wanted to After evaluating available solutions in the market, and taking
build an effective ecosystem for its
into account that the BYOD trend
customers to interact across multiple
was still nascent, ING zeroed in on
access channels, as well as extend its
IBM Worklight, an integral part
services across India. This paved the
of the IBM Mobile First solutions
way to thinking about enterprise
portfolio, to help create crossNeed – Mobile Banking
mobility.
platform apps, as well as manage
It was thus important for
the whole app development life cycle.
Solution – IBM Worklight
Aniruddha Paul, CIO, ING Vysya,
Using this technology, the bank
Available on the Apple iOS
and his team to adopt to this trend.
has reduced the time to market and
mobile platform
“Enterprise mobility is about
cost for product development. IBM
making available banking solutions
Worklight also provides secure
Soon launching on Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone
for our customers at their fingertips
connectivity with the client’s backirrespective of the device that they
end systems, allowing it to efficiently

Case Study Highlights


21

CASE
cover story | STUDY

SPECIAL

manage version upgrades, user data and audit data. With data
capture capabilities, the bank is able to analyse patterns and
trends of customer usage.
“As the mobile revolution continues to change the way we
interact with customers, transforming our services to meet
these demands and deliver a consistent customer experience,
regardless of the device or operating system, has become critical
to our growth,” said Aniruddha Paul. “With an IBM mobile
solution, we are now able to quickly and easily roll out new
mobile services to support our business growth strategies.”
The bank is the first IBM Worklight client in India to go live
with a publicly downloadable app. Currently available on the
Apple iOS mobile platform, ING Vysya Mobile apps will soon
be extended to other platforms such as Android, BlackBerry
and Windows Phone.

Windows and Java,” says Paul.
He adds, “Using the app, our customers can pay utility
bills, transfer funds to other accounts, view mini-statements,
request cheque books, stop payment of cheques, and locate the
nearest ATM and branches with their mobile device, among
other features.
The implementation process for customer facing
applications was very different from the normal procedures.
The initial focus was on customer research because the IT
team realised the mobility use case would be very different
from other use cases. It was a user experience led process.
Workshops and brainstorming sessions were conducted with
customer representatives and internal teams to identify the
aspects that people considered on a mobile application.

Evaluation process
The investment on Worklight was made about a year back and
has been used in a variety of platforms. Worklight has been
used to integrate within the internal systems. The internal
integration capability also has a financial inclusion.
For example, for people subscribing to Aadhaar and payment
processing, there is a particular eco system that needs to be
managed. The difference between one financial inclusion
partner and another would be the extent of their real time
support. Some companies do not give real time support, they
essentially do it on a day basis; whereas some companies go
in for a sophisticated online model where the authentication is
done with their systems and then with bank’s systems in a real
time environment.
What is required is real time integration between existing
framework and the new solutions. The IBM components at the
back-end come into play for the integration.

Evaluation Criteria
Evaluation parameters revolved around aspects like the best
offering on open ID for developing mobile applications, best
support, capabilities in the integration layer at the server level
and support for real time analytics.
While evaluating and selecting the partner, Paul looked at the
vision of the vendor in mobility, whether it was just a point in
time or whether it was a part of a longer roadmap.
The other factors were support for multiple mobile operating
environments and devices with the simplicity of a single, shared
code base, ease to connect and synchronise with enterprise
data and applications, ensuring mobile security at the device,
application and network layer and governing mobile app
portfolio from one central interface.

Implementation Process
“As phase one of the project, the ING Vysya mobile app was
made available on the iOS platform. Our banking apps will
be extended to other platforms such as Android, BlackBerry,

22


Aniruddha Paul, CIO, ING Vysya Bank

“Enterprise Mobility is about
making available banking
solutions for our customers at
their fingertips, irrespective
of the mobility device that they
use. So, mobility by definition
is agnostic. We don’t talk
about whether our customers
have got an iPhone handset or
Android handset”

CASE STUDY | AIRTEL

airtel enables lesser air miles,
more smiles at Bajaj
Hindustan Ltd.
airtel business’ Managed Video Communication Solutions
helps Bajaj Hindustan Limited replace traditional travel with
smart collaboration for their senior management to track
projects and monitor teams. The solution reduced travel costs
along with encouraging effective time management.

