MUMBAI, INDIA: Muralidharan Ramachandran, Syntel Inc’s CIO talks to Pankaj Maru of CyberMedia News about the company's overall IT landscape, how Syntel has adopted BYOD, Cloud and its challenges, new IT implementations and key areas of innovation and R&D activities
Excerpts…
CIOL: Syntel is a large sized BPO and IT services company with many offices and delivery centers across locations. Can you brief us about the company's overall IT infrastructure landscape?
Ramachandran: Syntel has development centers across Mumbai, Pune, Gurgaon and Chennai in India and three offsite development centers in the US, besides sales offices around the globe. Syntel has consolidated its data centers in its campuses in Pune, Mumbai and Chennai in India.
All the delivery centers and sales offices are interconnected using high speed TDM and MPLS links. Syntel has implemented data center virtualization and currently over 60 per cent of its workload is virtualized. The entire infrastructure is optimally configured with redundancies to ensure that availability of the infrastructure is consistently over 99.8 per cent.
Syntel has its multi-tenant Global NOC based out of Pune and the entire critical infrastructure across all the global locations including connectivity with its clients are monitored from here. Syntel leverages ITIL V3 compliant processes to deliver business services to its business users.
CIOL: BYOD (Build Your Own Device) and cloud have been the popular trends among IT companies and organizations over the world. So how open is Syntel towards BYOD and Cloud? Is there any specific corporate IT policy in place with regard to employees, BYOD and cloud technology?
Ramachandran: Syntel has already adopted BYOD and has extended it today to key customer facing users for access to email infrastructure.
The vendor independent approach has provided the flexibility to business users to use device of their choice. Today the environment already supports BlackBerry OS, iOS, Android, Symbian and Windows mobile environments.
Syntel has plans to upgrade and strengthen its infrastructure and roll it out to a larger set of employees. Syntel believes that cloud technology will revolutionize the way IT services will be delivered. Syntel is already in the final stages for deployment of its internal private cloud.
CIOL: Though the BYOD trend is highly popular largely in context to overall cost to organizations, what kind of challenges does it throw for CIOs?
Ramachandran: The key challenge that BYOD throws to CIOs continues to be security. This is more relevant to IT and BPO services companies where besides the challenge of protecting intellectual property of its enterprise, the challenge is with protecting the IP of its customers and convincing them of the effectiveness of controls during due diligences and audits conducted by them.
Challenge is also posed in the form of the requirement of convincing its GenY workforce of differentiated sets of policies arising out the need to adhere to customer contracts and security policies for certain type of work, which involves access to confidential customer data.
CIOL: Can you brief us on the latest IT or tech implementation carried out at Syntel recently that has helped the company in terms of cost-saving and other benefits?
Ramachandran: Syntel uses Microsoft Lync as a platform for promoting internal collaboration. Apart from the out of the box integration that Lync provides with Microsoft Exchange and Sharepoint, Syntel has integrated the Lync platform with its Polycom MCU infrastructure, thus providing seamless integration between its room based and desktop based video collaboration solutions.
Syntel has also integrated Lync with its Avaya telephony infrastructure. This has ensured that Syntel has seamlessly integrated its once disparate presence and chat, telephony and video infrastructure for enhancing collaboration amongst users.
The Lync platform is leveraged both internally and also externally for collaborating with third parties. With all these enhancements and implementations, Syntel has started seeing cost benefits and expects significant reduction over the period of time.
CIOL: As a CIO, which are the new technologies that you are evaluating for future deployment in Syntel?
Ramachandran: Syntel continuously evaluates works on upgrading and implementing technologies which will help reduce cost and also develop new capabilities.
All initiatives are evaluated against its impacts on cost, increasing revenue and / or enhancing customer and employee satisfaction.
Key technologies being evaluated and/or in implementation state include expanding implementation of desktop virtualization, private cloud, BYOD, analytics and mobility.
Rajesh Awasthi:NetApp is committed to help the customers achieve the 'anywhere, anytime' data access, integrated data protection and security, and instant delivery and capacity elasticity. NetApp recently announced the launch of Agile Data Infrastructure technology - a single, integrated agile data infrastructure that is 'Intelligent, Immortal, Infinite'.
