it next

may 2010 / Rs. 150

Volume 01 / Issue 05

IFRS: Gear up for

the new accounting
20 telecom: Getting 42
more juice from strategic
BI & ba: How to 24 the big q
analyse the business How to live with a lost
regime now outsourcing information right? Blackberry? Pg.53
Tape Storage: Not Yet Dead

Tape
Storage
Not Yet Dead
volume 01 | Issue 05

Even with the ‘digital’ odds stacked against it, the gritty
tape manages to hold ground. The big
question is -- How long?

A 9.9 Media Publication

4 Edu Tech December 2009
Editorial

It’s about
change, really
A change is a change is a change, and
while one may call it by any other name, what
does not change is the fact that all changes
have an impact—both, positive and negative— “It’s time to re-define
on organisations and its people. This is more true in an the role of an IT manager
environment where IT is not just changing by the day, but as ‘integration and
also getting intertwined with business and becoming virtually inseparable.
Today, there is a need to change IT infrastructure to include organisational
transformation’
efficiency and effectiveness, enable newer business plans, programmes, or manager”
projects and roll out service improvement initiatives.
Then there are policy and accounting changes like Goods and Service Tax S h u b h e n d u Pa r t h
(GST) and International Financial Regulatory Standards (IFRS) to deal with.
And as if this was not enough, there is also the parallel emergence of the
social media as a tool for many a corporate outreach programme, or for that
matter, even few dirty corporate wars.
The question is: how does one manage a change?
From the service management perspective, it is important to adopt
standardised methods and procedures or the ‘systems approach’ to roll out
the change at all levels, and across departments.
It is also critical to use the ‘team approach’ which is about involving all
stake holders in the change process and providing adequate training to
users. This is important for managing the emotional effects of change on
people and, thereby, handling resistance better.
However, the bigger question is whether ‘change managers’ themselves
have evolved to drive transformation and effectively ‘integrate’ the multitude
Blogs To Watch!
of technology, policy and social aspect.
Managing change: http://www.
If not, it is time to re-define the role of the senior IT manager as an strategies-for-managing-change.
‘integration and transformation’ manager. At the CIO level, such a shift is com/john-kotter.html
Six secrets of change: http://
already underway.
www2.scholastic.com/browse/
Earlier the role of a CIO changed from managing information assets to article.jsp?id=3749561
creating a technology roadmap for the organisation’s growth. Today, a CIO
Your views and opinion matter
is stepping into the role of a Chief (change) Integration Officer. to us. Send your feedback
To quote Charles Darwin: “It is not the strongest species that survive, on stories and the magazine
at shubhendu.parth@9dot9.
nor the most intelligent, but the ones who are most responsive to change.” in or SMS us at 567678 (type
Happy changing! ITNEXT<space>your feedback)

m a y 2 0 1 0 | it next 1
Content
Facebook:
http://www.facebook.
com/home.php#/group.
php?gid=195675030582

Twitter:
http://t witter.com/itnext

Linked In
http://www.linkedin.com/
groups?gid=2261770&trk=myg_
For the l atest technology uPDATES Go to itnext.in m ay 2 0 1 0 Volume 01 | Issue 05 ugrp_ovr

tape
plays
The

on!
Page The archaic storage medium
still survives even against the

14 onslaught of the digital disc...

insights boss talk interview

20 IT’s fair-value compliance time!
As the countdown for the implementation of IFRS starts, IT managers
need to gear up for the challenges that lie ahead
c ov er des ign: anoo p pc ; photography: shubho jit paul

24 B Eye
Success flows when the implementation team gazes at business
issues and searches for business benefits

28 10 Freewares
A listing of open source tools and freewares to aid the IT manager do
things cheaply

32 Knowing is preventing
A dossier on how to unravel the real persona of an alias in the cyber 05 Build for the Business| 38 “It’s time to switch over
universive and effectively secure your organisation against the threat Technology should be well to 802.11N” | Ruckus Wireless’s
of cybercrime aligned with business to be CEO Selino Lo lists down the vir-
beneficial for the enterprise tue of the new Wi-fi standard.

2 it next | m a y 2 0 1 0

Page Outsourcing for value | Telecom opera-
42
tors seem to be in a hurry to outsource, not only to cut
costs but also to scale up quick
opinion
12 Tech Talk: State if the...
smart | by Yogesh Dhingra, COO
& Finance Director, Blue Dart
Express
10 Money Wise: Use IT for
broader and deeper bene-
fits| by Suresh Senapaty, CFO &
Corporate EVP (Finance), Wipro
15-Minute
manager
47 Have a team, not a hero|
Super performers can be a pain if
not handled properly
48 Office Yoga | Asanas for
BACK PAIN
49 Getting your data card
right | A comparative analysis of
the different wireless data cards
that are available in the market
as of now
Page
47
itnext.in
MANAGEMENT
Managing Director: Dr Pramath Raj Sinha
Printer & Publisher: Vikas Gupta
EDITORIAL
Group Editor: R Giridhar
Editor: Shubhendu Parth
Consulting Editor: Pravin Prashant
Associate Editor: Shashwat DC
Sr Correspondent: Jatinder Singh
50 Unwind | 5 steps to a great DESIGN
vacation Sr Creative Director: Jayan K Narayanan
Art Director: Binesh Sreedharan
52 Training Calendar | A list Associate Art Director: Anil VK
of career booster courses Manager Design: Chander Shekhar
Sr Visualisers: Anoop PC, Santosh Kushwaha
the big Q Sr Designers: Prasanth TR & Anil T
53 How to live with a lost Chief Photographer: Subhojit paul
Blackberry? | Coping with the
sales & marketing
loss of a mobile device
VP Sales & Marketing: Naveen Chand Singh
(09971794688)
cube chat Brand Manager: Siddhant Raizada (09990388390)
58 Disciplined Doer | Binu
National Manager-Events & Special Projects:
Lakshman, Manager IT, Honda Mahantesh Godi (09880436623)
Siel Cars, believes in making the National Manager Online: Nitin Walia
best out of life in any situation (09811772466)
GM South: Vinodh Kaliappan(09740714817)
off GM North: Pranav Saran(09312685289)
the GM West: Sachin N Mhashilkar(09920348755)
shelf Assistant Brand Manager: Arpita Ganguli
60 Fujitsu
launches Production & Logistics
cloud extension server| A Sr. GM Operations: Shivshankar M Hiremath
new product that helps scale up Production Executive: Vilas Mhatre
the datacenter in a jiffy Logistics: MP Singh, Mohamed Ansari,
Shashi Shekhar Singh
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boss talk | Surinder Kumar
leadership
Build for the
business
F
or most business executives, IT is
confusing and expensive, with ever-
escalating capital expenditures
and operating budgets and poorly
understood RoI.
Does it need to be that way? The answer is no.
In the coming decades, all functional leaders
will need to understand technology to work
cohesively with other business functions. This
is important for ensuring that organisations
maintain their competitive edge, something
that can only be driven by IT leaders who
understand business and can communicate
with functions departments in their language,
not IT language.
I have been fortunate to have worked in quite
a few CPG companies. While I have seen many
CEOs completely frustrated with IT, I have also
seen two companies where IT was highly respected.
The differentiator was the IT leadership. Let me
illustrate this with examples.
Example #1: I joined Frito Lay in 1982 as a Senior
Director of R&D. As an organisation, Frito Lay was
run as a hybrid of centralised and decentralised
functions. Some functions such as R&D and IT
were centralised while other functions such as
sales were decentralised. Charlie Feld, the CIO at
Frito Lay had a clear belief that IT can and should
help drive business growth. He used a two-pronged
approach to achieve this:
1. Understand key drivers of business growth
and provide an IT technology solution
2. Ensure that all business and functional
leaders at Frito Lay understood what IT could do
for them and to ensure that they had a reasonable
understanding of the systems and technology.
Feld explained what IT systems could do for
driving sales and profits in ways that business
people understood. The IT function at Frito Lay
has been a vital part of the company’s success for
the past three decades.
“IT needs to be seen as an integrating
discipline for all other business functions
to operate as a well-run team”
Example #2: The Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company
had experienced steady growth for over a hundred
years. In the year 2000, when Bill Wrigley, Jr. took
over as the CEO, the company’s growth rate was in
low single digits. He decided to get a new team to
revitalise the growth rate. One of those executives
was Donagh Herlihy, who came in as the CIO.
Suggestion BOX Herlihy developed a business-focused strategy
that was simple, clear and easily understood by
other business leaders. Clear statement of business
case and constant communications with business
leaders led to a strong role for IT in the company. IT
played a significant part in catapulting company’s
sales from one billion dollars to over five billion
dollars within seven years.
It is indeed all about leadership.
Great IT leaders have excellent technical
Written by former competencies, but they also have good business
Frito-Lay CIO, the understanding, communication skills, and
book provides a people relationship capabilities. Effective IT
clear road map for leaders focus on providing technology solutions
IT leaders to help for business.
transform their
businesses The author is President, Arora Innovations and had been asso-
ciated with Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company, USA as its Chief Innova-
Writer: Charlie Feld
tion Officer. His book, Riding the Blue Train, A Leadership Plan
Publisher: Olive Press
Price: INR 1200 for Explosive Growth, has been published in several languages
m a y 2 0 1 0 | it next 5
4 Edu Tech December 2009
 update

Update
I n d u s t r y
trends
deals
products
services
people

reach out to clusters and even

Luis Murguia, micro SMEs in class B and C
Senior VP,
cities across the country.
SME, SAP
EMEA (Europe, The new option is targeted at
Middle East helping midsize companies get
and Africa) and started with a lower up-front
India cost by eliminating the capital
outlay traditionally required for
acquiring software license or IT
hardware.
“In SME segment, most of the
Indian companies are growing
at a very fast pace. They are
registering an incredible growth
rate of more than 30% and they
need technology to sustain the
growth,” says Luis Murguia,
Senior VP, SME, SAP EMEA
(Europe, Middle East and Africa)
and India.

SAP betting big The compa-

ny has an-
In India, SAP serves over
3,300 SME customers and

on SME nounced a
pay per use
business
provides pre-configured,
customised license,
implementing and hosting
TECH TIDINGS | German software firm SAP is focusing heavily on the delivery based solutions. The company
SME segment to pocket one billion customers by 2015. The company model for is presently focusing on the
currently has over seven lakh SME clients globally, representing the small localisation of its products
more than 77% of its worldwide customer base in 25 countries. & medium according to the core business
The company has also announced its partnership with Wipro enterprises needs.
to offer a subscription-based business delivery model (the SAP “Today SAP has around
Business All-in-One solutions suite) targeted at small- and mid-sized 32-34% of business that comes
companies. The alliance, according to the company, will help it to from SMEs. And even in
challenging times we were
able to maintain the 20% y-o-y
growth from this business.
intern
et 71 million Indians have in some ways used Internet in 2009. Our 70% of new customers
usage The ‘claimed users’ is an important category for understanding future come from below 100-crore
trends in active user base (Numbers in million)
companies” Murguia added.
This surge is 100 Besides having a focus on
primarily due
80 manufacturing companies, SAP
to the growing
is eyeing education sector as a
Photo graph y: photo s.c om

user base in 71
60
the remote next big opportunity to cherish
urban pockets 57
40 46 its SME ambitions in the global
(small metros
market. The company currently
and towns) 20 32
has Mumbai University, ISB and
2006

2007

2009
2008

0 Manipal Education as its clients

in the Indian eductaion space.
Source: IAMAI/IMRB 2010

6 it next | m a y 2 0 1 0
Mouse in your pocket Simplifying data centre needs Storage on the move
Inspan Infotech’s Genius Traveler 900 is Extreme Network’s XNV is a data center LACS has introduced an on-the-move
apparently the smallest management solution to deliver dynamic touch media device (TMD). The device
wireless mouse in mar- virtualisation management across the has a wide touch
ket. The wireless mouse network. The solu- screen and stor-
is priced at Rs.1,499 tion also increases age capabilities of
and carries a three-year operational effi- around 8GB and is
warranty. ciency and security. priced at Rs 8,999.

Verizon expands its CaaS configuration of a CaaS virtual

server and then create a golden
or reference server image. This

portfolio will eliminate the need to

Tech Tidings | Taking a step
further to increase its cloud mar-
ket share, Verizon Business has
announced the enhancements
for its on-demand, computing
as a service (CaaS) solution.
According to the company, the
enhancements will provide busi-
ness customers better control
and flexibility over the comput-
ing environments.
Based on the customer
demand, the company has
added some new features like
server cloning, application and
operating system expansion,
streamlined networking options
– virtual router and shared
manually create the same server
image multiple times and will
enable the rapid deployment
of server clones supporting the
same corporate application. In
addition, Microsoft SQL Server
2008 has been added as a click-
to-provision database server
option.
In addition to adding
new features, Verizon has
successfully completed the
first annual SAS 70 Type II
examination of controls for its
CaaS data centres. 
The current market for
The server virtual private networks. cloud services, according to
cloning feature According to the company, market research firm Gartner, is
helps cus- the server cloning feature will pegged at US $46.4 billion and
tomise CaaS provide IT administrators is expected to reach around US
configuration the option to customise the $150.1 billion by 2013.

Around The World quick byte

Worldwide IT spending to
grow 5.3% in 2010

Buoyed by strong hardware sales in first quarter of

2010, the global market for IT spending is poised to
reach US $3.4 trillion in 2010, a 5.3% increase from Marc Benioff CEO, Salesforce on Cloud
“We are in the era of
IT spending of US $3.2 trillion in 2009, says Gartner. Cloud 2, where social
According to the research firm, robust consumer networking use has
spending on mobile PCs will drive hardware surpassed e-mail and new
devices like the iPad are
spending in 2010. It further says that the enterprise creating entirely new
hardware spending will grow again in 2010, but it ways to interact with
information”
will remain below its 2008 level through 2014.

m a y 2 0 1 0 | it next 7
 update
Microsoft launches
Visual Studio 2010
TECH TIDINGS | Microsoft
announced the launch of Visual
Studio 2010 along with .NET
framework 4 and Silverlight 4.
According to the company,
the new editor uses Windows
Presentation Foundation and
supports the use of multiple
monitors, thereby enabling a
developer to have one monitor
with code, another with the
user interface designer, and yet
another with database structure.
.NET Framework 4 adds
additional support for industry
standards, more language
choice, new support for high-
performance middle-tier
applications including parallel
programming and side-by-
side installation with .NET
Framework 3.5. The .NET
Framework 4 client profile
TCS, Rolls-Royce join hands
to expand engineering
services footprint in India
Tech Alliance | Rolls-Royce, the
global power systems company, has
joined hands with IT major Tata Con-
sultancy Service (TCS) for strengthen-
ing its engineering services footprint
in India.
As part of the agreement, TCS will
set up an engineering centre to cater to
Rolls-Royce’s design and engineering
requirements in Bangalore. Rolls-
Royce chose to partner with TCS
for their technical and project
management capabilities, following
a comprehensive and competitive
evaluation process.  and energy—are all well represented in
Aerospace and defence sectors have
8 it next | m a y 2 0 1 0
It will simplify reduces the runtime size
the development by over 80%, making it
process and easier for developers to
enable develop- get applications up and
ers to target new running faster.
platforms and Silverlight 4 offers
build high-quality powerful media and
applications business application
capabilities that help
deliver compelling
application experiences
on or off the Web.
been a major focus for TCS and it has
significantly expanded its engineering
capabilities in this field. The agreement
represents an important milestone for
TCS in the aeronautical sector. TCS,
over the years, has consolidated its
position in the field of engineering
services as a player with growing
capabilities in the field of design and
development.
Today, there are over 1,300 Rolls-
Royce engines in service in India. The
company’s global market sectors – civil
aerospace, defense aerospace, marine
the country.
Interview
Manisha Kapur
Director, Continuous Improvement, In-
dia and EMEA, Convergys Corporation
IT NEXT: What is the significance of
quality management in today’s cut-
throat business environment?
Kapur: Today’s evolved customers are
looking for not only the quality of the
product but also the quality of the pre- and
post-sales support. For example, recently,
we have witnessed new players entering
the market with unbelievably low prices.
And many of the customers who had tran-
sitioned to the new ISPs due to the initial
price attractiveness are back with their ear-
lier service providers as the new ISPs were
unable to match the quality of service.
What are the critical challenges that
need to be addressed?
IT managers should understand that vari-
ation is natural and the manager’s role is
to reduce variation and not remove it and
while performance targets are the average
of the team performance, don’t rest on the
performance of few good performers. Make
sure that the entire team is delivering value.
How important is the role of analytical
support in this space?
The need for analytical support has arisen
as more and more clients outsource a
significant amount of their after-sales cus-
tomer service. A properly deployed analyti-
Photo graph y: Jayan K Narayanan
cal support can help keep clients close to
their customer’s wants and needs.
To ensure the long term success, IT man-
ager should be clear about the problem
that he is trying to solve and the goal of
the improvement effort.
By Jatinder Singh
 update

Masplantiz unveils web-

TECH ALLIANCE

Huawei,
based EMS PerSay to
develop
The software
helps map re- biometrics
altime energy Huawei has entered into an alli-
consumption ance with PerSay, to offer multi-
within the factor authentication solutions
enterprise to help enterprises in providing
secure and efficient access to their
contact centres. The solutions
are intended to reduce fraud and
increase customer satisfaction.
According to the company,
PerSay’s technology can work with
any contact center platform by
integrating with the IVRS and CTI.
Utilising the Voice Biometrics, Per-
TECH Trends | Masplantiz has control thorough digital inputs and Say provides both text dependent
launched an energy management solu- outputs (DIO), which helps the facility and text independent authentica-
tion to help organisations monitor manager to switch off loads that are tion through its proprietary voice
energy consumption pattern over the not required. biometric engine.
web, and reduce wastages. Accord- The company claims that by “We are very excited on our
ing to the company, the MIMTIS EMS displaying real-time consumption alliance with PerSay. Enterprises
software collects real-time information, users see that take advantage of our solution
energy data, with intervals How does it help the immediate impact of will have the power to provide
enterprise?
as short as one minute and their actions which can their customers with a safe, secure
l Reduces opera-
as large as one month. The tional and mainte- lead to a 7% reduction in and convenient access.” says Louis
data is collected from energy nance costs consumption. Victor Jayaraj, global director -
meters, sensors, devices, l Reduces energy MIMTIS EMS is offered enterprise solutions, Huawei.
automation systems, or other costs by up to 20% as a hosted service for The integration of Huawei’s IP
l Creates new rev-
sources. The software also SMEs wanting to monitor contact center product suite and
enue opportunities
allows acquisition of data l Creates competi- their energy consumption PerSay’s text dependent Vocal-
like temperature, humid- tive advantage over the web. Larger Password and text independent
ity and lighting intensity l Automated customers can purchase FreeSpeech Voice Biometrics prod-
via analogue sensors. The alarms to field staff MIMTIS EMS license for ucts were completed at Huawei’s
via SMS and email
software supports discrete onsite installation. India lab.