24

ITNEXT | D E C E M B E R

AIRTEL | CASE STUDY

Enterprises have recently seen a
steady increase in business-related
travel with multiple operations, thereby,
triggering the need to manage OPEX
better. But, is there another way to
review those critical outstation projects and monitor teams? This was the
challenge that Bajaj Hindustan Limited
(BHL), a part of Bajaj Group and one of
India’s largest sugar and ethanol producer faced. It wanted to explore newer
avenues that could replace the constant
travel more effectively.
extensive travelling adding to
expenses
BHL’s operations are based across India
and its management based out of two
locations – Noida and Mumbai. For projects and performance tracking, it was
mandatory that the top management
travelled extensively across these offices,
many a times at short notice. Inter-city
travel was increasingly becoming expensive and there were incremental costs
involved.
pressing need for effective
Face-to-face communication
Having a strong and satisfying existing
relationship with airtel business provided
an added level of comfort and confidence
to the company to work with airtel on its

collaboration offerings. Airtel business
suggested an effective face-to-face communication solution which encourage collaboration and reduces the need for travel.
There were many technology providers in
the market providing Immersive Video Conferencing solutions, but BHL wanted a solution tailor-made for their business scenario.
airtel suggested Polyom’s RealPresence
RPX Unit, one each at Noida and Mumbai,
connected through the airtel business Managed MPLS and state-of-the-art Business
Telepresence Bridging and VNOC Services.
These solutions are designed to be highly
scalable and the existing video conferencing
equipment could be easily connected to it.
The solution could further extend to various project offices through high-definition
media centres installed on premise.

“airtel always says
they are creating
numerous smiles and
numerous smiles per
cubicle, and we are
utilising that capability
to the full extent.”

a positive difference on the business’
bottom-line
The deployment of the video conferencing
solution took precisely three weeks, post
which it went live right away. The key business benefits accrued were:
Faster decision-making
Better project management
Reduced travel, resulting in cost saving
and better time management

Dinesh Kumar

BHL also received an overwhelming
response from the various teams in the
company.

CIO, Bajaj Hindustan Limited (BHL)

The telepresence room’s utilisation
exceeded 120 hours per month.

“We found that we have almost
recovered our investment in oneand-a-half months. Plus, there is
the added ease with which everyone is interacting and at a frequent
pace without disturbing their work
schedules due to travelling”
Dinesh Kumar
CIO, Bajaj Hindustan Limited (BHL)
The future collaboration plans include
enabling mobile and tablet devices to be
able to give anytime, anywhere access to
mobile workers – truly challenging the distance issue that multi-location offices pose.

E-mail: business@in.airtel.com
Website: www.airtel.in/business
Address: airtel business, Bharti Airtel
Limited, IIIrd Floor Tower C, Plot No. 16,
Udyog Vihar, Phase IV, Gurgaon – 122015

D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 3 | ITNEXT

25


• Reduced cost for product development

author this particular application.
In terms of ID, Integrated developer environment which is
open in its outlook means any developer who has worked in
other technologies to work here.
Paul says, “We are working on mobility servers that ensure
banking transactions are safe, analytical engines built into
solution sets and degree of security is quite high.”

• Secure connectivity with the client’s back-end

User Rich Experience

Business Benefits
• Reduced time to market

systems

• Efficient management of version upgrades, user
data and audit data

• Effective analysis of patterns and trends of customer usage through data capture capabilities.

