Change Warriors

MANAGING AND LEADING CHANGE IS A TOUGHTASK.CIOs AND THOUGHT LEADERS SHARE

THEIR EXPERIENCES WHILEIMPLEMENTING CHANGE | PAGE 20

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September | 21 | 2010 | Rs.50Volume 06 | Issue 03

S P I N E

Technology for Growth and Governance

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MAKING SEDUCTIVE PROMISES A REALITYPAGE 12

A QUESTION OF ANSWERS

MAKING IT EASYPAGE 17

BEST OF BREED

MOBILEWORKFORCE PAGE 34

NEXT HORIZONS

RAGHVENDRA VAIDYACIO, GE Capital India

NAVIN CHADHADirector-IT

Vodafone Essar

EDITORIALRAHUL NEEL MANI | [email protected]

EDITORS PICK

121 SEPTEMBER 2010CTO FORUMTHE CHIEF

TECHNOLOGYOFFICER FORUM

Making Seductive Promises a RealityPaul Maritz, CEO of VMware speaks about how the company will rule the world in data centre automation and management space.

12

Executing Change: Can CIOs

lead the way?

ahead, take precautions. It not only requires a great amount of perseverance to initiate and implement change, but calls for a lot of restraints. Before embarking upon this journey, you need to be clear about the do’s and don’ts (Read ‘Effective Ways of Managing Change: Do’s and Don’ts). Focus where pain is worth the gain (Susan Cramm’s Blog Post). Brief case studies on two of India’s largest business conglomerates namely, Voda-fone and GE Capital, will also help you in knowing how CIOs led change management.

I am sure you will find the information worth your time. As ever, I would request for your feedback to help us become more relevant.

While planning this issue’s feature on change man-

agement and the growing influ-ence of CIOs in the process, I was reminded of a quote from The Prince – the political treatise by Italian philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli: “There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the intro-duction of a new order of things.”

The quote has a deep connota-tion. One thing that we generally

lead and become the key drivers to affect change, and reform the way business is done. The CIO can act as a leader, driver, coach or a facilitator; depending on what kind of changes are required in an organisation.

Some of you would argue; why a CIO? A few others would say that a CIO, in today’s corpo-rate set-up, isn’t well-equipped to influence the process of change and drive home the desired outcomes. While these apprehensions hold merit, the tangible value brought on to the table by you, as a CIO, is tre-mendous. As a CIO you bring a unique perspective to change management because of your knowledge of IT and its man-agement. Who could be better equipped than you, to know how technology can be used to support the process of change?

But, before you move an inch

don’t accept with ease is change. Despite knowing that it is inevi-table, change is something (in the words of Peter Drucker) which people would like to post-pone as much as they can. But, is it really wise to do so? Intro-ducing change can cause havoc, but it is also true that without it, one remains inert.

The biggest issue here is whether a CIO can take that plunge and lead all the way.

I feel this is an exceptional opportunity for CIOs to take

2 21 SEPTEMBER 2010CTOFORUM THE CHIEF


CO NTE NT S THECTOFORUM.COMSEPTEMBER10

COVER STORY

20 | The Change Warriors Managing and leading change is a tough task. CIOs and thought leaders share their learning and experiences while implementing change in their organisations.

COPYRIGHT, All rights reserved: Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission from Nine Dot Nine Interactive Pvt Ltd. is prohibited. Printed and published by Kanak Ghosh for Nine Dot Nine Interactive Pvt Ltd, C/o Kakson House, Plot Printed at Silverpoint Press Pvt. Ltd. D- 107, MIDC, TTC Industrial Area, Nerul, Navi Mumbai- 400706

COLUMNS04 | I BELIEVE:USE BEFORE YOU PAY

Sunil Sirohi, VP, Information Re-sources Organisation, NIIT Limited on the transformation times of IT.

52 | VIEW POINT: LEADING INTO THE ABYSS The reasons why startups die. BY STEVE DUPLESSIE

FEATURES42 | TECH FOR GOVERNANCE: BOOSTING IT WORKER PRODUCTIV-ITY Management advice and technology suggestions from CIOs about achieving workforce efficiency. BY DON REISINGER

Please Recycle This Magazine And Remove Inserts Before

Recycling

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SEPTEMBER10 Managing Director: Dr Pramath Raj SinhaPrinter & Publisher: Kanak Ghosh

Publishing Director: Anuradha Das Mathur

EDITORIALEditor-in-chief: Rahul Neel Mani

Executive Editor: Geetaj ChannanaResident Editor (West & South): Ashwani Mishra

Associate Editor: Dominic KAssistant Editor: Aditya Kelekar

Principal Correspondent: Vinita GuptaCorrespondent: Sana Khan, Nipun Sahrawat

DESIGNSr. Creative Director: Jayan K Narayanan

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ADVISORY PANELAjay Kumar Dhir, CIO, JSL Limited