News @
blog
Don’t fall for fake Facebook e-mails 
McAfee’s warns about the latest scam being perpetrated in the online space | Moira Cronin in McAfee’s
Security Insight Blog<http://siblog.mcafee.com/uncategorized/don%E2%80%99t-fall-for-fake-facebook-emails/>

A new scam has been spreading in the form of an e-Mail from Facebook
alerting you that your password has been reset or needs to be reset. In
McAfee’s second Consumer Threat Alert, Internet users are warned that a
password stealing virus has been appearing in inboxes all over the world and
is targeting the 400 million Facebook users.

m a y 2 0 1 0 | it next 9
 money wise
Opinion Suresh Senapaty
CFO & Corporate EVP (Finance), Wipro
Use IT for broader
and deeper benefits
C
ompanies are serious today
about using technology
for competitive advantage.
They are learning that IT
is strategic to their busi-
ness and delivers business value. By
interlinking IT solutions and business
strategy, companies are finding that
business benefits are often broader and
deeper than originally anticipated.
Broadly speaking, IT investments at
an organisation can be put under two
broad categories:
n Automation and information led
n Strategic and shared services
Automation led investments
are used primarily to cut costs or
increase throughput at the same cost.
Informational investments provide
information for purposes such as
accounting, reporting, compliance,
communication or analysis.
Strategic investments are used
to gain competitive advantage by
supporting entry into new markets or
by helping to develop new products,
services or business processes. A good
example in relation to strategic IT is
the work Wipro is engaged in with
a large township developer in India,
where one of the key objectives is to
monetise IT investments to provide
technology-based services to residents
in the township, thereby transforming
IT from a cost centre to a profit centre.
Shared IT service investments are
used by multiple applications such as
servers, networks, laptops and customer
databases. Depending on the service,
the objective of such investments is
to provide a flexible model for future
business initiatives or to reduce long-
10 it next | m a y 2 0 1 0
“Automation led
investments help
cut costs whereas
strategic investments
are used to gain
competitive edge”
term IT costs through consolidation.
Coming to measuring returns on
IT investments, it differs based on the
objective of the IT investment.
The former is measured using the
traditional total cost of ownership
(TCO) metric that is well understood
and widely practiced but has a few
shortcomings. However, the latter is
much more complex and needs a more
holistic measure. One such measure
is to compute the total value over the
cycle of ownership. This comprises
four elements—measurement against
expected outcomes, cost/benefit
analysis; approach and processes that
integrate IT into business and strategy
planning of the organisation; and using
business judgment to make difficult
tradeoffs effectively.
For any strategic IT investment, it
is critical that the expected outcome is
clearly articulated. The outcome could be
in terms of financial metrics, operational
metrics or even qualitative milestones.
Cost-benefit categories cover the one-
time IT and business costs involved
in the decision, the ongoing IT and
business costs that will be incurred,
and the incremental business revenue
generated as a result of the investment.
Easy-to-quantify measures such as
the cost of new hardware or savings
in resources after a process has been
automated are easy to obtain. Qualitative
effects such as market share gains
are harder to quantify and depend on
uncontrollable factors such as customer
adoption rate but can be estimated
through simple analysis. Other benefits
such as improved competitive position
or increased operational agility are
uncertain and difficult to quantify,
but must be estimated using business
judgments if organisations are to arrive
at the holistic picture.
With new technologies such as cloud
computing and virtualisation, RoI
acquires a totally new meaning. IT is thus
set to be even more integral to business.
Another effect of cloud we are likely to
witness is the fact that businesses will be
driving spending decisions as opposed to
procurement and IT.
Organisations that integrate their
IT strategies with their business
strategies are at an advantage vis-à-vis
the competition. But identifying and
investing IT in the right quantum and
right business areas is only a beginning.
This needs to be backed up by effective
management capabilities if companies
are to achieve appreciably higher
returns from IT investments.
The author, is a Chartered Accountant and also
heads the legal, business planning, treasury and
controllership functions at Wipro
 tech talk
Opinion Yogesh Dhingra
COO & Finance Director, Blue Dart Express
State of the...
smart!
A
great IT investment is
one that wins on the
parameters of speed,
accuracy, convenience,
flexibility, cost and
return on investment.
Blue Dart Express Limited, South
Asia’s leading express air and logistic
company, has invested over Rs one
billion to continuously upgrade its
technology quotient and keep ahead of
market trends.
Blue Dart’s technology innovations
have played a key role in its premium
positioning and in bringing global
standards to the Indian customers’
doorstep. Such has been the
ramifications of these offerings that
more than 79% of Blue Dart’s regular
customers use them actively. Blue Dart
uses GPS technology in its vehicles to
track shipments effectively. It also uses
mobility solutions for real time visibility
and several other in-house applications
to provide effective business solutions.
In one of the recent technological
initiatives that Blue Dart has
undertaken, it has implemented a fully
automated, in-motion data capture
solution for capturing the weight and
dimension of each consignment at its
Bangalore air-side facility. The complete
solution is integrated with the conveyor
system and is capable of handling
packages at the rate of 1,800 packages
an hour, which can be further scaled up
to 2,500 packages per hour.
Parcels are automatically gapped
when object spacing is not maintained,
thus ensuring accurately dimensioned,
weighed and identified packages.
Handling everything from small items
12 it next | m a y 2 0 1 0
“The solution is a
benchmark IT project
that is versatile and
deliver multiple
benefits”
to big parcels, the solution provides a
complete data profile with dimensions,
weight and identification of most
objects.
It is a proven technology over years
and ensures reliable dimensioning
with an accuracy of ±2 mm. The data
capture software measures most sizes
and shapes with the highest precision.
This results in exact data on each item,
guaranteeing a correct foundation for
material handling procedures.
The high-speed capacity and fully
automatic mode helps in maximising
throughput. This, coupled with accurate
read-rates, increases productivity and
ensures billing accuracy.
The readings from the four barcode
scanners ensure that the consignment
is scanned from multiple directions.
The load cell takes the dead weight
and a dimensioner reads the image of
the consignment to derive the length,
breadth and height.
All these readers merge their
individual data into a common stream
to make one complete data profile of an
object. And all this happen while the
consignment is in-motion, travelling
at a speed of 55 meters per minute. The
system does all these computations in
two seconds flat. In case of an exception,
in which it is unable to weigh or gather
the dimension, the system sends a reject
signal and the conveyor automatically
stops. Only after an override the
system starts its operation again. Such
rejected consignments are rectified and
re-conveyed again through the system.
The data stream is configured to
integrate with the Blue Dart’s tracking
system and automatically incorporate
the changes in weights and dimensions
of each package. This results in freight
re-computation and reflects the
corrected amount for the customer.
This equipment is an absolutely state-
of-the-art tool and possibly the first
installation in India for the logistics
Industry.
The investment made by Blue Dart is
unique in many ways. The technology
saves high cost of manpower for
movement of cargo at warehouses. It
has enabled capturing the accurate
weight of packages, thus accounting for
transparency and authenticating the
weight charged to the customer. The
project has enabled faster realisation of
receivables and immediate returns on
the investment made.
While adding tremendous value
to Blue Dart’s quality processes, the
project has helped in saving costs and
enhancing the bottom-line.
The author is an expert with over 24 years of
industry experience, the last 18 years at Blue
Dart where he has been driving the overall
growth and ensuring excellence in financial,
technological and operational quality
 cover story | Storage

St
or
ag
e th
r
ou
gh
th
eag
e
s
i maging : ani l t

14 it next | m a y 2 0 1 0
 tape
storage | cover story

plays
The

on!
The storage medium delivers
For American Express (Amex) that occupied
several floors in the WTC 3 and 7 towers, the delib-
erate crashing of the hijacked American Airlines
Flight 11 Boeing 767-223ER was severely debilitat-
ing. The WTC complex housed not only the cor-

unparalleled value to enterprises porate headquarters of the renowned credit card

company but also its technology center. As the twin
on three key aspects—archival, towers collapsed under the impact, Amex faced a
major crisis; all its systems and accounts had shut
compliance and cost down. Chaos reigned supreme.
Fortunately, the company had an offsite backup
By S h ash wat D C policy in place and within 48 hours of the attack,

40000 BC 100 BC 1750

Cave Paintings Paper Punch Card
1877
Phonograph

1440
2000 BC Printing
Papyrus 1845
Punched Tape

m a y 2 0 1 0 | it next 15
 cover story | Storage

it was able to move its operation to

Jersey City and resume operations.
While many other enterprises that
had their offices in WTC were severely
impacted and some of them could never
be on their feet again; a few of them did
manage to scrape through and survive
in spite of all the odds.
With 9/11, the world woke up to the “Tape is the lowest cost
threat of global terror but also to the medium of all storage
need for disaster recovery and offsite
archival strategy. The attack also played media. It can be taken
a role into an unintended consequence; offsite to allow for
the tape as a medium of storage was disaster recovery in
saved from the very verge of extinction.
In the years leading to 9/11, most of case primary site is lost
the IT analysts and media had predicted due to fire, earthquake,
the gradual decline and the subsequent flood, or theft”
demise of tapes as a backup medium in
the enterprise. With storage capacity of
the HDD increasing manifold as prices —Basant Chaturvedi, Head IT,
fell southwards, the tape had literally Perfetti Van Melle India
been made redundant. The unwieldy
magnetic medium was dubbed as a relic
of the past and it was in the past where it
really belonged; that was the vox populi.
And suddenly, many companies
“Data backup on tape
woke up to a realisation that the storage is time consuming. And
media invented in the 1950s still had a since tape backups
role to play and quite unlike the gloomy
predictions, it was neither dead nor
store and retrieve data
going to die in the near future. sequentially, one needs
to go through the entire
Saved by archive length of tape even to
In was in 1951, when the magnetic
tape was first used to record computer retrieve the last backed
data on the Eckert-Mauchly UNIVAC up file”
I. Then, the bulky Uniservo drive —SK Rudra, Manager (Group IT),
recording medium was a thin metal Usha Martin Group

1949
Delay Line 1963
1946 DRAM 1971
Memory
Williams Tube 8” Floppy

1956 1970
1928 1946
Hard Disk Bubble
Magnetic Tape Selectron Tube 1976
Memory
5.25” Floppy

16 it next | m a y 2 0 1 0
 storage | cover story

shipped offsite in boxes, transported

What tape by truck or hand carried to remote

offers over HDD locations for secure offsite storage. If a

disaster occurs in the data centre, the
offsite tapes can be retrieved to restore
It’s a more reliable form of storage, and uses advanced error correction codes applications. Tape is the lowest cost
distributed across length of the tape. It can withstand higher levels of shock, medium of all media. It can be taken
temperature, and humidity than an HDD can. offsite to allow for disaster recovery
It has longer shelf life than an HDD, and is able to store data reliability for dec- in case the primary site is lost due to
ades.  fire, earthquake, flood or theft. Tape is
proven to have a shelf life of 30 years
It can be easily rotated, while standard size cartridges make auto loaders and when stored in proper conditions.”
libraries possible.  Compliance requirement is the other
It can easily be taken off-site to further ensure protection of data, even in the significant aspect that tape addresses,
event of a physical disaster such as flood or fire. Tapes consume less space than as Patrick Gavisk, IT Manager, WATPS,
a portable HDD, and are far less susceptible to damage caused by transportation. LLC, states. “Our office is required to
store HIPAA data for very long periods
of time, and we feel pretty confident
(By Greg Curry, CTO, Efficient Technologies LLC)
about the durability of tape under
proper storage conditions. We have
considered doing some interim backups
strip of rolled up tape with a capacity training, and money along the way. to disk, but the final storage would be
of a few MB data at best. Contrasting Thus, while the disk-based data tape,” he says.
it with today, where the storage tubs protection might be making steady
have crossed the TB limit and is rac- inroads in the area of backup solutions, The cost factor
ing towards PB scales, the tape seems tape still has a role to play, especially Besides the archival and the compli-
arcane. in larger organisations. Tape is simply ance requirements, the single biggest
So what are the options in front of the being moved downstream to the factor that works in tape’s favour is the
IT manager, who not only has to ensure archival tier rather than the backup tier cost. Even with the continuous decline
that the data is safe and protected but of the storage infrastructure. in disk prices, tapes are still the most
also efficiently managed? The logical So even if many IT managers find cost effective medium for storing vast
thing would be to invest in the future, tape to be cumbersome and bulky, they amount of data. Price-wise, tapes tend
shift to optical media or the cloud for cannot find any other medium that to be less expensive in the long run than
that matter. However the choice is not can replace the portability and the cost disks. So if data needs to be stored for
as easy as it seems, the biggest issue is associated with it. say 10+ years the total cost of owner-
that many enterprises have spent years Basant Chaturvedi, Head IT, Perfetti ship for tape will be less compared to
perfecting that tried and tested method Van Melle India, confirms this when the disk.
of data protection using a tape and have he says, “Tape has always been easily Balasubramanian M, Deputy General
invested substantial sums in people, transportable. Tape cartridges can be Manager, Saipem India, agrees, “Tape is

1980 1989 1992 1994

CD (Compact 1984 DDS (Digital MiniDisc CompactFlash
Disc) CD-ROM Data Storage)

1990 1993
1981 1987 MOD (Magneto DLT (Digital
3.5” Floppy DAT (Digital Optical Disc) Linear Tape)
Audio Tape)

m a y 2 0 1 0 | it next 17
 cover story | Storage

still a viable medium for storage since

it can store large amounts of data cost
effectively. Random access storage
like DVD is too small in capacity and
hard disks are expensive to buy and
maintain. We are using tape in our
enterprise. We have a tape library and
the systems to back up data and restore
from tape.”
In a white paper from the Linear
Tape-Open (LTO) Program, David
Reine and Mike Kahn of The Clipper
Group looked at total costs of ownership
over a five-year period for the long-
term storage of data in tiered disk-
to-disk-to-tape versus disk-to-disk
solutions. Factoring in acquisition
costs of equipment and media, as well
as electricity and data centre floor
space costs, The Clipper Group found
that the total cost of Serial Advanced
Technology Attachment (SATA) disk
solutions was about 23 times more than
tape solutions for archiving.
Pitfalls and challenges
Nonetheless, for all the virtues of tape
as a medium, there are still a lot of vices.
Ask IT managers who have grappled
with magnetic media in the past and
they will tell you the story. The most
common complaint is that tapes are
slow and unmanageable. There is a lot of
manual intervention required with tape
and not everyone can understand and
operate the tape libraries. Not to men-
tion the special care required because of
the lack of software tools.
SK Rudra, Manager (Group IT), Usha
Martin Group, elaborates, “Data backup
on tape is time consuming. And since
tape backups store and retrieve data
sequentially, one needs to go through
the entire length of tape even to retrieve
the last backed up file, which is again
time consuming. Not to mention the fact
that tapes are also quite vulnerable to
thefts and damage.”
Nandu Bhatt, GM (IT), Wilson
Sandhu Logistics, echoes similar views,
“The biggest challenge with tape is file
restoration. Tapes can be immensely
slow when it comes to data restoration,
also due to the fact that there are not
many software tools available that can
“In the hierarchical
storage definition, tape
is at the base level,
while fast disks could
be at the top. So based
on need, each plays
an important role and
offers differing RoIs”
—Arun Gupta, Group CIO,
K Raheja Corp
help in the process.”
Besides, tapes are also prone to
magnetic data erasure, and special
storage space is required to store tapes
for longer durations.  There have also
been instances of how a certain IT
manager was caught in a bad mess
when he accidentally erased a tape.
To counter these issues, Chaturvedi
advises a structured solution that
needs to be well thought out. “If you
are planning for old data archiving,
storing image and video files, which
don’t need frequent access, tapes are
the right media. Thus, decide upon
whether you need among DATs, DLTs
and LTOs based on the organisational

1996
CD-RW (Com- 2000 2003
1998 LTO-1 (Linear
pact Disc – Blue-ray
Memory Stick Tape-Open - 1)
Rewritable)

1995 2003
DVD (Digital 1997 2001
1999 SD (Secure xD-Picture
Video Disc) Multimedia card
Microdrive Digital) Card
Card

18 it next | m a y 2 0 1 0

backup requirement. This determines
one-time cost of the tape device and
recurring cost of tapes, which one
needs to use for application backup. If
the backup size is more than 2 TB, you
may need to think over usage of various
tape libraries, which is a more viable
solution. Interestingly, this doesn’t need
manual intervention,” he states.
Bleak future?
While the tape is very much alive and
kicking now, what does the future por-
tend? Will it continue to exist in the
days to come, or will newer technolo-
gies and inventions like Blue Ray and
Holographic storage finally make it
redundant?
The answer is yes and no. While
newer technologies have made
other storage media far easier and
tape vs disc: Tapes might be slow, but last long, very long
Tape Archiving
Sequential access
Relatively slow
Portable and can be shipped offsite
In expensive media
No dedupe
Longer shelf life
Less power consumption
2003 2004
LTO-2 (Linear High Definition
–Digital Video
Tape-Open - 2)
Disc
2004
Windows Media
High Definition
Video
manageable, the tape is evolving as
well. The biggest indication of this is
in the form of the LTO Consortium
that has members like IBM, HP and
Seagate, which directs development and
manages licensing and certification of
media and mechanism manufacturers.
The standard form factor of LTO
technology goes by the name Ultrium,
and the most recent version was
released in 2010 and can hold 1.5 TB in
a single cartridge. According to many
reports, LTO has been the best selling
“super tape” format and is widely used
with small and large computer systems
alike, especially for backup.
There is also much action on the
software side, with players like NetApp
and Symantec working on newer
technologies like data deduplication on
tape and virtual tape libraries that can
Disc Archiving
Random access
Fast
Less Portable, electronically vaulted
More expensive
Dedupe
Shorter shelf life
Higher power consumption
2007
LTO-4 (Linear
Tape-Open - 4)
2005
LTO-3 (Linear 2010
Tape-Open - 3) LTO-5 (Linear
Tape-Open - 5)
storage | cover story
be managed quite effortlessly.
Arun Gupta, Group CIO, K
Raheja Corp & Shoppers Stop, puts it
succinctly, “Tape and NAS/SAN are
not comparable as different media types
offer different capabilities and thus
are used for different purposes. In the
hierarchical storage definition, tape is at
the base level, while fast disks could be
at the top. So based on need, each plays
an important role and offers differing
RoI.”
The tape is very much going to exist
in the enterprise as long as the need for
long-term storage or archival remains.
Just as the adage goes, never put all your
eggs in one basket, similarly never bet
all your data storage on one format. Till
that is the case, tapes will always find
a humidity-free space beyond the NAS
and SAN boxes.
m a y 2 0 1 0 | it next 19
 insight | Accounting

It’s fair-value
compliance
time!
In a year, India will adopt IFRS
accounting standards—
the countdown for IT
readiness has begun
By Jat i n d e r S i n gh