Paul says, “Most banks have taken the website and converted
them into mobile applications. The same kind of navigation, the
same structure was designed. We observed that the design has
to be different. People were fed up of having different user ids
for mobile and net banking, resulting in a drop in adoption rate.”
The second use case that Paul and his team studied was that
people were fed up of islands of information. Architectural
considerations were made to all central pools of information
and was available across devices. The architectural landscape
has a central repository for data points.
He says, “Yesterday we did it for net banking, today we are
doing it for mobility and tomorrow, we will do it for Google
Glass. So, it is critical to look at the scalability.”
There were three parties involved in the implementation
process – IBM, System Integrator (MindTree) and the rest of
the ecosystem involved in it. The bank’s role was to design the
requirement to the system integrator and IBM’s role was to
ensure it works properly.

Paul says, “We have some pedigree in this space. In 2008, we
were one of the first banks in the country to offer Java-based
applications. When we hit the market with a hybrid solution,
we ensured that it was bundled with loads of features and
functionalities that would benefit customers.
The focus was on making the design based on the research on
user experience. It was one of the technologies which was design
led rather than technology led.”
The aspects that helped customers in a big way was user
experience. For example, if there was too much money lying in
the account, it goes into a particular zone; if there was too little
money compared to quarterly balance averages, then it goes into
a red zone. It was very visually effective for customers to know
their financial health. Apart from these, the mobility helped
customers to book and break fixed deposits, transfer funds
through NEFT or RTGS. It was a classic example of complete
interoperability between mobile banking and internet banking.

We had to be in the BYOD Race

ING Vysya has a BYOD policy on Blackberry and iPhone which
is going to be formulated on Android. The bank encourages
BYOD as a trend though there are two philosophies that the
bank has around it – one is based on conventional hierarchy
which means the employees within a certain grade that needs
mobility for productivity automatically gets to access mails and
applications on mobile. The other philosophy is the need.
The CIO is extremely cautious about exposing internal
applications outside the firewall, but is looking at possibilities
Mobility other than IBM Worklight
with robust security as they need to embrace mobility.
The IT team figured out that in private banking, customers
Paul says, “In terms of exposing applications outside the
facing relationship managers who could be of any scale needed
firewall, we need to analyse the use cases and ask ourselves
access to certain applications like voice recording where they
why we need do it. We are quite selective about it. For example,
needed to talk to customers, get their approval over the same
we are open to employee productivity applications like HRMS
call and record it centrally. The voice recording provides spaces
which benefit employees; and as it does not pose any threat to
which are compliant to various regulations from SEBI and RBI
our security, we are impinged into it. But
in taking voice approval to carry out the trade.
applications like core banking, credit risk
So, executives were enabled and
management do not let us go outside the
empowered with a blackberry based
firewall environment.”
application to do business on mobiles.
The device needs to be compliant with
The business challenge was how to ensure
of IT spend
the bank policies. Once it goes through the
there was an audit trail for a transaction a
would go to
policy compliance check, it is brought within
relationship manager is doing on behalf of
enterprise
the network with a sign off as per security
his customer who is confirming it over a
policies. Also, supervisory control is a part
phone call.
mobility by 2020
of the process to authenticate the need.
ING Vysya Bank partnered with Airtel to

12%


23

CASE
cover story | STUDY

SPECIAL

END TO END CONNECTIVITY

Connecting Formula 1

Just One Circuit Laps the World
Tata Communication enabled last mile connectivity,
ensuring good resilience, quality with real time
secure data at Formula 1
BY subh a n k a r k un d u