Anil Garg, CIO, DaburDavid Briskman, CIO, Ranbaxy

Mani Mulki, VP-IS, Godrej IndustriesManish Gupta, Director, Enterprise Solutions AMEA, PepsiCo

India Foods & Beverages, PepsiCoRaghu Raman, CEO, National Intelligence Grid, Govt. of India

S R Mallela, Former CTO, AFLSantrupt Misra, Director, Aditya Birla Group

Sushil Prakash, Country Head, Emerging Technology-Business Innovation Group, Tata TeleServices

Vijay Sethi, VP-IS, Hero Honda Vishal Salvi, CSO, HDFC Bank

Deepak B Phatak, Subharao M Nilekani Chair Professor and Head, KReSIT, IIT - Bombay

Vijay Mehra, Former Global CIO, Essar Group

SALES & MARKETINGVP Sales & Marketing: Naveen Chand Singh

National Manager-Events and Special Projects: Mahantesh Godi (09880436623)Product Manager: Rachit Kinger

Asst. Product Manager: Priyam MahajanGM South: Vinodh K (09740714817)

Senior Manager Sales (South): Ashish Kumar SinghGM North: Lalit Arun (09582262959)

GM West: Sachin Mhashilkar (09920348755) Kolkata: Jayanta Bhattacharya (09331829284)

PRODUCTION & LOGISTICSSr. GM. Operations: Shivshankar M Hiremath

Production Executive: Vilas MhatreLogistics: MP Singh, Mohd. Ansari,

Shashi Shekhar Singh

OFFICE ADDRESSPublished, Printed and Owned by Nine Dot Nine Interactive Pvt

Ltd. Published and printed on their behalf by Kanak Ghosh. Published at Bunglow No. 725, Sector - 1, Shirvane, Nerul

Navi Mumbai - 400706. Printed at Silver Point Press Pvt Ltd, D-107, TTC Industrial Area, Nerul, Navi Mumbai 400706.

Editor: Anuradha Das Mathur

This issue of CTO FORUM includes 8 pages of CSO Forum free with the magazine

www.thectoforum.com

17 | BEST OF BREED:IMMERSIVE TELEPRESENCE The game changer for video communication.

REGULARS

01 | EDITORIAL08 | ENTERPRISE

ROUND-UP

advertisers’ index

LG IFC HP IPG 5SYBASE 4LIFE SIZE 15IMB INSERT AFTER 16AWAYA 37ACE DATA 41MINT PAAN IT 45IBM IBCHP BC

This index is provided as an additional service.The publisher does not assume

any liabilities for errors or omissions.

34 | NEXT HORIZONS: MOBILE WORKFORCECIOs need to think more about managing mobility.

34

A QUESTION OF ANSWERS

12 | Making Seductive Promises a Reality Paul Maritz, CEO of VMware speaks about how the company will rule the world in data centre automation and management space.

12

17

I BELIEVE

CURRENTCHALLENGE



TO BE ABLE TO MATCH THE DEMAND AND GROWTH OF BUSINESS

Use Before You Pay Transformation times for IT

Typically large business applications have been tied to their dedicated hardware landscape. If there was a need to deploy new large applica-tions, the norm was to have new landscape of hardware to run them. It again meant the whole nine yards (shade higher configuration, fairly long procurement cycle and imple-mentation time). IT was unable to deliver at the speed that it wanted to and at the rate business demanded. However, with virtualisation tech-nologies, this is a non-issue, as there is no need to procure and setup hard-ware based on each application. It is much easier and quicker to provision multiple servers on a single hard-ware box running independent and unique software stacks.

However, one has to be careful while choosing virtualisation or cloud computing for one's needs. Decisions should be made on a project to project basis with proper evaluation criteria ranging from server workload demands, scalabil-ity needs (both upwards and down-wards), BCP/DR requirements to security risks. Currently there are some challenges that are visualised while using cloud computing – security, availability, performance, difficulty in customising cloud, its integration with internal IT and affordability. I am sure these will soon be overcome by cloud service providers.

Finally, telecom has provided phe-nomenal connectivity with mobility. With fast data exchange speeds the experience of using services is ever improving. Virtualisation provides the much desired dynamic provision-ing, scalability with agility to meet ever increasing business demands. Cloud computing brings in elasticity in usage of services allowing pay per use models. Telecom, Virtualisation and Cloud computing together are here to transform IT.

TRADITIONALLY investment has preceded usage. Whenever there has been a need to procure hardware, IT managers have kept scalability as a key parameter and procured a shade or reasonably higher available con-figuration (as much allowed by the budget) as compared to immediate/ current need. More often than not such procurements (done with best intentions) paid off. However, there were also times when such invest-ments became white elephants (if the projected growth in usage didn’t happen). But one can now make a choice of using services before paying; with cloud computing around, the usage can surely precede investment.