Photo graphy: photo s.c om

20 it next | m a y 2 0 1 0

Sundays were never too hectic for
Reema Seth till the last month. For this
senior IT manager at one of the leading tin
manufacturers, the erstwhile lazy week-
end afternoons have all of a sudden been
packed with a series of tutorial classes
and practical sessions.
She never thought that the last year’s
announcement made by Institute of
Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), to
make International Financial Regulatory
Standards (IFRS) mandatory for Indian
organisations from FY 2011, will compel
IT managers like her to deal with alienated
terms—asset, liability, equity, revenue
and expense, at such fundamental level.
Reema was recently given the
additional responsibility of leading
the change management team set up
to evaluate the technical complexities
in transiting from Generally Accepted
Accounting Principles (GAAP) to IFRS.
The context: India has decided to
join the pool of 150 countries that are
determined to embrace IFRS standards in
2011. Though the decision for a common
accounting language will certainly relieve
enterprises from filing multiple financial
reports and will help them compete
better, the process of transformation
will see organisations making massive
changes in their books and information
systems.
Until now, many organisations
have had separate procedures for tax,
statutory (US and Canadian GAAP), and
management reporting. The adoption
of IFRS gives them the chance to more
closely synchronise these areas.
A structural exercise
The conversion from Indian GAAP to
IFRS requires significant efforts. The
consequences are far wider than finan-
cial reporting issues and extend to vari-
ous significant business and regulatory
matters.
These include compliance with debt
covenants, structuring of ESOP schemes,
training of employees, modification of IT
systems and tax planning, change in new
data requirements, charts of accounts,
reconfiguration, interface and mapping,
consolidation of entities, reporting packs,
Accounting | insight
financial reporting tools and workability
of new operating systems compliant for
IFRS processes.
“The IT implications of conversion
to IFRS can be extremely challenging
because of the different information
systems present within an organisation,”
says Abhishek Asthana, Director, Piron
Operations
“The problem is further complicated
by the fact that the country has very
limited number of IT professionals with
thorough understanding of IFRS, and
the ability to interpret and translate IFRS
requirements into IT changes,” he adds. “At the end of
According to a recent survey
commissioned by Resources Global
the day, training
Professionals India, only 27% of blue both finance
chip foreign and Indian multinational and non-finance
corporations said they were prepared for
the conversion to IFRS from the current
staff on changes
Indian GAAP. of policies,
Moreover, nearly 60% reported that procedures,
critical milestones and success factors for
a clean and cost-effective conversion have
contractual
either been overlooked or are not properly and legal
understood. obligations
It is critical to note that IFRS, by
no means is just a reporting issue.
will determine
For any organisation or IT manager, the overall
understanding the significance of the success”
overall impact the standard will have —Shaleen Khetarpaul,
on the organisation, its philosophy, and Sr Manager, IT, Reliance
operational IT systems at both corporate Infrastructure
and subsidiary levels is very important.
“There are lots of disclosure
requirements which are coming in for the
first time. Some new fields may have to be
introduced. Getting the data mining right
could be very challenging,” says Sunder
Iyer, Partner, PwC
“For an IT manager, it is going to be
also about change management. Earlier,
Watch out
they were focusing on a particular set of for...
accounting to get information, but now
they will have to modify their systems.  eople-related issues, espe-
P
The real challenge with IFRS will be cially upgrading of skills
to ascertain the information that was Impact on company results
either never captured or only partially and equity
captured,” he adds. Debt covenants
The new accounting standard Management reporting
should be seen as an opportunity to Communication with investors
institute effective changes to the internal and other stakeholders
operations and decision-making systems Required changes in standard
of an organisation. business contracts
m a y 2 0 1 0 | it next 21
 insight | Accounting

The FAQs
What is IFRS?
Previously known as International Accounting Standards (IAS), IFRS is a set of standards and
interpretations adopted by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). It’s a new
accounting system, which is said to be more transparent and have a global acceptance

When will it come into effect?

The Indian government has set the deadline of April 1, 2011.

Why IFRS?
IFRS promises more accurate, qualitative, reliable, relevant, comprehensive and timely financial
information. A key aspect is the ‘fair value accounting’ and will help investors in the long run. Once
companies report their statements in an IFRS format, comparison of performances will be more

“Themajorissue meaningful and objective. Investors will be in a position to compare their investments at a global level.

comeswhenthe Shaleen Khetarpaul, Sr Manager, IT,
organisation Reliance Infrastructure agrees, “The
fails to do challenge is much bigger than what it
an impact appears. Everything from accounting
policies and procedures, financial
analysis,ahead reporting and disclosures to IT systems
oftheactual and the processes used to accumulate and
implementation report financial report information will
be affected.”
date” “At the end of the day, training both
—Gaurav Kohli, IT finance and non-finance staff on changes
Consultant Xebia Architects to policies, procedures, and contractual and
India legal obligations will make key differences
in overall success of the transformation,”
Khetarpaul comments.
However, for Arun Dixit, CEO, Udyog
Software, things are not that difficult as
they appear to be. According to him, it is
only a presentation layer—so it will take
minimal time and investment.  successful
“Indian CIOs and IT managers are
smartest. In India, one has to address
taxation and various regulatory needs
by way of a number of reports over
specific intervals,” Dixit elaborates.
“They have also implemented a lot of
complicated processes and procedures in
global ERPs.  It is not a big challenge for
this community at all,” he points out.
“The broad nature
of the project Making transition
strategies
requires the IFRS is ‘principles-based’ and not ‘pre-
support and scriptive-based’. Therefore, a comprehen-
participation of sive review of regulated reports is needed
to assess the differences between current
management at the reporting data and processes and the new
highest level,” data and processes that will be required
—Simon Dale, Senior Vice under IFRS. Both the scope and the nature
President, SAP Asia-Pacific of the required information will change,
as will the means by which it is recorded
and managed.
Therefore, it is critical to evaluate the
potential impact of the IFRS transition
process on your organisation and
formulate a realistic IFRS transition
strategy. IT Next recommends taking a
close look at some of the best practices
that will help you to control costs, manage
the scope of implementation and create a
smooth transition plan.
First, it is extremely important to verify
that your existing financial consolidation
system should support the transition.
7 steps
transition
 ake up and start the process, the
W
1 earlier you start the better
Manage the transition in project
2 mode
Allocate and mobilise adequate
3 resources
4
Map the IFRS change impact for
all transactions
Determine the approach for paral-
5 lel running multi gap reporting
Identify the sources of additional
6 information as required under IFRS
7 Initiate training and testing of
changes

22 it next | m a y 2 0 1 0
 Accounting | insight

The impact on IS
New data requirements: New accounting disclosures and
recognition requirements may result in more detailed informa-
tion, new types of data, and new fields. Hence, information may
need to be calculated on a different basis.
Action: Modify the system to capture new or changed data
Changes to the chart of accounts: There will almost
always be a change to the chart of accounts due to reclassifica-
tions and additional reporting criteria.
Action: Create new accounts and delete accounts that are no
longer required.
previous financial reporting standards did not require the use
of a system for IFRS reporting, certain new software will be
required. The interfaces may be affected by modifications to
existing systems, the need to collect new data, the timing and
frequency of data transfer requirements.
Action: Evaluate and carry out the new software implementation.
Consolidation of entities: Under IFRS, there will be potential
changes to the number and types of entities that need to be in-
cluded under the head ‘consolidated financial statements.’ Also, the
application of the concept of ‘control’ may be different under IFRS.
Action: Update consolidation systems/models to account for
changes in consolidated entities.

Reconfiguration of existing systems: Existing systems
may have built-in capabilities for specific IFRS changes, particu-
larly the larger enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and
high-end general ledger packages.
Action: Reconfigure existing software to enable accounting
under IFRS.
Modification to existing systems: New reports and calcula-
tions are required to accommodate IFRS. Spreadsheets and
models used by management as an integral part of the financial
reporting process should be included when considering the
required systems modifications.
Action: Make amendments such as new or changed calcula-
tions, new or changed reports, and new models.
New systems interface and mapping changes: As
Reporting packages: Reporting packages may need to be
modified to gather additional disclosures in the information from
branches or subsidiaries operating on a standard general ledger
package or to collect information from subsidiaries that use dif-
ferent financial accounting packages.
Action: Modify reporting packages and the accounting systems
used by subsidiaries and branches to provide financial information.
Financial reporting tools: Reporting tools can be used to
perform the consolidation and the financial statements based
on data transferred from the general ledger or prepare only the
financial statements based on receipt of consolidated informa-
tion from the general ledger.
Action: Modify reporting tools used by subsidiaries and
branches to provide financial information.
Source: KPMG (IFRS for technology companies: Closing the GAAP?)

It should be able to support parallel
reporting, top side adjustments,
rules-based environment, disclosures
and commentary, and a flexible
and powerful reporting and XBRL
publishing.
Second, if you are evaluating a new
financial consolidation application,
the evaluation criteria should stress
upon software vendors that provide
pre-configured IFRS complaint content
in order to accelerate your IFRS
implementation.   the support and participation of
The third and most important
consideration is to improve source
systems. Integration of the financial
consolidation system as the
underlying transactional general
ledger (GL) systems will provide
reliability, flexibility and ability to
fast adapt to changes.
“If it is not realistically possible
to use a single-instance enterprise-
wide ERP or GL system, your IFRS
implementation strategy should
consider avoiding flat files and manual
data entry as much as possible. This
way your IFRS transition will progress
more smoothly,” suggests Simon Dale,
Senior Vice President, SAP Asia-Pacific.
“Therefore, in order to cover
the wide array of issues involved
in adopting IFRS, companies will
need an interdisciplinary team. The
broad nature of the project requires
management at the highest level,” Dale
points out.
“The major issue comes when
organisations fail to do the impact
analysis well ahead of the actual
implementation date,” says Gaurav
Kohli, IT consultant, Xebia Architects
India. According to him, it is
advisable for the IT manager and the
organisation to assess and evaluate
if the existing technology or ERP
systems are capable enough to support
the new changes.
“An IT manager should gear up
to address issues like additional
quantitative and qualitative disclosures
required under IFRS. He will also need
to keep multiple sets of books during the
transition period to resolve complexities
better,” advises Zoeb Adenwala, CIO,
Essel Propack.
The implementation team should
include, at a minimum, management
accountants, tax accountants, external
auditors, IT managers and IT staff. Since
implementation of IFRS is likely to affect
many aspects of the business, several
departments outside financial accounting
should be involved as well.
How did you like this story?
Send your feedback at
editor@itnext.in

m a y 2 0 1 0 | it next 23
 insight | Business Analytics
Success flows when the
implementation team gazes
at business issues and
searches for business benefits
I
t’s been quite many years since
IT has been seen as a business-
supporting and enabling func-
tion. Everybody, from research
firms to vendors to media, has
noted that IT needs to be aligned to
business objectives in the organisation.
The slowdown that’s passing by did
make the chorus even louder.
However, most of the IT areas are
expected to support business objectives
by ways such as lowering of IT costs,
converting capex into opex and ensuring
quicker RoI. Some areas fare still better,
by employing more direct ways to
make IT dynamic and responsive to
business needs. Some of these areas are
virtualisation, sales force automation
and enterprise mobility.
None of these, however, give IT the
chance to have a close participation
in determining business goals and
24 it next | m a y 2 0 1 0
By De e pa k K u m a r
strategising towards achieving those
goals.
Do Business Intelligence and
Business Analytics help in interlinking
the IT and business functions more
cohesively? Potentially yes.
Some organisations that have
successfully done BI implementations
haven taken the approach of having a
core team in place to work out greater
BI and BA benefits for the organisation.
Often, these teams have members from
both IT and business teams, who work
closely towards extracting advantages
of BI for the organisation.
Krishnakumar Avanoor, Customer
Care Associate & Deputy General
Manager, Solutions and Technology
Team, Shopper’s Stop Ltd, who has
been leading the BI implementation
at his organisation, says, “There is
a core team that works on the more
sophisticated aspects of BI and BA.
The team has 75% participation from
business side while the remaining
members are from IT. We feel that
strong business participation is a
must for the success of BI.”
“It’s been around 18 months since
the BI deployment was initiated
in the organisation. We have made
satisfactory progress and are
steadily moving towards a mature BI
environment,” he notes.
Growing dependence
The business environment has become
highly competitive, and more impor-
tantly, increasingly complex. Techno-
logical excellence is easy to emulate
and surpass and as such a product can’t
differentiate much—and for long—in
terms of features.
To be ahead of the competition

in the one-up game, enterprises are
warming up more to BI and BA tools.
While BI has already been around
for some time as a logical progression
from data warehousing and online
analytical processing (OLAP), the
uptake of BA is also picking up slowly.
“In particular, in case of greenfield
deployments, organisations are opting
for both BI and BA tools,” notes Ashit
Panjwani, Executive Director, Sales-
Marketing & Alliance, SAS India.
In case of legacy systems, however,
IT managers sometimes take a step-
by-step approach. They first deploy
BI tools and only when they have
Photo graphy: photos .co m
satisfactorily monitored the quality of
querying and reporting for some time,
they move on to the next step.
Experts feel this is a good approach,
as it de-risks a BI/BA strategy by
ensuring that data coming from legacy
Business Analytics | insight
eye
systems is in a format and structure
that lends itself to new reporting
requirements. Any gaps can be
noted and corrections can be made
accordingly.
The step-by-step approach also
ensures that those departments in an
organisation that are comfortable to
migrate to BI reporting tools take the
plunge first while others can come on
the board later.
“It’s a cultural change, where some
departments are quicker to move on
to new forms of reporting while some
others are still comfortable with the
traditional reports,” feels Avanoor of
Shopper’s Stop.
However, initiating BI also
promotes and facilitates a cultural
shift, as Bhavish Sood, Principal
Analyst—BI, Gartner Asia-Pacific,
points out, “BI will be a key enabler in
building information-oriented culture
within an enterprise and should be an
important deployment priority. Indian
enterprises should not confuse BI
technology selection as the end goal
of a BI initiative.”
“Many BI initiatives fail to deliver
sustainable business value primarily
due to lack of business sponsorship
leading to weak commitment, lack of
business engagement in the process,
and finally IS not being involved in
supporting benefit realisation,” Sood
cautions.
Quality of data
It is often said that a BI or BA solution
can be only as good as the quality of
data. If the quality of data is suspect, it
can actually lead to an implementation
failure, which can be catastrophic for
the organisation.
m a y 2 0 1 0 | it next 25
 insight | Business Analytics

“BI framework is market will buy is in a hybrid—

part pre packaged and supported by
constituted by four key some customisation as required,”
building blocks—data says Sood of Gartner, looking at the

integration, analytics, market from an analyst’s viewpoint.

Saurabh Verma, who manages
reporting and business BI market research at IDC India
challenge” observes, “Consulting does play a
—Ashit Panjwani, Executive Director, Sales- vital role, but mostly in the large data
Marketing & Alliance, SAS India warehousing type of deployments.
Basic dashboard solutions are
available off the shelf and easy to
“A core team works on deploy too. Consulting and system
sophisticated aspects integration come into play only when
there is work required at the back end
of BI. Strong business for data cleaning.”
participation is a must Having said that, those
for the success of BI” organisations where data
—Krishnakumar Avanoor, Customer Care integration has attained a level
Associate & DGM, Solutions and Technology of maturity are not worried. “We
Team, Shopper’s Stop have been following best practices
to ensure the quality of data in the
organisation. The process is quite
“Many BI initiatives fail mature with necessary checks being
to deliver sustainable in place and hardly any exceptions
being allowed,” says Avanoor of
business value primarily Shopper’s Stop.
due to lack of business
sponsorship” BI framework
What constitutes BI? While there
—Bhavish Sood, Principal Analyst – BI,
can’t be a complete consensus on
Gartner Asia-Pacific
this, given the different solution per-
spectives, as per the definition used
“We are being served by market research firm IDC India,

well by the existing ERP BI solutions cover Advanced Analyt-

ics/BA and End User Query Report-
system and it will be ing and Analysis (EUQRA), which
only after two to three includes dashboards.

years that BI will become As per IDC’s estimates, the total

deployable”
—Jacob Livingstone, Manager-IT at Bhilai
Engineering Corp
Ensuring data integrity across the issue? He agrees, noting that BI is
various systems can sometimes be a not something that is best suited off
nightmare, and this is one area that the shelf and a consultative approach
can be challenging for the IT manager is surely the way to go.
entrusted with the task. Not that packaged offerings are not
Panjwani of SAS feels that this is available. “Packaged analytics have
a very critical area and that vendors been around for some time and they
have an important role to play in this have a time-to-market advantage.
regard. Can a consultative approach Many vendors also have a consulting
towards implementation take care of approach but I think the way the
India BI market in 2009 stood at US$
41.3 million, and is expected to grow
at a rate of 20% for the next five years.
However, both BI and BA can
be deployed independently, says
Sandeep Sharma, BI analyst at IDC
India. “A reason why BA is deployed
after BI typically is primarily due
to the organisation’s maturity. A
mid-size organisation will be more
interested in day-to-day operations,
but as the organisation grows, it will
want to get into statistical modelling,
forecasting, and other complex ways
of looking at the business, when BA
comes into the picture,” he says.

26 it next | m a y 2 0 1 0

Panjwani of SAS sees the BI
framework as constituted by four key
building blocks—data integration,
analytics, reporting and business
issue or business challenge.
“Each of these blocks is equally
important, but then it is the business
challenge for which the other three
come into being and as such it is
necessary that the first three blocks
are linked to the business challenge.
This forms the basis of a successful
BI implementation,” Panjwani
emphasises.
Going mainstream
Contrary to the general perception,
today BI tools are available to suit the
needs of all size and type of businesses.
Panjwani strongly agrees with this.
But, are there some verticals that have
seen more BI implementations by
comparison? “Well, there have been
more implementations in organisations
from BFSI, manufacturing, telecom,
government, IT/ITeS and
pharmaceutical verticals, but it is
equally relevant to all organisations
across other verticals as well,” he
reemphasises.
Verma of IDC also feels that
EUQRA kind of solutions can be
adopted by an organisation of any
size and there are many small ISVs
offering such solutions. However,
advanced analytics solutions need
much greater user maturity as well
as structured and clean data at the
backend. Though advanced analytics
tools are expensive, they are useful for
larger organisations as they help manage
volumes and need greater user maturity.
“The market will continue to have a mix
of both large and small ISVs for EUQRA
solutions, but the advanced analytics
space will continue to be dominated by the
larger software vendors,” his colleague
Sandeep at IDC comments.
Not everybody is on the bandwagon
yet. Many organisations still believe, and
with sound reasons, that they will be
better off delaying BI implementations
by another few years.
Jacob Stone, Manager-IT at Bhilai
Engineering Corporation Ltd, says his
Business Analytics | insight
organisation is being served very well
by the existing ERP system and it will
be only after another two to three years
that it will become advantageous to go
for a BI implementation.
Sure, there will be benefits to be
reaped in the long run. “After we have
the required preparedness, we can go for
a BI implementation. A good database at
the backend and BI tools can help us go
for long-lead items,” Stone says.
Looking ahead
Gartner had talked of “Advanced Ana-
lytics” in Top 10 predictions for 2010.
How cleanly do BI and BA fit into the
concept?
We have reached the point in the
improvement of performance and
costs that we can afford to perform
analytics and simulation for each and
Analytics and
Performance
Management market to
be US$
31.1
million, by 2014 at
a CAGR of 14.6%
Source: Gartner
every action taken in the business,
says Sood. Not only will data center
systems be able to do this, but mobile
devices will have access to data and
enough capability to perform analytics
themselves, potentially enabling
use of optimisation and simulation
everywhere and every time, he adds.
From BI and BA, the market will
next move to the “Advanced Analytics”
stage, Gartner had said in its 2010
predictions early this year.
Sood explains the concept, “This can
be viewed as a third step in supporting
operational business decisions. Fixed
rules and prepared policies gave way
to more informed decisions powered
by the right information delivered at
the right time, whether through CRM
or ERP or other applications. The
new step is to provide simulation,
prediction, optimisation and other
analytics, not simply information,
to empower even more decision
flexibility at the time and place of
every business process action.”
“Another way to view this is as a
shift in timing. Business intelligence
has mainly provided us historical
analysis, increasingly powerful
ways of analysing what has already
happened. We can increase the scope
of the information that is analysed and
we can reduce delays between the data
creation and its analysis, but at heart
this is a look backwards. The new step
looks into the future, predicting what
can or will happen,” he adds.
Advanced analytics also involves
new technologies to search
unstructured content and other
search enhancements.
There is a steady progress
that organisations are making.
Avanoor of Shopper’s Stop
says, “While prediction and
forecasting is not full blown yet,
we do make use of analytics and
modelling for specific purposes
in certain key areas.”
“One of our key BI goals for this
year is to provide dashboards for
senior management,” he notes.
Yet, organisations in India are
not among the frontrunners in
implementing Advanced Analytics
solutions. Verma of IDC India agrees,
“The global markets are a lot more
advanced as compared to India on
account of the maturity of their
processes, automation, data capture
and management.”
“Leverage analytics to compete at
the global level” is the message that
needs to be there, Panjwani feels.
“It’s time to evaluate BI, if not
implement.” That’s IT Next’s take.
The author is an ICT/Media market researcher
and consultant
m a y 2 0 1 0 | it next 27
 insight | open source
one
Operating system
While Microsoft has ruled the OS space on the desktop front, the story
has been very different on the server side, with Unix and Sun Solaris
being some of the powerful options. Ranging from Novell to Red Hat,
companies around the world have opted for Linux derivatives to build
their offerings.
But now, Linux is becoming a stronger alternative on the desktop
front as well. For the past few years, Ubuntu, a derivative of Linux, has
been making inroads in the desktop space. A package consisting of a
free OS and some basic productivity applications, Ubuntu more or less
mimics the Windows or rather the Vista environment. It has steadily
gained ground as software of choice for companies and professionals
that are looking for easy-to-use open source options to Windows. And
with the current release of Karmic Koala (Ubuntu version 9.10), the
OS’ share is estimated to be anywhere between 40% and 50% of Linux
desktops.
Yet another compelling alternative to Windows on the desktop is
expected to come in the form of Google’s Chrome OS, another big-ticket
Linux derivative to be available in the second half of this year.
Open source is getting better on the desktop!
Links ubuntu.com | debian.com | mandriva.com
28 it next | m a y 2 0 1 0
free
Wares
Dotcom’s 25
years have helped
open-source tools
mature decisively.
Here are some
useful picks for you
By S h as h wat D C
two
Google applications
Since Larry Page and Eric Schmidt ven-
tured into the online sphere in 1998 with
Google; the innocuous search company has
grown up to become the world’s largest Inter-
net company. Google is now part of every
Internet user’s life, with the name Google
becoming a synonym for online search.
However, Google is no longer about merely
search and offers a host of services for both
individuals and the enterprise users, both for
free and for a fee.
Google Apps continues to be one of the
most innovative services from Google. It
features several Web applications with
similar functionalities to traditional office
suites, including: Gmail, Calendar, Talk, Docs
and Sites. Most of these services can be linked
to a common Gmail login ID.
Worth noting among other services is
Google Analytics, a service that lets an
individual or a company get an in-depth view
of the efficacy of an online property. Recently,
 open source | insight