F

ormula 1 races occur in some of the most diverse play a key role in the amazing feat of logistics and organisation
and challenging environments across the globe, that is involved in setting up the trackside operations. When
from the streets of Monaco to the deserts of the events were running, the onsite team was supported by
Bahrain. No matter how difficult or remote the Tata Communications’ remote pit crew from all functions.
the terrain, every race has to be connected to These virtual teams, spread across the globe and operating
the rest of the world and fans everywhere. In a out of different time zones, have demonstrated the capability
sport where milliseconds count, even the smallest downtime to support dynamic clients both in terms of technical
expectations, and the timescales and flexibility required in
can be disastrous.
delivery. There is no slack in the schedule. We are constantly
Tata Communications, the official connectivity provider
of Formula 1, had the top priority of delivering a consistent, pushing the boundaries for Formula 1,” says Mike Winder,
Vice President--Advanced Solution
reliable connection, which could
Delivery, Tata Communications.
power Formula One management’s
diverse global operations. The
highest quality fixed and temporary
The Solution
100Mb MPLS networks were
As the official connectivity provider
therefore used to connect each race
to Formula 1, Tata Communications
to the Tata Global Network.
delivered quality connections
The largest tier 1 network spanned
repeatedly around the world,
the world, linking 240 countries,
allowing vital real-time content
enabling Formula One Management
to travel quickly and reliably. The
“It traditionally takes around 30
to tap into this resilient, super-fast
organisation’s global footprint
days to install, test, run and then
connection, knowing that vital realspread across the Formula 1 race
dismantle a big MPLS circuit. A lot
time data would speed securely
locations, giving it the scope and
of planning and effort has gone
back to the UK, and straight on to
strength to take complex solutions
into condensing that to meet our
its Formula1.com website.
to challenging locations.
timescales, with some events just
Temporary 100Mb MPLS circuits
one week apart,” says
were installed, configured, and
The inside view...
Eddie Baker, Chief Technical
tested at each location in just one
“Usually Tata Communications
Consultant, Formula One Group.
week, increasing the average 7Mbps
is the first team at the track in the
bandwidth previously provisioned
weeks leading up to the race. We

26



at events, giving Formula One management the power to
enhance the experience for fans and broadcasters. With an
initial tenfold increase in pipeline capacity, they found it easier
than ever to transfer data.
As a feat of networking, it’s the equivalent of changing a
tyre in less than four seconds. From Melbourne in March to
Brazil in November, the Tata Communications team set up,
connected (and decommissions) networks for races across
the globe. A dedicated race implementation team was there
on every race weekend, dealing with the unpredictable and
ensuring delivery every day. Detailed planning and on-theground flexibility ensured that connections were always
available, avoiding even a second of downtime for these
essential networks.
For seamless interoperability, Tata Communications also
provided UK connectivity between Formula One management
offices, increasing bandwidth to improve productivity and
offer better collaboration opportunities.

Connectivity Insights
• In a sport where milliseconds count, even the
smallest downtime can be disastrous

• The largest tier 1 network spanned the world,
linking 240 countries, enabling Formula One
Management to tap into this resilient, superfast connection, knowing that vital real-time
data would speed securely back to the UK, and
straight on to its Formula1.com website

• Temporary 100Mb MPLS circuits were installed, configured, and tested at each location
in just one week, increasing the average 7Mbps
bandwidth previously provisioned at events,
giving Formula One management the power
to enhance the experience for fans and
broadcasters

The customer speaks...
“It traditionally takes around 30 days to install, test, run and
then dismantle a big MPLS circuit. A lot of planning and effort
has gone into condensing that to meet our timescales, with
some events just one week apart,” says Eddie Baker, Chief
Technical Consultant, Formula One Group.
“Tata Communications’ responsibility was to make sure
that everything we needed was ready to be commissioned, and
go live was available on time and on spec.
Its on-site engineers monitor the connections throughout
practices, qualifying and races to ensure the service levels
meet our exacting expectations. Commitment and reliability
was one of the key reasons we chose Tata Communications
as our connectivity provider. Coupled with its global
infrastructure and extensive contacts, this association means
that we can travel anywhere in the world and still expect the
same resilience and quality of connectivity.” says Baker.