It is a platform, designed as layered modular components, that meets different workload, performance, protection, and compliance needs.
Intelligent: This is about bringing the world’s best storage efficiency and application-aware software tools to deliver impact faster than ever. Intelligence is also about shrinking the footprint of infrastructure needed for the growing volumes of data, without compromising performance.
Immortal: Immortal is about maintaining accessibility and quality of service so data endures over the long-haul as individual infrastructure components change and evolve.
Infinite: Infinite is about optimizing resources to accelerate business growth, whether you are scaling current services or developing new ones.
CIOL: What are the trends you see in cloud adoption amongst telcos?
Rajesh Awasthi: Challenging economic times are compelling businesses to achieve greater levels of operational efficiency and flexibility. However, we see telcos looking at cloud computing as a growth area and are investing in cloud infrastructure. For most of the telcos, cloud computing is an area for B2B growth.
Currently most of them are getting into infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and increasing skills in data centre practice. We have seen telcos assuring customers on security concerns by putting processes and deploying secure multi-tenant infrastructure utilizing NetApp technology like MultiStore and FlexShare in a unified storage environment.
CIOL: How will cloud actually create new jobs?
Rajesh Awasthi: With the adoption of cloud computing, new service opportunities would come in setting up hybrid cloud infrastructure. We would need more skilled-people for automation of the processes and IT service management. As per estimation from Asia Cloud Forum, India Public Cloud Market for India is approx. $183 million and growing at a CAGR of 40 per cent.
CIOL: What are your offerings for the public sector?
Rajesh Awasthi: Governments coping with Big Data and small budgets can rely on NetApp's expertise for flexible, efficient, and secure data management solutions.
CIOL: What are your expectations from Storage GRID version 9.0 in south Asia/India? How does this release have a competitive advantage over your competitors'?
Rajesh Awasthi: NetApp Storage GRID is a proven, object storage software solution designed to manage petabyte-scale globally distributed repositories of images, video, and records for enterprises and service providers.
It can provide: Boundless scalability: Scales to support petabytes of data, billions of files and objects, while eliminating physical storage boundaries.
Intelligent data management and retention: Automates data lifecycle management, global data placement, and automatic data protection
Secure data retention: Protects content through encryption and digital fingerprints, eliminating data corruption and tampering
BANGALORE, INDIA: With growing unstructured data, there is a change in the way it is handled. Cloud is one platform which the companies are fast embracing to ensure that data is put to efficient use. HP, on the other hand, has gone a step ahead in cloud implementation and expects to give other big players like VMware a tough time. In an interaction, Santanu Ghose, country head, Converge Infrastructure Solutions, HP India, tells Deepa Damodaran of CIOL how HP planned its cloud journey and how it now sees a lot of scope to monetize it. Excerpts: CIOL: Vendors say enterprises are looking at cloud, but when asked CIOs tell they are not because of various reasons, especially security. Your take. Santanu Ghose: From technology perspective there is no dearth of systems and methods that can take care of security, but it is the perception that has to change. Some CIOs do have reservations with regards to security of data. However, bankers, supposed to be the most conservative of all, are today looking at it for some of their applications because it gives them scalability. Even many from manufacturing, telecom, IT, ITeS segments are also looking at cloud. Security is more of a concern when you are implementing applications on a public cloud. Whereas, when you set up your own private cloud you need not because data resides in your own environment. So, private cloud is definitely happening and each and every CIO, especially in SME/SMB, has a strategy around it. The only thing bothering them is how are they going to implement it. What customers are saying today is that they are open to host some applications on private cloud and some such as e-mails, or sharepoint on public cloud. Some are also looking at managed cloud, wherein a company's private cloud is managed by another person in the latter's premises. Now, the problem is that user should get a seamless experience while accessing a service, which would be either in a private or a managed or a public cloud. So now we have traditional IT, and a mix of private, public, hybrid and managed clouds. All of them reside in islands, and migrating from one to another is not an easy job. This is where HP's Converged Cloud can play a role. It comes with a set of tools and softwares which can bring convergence in the experience between various clouds as it can manage your computer server, storage, network as a single entity. Moreover, it supports