This is the Silver Jubilee year of “.com”—the omnipresent top-level Internet

domain that came into existence in 1985. A small Massachusetts-based
computer maker Symbolics had the honour of registering the first .com.
Today, according to an Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF)
study, there are over 80 million dotcoms registered. These dotcoms lead to
economic benefits amounting to US $400 million, a number that is likely to double in
the next 10 years, says ITIF.
And dotcoms are not the sole domain names, as there are some 270 other so-called top level
domain names including .net, .org, .edu, .mil, .gov and the domains for individual countries
such as .in for India, .cn for China, and .ru for Russia. Now, with the mobile Web growing, a new
breed of domain name, .mobi, has emerged.
This spirit of sharing and collaborating that the Internet has fostered has also helped the Open Source
Software (OSS) movement spawn and grow into a meaningful existence. The OSS movement more or
less relies on the Web not only for its proliferation but also for its sustenance.
What better way to mark the 25th anniversary of the domain name system than to list 10 tools found on the Web
that are open and that are free!

Google also released Buzz and Wave, online social networking tools and also has plans to offer online storage service
collaborative platforms that can also be used as much for work as for fun. named Gdrive.

wave.google.com | buzz.google.com | desktop.google.com skydrive.live.com | getdropbox.com

Links docs.google.com | adwords.google.com | google.com/analytics Links box.net | humyo.com | drop.io
mozy.com | xdrive.com | adrive.com

three
Online storage and
backup
Backup and storage are among
the IT must-haves. While usually
NAS, SAN and tapes are used for
storage and backup, off-the-Inter-
net options are also available for
the purpose.
For example, there is Dropbox.
io that provides a 2GB free online
space for a user and then has
graded payment options for
people who want more. Box.net
is yet another service that allows
1 GB of space free of cost with a
file-size limit of 25MB.
Symantec also offers the
facility of online backup with its
new release of Norton 360 v4.0,
where it gives 2GB backup and
the rest can be upgraded based
on need and requirement.
Interestingly, the biggest online
storage option is available from
the Microsoft stable. Windows
Live SkyDrive service from
Microsoft currently offers 25 GB
of free personal storage, with file
size capped at 50 MB. Earlier,
Yahoo! too had provided a similar
service called Yahoo! Briefcase
but now it has been wrapped up.
Some reports say that Google
four
ERP
Previously known as Tiny ERP, OpenERP
is touted as a complete ERP for small and
medium businesses. It’s a complete Open
Source software with inbuilt modules for
CRM and BPM. Other features include man-
agement and financial accounting, inven-
tory management, sales, purchase human
resource and project management. The
software, released under General Public
License (GNU), has a very modular charac-
ter with more than 500 modules available
with customisable reports.
Links openerp.com/downloads.html

m a y 2 0 1 0 | it next 29
 insight | open source

five seven
Office productivity Antivirus
One of the reasons why Microsoft has been able to maintain a domi- Protecting the company’s assets can be
nant position in the desktop space is due to the spread and reach of a tough job, especially against viruses and
its MS Office suite of applications. People across the world are using malware. While there are a host of suites and
Window applications like MS Word and Excel. The company sells a proprietary solutions available to help do the
suite of these applications in the market and the pricing is dependent same, there is a good amount of freeware that
on the type of application desired by an individual. is equally effective. One of the most popular
If you want to save on the MS Office licensing cost, an alternative options is the AVG Free Edition (it is a propri-
available is OpenOffice.org. Available freely on the Internet, the suite etary software that also has a paid product). It
offers applications like Writer (functional equivalent of MS Word), Calc also has versions available for both Microsoft
(MS Excel), Impress (MS Powerpoint), and Base (Microsoft Access). and Linux and has constant updates over the
Web.
Links openoffice.org | softmakeroffice.com Another option is Clam AV, a GPL antivirus
toolkit for Unix platforms. The salient feature
of this software is its integration with mail
servers (attachment scanning). The package
six provides a flexible and scalable multi-
threaded daemon, a command line scanner,
FTP number of people. and a tool for automatic updating via the
While there are several FTP Internet.
Often, IT users need to mail applications that offer similar
avg.com/in-en/homepage
huge files in the range of 20MB or
above to multiple recipients. This
functionalities, it is hard to beat
Filezilla in the game. FireFTP is
Links antivirus.comodo.com
clamav.net/lang/en
can clog the network and create also equally effective in uploading
e-mail server-related issues. files to a ‘storage cloud.’
A simple way out is to upload For larger uploads, there is
the file on the Web and mail the Yousendit, a free service that
link to recipients and it is in
this context that a File Transfer
lets one send attachments up
to 1 Gb. And then there are also
eight
Protocol (FTP) utility becomes services like AxiFile that allows Data recovery tools
useful. FTP can be used to one to store and share files of up
upload files to be accessed by a to 10 Gb. One of the biggest headaches for an IT
manager is to recover data that has been
4shared.com | filezilla-project.org | fireftp.mozdev.org accidentally lost. Causes of data loss can
Links yousendit.com | axifile.com vary from computer viruses, power failure,

30 it next | m a y 2 0 1 0
 open source | insight

operating system crash, appli-
cation crash, corrupt or missing
system files, accidental format-
ting of hard disks, hard disk
media failure and accidental
deletion of files.
One of the popular freeware
for data recovery is ADRC data
recovery software tool, which
can undelete files, recover files
from damaged disks, copy a raw
disk image to another disk, create
and write disk image files to/from
internal and removable drives,
and import/export the boot sector
of a drive.
Another tool is Disk
Investigator, which can display
a drive’s actual data content by
bypassing the operating system
and directly reading the raw
drive sectors. It can also view
and search raw directories, files,
clusters, and system sectors and
verify the effectiveness of file
and disk wiping programs. It can
undelete previously deleted files
as well.
website. Services like Freeservers, 5gighost
and Freebeehosting let one host a website
with limited bandwidth and storage space for
free. Google too lets people develop their own
websites, with its service called Google Sites.
Meanwhile, for small businesses wanting
a more professional website, Intuit offers a
free website builder that lets people build a
website in a jiffy. The service is initially free
and then charges are applicable based on the
level of expertise that is required by the user.
freeservers.com | 5gighost.com
Links freebeehosting.com

Links adrc.net/data_recovery_software | theabsolute.net/sware/

dskinv.html | cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

nine
Free website hosting
To facilitate hosting of websites, there are scores of hosting service
providers that let businesses and individuals host pages for free, in
exchange for banner or sponsored adverts that are displayed on the
Protecting the company’s
ten
The social universe
Over the past many years, the real world is
being literally overshadowed by the so-called
social universe made up of the Facebooks and
the Twitters of the world. Not just the indi-
viduals, even enterprises are now looking at
social networking and micro-blogging tools to
reach out to their customers as well as engage
their employees.
LinkedIn has become one of the most
potent professional networking tools, which is

assets can be a really

increasingly being used by HR professionals
during a recruitment process. And services

tough job, especially like Yammer help employees within the

company to communicate and interact freely.
when it comes to viruses
and malware Links
linkedin.com | yammer.com
facebook.com | twitter.com

m a y 2 0 1 0 | it next 31
 insight | Security

Knowing
is
A mechanism that can unravel the real persona
of an alias is the way to keep cyber crime at bay
By D r . A n to n i o N u c c i

preventing
photo : Photos.co m

32 it next | m a y 2 0 1 0

The Internet has become the central
nervous system for our networked life.
As a global network of loosely con-
nected IP-based networks, it reaches
everywhere and provides a common
platform for communication to govern-
ments, businesses and consumers.
With the Internet, however, a new
kind of criminal has emerged—the
cyber criminal.
The pervasive nature of cyber crime
today threatens loss of proprietary
corporate information to the loss of
life. Various forms of cyber crime have
emerged, from predators exchanging
child porn and scammers stealing
identities to countries attacking
countries.
Quantifying cyber crime
The US FBI estimates that various types
of computer crimes in the U.S. now
cost the industry about US $400 bil-
lion, while officials in the Department
of Trade and Industry in Britain said
computer crime rose by 50% in 2006
over 2005. It is estimated that only 5%
of cybercriminals are ever arrested or
convicted because the anonymity asso-
ciated with Web activity makes them
hard to catch, and the trail of evidence
needed to link them to a cyber crime is
hard to unravel. The CERT Coordina-
tion Center estimates that as much as
80% of all computer security incidents
remain unreported.
Combating the threat
There are certain steps to be taken before
we can successfully combat cyber crime.
First, it is important to increase our
understanding of the many languages
and dialects (protocols, applications and
services) being spoken in the cyber world.
Network traffic monitoring and
measurement is increasingly regarded as
an essential function for understanding
and improving the performance and
security of our cyber infrastructure. With
networking technologies and services
evolving rapidly, as witnessed by the
explosive growth of the Web, accurate
network traffic monitoring is required to
ensure security in a cyber world.
Second, it will be timely to promptly
identify and tag cyber users and
communities of cyber users whose
activity and content may harm the safety
and transparency of the cyber world.
Third, it is critical to gain visibility
into who is the real person behind an
alias or cyber-identifier used to enter
the cyber world. A critical problem
in this digital world is knowing with
whom you are interacting.
The weak links
Critical to the success of a network mon-
itoring tool is its ability to accurately—
and on a real-time basis—identify and
categorise each flow of packets associ-
ated with a transaction and connection
by application.
Identifying network traffic using port
numbers was the standard in the recent
past. This approach was successful
Packet-inspection techniques
only identify traffic for which
signatures are available
and work if full packets are
available as inputs
because many traditional applications
used port numbers assigned by or
registered with the Internet Assigned
Numbers Authority (IANA). The
accuracy of this approach, however,
has been questioned because of the
evolution of applications that do not
communicate on standard ports. Many
current-generation P2P applications use
ephemeral ports, and in some cases, use
ports of well-known services such as Web
and FTP to make them indistinguishable
to a port-based classifier.
Techniques that rely on inspection
of packet contents have been proposed
to address the diminished effectiveness
of port-based classification. These
approaches attempt to determine whether
or not a flow contains a characteristic
signature of a known application.
Studies show that such approaches
work very well for today’s Internet
Security | insight
traffic, including P2P flows. In fact,
commercial bandwidth management
tools and network security appliances
use application signature matching to
enhance robustness of classification and
deep inspection of packet content even
in the case of encapsulated protocols
within each other.
Newer threats
Yet, recently several threats appeared
to use this technique to hide their pres-
ence and break through firewalls and
other security devices. The progress
in hardware acceleration has allowed
packet content inspection techniques to
run at speeds as high as 40 Gbps and
have made them the most commonly
used approach to gain visibility into any
Internet stream.
Nevertheless, packet-inspection
approaches face two severe limitations.
First, these techniques only identify
traffic for which signatures are
available. Maintaining an up-to-date
list of signatures is a daunting task.
Information is rarely fully updated and
complete. Furthermore, the traditional
ad-hoc growth of IP networks, the
continuing rapid proliferation of
applications of different kinds, and
the relative ease with which almost
any user can design and infiltrate
a new application to the traffic mix
in the network with no centralised
registration, contribute to this gap.
Second, packet inspection techniques
only work if full packets (header and
payload) are available as inputs and are
completely harmless whenever coarser
information is provided. Unfortunately,
only a few service providers today have
equipped their networks with packet
m a y 2 0 1 0 | it next 33
 insight | Security

such framework, such as supervised and

un-supervised machine learning, clus-
tering and graph-theoretical approaches.
These help increase the detection rate
while decreasing the false-positive rate.
However, these techniques lack
a fundamental attribute that make
them impractical from an operational
perspective—a precision identification
of the application responsible for the
observed flow in contrast to packet
content inspection techniques. This is
a fundamental question to answer, as
ACAS: Novel concept but today’s network operators must know
doesn’t go far the nature—legitimate or malicious—of
any single bit of information flowing
Exploring the feasibility of bringing together the benefits of the two families – through their pipes. Furthermore, as the
packet inspection and flow-based analysis -- has not attracted much attention application classification process might
in the research community. The only framework available is called ACAS, aimed still be prone to classification errors, these
at automatically extracting application-specific signatures by processing the techniques are not reliable for content
first 200 bytes of the first few packets. Although this work is novel from a pure billing or for robust application security.
conceptual perspective, the practicality of such a framework is still questionable The ideal solution should leverage
in many aspects. the merits of the packet content
inspection techniques by guaranteeing
First, it has been tested on only a very few well-known applications such as FTP,
high accuracy in classifying application-
POP3, IMAP, HTTPS, HTTP, SMTP and SSH. Thus, it is not clear how well it will
specific traffic, while providing the
perform in a more application-enriched environment.
robustness of the flow-based behavioral
Second, its underlying algorithms require offline training on the set of applica- analysis techniques.
tions that one is interested in detecting. Thus, it is not capable of recognising
‘zero-day’ applications but it is still based on the network operator’s knowledge Know your cyber world
of which applications are on the wire. Most importantly, it is required to go over a While governments have increasingly
manual and tedious process of generating traffic with the set of applications he expressed their concerns about the cyber
is interested in to properly train ACAS. threat to public safety and national secu-
rity, we still have not done enough to shed
The ultimate training of ACAS on these “never seen” applications must be ex-
light on the cyber world and its users.
ecuted in a controlled and clean lab environment.
The cyber infrastructure must
ACAS may suffer high false-positive rates for these new applications due to the not be thought of as just the physical
discrepancy in environments, (for example, a clean and controlled lab for offline infrastructure made of optical fibers,
training and an enriched and more complicated real network for online applica- servers and routers. Rather, it is about
tion classification). protocols, applications and services
being used to enable communications
among any number of end points (users).
We must discover who is behind
inspection appliances, while a majority The shortcomings a nickname, Mac or IP address, or
of them have access only to traffic flows These techniques achieve the flow-appli- VoIP number—perhaps by using
extracted directly from the routers, cation class mapping by extracting and biometric techniques to profile users’
either sampled or un-sampled. analysing hidden properties of the flow, communication as they access the cyber
To overcome these two fundamental either in terms of ‘social interaction’ of world. Reconstructing today’s missing
problems of packet content inspection hosts engaged in such a flow or the spa- links between the cyber ID and the real
appliances, research has focused on a new tial-temporal behavior of several flow person will make the cyber world a safer
family of techniques called ‘flow-features- features. These features range from flow place to visit.
based analysis.’ The common goal of duration and number and size of packets
these techniques is to identify which per flow to inter-packet arrival time. A
The author is CTO at Narus Inc and has vast
application class a traffic flow belongs to variety of more sophisticated data mining experience in Internet protocols, optical (WDM)
when using traffic flow information only. algorithms have been proposed on top of networking, mobile and wireless space

34 it next | m a y 2 0 1 0
4 Edu Tech December 2009
 case study | Meru Cabs

I
n 2007, when Meru Cabs first

First IT lanes,
started its cab operations in
Mumbai, there was skepticism
on the roads; it was not the first
time that such a service was

highway
being introduced in Mumbai. Yet, all
earlier attempts had fizzled out mainly
now due the non-viability of the operations
from an economic viewpoint.
The urban spread of the city, the
presence of numerous small-time cab
operators, and the sheer dominance of
Meru vroomed past early challenges with the black-yellow taxiwallahs presented a
in-house IT engines and was quick to use full- huge challenge for the radio taxi operator.
Meru’s strengths came from it being a
blown ERP when volumes swelled professionally managed company with
capital infusion from a private equity
By Shashwat D C fund. The management at Meru decided

The technology
Hardware: Sun T6340 blade servers with UST2+
processors
OS: Solaris 10
Consolidation: Solaris 10 virtual containers or logi-
cal domains (LDOMs) made it possible to consoli-
date 18 server instances on six physical blades
High Availability: Active/Passive cluster was used for
databases and applications with Solaris Cluster Suite
3.2. Siebel’s internal load balancing capability was
used to load balance requests on Siebel web server
Storage: EMC fiber channel storage area network
was used with multi-pathing for redundancy on
connectivity with the hosts
Backup: Symantec Netbackup was used with Sun’s
Tape Library for backing up all the servers

The team
Sourav Das (Sr Manager, Infrastructure)
Merene Gomez (Manager, Application Support)

Key learning
n  Since configuration of applications like Siebel
and Oracle EBS on a cluster environment is a spe-
cialised skill, take external help for implementation
photo: jiten gand hi

n  There is a saying ‘failing to plan is planning to

fail’. Meticulous planning during the initial stage is
critical for a large scale ERP deployment, some- NILESH SANGOI,
thing that helped Meru a great deal during the CTO, Meru Cabs
project