Tata Communications’ on-site teams are dedicated to fixing issues in seconds and minutes,
instead of the usual hours or days

• No matter how difficult or remote the terrain,
every race has to be connected to the rest of
the world No matter how difficult or remote the
terrain, every race has to be connected to the
rest of the world

• As a feat of networking, it’s the equivalent of
changing a tyre in less than four seconds

each track to the Tata Global Network, strong relationships
had been built with leading providers in each country to
ensure the reach to exact sites, as well as guarantee that all
Benefits
Reliability was the main feature. All connections linked to the links were commissioned, tested and ready to use before the
Tata Global Network, Tier 1 network, offering unsurpassed Formula 1® teams rolled into town.
Responsiveness: All connectivity was monitored and
scale, reliability and performance. Tata Communications
offered secure MPLS at every location without having to resort managed on race weekends. Tata Communications’ on-site
teams are dedicated to fixing issues in
to public internet, which didn’t suit some of
seconds and minutes, instead of the usual
the client’s applications.
hours or days.
Tailored service was provided. Tata
Flexibility: When Formula agreed to
Communications had committed to
share part of its Barcelona connectivity
building a service around the needs of
days turnaround to
with another customer so that they
Formula 1, delivering to global standards
install, test, run and
could use it to send audio for a leading
and specific SLAs for the established format
then dismantle a
broadcaster, Tata Communications
of race delivery.
provisioned and delivered in less than
Partnerships were key: to ensure the
big MPLS circuit
highest quality ‘last mile’ connections from
two days.

30


27

CASE
cover story | STUDY

SPECIAL

Business Intelligence

Better Intelligence +

Better Insights = Better Profits
Mahindra Finance bets on business intelligence to gain fast
and accurate insights so as to solve complex business problems
and improve financial exposures for real time insights
by n g e e t h a

M

ahindra & Mahindra Financial Services
Ltd. (MMFSL), provider of financial services in the rural and semi-urban markets, which is growing at a higher double
digit growth annually in revenue terms
and which is expanding its footprints
across various verticals is also high in volume of transactions.
To sustain the growth and also to meet the top management’s
ambitious growth plans, MMFSL’s CIO and his team found the
Business Intelligence (BI) tool to be the perfect option; and hence
the team geared up to roll out project
‘MF Sanjay,’ the BI project.

Why MF Sanjay and the need for BI
The need was felt as business
expanded and the management felt
that true BI was the key to running a
performance-oriented organisation.
Report consumption increased at
operational and tactical levels. “BI
was expected to give insights which
would help the teams define corporate
strategy and drive profitability,”
says Suresh A Shanmugam, Head-MMFSL BITS (Business Information
Technology Solutions).
According to Shanmugam, the
business teams understood that the
data gave them the ability to make
sense of markets, to identify strengths
and weaknesses, to measure the
progress of the company against

28


its goals and to employ the skills, processes, technologies,
applications, and practices that support good decision making.
“Most applications at MMFSL were web-based and hence
business users sorelyneeded reports based on the management
requirement at their review meetings,” says Shanmugam. BI was
expected to reduce dependence on IT for every report generation.
Another reason was that an automated email with analysis was
also vital for the 2,000 business users of the company.

Evaluation of BI Shanmugam and team laid out stringent
criteria to evaluate BI vendors
based on:

3 Distinct Strategic
Objectives of the
IT team:
Provide business users with clear
opportunities to improve their
business performance through
information delivery.
Deliver information to the business
community reflective of its processes and their outcomes.
Provide appropriate levels of
formatting, timeliness, history,
detail and quality as are specified
in the business validated release
or project specifications.