Open Stack distribution. Open Stack is a collection of open source tools to enable applications seamlessly operate between all clouds. This will help inter-operate many applications. CIOL: Why should companies start using cloud services? Santanu Ghose: Today, a lot of data, especially unstructured data, is being generated especially through handhelds. Unlike before, they are used for various purposes such as to watch movies, videos, send e-mails, connect to social media, etc. This amount of unstructured data is changing the whole format of how we need to handle data and cloud is the best way out. On the other hand, adoption of IT is going up with cloud because today even handhelds are accessing applications. They are accessing data constantly unlike in the PC or desktop era, where we used to have a shut down time. Moreover, with technologies such as 3G and 4G the demand and pressure on IT will only grow. 4G will drive a very different experience of content. Going forward, with the concept called OTT, i e over the top, content can also be received with PC, broadband, handheld etc, unlike before where DTH or set-top boxes used to be major distributors. This will give rise to media cloud. Similarly, there will be education cloud where classes and courses will be remotely delivered. Such changes are putting a lot of pressure as to how much of data can we handle. And cloud is the answer
BANGALORE, INDIA: Shrikant Kulkarni, KPIT Cummins' CIO talks to Pankaj Maru of CyberMedia News about how the company's IT infrastructure is playing the role of business enabler, challenges of dealing with complex IT environment, benefits of virtualization and cloud along with latest BYOD trend.
CIOL: Brief us about the company's overall IT infrastructure that brings out solutions to address the sectors of like automotive, energy & utilities, industrial equipments, engineering products and semi-conductors
Shrikant Kulkarni: At KPIT Cummins, we have built our IT infrastructure which is robust, scalable, highly efficient and fully secured and truly 'Business Enabler'. We have implemented ERP to ensure best in class business practices and processes and have successfully implemented SAP covering all the business, functional areas of the organization.
We have also set up a Global Network, which is high performance, resilient global network infrastructure facilitating anytime, anywhere data and voice connect along with Global Helpdesk - to provide our project teams a single integrated solution for all IT support requirements for incidents, problems, service requests, change management etc.
Beside, we have Unified Communication – a single integrated platform based on Microsoft Exchange 2010, Office 2010 and Lync 2010 that enables our project teams and business managers to connect with each other using options like IM, Audio, Video, Live Meeting and Desktop/Application sharing. The Dynamic VLAN- offers flexible workplace and has given flexibility for project team members to work from any of the KPIT offices.
Also, we have Private Cloud and Virtual Desktops, where all corporate applications servers and majority of test and development servers function. This has reduced the server provisioning time from 6 weeks to 2 hours flat for the business and it helped in big way in optimizing on data centre resources. On Virtual desktop infrastructure front, 1200 VDI have been implemented successfully giving flexibility to user to work from anywhere, using any of the gadgets without compromising security.
We have a Global Telepresence roll out with high Definition Video conferencing solution that is implemented across domestic and international offices for improving connect internally and with customers/partners.
For Disaster Recovery, we have implemented solutions for all critical infrastructure/ applications along with Information security to insulate the IT infrastructure from external threats and have deployed perimeter security solutions including intrusion prevention system and firewalls.
We also have web content management solution and end point security solutions for ensuring information security of the organization as well as of the customers.
Most of the technology solution implemented at KPIT are the very latest and belong to Gartner's leader magic quadrant. It will not be out of place to mention here that KPIT Cummins is one of the few IT companies to implement private cloud with Virtual Desktop Infrastructure.
Ramachandran: Syntel has development centers across Mumbai, Pune, Gurgaon and Chennai in India and three offsite development centers in the US, besides sales offices around the globe. Syntel has consolidated its data centers in its campuses in Pune, Mumbai and Chennai in India.
Rajesh Awasthi: NetApp is committed to help the customers achieve the 'anywhere, anytime' data access, integrated data protection and security, and instant delivery and capacity elasticity. NetApp recently announced the launch of Agile Data Infrastructure technology - a single, integrated agile data infrastructure that is 'Intelligent, Immortal, Infinite'.
CIOL: Brief us about the company's overall IT infrastructure that brings out solutions to address the sectors of like automotive, energy & utilities, industrial equipments, engineering products and semi-conductors
7:09 AM
admin