36 it next | m a y 2 0 1 0

to tackle the business issues with the
help of using technology innovatively.
So they launched a whole fleet of GPS/
GPRS luxury sedans that could be hired
by calling a single multi-line number.
The bet on technology paid off quickly.
After starting with some 46 cabs in
Mumbai, today the company runs close
to 5,000 cabs in four cities of Mumbai,
Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad.
But the exponential growth also
brought along with it the issues
of scale. Almost suddenly the call
volumes breached the roof. This posed
operational problems, as until about
a year ago most of the systems of the
company, developed in house, were
working in silos.
“Standardising
processes and using
a single, integrated
system will help us
increaseproductivity
and improve service
levels”
— Rajesh Puri, CEO, Meru Cabs
Sourav Das
Merene Gomez
Manager, Sr Manager,
Application Support Infrastructure
After much deliberation, the
management in consultation with the
technology leader at Meru, CTO Nilesh
Sangoi, decided to implement a complete
suite of ERP with various business
applications that could be customised for
specific needs. The decision to implement
an ERP was certainly not as easy as it
sounds, because much of the transactions
carried out were in cash. The decision
was taken some time in June 2009.
The solution
PwC was appointed to document pro-
cesses and convert them into a compre-
hensive RFP to be circulated to various
ERP vendors. Ultimately after much
deliberation the team selected Oracle’s
E-Business Suite ERP solution for its
Financial, HR and Fleet Management
needs, Siebel for Subscriber Manage-
ment and Ad-sales, Oracle Business
Intelligence for Analytics and Oracle
SOA suite for integration between
these applications. Once Meru decided
on implementing the solution, the first
thing done was to identify a consul-
tant, which was when Accenture was
brought into the project. The team
worked hard on defining what was to be
achieved and how, as part of the proj-
ect scope document. Next the scope and
requirements were defined, the techni-
cal team analysed and evaluated differ-
ent solutions that were available.
The infrastructure team was assigned
the responsibility of setting up a high-
performance, high-availability hardware
infrastructure for this project.
The biggest challenge faced by
the team was the sheer scale and the
novelty, as the entire infrastructure in
terms of hardware, a high-availability
load balancing OS cluster, installation
and configuration of the application
suite, was relatively new to Meru’s
environment.
An ERP core team was created
consisting of people from various
departments and Accenture to arrive
at the proposed transaction volume
and load in the foreseeable future.
Based on this, a high availability
and load balancing OS cluster for
various applications was designed in
Meru Cabs | case study
conjunction with Sun. It took a good
amount of time, with some help from
external solution architects, to finally
arrive at the right size and design for
the architecture, keeping in mind
future performance, stability and high
availability of the system.
Similar challenges were faced during
the implementation phase and after a
month-long effort the infrastructure
was made ready for production use.
Multiple instances of applications
like Production, Pre-prod, UAT
and development were created. The
toughest challenge was to complete the
entire ERP project within a very short
timeline of nine months. This meant
that only two months were available for
setting up the complete infrastructure.
The rewards
The system is now fully up and run-
ning. The single biggest benefit of the
integrated ERP system is to help Meru
in consolidating applications and bring-
ing much better operational efficiencies
in the business. The systems have been
sized to handle the business scale up for
next four to five years. The company is
now looking at raising the ante, by look-
ing at analytics.
Not only the technical team, even the
CEO Rajesh Puri seems to be enthused
by the implementation. “I am excited
about strengthening and combining
all systems together into a single,
integrated software program that runs
off a single back-end system, so that the
various departments can more easily
share information and communicate
with each other,” he says.
“Standardising those processes
and using a single, integrated system
will help us increase productivity and
improve service levels,” he adds. 
“Meru Cabs has always been an
innovator in the radio cab service
space, and we are proud to be the
only cab service company in the
world to implement ERP systems
in our organisation. Implementing
ERP systems shall have tremendous
payback for Meru Cabs and will help
us to grow even faster,” Puri states with
a touch of pride.
m a y 2 0 1 0 | it next 37
 interview | Selina Lo

38 it next | m a y 2 0 1 0
 Selina Lo | interview

“it’s time to
switch over
to 802.11n”
In India, Ruckus Wireless has been most noted as the technology
provider behind wireless broadband player Tikona Digital Networks.
Selina Lo, CEO, Ruckus Wireless, was in Delhi recently to give fillip to
the company’s growth plans in the country. She spoke to Shubhendu
Parth at length on how Ruckus technology betters standard Wi-Fi and
how that makes IT managers’ work simpler. Excerpts:

With the Wi-Fi Alliance
ratifying the standards
for 802.11n in September
2009, do you expect
enterprises to make a major
shift towards the wireless
environment? Why?
Absolutely! And this is already
underway. With the explosion
of wireless-enabled devices hit-
ting the market, there is a pent
up demand for better and faster
wireless connectivity. With the
popularity of mobile Internet
applications growing by the day,
enterprise environments are
becoming much more dynamic
and mobile in nature. This is driv-
Photo graph y: ji te n ga ndhi
IEEE standard, we have eliminated
both the price and performance
barriers. Ruckus Wireless has
recently introduced a new line
of enterprise access points that,
for the first time, has brought the
price of 802.11n to under US $500
with performance that can clearly
beat higher-end products. In the
last quarter, worldwide revenue
shipments of 802.11n products
surpassed 802.11g products and
continue to rise quickly.
How does the dual-band and
QoS tagging support that
802.11n provides make a
difference? Will that make an
environments. The 5GHz radios
can be used to establish wireless
mesh connections to build a wire-
less backbone. This eliminates
having to cable every access point
to an Ethernet connection—mak-
ing deployment much simpler.
IT managers need only find a
power source, plug the AP in and
walk away. At the same time, the
2.4GHz radio can be used to ser-
vice client traffic. When combin-
ing the attributes of dual-band
802.11n with advanced quality of
service techniques, smart antenna
arrays and tagging, IT managers
can now begin to support latency-
sensitive applications much bet-

ing interest in new technologies
such as 802.11n.
However, three primary
roadblocks—price, performance
and standardisation—inhibited
the mass adoption of 802.11n. But,
with 802.11n now ratified as an
IT manager’s job any easier?
Because dual-band 802.11n pro-
vides support in both the 2.4GHz
and 5GHz bands, IT managers
are better able to support a wider
range of applications from wire-
less meshing to high capacity
ter such as streaming IP-based
video, voice and other multime-
dia applications.
While a group of experts
have been suggesting that
802.11n can truly replace

m a y 2 0 1 0 | it next 39
 interview | Selina Lo

an enterprise’s Ethernet,
most of the others have
been advocating for a mixed
network. What is your take
on this?
802.11 will never fully replace
a wired network. While it might
eliminate pulling Ethernet
cable to every cube or office,
wired connections will still be
required. However 802.11n, when
combined with enhancements
such as dynamic beamforming
that dramatically increases the
reliability of the medium, will
become the primary access
method for the enterprise
over time. Because of Wi-Fi’s
instability, it has always been
viewed as a backup or secondary
means of connectivity. But with
more mobile devices that don’t
have Ethernet jack and more
robust implementations of Wi-Fi,
such as from Ruckus Wireless
that increases both the range and “By combining
reliability of Wi-Fi connections,
802.11n will undoubtedly become attributes of
the primary means of connecting
to a network with Ethernet cabling 802.11n with smart
now becoming the backup.
antenna arrays, IT
Ruckus has the patent
for multicast-to-unicast will actually work properly with-
managers can
conversion of video on
wireless LANs. How can the
out a lot of configuration, optimi-
sation and tuning of the network.
support latency-
enterprises benefit from it? sensitive applica-
Within the enterprise, deliver- Can you elaborate on how
ing streaming video and other exactly does the Smart Wi-Fi tions better”
broadcast applications are often technology works?
best served through multicast Smart Wi-Fi works by leveraging
transmissions. It’s projected that advancements in Wi-Fi technol- ing Wi-Fi “beams” and steering
over the next two years, video ogy such as miniaturised intelli- them around interference, enter-
will become the dominant appli- gent antenna arrays and RF signal prises realise much better perfor-
cation over enterprise networks. control software to increase the mance at longer distances. It also
Multicast-to-unicast conversion range and reliability of wireless dramatically reduces packet loss
is essential for delivering stream- communications. Smart Wi-Fi and brings in the ability to confi-
ing video content over Wi-Fi. The works by focusing and direct- dently support latency-sensitive
802.11 protocol inherently treats ing Wi-Fi transmissions over applications over Wi-Fi such as
multicast traffic as best effort the best performing signal path IP-based voice and streaming
traffic only, giving it no priority for each client and constantly video. Consequently, enterprises
or preference. By automatically “steering” or “switching” these can deploy fewer access points
converting this traffic to unicast, transmissions when interference that yield more stable and con-
IT manager can now be confident or obstacles that impede perfor- sistent performance for a given
that streaming video over Wi-Fi mance as experienced. By focus- area. This reduces both capital

40 it next | m a y 2 0 1 0

and operational expenses.
Additionally, the Ruckus
Smart Wi-Fi technology supports
advanced meshing techniques
that effectively eliminate the need
to run an Ethernet cable to every
Wi-Fi access point. This further
reduces operational cost and
complexity and cuts deployment
time up to half.
You recently released Zap
as an open source tool for
analysis of video traffic over
the wireless LAN. How will it
help the ecosystem?
Ruckus has a philosophy of shar-
ing useful tools and applications
that help customers optimise
their wireless networks. Zap is
the first proof of point of this phi-
losophy—and there will be more.
Zap helps the larger wireless
ecosystem by providing a useful,
free tool for anyone interested
in characterising the behaviour
of their wireless infrastructure.
It was developed specifically
for wireless networks. While
IxChariot and NetPerf are good
tools for determining average
(50%) throughput, they are
expensive and don’t do the
best job in sampling to the 99.5
percentile. It works by sending
Selina Lo | interview
“We are able to extend
carrier-class technology
into enterprise class prod-
ucts at a much lower cost”
controlled bursts of packets and
measuring both packet loss and
inter-arrival times. The primary
results reported are number of
packets lost, total packets received
and detailed throughput statistics.
Because Zap provides a measure of
both throughput and consistency
over time and distance, it
has particular importance to
streaming video, voice and other
latency-sensitive applications.
The company claims to have
breached the US $1 per Mbps
price over performance
barrier in the 802.11n
space. Has the product been
launched in India? What is
the cost?
With ZoneFlex 7300 series,
Ruckus Wireless has made enter-
prise class Wi-Fi more affordable
for its customers in India and
globally. This is the first sub-US
$500 enterprise-class 802.11n
access point, comprising both
single-band (7343) and dual band
(7363) products. The products
are priced at US $499 and $599
respectively. With maximum
Find similar inter- 802.11n capacity of 300Mbps
views online on
the website (single band) or 600Mbps (dual
www.itnext. band), the ZoneFlex 7300 has
in/resources/
interviews been measured to deliver unpar-
alleled throughput of 210Mbps
at short ranges (10 to 20 feet) and
over 120 Mbps at longer ranges
(60 to 100 feet) within a typi-
cal, walled office environment—
making it the industry’s lowest
cost, highest performing line of
802.11n access points.
Unlike any other 802.11n
access points, Ruckus ZoneFlex
access points integrate BeamFlex,
a patented software-controlled
multi-antenna array that forms
and directs Wi-Fi signals over
the best performing signal paths
in real time, on a per packet basis.
As RF environments change,
Ruckus ZoneFlex APs are able to
automatically select better signal
paths to increase performance
and minimise packet loss, thereby
ensuring good, consistent user
experience. In contrast, access
points with omni-directional
antennas have difficulty coping
with obstacles and interference
and must resort to dropping
their data rate. This degrades
performance for all users sharing
an access point.
So, how do you compare
Ruckus solutions to those
from the likes of Cisco, D-Link,
Aruba, Proxim and others who
have been there in the Indian
market for a long time?
Compared to other wireless ven-
dors, Ruckus offers unique advan-
tages that remain unmatched in
the marketplace. Our wireless
LAN system is typically half the
cost of comparable systems from
Aruba, Cisco, Proximate and oth-
ers—delivering two to three times
the range, twice the performance
at half of the cost. We are the only
wireless supplier that integrates
a patented smart antenna array
and supports dynamic beam-
forming to enable unprecedented
performance at longer distances.
This unique value proposition
has allowed us to win some of the
largest deals in India.
m a y 2 0 1 0 | it next 41
 Tech for telecom

42 it next | m a y 2 0 1 0
 tech for telecom

Outsourcing
for
value
Putting the right mix of non-core IT functions
in the vendor’s basket can drive benefits for both
the parties
BY Jat i n d e r S i n g h

W
ith over 600 million cellular subscribers,
Indian telecom industry is today also con-
sidered to be one of the most competitive,

8.27
globally. India has an addressable US$
The mobile-led telecom revolution
has given the country No. 2 position in terms of number of
subscriptions, but the remarkable growth is also accompanied
with its own set of challenges for operators, when it comes to
maintaining profitability. With over a dozen operators in the fray,
bn
Photo graph y: photo s.c om

the competitive landscape has become tough, leading to ever falling

tariff rates and diminishing ARPUs (average revenue per user). managed services
In order to remain more competitive, operators are finding it opportunity by 2013,
important to stay focused on their core business. So they are more
open to outsource operations like network management and basis a CAGR of 19%
customer service to players like Ericsson, Nokia-Siemens, Alcatel- Source: Forrester Research

m a y 2 0 1 0 | it next 43
 Tech for telecom

Getting it right sourced Experts feel that what turned out to

be a fruitful preposition for Bharti and
Service Level Agreements: With security and efficiency of their network a few others may not necessarily be
operation at stake, telecom companies should look for vendors that understand rewarding for all other operators.
their business and provide clear and competitive pricing, easy-to-understand Amit Goel, Consultant at Infosys
contracts, and guarantees mapped to realistic performance expectations. feels “It’s not just about outsourcing
but how much strategic value is left
Flexibility: Contracts should be flexible enough to upgrade to different classes after outsourcing that one should
of service or service-level agreements (SLAs) as needed. Also, services that watch for. Bharti has huge experience of
span a range of national or international connectivity options and are scalable for managing the business so they became
the long term, allowing easy, low-cost upgrades to support evolving application successful.”
needs should be considered. Says Amit Ravankar, head—Pre-sales
Total cost of service: It is imperative for companies to analyse the total cost and Operations, VAS, SDP and mobility
of the service over the course of the SLA. Charges for service changes or work solutions at Tata Consultancy Services,
done outside normal business hours, in addition to initial up-front expenses, can “When it comes to outsourcing, the cost
add up to the overall cost.
advantage will come only if they know
what to outsource, how to outsource,
Details: An SLA should communicate shared expectations regarding service whom to outsource and at what costs.
levels, including installations and changes. What exactly will the provider control If they get the answers to these, they
and where? Will the equipment reside on the provider’s premises or enterprise’s? have got the best deal. Telcos will have
What reports and information will be available to the company and how often? to maintain team of people who will
How will the provider respond to problems and how quickly? How does the pro- be overlooking the activities of the
vider measure network failures and what compensation is available when they outsourcing partner.”
occur? All these details should be properly discussed. “This team will have to be at least
as important as their core activity
By Vikram Sharma, VP (SP), Cisco India & SAARC operations team, as they will be the
ones who will be controlling costs and
yet deriving values. Not many players
have understood this whole dynamics
Lucent, IBM, Wipro, and TCS. yet. Whoever has is deriving profits
According to industry experts, from the outsourcing,” Ravankar added.
many Indian operators are unable
to match the global experience and No rigid rules
skill set required for managing IT and Much alike any other business, telecom
network operations internally. More companies are also expected to take a
so because in the wake of a rapidly holistic view before outsourcing their
growing telecom market, it is extremely IT infrastructure. Though it may appear
difficult to stay updated on new to be an easy way of keeping operational
technologies and frequently changing costs low, it is important to see that any-
IT applications, while focusing on new thing strategic is not outsourced, say
revenue opportunities. billing, for example.
Looking back, it was the $750 million “Telcos should For any telecom company, composing
Bharti-IBM revenue sharing deal,
look for vendors
bills and presenting those to customers
where the idea of IT outsourcing took is an important way of direct interaction
seed for the Indian telecom fraternity.
The 10-year deal has recently crossed who understand between the company and the end-user
and hence, the decision of outsourcing
the US $2.5 billion mark and has been
hugely success and beneficial for both
their business and the function should not be taken in a
hurry. On the other hand, application
Bharti and IBM.
Later on, Bharti also outsourced
provide clear management and systems are mostly
touted as non-strategic and can be
some of its other critical operations and competitive considered as perfect candidates for
to Ericsson and Siemens. Very soon, outsourcing.
other Indian operators also took the pricing” “There are no clear answers under
outsourcing route, sometimes even —Vikram Sharma, VP (SP), current scenario where entire telecom
before launching their services. Cisco India & SAARC industry is struggling to retain margins