• Service level capabilities of
vendors
• Extent of customisation required
• Security Features
• Technology fit
• Performance
• Number of installations
• Existing customer reference
“While cost was also a criteria,
support and service, flexibility of
solution, scalability factors along with
the capability to migrate to another
platform etc., were also reviewed” says
Ranganathan N N, Head-IT, Mahindra
& Mahindra Insurance Brokers Ltd.
Implementation Insights of
Project Sanjay
MMFSL zeroed in on MAIA
Intelligence 1 KEY BI solution to
enable its end users to analyse


customer and field officer’s data and effectively
of key stakeholders. The roles that employees
take informed decisions..
assume can be just as important as the
metrics themselves. “That’s why we assigned
“What caught our attention was the feature
dedicated resources for managing the reports
of automated mails that reduced daily manual
of the IT teams’
requirements and development. Metrics
work for the software team. The automated
task of generating
are overseen by the top management and
scheduling system made everyone’s job
daily new reports
managed by the executives most directly
easier by adding predictability to the AIS
environment,” avers Ranganathan. Also, the top
got reduced with BI responsible for the performance they reflect,”
says Shanmugam.
management could hold down costs through
deployment
better use of personnel and technology and
Every BI implementation ran across the
effective utilisation of resources. Shanmugam
breadth of the company’s IT infrastructure.
and team were able to create a single dashboard and use reports
“We have also ensured that BI software works alongside the
from disparate systems, an added advantage with the 1KEY Touch.
future vision for IT and the business,” Shanmugam says.
The dashboard was integrated to the outlook mailbox:
at a click of a button, the entire MIS could be seen by the top
Resource Allocation
management with drill down at each level.
The project started with gathering analysis from users.
Considering the challenges of the IT team, the project plan was
BI helped define strategy, drive profitability and develop a
to deploy a person with the respective technology knowledge
performance-oriented culture throughout the organisation. It
and a person for training business users and IT software
is now much more than a reporting tool. Conceiving of metrics
persons. Modifications in the database were made to make
that would measure progress towards specific goals was critical.
it easy to incorporate with 1KEY BI software. No consultants
“Once the right metrics were identified, we focused on gaining the
were involved except for advice from senior functional persons
support of key stakeholders and cooperation of employees and
or technology specialists from both sides. The major concern was
partners for smooth implementation,” says Ranganathan.
technical, as mailing for more than 3000 users was to be done.
However, says Shanmugam, the key to designing a successful
The project team delivered the best through 1KEY Scheduler.
BI strategy is metrics. They should be closely aligned with a
Users have been advised to draw a report from 1KEY BI.
company’s strategy and essential capabilities, include both
internal and external inputs, and encompass a balanced set of
leading and lagging indicators.
Project Investment
No value of BI is gained without the support and leadership
The existing hardware infrastructure was used, as the BI tool
implemented did not need any new investments in hardware.
“The vendor provided able developers who developed the
initial setup for us and trained us thoroughly on the development
and administrative support perspective. Currently,two vendor
resources are deployed to develop new reports at MMFSL.
Later on, the in-house team will take over the development for
upcoming requirements from the business side.

95%

IT Challenges from Business
The primary business challenge was getting the top management’s
attention on the need for information management.

“As this was a greenfield
project, both the business
users as well as the
development team did not
have an idea what the end
product would look like”
Suresh A Shanmugam, Head--MMFSL BITS
(Business Information Technology Solutions)


29

CASE
cover story | STUDY

SPECIAL

What’s new with BI?
Mahindra & Mahindra Financial services Ltd subsidiaries, that is, Mahindra Insurance Brokers Ltd and
Mahindra Rural housing finance Ltd, have implemented
the Analytics and Dashboard to the top management
and decision makers.

• Mahindra Insurance Brokers Ltd (MIBL):has connected to the business application (MYSQL database)
to generate various analytical reports related to
cover notes reconciliation, cover notes which are getting expired, insurance company wise penetration/
employee-wise to get more insights and controls.
Other analytical reports include business reports for
the field force for the retail vertical and those related
to Mahindra finance group products. The customer
coverage in terms of number of villages covered

The technical challenge was to consolidate the data in a
meaningful way to gaina deep understandingof the information
available and its benefits. Another key challenge was to define
a clear and concise model of users’ information needs,as users
followedtheir traditional way of getting the information: it was

30


against pan-India villages is also analysed.
Analytical reports for users have been provided for
them to generate various analytical reports, slice
and dice, based on requirements.