44 it next | m a y 2 0 1 0
 tech for telecom

and sustain in the market. A few telecos

took this route and created rules and
other just followed them,” says Ravinder
Dagar, Manager, Prepaid Operations at
Aircel.
Notably, it was to bring down
operational costs that telcos started
outsourcing.
“We want to have quality vendors but
after hiring them we squeeze them year
on year under a cost-cutting agenda.
This leads to poor quality, bad relation
between the company and the vendor,
and bad quality of service for the
subscriber,” says Dagar.
“However, not all the processes can
be outsourced,” adds Dagar.
“With operators “Operational
Operators have realised the looking for more cost versus
importance of having tasks such
as provisioning, implementation, info on consumer RoI is the most
configuration, support and ongoing
operations managed by an outside party behaviour, we critical factor
that specialises in these functions, while
concentrating on their core area.  
can see a rise in that determines
According to a recent Forrester
Research report, India promises a
the use of business the need to
US $8.27 billion managed services
opportunity by 2013, with a CAGR of
analytics tools” outsource”
19%. However, as per Richard Curtis, —Kamlesh Bhatia, Principal —EVS Chakravarthy, CEO, You
ICT consultant for Beyond Solutions, Research Analyst, Gartner Broadband & Cable India
outsourcing a complete IT function
has historically been a failure for
telcos and many have bought the technologies like 3G and WiMAX will have little interest in running giant
function back in house and in some compel operators to look for better IT systems either. Such companies
cases cycled through the outsourcing- alternatives for technology alignments. therefore need to outsource key
insourcing process again. “3G and/or WiMaX will be enabling functions because they simply may not
new types of applications. In the wake have the in-house expertise.
Newer challenges of dwindling ARPUs, operators will “Operational cost versus RoI is the
In the next wave of growth, is the mobile want more information related to most critical factor that determines the
virtual network operator (MVNO) consumer behaviour and hence we need to outsource a function or activity.
model expected to change things? can see business analytics tools being At You Broadband, we measured the
“Outsourcing has been so successful demanded,” says Kamlesh Bhatia, return from running the call centre
that Bharti is thinking of elevating the Research Analyst at Gartner. function using in-house resources
business to the level of focusing only In addition, for greenfield operators and decided to outsource it,” says EVS
on the business... being very close like Datacom, Uninor and Loop Chakravarthy, CEO at You Broadband
to MVNO-type model,” says Sathya Telecom, the success in the market is & Cable India.
Narayanan, Solution Architect at largely driven by lower cost structure, Experts also note that there are so
Ericsson. competitive service bundling and fast many modes of ‘outsourcing’ today that
“Such daring and innovative adaptability to changing requirements. some are becoming less popular while
strategies are needed to fight a fair Many of these new entrants would others are gaining ground.
battle in the already competitive market, not even want themselves getting into “There are also regional trends. The
culminating in the long run into a the detailed analysis of technology as US, for example, traditionally always
market that is favourable to the end- they would see themselves more as outsourced more BSS/OSS than Europe
user,” Narayanan added. retailers of services. In fact, they may as we tended to prefer COTS. You are
Also, the emergence of new not even want to own a network and seeing BTO models in Africa and

m a y 2 0 1 0 | it next 45
 Tech for telecom

Major deals According to a research by ValueNotes, outsourcing of services in

this sector is expected to reach US $620 million by 2012

Telecom
Date operator Vendor Deal Description
Nov 2009 Uninor Genpact Genpact to set-up customer service solution centre for operator in
North India using its centre in Jaipur
Apr 2008 BSNL Convergys Convergys to support BSNL’s 18 million wireline subscribers. BSNL
will replace its legacy billing systems with the Convergys’ Infinys
rating and billing solution
Jan 2008 Aircel Wipro Wipro to support IT infrastructure for Aircel in India. The nine-year
deal is estimated at $450 to $600 million.
Sep 2007 BSNL TCS TCS to develop a billing system for BSNL The deal covers the North
and West of India, includes deploying operational support systems
and business support systems components such as CRM, billing,
mediation and directory enquiry. The nine-year deal is valued at
$140 million.
July 2007 Vodafone IBM IBM to manage all of Vodafone Essar’s IT operations with
the exception of network service platforms. It also includes
maintaining billing, data centers and financial systems. The tenure
of the contract is five-years and is estimated value of the deal is
$600 to $800 million
Mar 2007 Idea Cellular IBM IBM to integrate Idea’s business processes, IT and IT infrastructure.
About 70-75% of the Idea’s total headcount will be moved to IBM.
The vendor will also provide technology to handle billing and credit
collection, manage frauds and customer relationships. This 10-year
deal is estimated to be valued at $600 to $800 million.
April 2004 Bharti Airtel IBM Airtel outsourced its operations to IBM which started at $750
million and now reached $2.5 billion
Source: ValueNotes/IT Next Research

Middle East where a company runs
your solution for you on an interim
basis and transfers skills over time so
you can run it yourself,” says Teresa
Cottam, Director of Research and
Publications at Babworth.
“You may also fully outsource to such
a company because it makes sense as
the skills required are so specialised,”
Cottam adds.
“Outsourcing like roaming data
exchange through a clearinghouse is
pretty standard for a lot of operators.
Then there are those disciplines
where there are skills shortages and
outsourcing to an expert company
might be your only option,” Cottam
further commented.
To ensure quality of service (QoS) at all
times one has to regularly verify systems
and tools used, analyse various reports
on network uptime, and ensure that SLA
norms are being met. It is also important
to determine that resources are deployed
adequately and best practices are being
followed across systems.
There is no formula for outsourcing.
The decision has to be based on the
local market conditions, business
model, and customer expectations. As
an example, one may decide to support
customers based on ARPU, with low-
ARPU customers being redirected to
self-service or outsourced call centres
while high-ARPU customers are given
premium customer service.
Find similar stories online
on the website
www.itnext.in/vertical

46 it next | m a y 2 0 1 0
 15minute
training
Education
workplace
Asanas
For
back
manager

Leadership Have a team, not a hero this page

compensation pain Manage IT Getting your data card right page 49
workforce trends Page 48
Unwind 5 steps to a great vacation Page 50
skills development
personal development

By Thej e n d r a B S

I
f you have the habit of reading
business magazines, manage-
ment books or articles you will
definitely encounter countless
references about super perform-
ers or hyper efficient employees that
exist in various organisations, depart-
ments and teams.
Of course, the definition of a super
performer is a subjective term that
can vary from manager to manager or
from company to company, and can be
quite varied based on their personal
experiences. And that picture can
range from someone who is super
fast at everything, a noisy person, a
flamboyant person, someone who has
all the answers, the management’s blue
eyed boy, a jargon emitting person, a
go-to person, or even someone who
always comes to office very early and
Leadership

Have ateam,
leaves very late, and so on.
Yet, going by the job advertisements
of organisations today, a super
performer is someone who meets (or

not a hero
claims to meet) the fancy criteria like
below (based on real sentences picked
I maging: santos h kus hwaha

from some newspaper advertisements).

l  We are looking for high value employees
dedicated to delivering innovation to assist
our clients in high performance delivery. The Promoting super performers in an
employee must be a class of his own and raise
his or her sights above the horizon. We are
unbalanced way can do more harm than
looking for super efficient leaders who have good for the team work and morale

m a y 2 0 1 0 | it next 47
 15-MINUTE MANAGER

the challenge to outdo themselves, and be a

winner all the way.
l  We are looking for a person to lead,
motivate and create a high performance
team capable of continuous innovation and
excellence in working for a global leader.
l  We are looking for candidates who are
bubbling, energetic and invigorating to join a
sales team of a global winner who can swim in
an ocean of opportunities.
Every manager will unquestionably
agree that having a gang of such super
performers in their teams would be
a great thing. However, while having
some performers may seem great, you Office Yoga By Dr Naveen Arya | aryansclinic@gmail.com

will be surprised to know that they

can gradually become your worst
nightmare.
Over time, and often unknown to
The lumbar facts
you, they can do more harm than good
and can slowly curdle or ruin an entire
team consisting of normal to good
performers. What I am saying may
sound ridiculous, but wait till you have
read through this:
While being super efficient is not
1 a crime, a hyper performer can
often make other team members (who
work quietly without fanfare) look bad
and inefficient, either intentionally or
unintentionally. To understand this,
just go back to your school and college
days. Remember in school where a cou-
ple of smart kids would quickly shout
answers before the other kids could
even understand the teacher’s question.
They were the class’s “knows it all.” And
slowly those speed kids would become
the teacher’s pets while the rest of the
students would constantly be compared
with them, leading to an icy jealousy.
Similarly, super performers in a team
Asanas for BACK PAIN
Functions of the low back, or lum-
bar area, include structural sup-
port, movement, and protection of
certain body tissues.
Symptoms in the low back can
relate to the bony lumbar spine,
discs between the vertebrae, liga-
ments around the spine and discs,
spinal cord and nerves, muscles
of the low back, internal organs of
the pelvis and abdomen, and the
skin covering the lumbar area.
Treatment of low back pain is opti-
mally directed toward a diagnosed
or suspected specific cause.
In the previous issue, we listed a couple of
simple aasanas that can help relieve or pre-
vent back pain. Here are a few more.
Each pose should be held from five to ten
seconds, depending upon your level of
comfort, and should be done on a mat or
other soft, supportive surface. Do remember
that it’s best to do these exercises under the
supervision of a certified yoga instructor. If
you encounter any problems in between, you
should consult an expert.
WIND-RELEASING POSE: Lie flat on your
back as in the corpse pose explained in the ear-
lier issue. As you inhale, bend your knee, place
your hands right below the knee, and draw your
leg towards your chest. Your left leg should
remain flat on the floor. Exhale and bring your
forehead up to touch your knee. Inhale, and
then as you exhale, return to your original posi-
tion. Repeat the same, with the other leg.
SAGE TWIST: Sit on the floor with both legs
stretched out in front of you. Bend your right
knee, lift your right leg over your left, and

80
can corrode the manager’s opinion of
others as they will invariably be com-
pared against the heros. But people hate
being compared with others as it will
make them look inferior and dull. This
place your right foot on the floor next to your
Over left knee. Sitting with spine straight, place
your left elbow on the right side of your right
knee. Bend your left arm so that your left
fingertips are touching your right hip. At the
Photo graphy: Jayan K Narayanan

in turn kills teamwork, collaboration

%
same time, twist gently to look over your right
and can lead to internal politics. shoulder; hold for a few seconds, release, and
Photo graphy: photo s.c om

Many will argue that having a repeat on the opposite side.

2 super performer in a team can be
people experience back Caution: Take care not to twist too far or you
great source of inspiration for other pain at some point in risk aggravating any existing back pain.
team members. But the reality is far
their lives, and slightly
from this assumption. Just like the
more men suffer from it
omnipresent sibling rivalry among The author is a Ayurveda and Yoga expert and Direc-
than women tor of www.ayurvedayogashram.com

48 it next | M a y 2 0 1 0

kids, a super performer in a team of co-
workers will soon be viewed as someone
who is hogging all the limelight and the
manager’s attention or affection, while
others are automatically viewed as
morons being unable to do work as effi-
ciently as the super performer. Constant
success of this type is a guaranteed way
to gain unpopularity. Apart from the
usual feelings of envy it can also lead to
fear among co-workers. So team mem-
bers will start viewing the super per-
former as a danger to their survival
rather than an inspirational soul.
Managers will intentionally (or
3 unintentionally) start diverting
all the juicy jobs to the super performers
and the routine or mundane work to
others, thereby depriving them to get
ahead or get involved. Team members
will start feeling they are getting
unequal amount of the manager’s atten-
tion and responses.
Appreciation can be intoxicating
4 and addictive. Once high per-
formers get continuous attention and
appreciation the natural tendency is to
seek activities and tasks that can earn
them more and more limelight or
Manage IT
Getting your
data card
right
As the pre-3G era continues to drag
on, CDMA still edges out GSM when
it comes to USB-based wireless
Internet
By Shash wat D C
rewards. So they will start invading into
other team members’ territories and
even start finding fault in the way oth-
ers work. They could also start showing
off how they could handle the same job
better, and start giving unwanted sug-
gestions, thereby making other team
members look stupid. And in many
cases, super performers in their desire
to remain at the top will start grabbing
ideas and pieces of work (or even entire
work) from others, thus depriving oth-
ers of their rightful share of the work-
load, or maybe even make them lose
their job.
Like a child that gets bored of
5 every toy within hours or days
and expects its parents to buy a new toy,
super performers by nature are restless
individuals constantly seeking new
activities that will excite them. But a
manager or an organization cannot find
or invent exciting work perpetually to
keep their super performers happy. And
because of the halo surrounding them
and the holy throne on which they sit,
they will be unwilling to do ordinary,
mundane and routine work that is
essential in any department. Hence
15-MINUTE MANAGER
super performers will refuse, avoid or
quietly offload such activities to their
co-workers as they start believing such
menial activities are to be done only by
the lesser mortals. This can lead to vari-
ous workload conflicts.
As you can see from the above,
you have as much to fear about super
performers as you have to fear about
inefficient and troublesome workers.
And such things could be happening
right under your nose and just waiting
to explode at the most inconvenient time.
However, if you can recognise the smoke
signals early and apply the necessary
balances periodically then you can
ensure that everyone in the team can
contribute to their potential without
stepping on others’ toes. Finally, at the
end of the day one should understand
that super performers can shine and
bloom only because bad, normal and
good performers exist around them.
And we can conclude this article
with a quote that says, “Either super
competence or super incompetence may
be offensive to an establishment.”
The author is IT Manager at ANZ OTSS
G
etting a new broadband
connection is much like
procuring a new mobile
connection. No matter
how much discretion or
research is put in, in the end organisa-
tions don’t necessarily get what they
expect.
The story is not much different when
it comes to buying a USB-based wireless
Internet connection, the plug-and-
play broadband solution that is quite
common these days. While all service
providers, including Reliance, Tata,
Airtel, Vodafone MTS, claim to provide
the best service at the most affordable
rates, one needs to take the claims with
a pinch of salt.
Essentially, there are four broad
parameters on which one will evaluate a
wireless broadband connection namely,
m a y 2 0 1 0 | it next 49
 15-MINUTE MANAGER

unwind speed, coverage, cost and service. But

5 Steps to a great before we get into an actual comparison,

let’s enumerate which are the products

vacation that actually fall in the category of

wireless broadband.
Like the mobile services, there
are two variants of the wireless USB
Internet—CDMA and GSM. While,
Reliance Net Connect and Tata Photon
are the most popular and preferred
ones, they aren’t the only ones in the
market. Airtel too has a similar GSM-
based USB modem, Vodafone has a
3GConnect USB Stick, Idea has the Net
Setter, Virgin has the V-Link (which
rides on the Tata backbone), MTS has
launched Mblaze and BSNL too has
BSNL EVDO. Thus, there are plenty
of options to choose from, though the
Vacationing to a destination that suits your choice and budget can be a common choices are Reliance, Tata,
great way of de-stressing and bringing back memories to be cherished for a MTS and BSNL.
lifetime. Putting a little bit of planning into it will make the experience all the By comparison, the speeds in case
more enjoyable and rewarding. of Tata Indicomm and Reliance are
better than Airtel, Vodafone and
Decide your vacation: Discuss with your family or group and decide
1 what vacation you want to enjoy. Do you just want to get away from
Idea cellular, largely because CDMA
technology allows several users
everything, or do you want to have a relaxed tour of a new and exciting
to share a bandwidth of different
place? Or, as many are discovering these days, do you want to dive deep and
frequencies. Through multiplexing,
experience oneness with the nature?
CDMA employs spread-spectrum
Choose your destination: Do some research on locations that offer technology and a special coding
2 what you seek. In an age where every travel website features all scheme to allow multiple users over
prices, and every destination website features site photographs, the most the same physical channel.
effective research remains word-of-mouth. Talk to your friends and friends of GSM services, while good for calls,
friends, and it is likely you will chance upon a hidden gem. Talking to travel are not that great for data, especially for
agents will also be useful. pre-3G networks. With 3G, however,
things are expected to change. 3G
Fix your budget: Account for things you can’t do without – like the
3 travel and food, as well as the must-do experiences – like a day tour
allows simultaneous use of voice and
data services and higher data rates, up
or an amusement park, or even essential shopping. What remains is your ac-
to 14.0 Mbit/s on the downlink and 5.8
commodation budget. Research and locate a place that fits your budget and
Mbit/s on the uplink with HSPA+.
offers clean rooms and decent service.
So for the moment we will only talk
Experience the destination: Vacation for the well read traveller of about the limited products and not all
4 today is more about actively enjoying the best experiences a destina- of them.
tion has to offer and bringing back lasting memories. Research shows that
the best way to de-stress is to immerse the mind and body into an enjoyable Speed claims
activity such as an active vacation. So it helps to dive into the local cuisine, When it comes to speed, both Reliance
and walk or cycle around. and Tata promise you heavenly delights;
upload speed of 1.8 Mbps and download
Photo graphy: Pradee p Murthy

Relax: Remember you are on vacation. Budget enough lazy time to

5 put your feet up and relax, and for quiet conversation with your family
speed of 3.1 Mbps. Thus, technically, if
you were downloading a 1 GB film (from
and friends. Refuse to fret over the small things, adopt an island lifestyle
a registered site, of course), it should
and let things go at their pace. If you follow the previous tips, you will return
take you round about 6 minutes, right?
with life-long memories.
Wrong. Because what’s advertised is not
necessarily delivered. The 3.1 Mbps and
By Pradeep Murthy, Co-founder MuddyBoots (www.muddyboots.in) 1.8 Mbps are hypothetical limits, much

50 it next | M a y 2 0 1 0

As far as coverage is
concerned, BSNL seems to be a
better choice considering the
robust network it has across
India
like the 150 km mark in the Maruti
Cars. The car will not achieve that
speed, as there are numerous factors
in play. Similarly, your wireless broad-
band experience depends on where you
are, and the time of day, which together
determine how many users are there on
the network.
There are a few good online tools
that allow you to test the actual speed of
the modem, like http://www.speedtest.
Photo graphy: photo s. co m
net/ or http://www.pingtest.net/. If you
are able to touch a download speed of 1
Mbps too, consider yourself extremely
lucky.
So how do the providers compare,
well last year one of the networking
news portals had done a nationwide
comparison of Tata Photon and Reliance
NetConnect (http://www.connectindia.
in/posts/list/articles-reliance-data-
card-vs-tata-photon-check-out-the-
nationwide-982142.htm), wherein they
tested both the modems simultaneously
in different cities. Reliance was the
winner in the test. Going by the
responses collated from different users,
while Reliance NetConnect scores
higher when it comes to speed, Tata
Photon has not really lived up to its
promise in this regard, it so appears.
Reach and coverage
Ask any frequent traveller holed up in
15-MINUTE MANAGER
By comparison, the speeds in
case of Tata Indicomm and
Reliance are better than Airtel,
Vodafone and Idea cellular
distant hotel in Varanasi, what his or
her most important criterion is, and he
or she will surely quip: connectivity.
Even to this day, when we go gaga on
arrival of India on the global scene, net
connectivity beyond the 4-5 major met-
ros is pathetic to say the least. While all
service providers put up valiant claims
in terms of coverage, the reality is very
different.
As far as coverage is concerned,
BSNL seems to be a better choice
considering the robust network it
has across India. Among the private
operators, Tata claims coverage in 70
cities, while Reliance in around 40
cities and MTS Blaze in approximately
18 cities. Overall, among private
operators, Reliance NetConnect scores
better in terms of coverage provided in
various cities, thanks to the dour fibre
network that stretches across the length
and breadth of the country.
After-sales service
More often than not, one factor that
is clinching when it comes to making
m a y 2 0 1 0 | it next 51
 15-MINUTE MANAGER
training
calendar
Program
Finance for Non Finance
Executives
Customer Based Business
Strategy
Customer Relationship
Management
Effective Leadership & Teamwork
Business Integration through ERP
Financial Modelling and Risk
Management
Marketing Strategies for SMEs
Developing International Business IMT Ghaziabad
Strategies
International Executive
Programme
Asian International Executive
Programme
Negotiating Your Way to Success
Advanced Selling and Salesforce
Management
Balanced Scorecard in practice
- Process, Methodology &
Techniques
High Impact Leadership
Advanced Management
Programme
52 it next | M a y 2 0 1 0
a purchase decision is the after-sales
service. How well does the company
resolve your problem and more impor-
tantly, what is the response time. In this
regard as well, Reliance seems to have
an edge. Not only are their call centers
more proactive but they actually tend to
resolve the issue over the phone. Tata’s
Career booster case is a wee bit less assuring, as till
courses for you recently there was only a national toll-
free on which one could reach its rep-
resentatives.
Again, the state-owned operator
BSNL is also fairly okay, though it can
at times be slow. Not much can be said
about MTS, as it a much newer player
and hasn’t yet covered the cities well
Venue Dates enough.
NITIE Mumbai May 03 – 07, 2010
The cost factor
Beyond the acquisition cost, what really
IIM Ahmedabad May 06 – 08, 2010 matters is the actual cost of using the
service. Different players have various
data plans to cater to user needs. As of
IMT Ghaziabad May 06 – 07, 2010 now, both Tata and Reliance don’t have
an unlimited plan in place. For instance,
a Reliance user can get a maximum of
IIT Kharagpur May 10 – 12, 2010 15 GB at the price of Rs 1,750 per month
IMT Ghaziabad May 13 – 14, 2010 but if that is exceeded then users have to
pay at the rate of Rs 2 per MB for addi-
IIT Kharagpur May 24 – 27, 2010 tional usage. Similarly, a Tata Photon
+ user can get a maximum of 20 GB at
the price of Rs 2,000 per month beyond
IMT Ghaziabad May 25 – 26, 2010
which users have to pay at the rate of Rs
May 27 – 28, 2010 0.50 per MB.
MTS provides flexible data plans
which starts from Rs 198 per month.
INSEAD May 31 – June 18, Also user can get full value Internet
2010 usage on recharge of Rs 299, Rs
699 and Rs 999. However, the state
INSEAD May 31 – June 11, operator BSNL offers unlimited web
2010 surfing and download for post paid
subscriptions while for pre paid
IIM Kolkatta June 01 – 05, 2010
subscriptions, 5 paisa per 100 KB plan
IIM Lucknow June 04 – 06, 2010 is available.
So overall, Reliance seems to be fare
better on speed and service aspects,
IIM Kozhokode June 07 – 09, 2010 BSNL is a winner on the coverage and
cost fronts. However, much like the
mobile services, USB-based wireless
Internet is also a very dynamic segment
IIM Bangalore June 21 –23, 2010 where quick changes are frequent.
Therefore, it’s important to check the
INSEAD July 5 – 30, 2010
latest buzz in the market and the latest
plans as well before buying.
 Mobility
How to live
with a lost
the Black-
berry?
big EXPERT PANEL
Satish
Mahajan
head IT
- inf ra-
stru ctur e,
ray monds
The Situation...
“The movie was awesome,” said Rahul through
the final munches of popcorn to his father, Ramesh
Vasudeva as the credits to the three-hour epic
rolled up. Vasudeva was treating his teenage son
to a movie and dinner as part of the baby sitting ex-
ercise since his wife was on a business tour. While
he was tired after a long day at his workplace,
ConsCom, a leading consumer durable player, he
had been looking forward to the movie break for a
week now to get his mind off the challenges that
awaited him at work in the days ahead.
Photo graph y: s ubhojit paul
Vasudeva was in-charge of new products and
was in the middle of applying the final touches to
the design of a personal video player, the compa-
ny’s first foray in the consumer electronics space.
The product would be a big break for Vasudeva as
he had driven the project from the very start.
Post movie, the father-son duo sauntered to the
pizza outlet to end their day on a high calorie note.
Ready to leave after a hearty meal, Vasudeva
from he re
Your responses count. Log on
to www.itnext.in/bigQ to submit
Cut it
your replies. The best entry will be
published in the next print edition.
Vishwajeet tr madan mohan
SINGH pr esident/man-
national aging partner,
Manager IT, Br owne & mohan
fcm Travel
solutions
lunged to his pocket so that he could ask his driver
to get the car but he found the pocket empty. Panic
gripped him, his Blackberry was missing.
“Rahul, my phone is gone, look around,” he said
and dashed to the pizza counter. His request if the
pizza store boys had seen a Blackberry drew a
negative. Rahul was asking the sales staff at the
other counters that they had been to.
The last time Vasudeva remembered seeing his
phone was when he had bought the tickets. He
had turned on the silent mode to enjoy the movie
in peace. That was over four hours ago. “What
have I done, all the product drawings and market-
ing plans are on the device.” The thought brought
beads of sweat on his forehead.
“Can I please use your phone,” requested Vas-
udeva to the theatre guy.
He quickly dialled his number and heard the
inevitable - “The number you are trying to reach
is currently switched off. Please try again later.”
“This can’t be happening to me, what if the phone
reaches the wrong hands, what if…,” Vasudeva’s
head was a whirlwind of doomsday scenarios.
NEXT
m a y 2 0 1 0 | it next 53
 the big q

the big questions...

?Is there a way to ensure that nobody is able to access the data on
Vasudeva’s lost Blackberry?

? What should the company do to ensure safety of the huge company

data and information on all its mobile devices?

Here are the answers...

‘HAVE REMOTE DATA ACCESS POLICY’

FIRST ANSWER
The problem faced by Vasudeva is big but is also fairly common.
In today’s hyper-connected world, security of the data in the mobile
device is a critical requirement. Yet, even in these trying times, pro-
tecting the data is not that hard if you follow some ground rules. If
an organisation is running Blackberry server one can put different
restrictions on the device depending on the need and requirement.
Coming to the issue faced by Vasudeva, I would make the following
suggestions to him:
n  Stop the mobile services so that the mobile will not be accessible.
n  Provide the unique Mac ID of the Blackberry to the service
provider so that if anybody tries to access the device the service
provider can block the device and it becomes unusable.
Satish n  If the Blackberry is controlled through the local server of the
Mahajan organisation then control becomes easier and activation can be
completely disabled.
Head IT— n  The Blackberry information can be completely erased if there were third party
Infrastructure,
Raymonds solutions ported on the device.
n  These are some of the methods practiced in the industry to prevent data access of
About me: Tech leader the users though Blackberry.
with over two decades
of experience, have
worked with companies second ANSWER
like Hinduja Group and
ICICI Ltd, before joining Increase of storage capacity of the mobile devices has threatened the security of the data
Raymond in the organisation. We are not really able to categorise the data as per its importance and
create backup of the same. Encryption of the data is one of the easiest ways to handle this
issue. But there are not many reliable ways available today to retrieve the data. So, it’s
risky to encrypt the data if we are not able to restore back to normal form.
One can have remote data access policy through Blackberry servers, where we can
prevent deleting, copying or transferring of data in case of a loss of the mobile device.
This is possible if and only if one know s the unique pin number of the device.
Discourage user to store data on mobile devices like Blackberry and Windows mobiles
so that minimum business data is available on mobile devices. This will help maintain
the privacy of the data. .
Some of the other standard practices are, frequently synchronize the data of the mobile
devices with local laptops or desktops. This can be as frequent as daily, depending on the
criticality of the data stored in mobile device.
Also, important data should be backed to the local hard disk so that it can be made
available in case of a loss. Many organisations follow a method of storing critical data at
a central location with right access control and proper documentation so that data can
be retrieved quickly in case of loss due to any reason..

54 it next | m a y 2 0 1 0
 the big q

‘ENCRYPT MOBILE DEVICE DATA’

FIRST ANSWER
Unfortunately, as businesses’ reliance on technology continues
to grow, risk factors are growing in tandem. I personally keep my
important details on my phone but at the same time I always make
sure that I religiously take care of the following precautionary mea-
sures to protect it. I would suggest the same to Vasudeva:
1. Protect the phone with a strong password, both for the device
and the storage card.
2. Always encrypt your storage card, it is a MUST.
3. Don’t forget to synchronise your device on regular intervals with
any primary or secondary device, it will at least make you feel relaxed
even after losing your device.
4. If your data is very critical then use any third-party service to
track and delete your data remotely. Vishwajeet
5. If possible, try to physically mark your handset with personal Singh
information. This will greatly reduce the second-hand value of the
mobile if it is stolen. National Manager – IT,
FCm Travel Solutions
6. Record your IMEI: Every mobile phone has a unique 15-digit electronic serial
number. Inform your operator and the police as soon as you lose it. About me: Tech
7. Don’t leave your device open to access (e.g. leaving Bluetooth or WiFi on). professional with a
management bent,
8. Remove old SMS or emails on your handset that you don’t need any more. have been associated
with companies like
Indiamart Intermesh
SECOND ANSWER Ltd. and Innoserv
As the number of such loses have increased, the options for handling such incidents have Systems prior to joining
FCm
also grown. To minimize their potential privacy liability, companies need to:
1. Train employees and contractors to understand their responsibility in the protection
of data assets.
2. Ensure that mobile devices are encrypted and that employees understand the
organisation’s policies on downloading sensitive information and working remotely.
3. Make employees aware of the precautions that should be taken when travelling with
laptops, PDAs and other data bearing devices.
4. Devices like laptop can be protected through different layers of authentication like,
security chip, smart cards and USB tokens. NEXT

Strat
egy Securing mobile workforce
e P o l i cy Orc h est rato r
C e nte ra liz e d ma n ag e me n t
Compr e h e nsive re po rtin g a n d au diting
Irr ef uta ble pro o f o f protectio n

Host DLP
Encrypted USB Contr ol ov er inter nal data
Endpoint E nc ryption
Standa rd, secure USB f l ash stroage tr ansfer
Pow erful full-disk, f ile, and folder
Driv erless zero footprint Comprehensive device manag em ent
encryption
technology Multil ayered pr otection
Strong access control
T wo-factor au thentication Comprehensive device and data
Syn chronized password ch anges
Secure token services m anag ement
G ranul ar controls

Source: Mcafee

m a y 2 0 1 0 | it next 55
 the big q

‘DO A REMOTE DATA SWIPE’

FIRST ANSWER
Users with Blackberry Enterprise Solution have two options. They
could ask their IT admin to remotely change the password. In case
Vasudeva discovers the hadheld at home/in a car, he could just reset
the Blackberry and he is up and running again.
On the other hand, if the handheld is not traced and Vasudeva wants
to ensure that data should not be accessed by anyone who found it, he
should ask his IT department to do a remote data swipe.

SECOND ANSWER
As with desktops, companies should adopt the same rules for mobile
data protection like prevention and control.  Formal risk analysis
helps in risky incidents and mitigation strategies.  Companies should
TR Madan go for device and memory card encryption, which does not require
Mohan much user intervention. They should adopt stringent password pro-
tection and content protection procedures and insist that first-time
President/Managing users of a device set the password before devices are activated. Also, it should be ensured
Partner, Browne &
Mohan that passwords are changed frequently.
Another important way of protecting the mobile device is by deploying anti-theft soft-
About me: Consultant ware, something that most companies must follow. From a control perspective, a clear
and academician, have
been associated with password change and data swipe process needs to be defined. Finally, the users need to
Frost & Sullivan, Carleton be made aware on the importance and criticality of such measures, and hence training to
University, IIM Bangalore
users on security aspects should be provided before handing down the device. Security
is seldom a single solution or methodology, instead it is multi-pronged approach.

Notes
NOTEs

Wireless data security: http://bit.ly/HRZqw

More Resources Security behind Blackberry: http://bit.ly/bVXd52
How to access corporate data with BlackBerry: http://bit.ly/94bBWy

56 it next | m a y 2 0 1 0
4 Edu Tech December 2009
 cube chat | Binu Lakshman
Disciplined
doer
“I believe in creating opportunities
from every situation of life,” says Binu
Lakshman, Manager IT, Honda Siel
Cars, India
By Jatinder S i n g h
M
ost of us dream of creating a
roadmap, which could be fol-
lowed by others. Binu Laksh-
man, Manager IT, Honda Siel
Cars has a slightly different
philosophy.
“I walk my talk, both personally and
professionally. I believe in creating opportunities
from every situation of life” he says.
My sucess Hailing from Kerala, Lakshman believes that
mantra he is an action-oriented person and loves taking
up new challenges. For him, it is the long-term
Put in your best foot for- vision that differentiates the ratio of successes
ward and rest assured. and failures.
Do not, however, forget Elaborating on the qualities that an IT
that destiny does play a manager should have for a longer-term success,
role as well. he says, “One should be able to see the big picture
and align himself to organisational goals. Like
58 it next | m a y 2 0 1 0
any other manager, he or she should be able to
delegate, check and allow people to participate.”
“IT managers should know what’s happening
around. They should be up-to-date on trends in
IT and should be able to communicate and sell
their ideas to the board room,” he further adds.
At present, he is involved with a supply
chain optimisation project–Honda Dealer Order
Management System–to help company meet the
demand-supply gap by optimising the inventory.
“It is integrated end-to-end with our upstream
and downstream systems,” he explains.
“The other projects I am currently involved
with are outsourcing of facility management
services and the managed print services, which
will provide lot of added value to the organisation
in terms of cost savings, and improved service
levels,” he adds.
 cube chat

Fact File

Name
Binu L akshman

Current designatio n
M anager IT, Honda
S iel Cars, I ndia

Current rol e
M anaging the
applic ation spac e,
contri buting
to strategic
outsour cing,
business proc ess
reengineering and
automation, and
managing and leadi n g
the team to achieve
long-term goals of
the organisation

Ex pertise

“A good it manager should have Su pply c hain, CRM ,

projec t managemen t

strong team building abilities. He Work experienc e

should encourage team members to 2003 – present

Manager IT, Honda

think out of the box and innovate” S iel Cars India

1998 -2003
Programmer Analyst,
Visesh I nfosystems ,
Coming from a highly disciplined family his never-say-die spirit and composure, Bangalore
culture, no wonder, he gets annoyed if which earns him the respect from the
something is not organised. entire fraternity; Shah Rukh Khan for his Edu c ation
2006 - 08
“Any one and anything that is not hard work, dedication, determination and
M C A, MD Universit y
organised irritates me the most. I get making all of us believe that nothing is
irritated by the infrastructure mess in our impossible if you dream and Aamir Khan 2005 - 07
country and I get very irritated when I see for the perfectionist he is.” M.Sc ., MD U niversit y
people misusing and abusing nature and So is he taking some inspiration to get
1995 - 98
public property,” he says. into the next big thing—the CIO? GNIIT from NIIT,
IT apart, Lakshman loves long drives “I believe in contributing to my profession Bangalore
Photo graph y: S hamik Bane rjee

and playing cricket whenever he gets time. and the IT community in the best possible
1992- 94
“I had played many tournaments, but manner and to the best of my ability, and
BSc . (M aths), Kumaon
I miss all that now. I also enjoy driving. want to see myself advancing in my career U niversit y, Nainital
Long drives with family are very relaxing, goals by taking new responsibilities” he
provided there is no traffic” he says. says. Certifi cations
Certified PM P
When asked about his role models, he “Yes, if the opportunity comes, I will
smilingly says, “All my role models are accept it with open heart and mind,” Certified Qua lit y
from Bollywood: Amitabh Bachchan for Lakshman adds. Professiona l

m a y 2 0 1 0 | it next 59
 update

off the shelf A sneak preview of enterprise products,

solutions and services

Fujitsu unveils cloud

extension server
The product replaces individual server
nodes in case of a system failure and enables
one replace faulty components offline A-DATA releases
USB 3.0 Portable
Hard Drive
A-DATA Technology, a global DRAM
memory and Flash application pro-
vider, has announced the shipment of
NH01, a 2.5-inch portable hard drive
for the India market. According to
the company the product is equipped
with the latest USB 3.0 interface, and
is designed to deliver data transfer
rates up to 88 Mbps in read and write
that means three times faster than
the conventional hard drives with USB
2.0 interface based on real-world test
results.

The transfer speed has become

increasingly critical for external
storage devices in order to cope with
the nowadays richer and larger-sized
multimedia content. The company
Fujitsu has introduced the new cloud key features further informed that it takes only 4.6
extension server- Primergy CX1000 to * Cool-central architecture minutes as opposed to 14.6 minutes
meet the scalability requirements of data- * Helps reduce environmental via a conventional USB 2.0 interface,
centers. According to the company, the footprints to transfer a typical 24 GB Blue-ray
product is ideal for cloud environments * Internal chimney results in 40% movie.
and help enterprises save 20% in power cost savings Other than its superior transfer speed,
and cooling costs when compared to a stan- * Simple design concept USB 3.0 also provides improved
dard rack server assembly. interaction between device and host
The system uses the Intel Xeon processor 5600 series, to deliver high-speed computer to deliver enhanced energy
processing power and also to have a cool-central architecture that saves space by efficiency.
Photo graph y: Jayan K Narayanan

removing the need for the datacenter “hot aisle” – the space behind racks where
hot air is blown out of the back of running servers.
The product features an internal chimney that funnels hot air through the top Product Specifications
of the standard-size rack thereby allowing rows of Primergy CX1000 racks to be Interface: USB 3.0
placed back-to-back, resulting in floor-space savings alone of up to 40%. Storage Capacity: Up to 640 GB
The company claims that the product has a simple design and provides Warranty: 3 years
flexibility when it comes to replacing individual server nodes in case of a system Data Transfer Rates: 88 MB/s in read and 81
failure. It also helps one replace faulty components offline. MB/s in write overall

60 it next | m a y 2 0 1 0
 update

Symantec
Hitachi intros enterprise
launches protection suites
external Symantec has introduced its
new protection suites, which

storage will unify information security

management across endpoints,

solutions
gateways and servers; and deliver
targeted protection
for enterprises. As
per the company,
these new solutions
are aimed to alleviate
challenges of security
Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi Key Advantages administrators by
* Simple and high-speed USB
GST) has unveiled its new range of external bringing in simplicity
2.0 interface
storage solutions. The range includes portable and protection across
* Preloaded backup software
USB drive-SimpleTOUGH, which is water and the enterprise infrastructure in a
* Up to 2TB capacity to store or
shock-resistant, and the Hitachi X Series that seamless manner.
backup
includes the XL Desktop Drive and Mobile The foundation of each of the
Drive. new protection suites will be
According to the company, the solutions are best suited for people on the move Symantec Protection Center, a
and SOHO users and provide easy add-on storage, effortless backup and restore single sign-on Web console that
capabilities making it easier for users to manage and protect data. provides administrators full access
The products have simple and high-speed USB 2.0 interface and are preloaded to configuration management,
with the backup software, to enable users protect files and folders stored on their report generation and dashboard
systems with a single click or automatically. views of the multiple Symantec
The Hitachi XL Desktop Drive has up to 2TB capacity and a plug-and-play protection technologies relevant
design. It gives both Mac and PC users enough capacity to store or backup to each suite. It will also
660,000 photos, 500,000 MP3 files or 153 hours of digital video. provide consolidated access to
The Hitachi X Mobile Drive is cost-optimised and comes in the capacities of threat, security and operational
500GB and 320GB. dashboards.