One key touch interactive dashboard is given to
the top management--which will cover business
performance(product-wise/state-wiseetc.), collections in terms of premium, insurance company wise
penetration.

• Mahindra Rural Housing Finance Ltd:has connected to the business application to generate
various analytical reports related to business
performance,collection, NPA, etc., to drive business
and collection.

limited to getting information from one data set, unlike in BI where
you can link 2 or more data sets to get meaningful information.
“As this was a greenfield project, both the business users and
the development team did not have an idea what the end product
would look like,” remarks Shanmugam. “The management was

Frequent
Breakdowns
hampering your business?

Ranganathan N, Head-IT, Mahindra &
Mahindra Insurance Brokers Ltd.

“Once the right metrics had
been identified, we focused
on gaining the support of
key stakeholders and the
co-operation of employees
and partners which ensured
smooth implementation”

in Control Rooms
®

Benefits that Business Witnessed
“1KEY BI helped us to gainfast and accurate insight to solve
complex business problems, react quickly to changing market
trends, improve financial exposures, and drive change,
thereby gaining real-time insight into customer and market
trends,” says Ranganathan. The greatest advantage was no
more uncertainty--business users know exactly what to do
when they arrive for work every day. Through easy-to-use
interactive graphics, gauges and filters, business users can play
out scenarios, explore potential outcomes and gain a
deeper insight that can help reach decisions faster--and they
don’t have to be a technology expert to construct complex
queries to do so.

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30.04.2013

RB/BA/1319HVCA1

not convinced about investing in technology in such cash crunch
times,” says Shanmugam. “So, we decided on doing a POC. We
evaluated different BI tools available in the market and selected
1KEY. During the POC, we could generate a few reports from
various business and back-office applications which helped
understand the data in terms of sales, collection etc.

28 cm x 10.3 cm

Design the

on Your Terms

IT managers can now implement softwaredefined data center architecture in their data
center and beyond--a realistic approach to drive
flexibility, agility and easy management
By N G e e t h a

32

itnext | D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 3

PHOTO /I LLUSTRATIO N/IMAG ING CRE DIT

Data Center

Software Defined Data center | insight

C

loud strategies driven by a software-defined
approach will significantly impact organisations in the coming year, says VMware’s 4th
Annual Cloud Index, a study that was conducted by Forrester Research across 12 Asia
Pacific countries.
Another interesting trend that the Forrester group indicated
was that Indian organisations were turning to IT to help them
grow the business in the current economic environment. IT
is seen as a change enabler and source of business value for
organisation by a majority of the respondents; most observed
that IT decision makers believed in improving the quality
and capabilities of their products with rising expectations of
customers and improving customer satisfaction.
VMware’s VForum, which was held recently and which
had a large conglomeration of CIOs and senior IT managers,
laid thrust on improving IT agility and responsiveness to
business demands based on its research findings. Against this
backdrop, a software-defined approach to implementing and
managing datacenter resources (servers, storage, networks)
was the most sought after by IT decision makers. As part of
the transformational journey of IT and IT decision makers,
the concept of software-defined data center (SDDC) is most
debated; and the question of whether it is hype or a need is
most discussed.
T Srinivasan, Managing Director, VMware India and
SAARC, at the launch of the study at VForum points out,
“Business priorities are clearly shifting at a time when
optimism is slowly returning to the Indian economy. Business
leaders recognise and expect IT to deliver much more RoI;
they want the agility and flexibility to adapt to the dynamics
of the marketplace while continuing to lower operating costs,”
he adds.
Having said that, Srinivasan ensures that his team
remains committed to evolving the software-designed data
center architecture to address IT’s critical needs—enabling
businesses to build infrastructure that is radically simpler and
more efficient.