Blue Coat Intros Carrier Key Advantages

* Detachable antenna

Caching Appliance
* Pure AP mode with full WDS
* 802.11n technology
* Six-level output power control
Blue Coat Systems has launched a carrier appliance solution CacheFlow 5000 capability
for large-scale bandwidth savings. This product specifically addresses escalating * 64/128-bit WEP
international and mobile backhaul bandwidth consumption and is targeted at
regions where bandwidth is expensive and limited.
This cloud-based service provides rules and instructions designed to fine-tune
CacheFlow 5000 appliances to better address the changing Web and deliver
consistent bandwidth savings.
Using advanced caching technology, this new appliance helps scale service
delivery to meet the burgeoning subscriber demand for online video, large file
downloads and other Web 2.0 rich media content while improving subscriber
experience.   

m a y 2 0 1 0 | it next 61
 update

indulge The hottest, the coolest and the funkiest next

generation gadgets and devices for you

Presenting an eclectic mix of tech gadgetry

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Capability to convert 2 D
pictures into 3D, impressive BD
C6900 3D blue ray player, SSG
2100RB Active glasses
Like something? Want to share your
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62 it next | m a y 2 0 1 0

open Debate
How secure is
the cloud?
Berjes Eric
Shroff
Manager – IT, Tata
Services Ltd
As the security models
and standards are still
emerging, security of cloud
computing depends a lot
on the offerings by the ven-
dor. Each element of “CIA
triad” of security needs
to be addressed. Is there
a secure or encrypted
connection between the
host and the client? Does
the vendor offer data-at-
rest encryption? Are the
country’s regulations being
addressed? To sum up
the situation, unless the
vendor is offering the same
security levels (or higher)
than what one would have
at their own remote data
centre, it would not be
advisable to store private
and confidential data in the
cloud arena, just as yet.
Your views and opinion matter to us. Send us your feedback on stories and the
magazine to the Editor at editor@itnext.in
A platform to air your views on the latest
developments and issues that impact you
Rajiv Desai
Manager – IT,
Maharashtra
Pollution Con-
trol Board
Any organisation that
wants to go with the cloud
has to rely on the service
provider for security. There
is a great danger of the
data being compromised.
The question, which one
needs to ask, is–can my
company’s crucial data
reside in the cloud? Look-
ing at the present situation
there very few “standards”
that are followed by the
cloud providers. There is
however a default cloud
security standard SAS
70 that needs to be fol-
lowed, but nothing seems
to be mandatory at the
momentt. Till all the com-
panies come together and
resolve this piece, security
will always be an issue.
Mario Fishery
Manager – IT,
American School
of Business
Data security is indeed a
big issue for an enterprise
when it comes to cloud
computing. But with the
right SLAs in place one
can definitely secure the
assets and move forward
with cloud computing. Be-
sides network security the
thing that alarms me most
is physical security.
How well protected is
your server farm from the
threat of a terrorist at-
tack? Is your server farm
holding a mirror image
in another country? How
much time will it take to
do a switch over? These
are very important checks
you need to make while
selecting which service
you will be using for cloud
computing.
update
book For you
Dough will
not die
The Ascent of Money is as
entertaining as it is informative
Publisher : Penguin Books
Price : Rs 200
Niall Ferguson had the guts to hammer
out at Nobel laureate Paul Krugman in
a public debate on macro-economics
last year. And like in most arguments,
there was no clear winner. Not losing
was victory, said his supporters.
Well, nobody ever disputes that Fergu-
son is one of the finest living financial
historians in the world. The Ascent of
Money: A Financial History of the World
proves just that, yet again. His stellar
work traces the rise of money and cred-
it from ancient Mesopotamia to modern
times. It delves into the growth of bond
markets from the 13th century, role of
some of the biggest market manipula-
tors such as Nathan Rothschild. The
rest of the book focuses on the emer-
gence of stock markets, growth of sec-
tors such as insurance, real estate and
international finance. Starting off by
taking a dig at the Marxian forecast that
“money will disappear”, it concludes by
saying that if financial markets are the
mirror of mankind, “it is not the fault of
the mirror if it reflects our blemishes as
clearly as our beauty”. It is timely, and
as readable because in writing history
as entertainment, Ferguson is a master.
IT NEXT Verdict
This book is a fascinating account of how the
current monetary system has evolved and is
not only a must read for anyone interested
to know about the financial system but also
about history in general.
Star Value:
m a y 2 0 1 0 | it next 63
 Osama Manzar
my log Founder-Director, Digital
Empowerment Foundation

For the
people

o op pc
: an
on
ti
ra
If e-Governance is to be transparent

st
lu
Il

and meaningful, websites at all

elective levels are a must
We have 346,000 Panchayats in
India, but barring a few in Kerala, there
is no Panchayat website to be found. The
Panchayati Raj Ministry has created
navigation for each Panchayat on its
ministry website, but in the last many
only medium that can be used to achieve
the objective effectively.
While the ministries and departments
are furnishing information on their 3 Essential
Websites, the same trend is not followed Reads
by Sarpanches, MLAs and MPs who INSIgHT | OpEn sOurcE OpEn sOurcE | INSIgHT

years, I could not find content for any of
are elected by people to represent their FRee
WAReS
this is the Silver Jubilee year of “.com”—the omnipresent top-level internet
domain that came into existence in 1985. A small Massachusetts-based
computer maker Symbolics had the honour of registering the first .com.
Today, according to an Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF)
study, there are over 80 million dotcoms registered. These dotcoms lead to

problems, issues and needs. For example,

economic benefits amounting to US $400 million, a number that is likely to double in

those.
Dotcom’s 25
the next 10 years, says ITIF.
years have helped
and dotcoms are not the sole domain names, as there are some 270 other so-called top level
open-source tools domain names including .net, .org, .edu, .mil, .gov and the domains for individual countries
mature decisively. such as .in for India, .cn for China, and .ru for Russia. Now, with the mobile Web growing, a new
Here are some breed of domain name, .mobi, has emerged.
useful picks for you This spirit of sharing and collaborating that the Internet has fostered has also helped the Open Source
Software (OSS) movement spawn and grow into a meaningful existence. The OSS movement more or

We have 4,011 Members of Legislative how are they spending the MPLAD
BY SHASHWAT DC less relies on the Web not only for its proliferation but also for its sustenance.
What better way to mark the 25th anniversary of the domain name system than to list 10 tools found on the Web
that are open and that are free!

ONE TWO Google also released Buzz and Wave, online social networking tools and
collaborative platforms that can also be used as much for work as for fun.
also has plans to offer online storage service
named Gdrive.
Operating system Google applications

Assembly (MLA) constituencies across all
fund? What questions and queries are
wave.google.com | buzz.google.com | desktop.google.com skydrive.live.com | getdropbox.com
LINKS docs.google.com | adwords.google.com | google.com/analytics LINKS box.net | humyo.com | drop.io
mozy.com | xdrive.com | adrive.com
While microsoft has ruled the OS space on the desktop front, the story Since larry Page and Eric Schmidt ven-
has been very different on the server side, with Unix and Sun Solaris tured into the online sphere in 1998 with
being some of the powerful options. Ranging from Novell to Red Hat, Google; the innocuous search company has
companies around the world have opted for Linux derivatives to build grown up to become the world’s largest Inter-
THREE
their offerings.
But now, Linux is becoming a stronger alternative on the desktop
net company. Google is now part of every
Internet user’s life, with the name Google Online storage and Symantec also offers the
FOUR
front as well. For the past few years, Ubuntu, a derivative of Linux, has becoming a synonym for online search. backup facility of online backup with its eRP
been making inroads in the desktop space. A package consisting of a However, Google is no longer about merely new release of Norton 360 v4.0,
free OS and some basic productivity applications, Ubuntu more or less search and offers a host of services for both Backup and storage are among where it gives 2GB backup and Previously known as Tiny ERP, OpenERP
mimics the Windows or rather the Vista environment. It has steadily individuals and the enterprise users, both for the IT must-haves. While usually the rest can be upgraded based is touted as a complete ERP for small and

the 35 states of the country, but there is not
they presenting in the assemblies and
gained ground as software of choice for companies and professionals free and for a fee. NAS, SAN and tapes are used for on need and requirement. medium businesses. It’s a complete Open
that are looking for easy-to-use open source options to Windows. And Google Apps continues to be one of the storage and backup, off-the-Inter- Interestingly, the biggest online Source software with inbuilt modules for
with the current release of Karmic Koala (Ubuntu version 9.10), the most innovative services from Google. It net options are also available for storage option is available from CRM and BPM. Other features include man-
OS’ share is estimated to be anywhere between 40% and 50% of Linux features several Web applications with the purpose. the Microsoft stable. Windows agement and financial accounting, inven-
desktops. similar functionalities to traditional office For example, there is Dropbox. Live SkyDrive service from tory management, sales, purchase human
Yet another compelling alternative to Windows on the desktop is suites, including: Gmail, Calendar, Talk, Docs io that provides a 2GB free online Microsoft currently offers 25 GB resource and project management. The
expected to come in the form of Google’s Chrome OS, another big-ticket and Sites. Most of these services can be linked space for a user and then has of free personal storage, with file software, released under General Public
Linux derivative to be available in the second half of this year. to a common Gmail login ID. graded payment options for size capped at 50 MB. Earlier, License (GNU), has a very modular charac-
Open source is getting better on the desktop! Worth noting among other services is people who want more. Box.net Yahoo! too had provided a similar ter with more than 500 modules available
Google Analytics, a service that lets an is yet another service that allows service called Yahoo! Briefcase with customisable reports.
LINKS

a single official website of any of the MLA the Parliament, and are those questions
ubuntu.com | debian.com | mandriva.com individual or a company get an in-depth view 1 GB of space free of cost with a but now it has been wrapped up.
of the efficacy of an online property. Recently, file-size limit of 25MB. Some reports say that Google LINKS openerp.com/downloads.html

28 it next | m a y 2 0 1 0 m a y 2 0 1 0 | it next 29

constituencies.
We have 542 Member of Parliamentary
(MP) constituencies in India, and
again, there is not a single official MP
relevant for the constituency under 10 Freewares ranging from online
consideration? storage to Free OS for the IT manag-
ers to chose from Pg 28
Intentionally or unintentionally, the
entire e-government focus has been INSIgHT | sEcurItY sEcurItY | INSIgHT

KNOWING
The Internet has become the central
nervous system for our networked life.
As a global network of loosely con-
nected IP-based networks, it reaches
everywhere and provides a common
identify and tag cyber users and
communities of cyber users whose
activity and content may harm the safety
and transparency of the cyber world.
Third, it is critical to gain visibility
traffic, including P2P flows. In fact,
commercial bandwidth management
tools and network security appliances
use application signature matching to
enhance robustness of classification and

Constituency website. more on administrative governance and

platform for communication to govern- into who is the real person behind an deep inspection of packet content even
ments, businesses and consumers. alias or cyber-identifier used to enter in the case of encapsulated protocols
With the Internet, however, a new the cyber world. A critical problem within each other.

IS
kind of criminal has emerged—the
cyber criminal.
A mechanism that can unravel the real persona The pervasive nature of cyber crime
today threatens loss of proprietary
of an alias is the way to keep cyber crime at bay corporate information to the loss of
life. Various forms of cyber crime have
BY DR. ANTONIO NUCCI emerged, from predators exchanging
in this digital world is knowing with
whom you are interacting.
the weak links
Critical to the success of a network mon-
itoring tool is its ability to accurately—
and on a real-time basis—identify and
newer threats
Yet, recently several threats appeared
to use this technique to hide their pres-
ence and break through firewalls and
other security devices. The progress
in hardware acceleration has allowed

not on elective or public representative PREVENTINg

child porn and scammers stealing categorise each flow of packets associ- packet content inspection techniques to

There are many such examples, but I am

identities to countries attacking
countries.
Quantifying cyber crime
The US FBI estimates that various types
of computer crimes in the U.S. now
cost the industry about US $400 bil-
lion, while officials in the Department
of Trade and Industry in Britain said
computer crime rose by 50% in 2006
ated with a transaction and connection
by application.
Identifying network traffic using port
numbers was the standard in the recent
past. This approach was successful
PACKET-INSPECTION TECHNIQUES
ONLY IDENTIFY TRAFFIC FOR WHICH
run at speeds as high as 40 Gbps and
have made them the most commonly
used approach to gain visibility into any
Internet stream.
Nevertheless, packet-inspection

governance. The representatives elected

SIGNATURES ARE AVAILABLE

highlighting these because they are people

over 2005. It is estimated that only 5%
of cybercriminals are ever arrested or
convicted because the anonymity asso- AND WORK IF FULL PACKETS ARE
AVAILABLE AS INPUTS
ciated with Web activity makes them
hard to catch, and the trail of evidence
needed to link them to a cyber crime is
hard to unravel. The CERT Coordina-
tion Center estimates that as much as because many traditional applications approaches face two severe limitations.
80% of all computer security incidents used port numbers assigned by or First, these techniques only identify
remain unreported. registered with the Internet Assigned traffic for which signatures are
Numbers Authority (IANA). The available. Maintaining an up-to-date

elected representatives and as such they
by people are hardly accountable for
Combating the threat
There are certain steps to be taken before
we can successfully combat cyber crime.
First, it is important to increase our
understanding of the many languages
and dialects (protocols, applications and
services) being spoken in the cyber world.
Network traffic monitoring and
measurement is increasingly regarded as
an essential function for understanding
accuracy of this approach, however,
has been questioned because of the
evolution of applications that do not
communicate on standard ports. Many
current-generation P2P applications use
ephemeral ports, and in some cases, use
ports of well-known services such as Web
and FTP to make them indistinguishable
to a port-based classifier.
Techniques that rely on inspection
list of signatures is a daunting task.
Information is rarely fully updated and
complete. Furthermore, the traditional
ad-hoc growth of IP networks, the
continuing rapid proliferation of
applications of different kinds, and
the relative ease with which almost
any user can design and infiltrate
a new application to the traffic mix
in the network with no centralised

owe transparency and accountability to their promises and responsibilities.

and improving the performance and
security of our cyber infrastructure. With
networking technologies and services
evolving rapidly, as witnessed by the
pHOtO : pH OtO s .cO m
of packet contents have been proposed registration, contribute to this gap.
to address the diminished effectiveness Second, packet inspection techniques
of port-based classification. These only work if full packets (header and
approaches attempt to determine whether payload) are available as inputs and are

explosive growth of the Web, accurate or not a flow contains a characteristic completely harmless whenever coarser
network traffic monitoring is required to signature of a known application. information is provided. Unfortunately,
ensure security in a cyber world. Studies show that such approaches only a few service providers today have
Second, it will be timely to promptly work very well for today’s Internet equipped their networks with packet

their citizens. Transparency and accountability towards

32 it next | m a y 2 0 1 0 m a y 2 0 1 0 | it next 33

Knowing is preventing A dossier

But why should we emphasise so much the people can only be possible if the on how to secure your organisation
on the Web presence? elected representatives use media like against cybercrime. Pg 32
Well, simply because if you look at all the Web. CASE STUDy | mEru caBs mEru caBs | CASE STUDy

media, no other media than the Internet Can we somehow mandate that all I
n 2007, when Meru Cabs first to tackle the business issues with the After much deliberation, the conjunction with Sun. It took a good

First it lanes,
started its cab operations in help of using technology innovatively. management in consultation with the amount of time, with some help from
Mumbai, there was skepticism So they launched a whole fleet of GPS/ technology leader at Meru, CTO Nilesh external solution architects, to finally
on the roads; it was not the first GPRS luxury sedans that could be hired Sangoi, decided to implement a complete arrive at the right size and design for
time that such a service was by calling a single multi-line number. suite of ERP with various business the architecture, keeping in mind

HIGHWaY
being introduced in Mumbai. Yet, all The bet on technology paid off quickly. applications that could be customised for future performance, stability and high
earlier attempts had fizzled out mainly After starting with some 46 cabs in specific needs. The decision to implement availability of the system.
nOW due the non-viability of the operations Mumbai, today the company runs close an ERP was certainly not as easy as it Similar challenges were faced during
from an economic viewpoint. to 5,000 cabs in four cities of Mumbai, sounds, because much of the transactions the implementation phase and after a
The urban spread of the city, the Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad. carried out were in cash. The decision month-long effort the infrastructure

Panchayats and MLA/MP constituencies

presence of numerous small-time cab But the exponential growth also was taken some time in June 2009. was made ready for production use.

or the Web is as permanent, where people

operators, and the sheer dominance of brought along with it the issues Multiple instances of applications
Meru vroomed past early challenges with the black-yellow taxiwallahs presented a of scale. Almost suddenly the call tHe SOLUtiOn like Production, Pre-prod, UAT
in-house IT engines and was quick to use full- huge challenge for the radio taxi operator. volumes breached the roof. This posed PwC was appointed to document pro- and development were created. The
Meru’s strengths came from it being a operational problems, as until about cesses and convert them into a compre- toughest challenge was to complete the
blown ERP when volumes swelled professionally managed company with a year ago most of the systems of the hensive RFP to be circulated to various entire ERP project within a very short
capital infusion from a private equity company, developed in house, were ERP vendors. Ultimately after much timeline of nine months. This meant
BY SHASHWAT DC fund. The management at Meru decided working in silos. deliberation the team selected Oracle’s that only two months were available for
E-Business Suite ERP solution for its setting up the complete infrastructure.
Financial, HR and Fleet Management
needs, Siebel for Subscriber Manage- tHe ReWARDS

can access and post content anytime
have websites of their own and are
ment and Ad-sales, Oracle Business The system is now fully up and run-
tHe teCHnOLOGY
Intelligence for Analytics and Oracle ning. The single biggest benefit of the
Hardware: sun t6340 blade servers with ust2+
SOA suite for integration between integrated ERP system is to help Meru
processors
these applications. Once Meru decided in consolidating applications and bring-
Os: solaris 10 on implementing the solution, the first ing much better operational efficiencies
consolidation: solaris 10 virtual containers or logi- thing done was to identify a consul- in the business. The systems have been
cal domains (lDOms) made it possible to consoli- tant, which was when Accenture was sized to handle the business scale up for
date 18 server instances on six physical blades brought into the project. The team next four to five years. The company is
worked hard on defining what was to be now looking at raising the ante, by look-
High availability: active/passive cluster was used for
achieved and how, as part of the proj- ing at analytics.
databases and applications with solaris cluster suite
ect scope document. Next the scope and Not only the technical team, even the
“STANDARDISING

anywhere. maintained on a regular basis, linked with

3.2. siebel’s internal load balancing capability was
requirements were defined, the techni- CEO Rajesh Puri seems to be enthused
used to load balance requests on siebel web server
storage: Emc fiber channel storage area network
PROCESSES AND USING cal team analysed and evaluated differ- by the implementation. “I am excited

was used with multi-pathing for redundancy on A SINGLE, INTEGRATED ent solutions that were available. about strengthening and combining
The infrastructure team was assigned all systems together into a single,
connectivity with the hosts SYSTEM WILL HELP US the responsibility of setting up a high- integrated software program that runs
Backup: symantec netbackup was used with sun’s INCREASEPRODUCTIVITY performance, high-availability hardware off a single back-end system, so that the
tape library for backing up all the servers
AND IMPROVE SERVICE infrastructure for this project. various departments can more easily
The biggest challenge faced by share information and communicate
LEVELS” the team was the sheer scale and the with each other,” he says.
tHe teAM — Rajesh Puri, CEO, meru Cabs novelty, as the entire infrastructure in “Standardising those processes
sourav Das (sr manager, Infrastructure)

In a time when Right to Information the corresponding Panchayat or MPLAD

terms of hardware, a high-availability
merene Gomez (manager, application support) load balancing OS cluster, installation
and configuration of the application
suite, was relatively new to Meru’s
KeY LeARninG
environment.
 since configuration of applications like siebel
An ERP core team was created
and Oracle EBs on a cluster environment is a spe-
consisting of people from various
cialised skill, take external help for implementation
departments and Accenture to arrive
pH OtO : JI tE n Ga nD H I
and using a single, integrated system
will help us increase productivity and
improve service levels,” he adds.
“Meru Cabs has always been an
innovator in the radio cab service
space, and we are proud to be the
only cab service company in the
world to implement ERP systems

 there is a saying ‘failing to plan is planning to at the proposed transaction volume in our organisation. Implementing
fail’. meticulous planning during the initial stage is and load in the foreseeable future. ERP systems shall have tremendous
critical for a large scale Erp deployment, some- nIlEsH sanGOI, Based on this, a high availability payback for Meru Cabs and will help

funds? India will then also be richer by

Sourav Das

(RTI) is an Act and all public represented

ctO, meru cabs Merene Gomez
thing that helped meru a great deal during the sr manager, and load balancing OS cluster for us to grow even faster,” Puri states with
manager,
project application support Infrastructure various applications was designed in a touch of pride.

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offices and officers have to make all 350,000 in terms of digital content creation Meru Cabs have raced ahead of the
information open and available, Web is the of a true e-Governance genre. league with ERP deployment. Pg 36

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