Software Defined Data Center—A Reality
Dan Smoot, Senior Vice President, Global Customer
Operations, VMware, argues in favour of SDDC that allows
greater flexibility for IT practitioners; saying that this was the
greatest innovation that customers are spending their budgets.
Smoot fully endorses the view that software-defined data
center architecture enables a fully automated zero-downtime
infrastructure for any application, and any hardware, now and
in the future.
How can you drive this change with SDDC? According to
Smoot, there are certain building blocks which enable IT
managers to design their data centers on their own terms. SDDC
is the ideal architecture for private, public and hybrid clouds.

How can SDDC be implemented? Smoot says, “SDDC
extends virtualisation concepts like abstraction, pooling and
automation to all data center resources and services.”
These components can be implemented together or in phases.
They would include:
• Compute virtualisation, network virtualisation and
software-defined storage deliver abstraction, pooling
and automation of the compute, network and storage
infrastructure services
• Automated management that delivers a framework for
policy-based management of data center application
and services

Dan Smoot, Senior Vice President,
Global Customer Operations, VMware

“Our solutions address and
automate the full spectrum of
software-defined data center
operations; IT managers
can even extend automated
service provisioning,
both operational and
business management, to
heterogeneous and hybrid
cloud environments”
D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 3 | itnext

33

insight | Software Defined Data center
Smoot indicates that the software-defined data center can
be implemented in 90 per cent of virtualised environments.
“However, a lot of headway is required still in addressing
business critical applications within SDDC,” he points out.
However, according to Smoot, in a SDDC, policy-driven
automation enables provisioning and ongoing management
of logical compute, storage and network services. The result
is unprecedented IT agility and efficiency, with flexibility to
support today and tomorrow’s hardware and applications.

Preparing for SDDC

T Srinivasan, MD, VMware India

“Business leaders recognise
and expect IT to deliver
much more RoI; they want
the agility and flexibility to
adapt to the dynamics of the
marketplace while continuing
to lower operating costs”

The kind of changes IT managers need to look at, according
to Smoot, is to first do away with the traditional system of
operational teams working in silos. “The IT teams need to
develop consolidation capabilities and bring in changes in
skill sets while taking up cross pollinating training lessons,”
says Smoot.
It is critical to find out how these four components such as
compute, networking, storage and management enable SDDC
to drive data center agility and efficiency.
a) Compute Virtualisation—the modern software-defined
compute liberates CPU and memory power from the
underlying physical hardware. Server virtualisation forms
the basis of a software-defined data center, which extends
the same principles to all infrastructure services.
b) Network virtualisation—the software-defined data center
moves networking and security forward by creating
the same kind of software driven abstraction layer
that transformed computing. From physical to logical
services, a virtual network presents logical network
components—logical switches, logical routers, logical

For Better Agility and Flexibility through SDDC
App-Centric Policies to Automate Storage Consumption
Software-defined storage enables consistent
policies across all resources in the heterogeneous storage
pool, making consumption as simple as specifying the capacity,
performance and availability requirements for each application
or virtual machine. This policy-based automation maximises
the utilisation of underlying storage resources while minimising
administrative overhead.
Virtualised, Hardware-Agnostic Data Services
Data services such as snapshots, clones and replication are
delivered in software as virtual data services, provisioned and
managed on a per-virtual machine basis. Independence from
the underlying storage hardware makes these services especially easy to allocate.
Data Persistence through virtualisation of hard disks and

34

itnext | D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 3

solid state drives
As server capabilities increase, software-defined storage solutions allow enterprises to augment their storage resources by
leveraging the same inexpensive industry-standard hardware
they use for compute. Utilise solid state drives and hard disk
drive as shared storage for virtual machines to achieve high
performance, built-in resiliency, dynamic scalability and up to
50 per cent reductions in storage TCO.
Software-Defined Availability
The software-defined data center delivers availability for all
applications independent of the platform stack. This technology lets you establish a consistent first line of defense for your
entire IT infrastructure. You can automatically detect and
recover from any software or operating system failure affecting
Exchange, SQL, Oracle, SharePoint etc.

ITNEXT Magazine December 2013

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ITNEXT Magazine December 2013