THE AUTHOR HAS over 21 years of experience in IT.

SUNIL SIROHI VP, Information Resources Organisation, NIIT Limited.

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LETTERS

WRITE TO US: The CTOForum values your feedback. We want to know what you think about the magazine and how

to make it a better read for you. Our endeavour continues to be work in progress and your comments will go a long way in making it the preferred publication of the CIO Community.

Send your comments, compliments, complaints or questions about the magazine to [email protected]

CTOForum LinkedIn GroupJoin close to 500 CIOs on the CTO Forum LinkedIn group

for latest news and hot enterprise technology discussions.

Share your thoughts, participate in discussions and win

prizes for the most valuable contribution. You can join The

CTOForum group at:

http://www.linkedin.com/

groups?mostPopular=&gid=2580450

Some of the hot discussions on the group are:How do you treat your vendors - a partner, a

service provider, or a mere salesman?

The secret to a truly collaborative arrangement is based

on mutual trust and the acceptance that the relationship

needs to be a "win win" every time. True professionals

should not assume that they can deliver the results you

wanted - may be they took the relationship for granted. In

my experience relationships blossom when it is not taken

for granted!

—K R SreenivasanAdvisor at Tata Motors (PCBU).

Are CIOs the right architects of Change

Management? If yes, How?

CIO has to understand what type of data brings the most

value to the company and then influence the infrastructure

design and integration of systems to produce that data

faster in different result oriented work. With the new tech-

nology, innovation & architecture CIO's can reduce the

TCO & bring more productivity.

—Vivek DhariaCIO at KNP SEC. PVT. LTD.

REAP GREEN BENEFITSCIOs need to look at the impact that the IT infrastructure has on the business and environment. “As CIOs drive solutions to environmental issues they will gain insights that can be applied to broader corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategies.”To read the full story go to:

http://www.thectoforum.com/content/reap-green-benefits

CTOF Connect Virtualisation may not be for everybody yet, but a hybrid strategy could suit many. During VMworld 2010, held recently in San Francisco, VMware announced a bevy of new offerings to bolster their product line. Raghu Raguram, Senior VP and General Manager, Virtualisation and Cloud Platforms, VMware spoke to Rahul Neel Mani during the event. To read the full story go to:

thectoforum.com/content/hybrid-sense

OPINION

V.S. PARTHASARATHY Group CIO, Mahindra & Mahindra



COVE R S TORY AWA RD WI N N I N G TA L E S

Three categories, more than a 100 entries – nine winners. CTO of the Year Awards 2010.

Award winning tales

VIJAY SETHI, Vice President IS, Hero Honda S.R. BALASUBRAMANIAN, Executive VP, IT and Corporate Development, Godfrey Philips India ARVIND TAWDE, Former CIO, Mahindra & Mahindra ASHOK WAHI, Professor of Information Systems at Jaypee Business School, JIIT University SUNIL KAPOOR, Executive Director, Fortis Healthcare

The awards were judged by:

Award winning

A 9.9 Media Publication

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September | 07 | 2010 | Rs.50Volume 06 | Issue 02

Award winning tales Three categories, more than a 100

entries – nine winners. CTO of the Year Awards 2010 | PAGE 28

Milestones RevisitedPAGE 52

NEXT HORIZONS

HP's Next CEOPAGE 68

VIEWPOINT

Identity CheckedPAGE 22

BEST OF BREED

S P I N E

Technology for Growth and Governance

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INFORMATION RIGHTS MANAGEMENT EXTENDS DLP SAFEGUARDS Very interesting article and com-pletely spot on regarding the issues and challenges thrown up by evolving tech and mobility. However, it seems to me that the current craze for cloud-based, everything-as-a-service, ap-proach may actually compound or simplify the problem, depend-ing on how access is handled. If all data resides in the cloud, then properly managed dynamic ac-cess to that central source would be key. This may be less of a problem compared to data that's spread out all over the device or location landscape.JUDE UMEH, Consultant, Enterprise Architect, and Rights

Management Evangelist – London, UK



Enterprise

ROUND-UP

STORY INISDE

HP settles lawsuit over Hurd. Ex-CEO to give-up stock options worth

$13.6 million. Pg 10

PREDICTED GROWTH OF CON-VERGED MOBILE DEVICES IN 2010.

Chips Hit Record Sales Semiconductor revenue to grow 31.5 percent in 2010. WORLDWIDE semiconductor revenue in 2010 is fore-

cast to reach USD 300 billion, a 31.5 percent increase from 2009 revenue of USD 228 billion, according to the latest outlook by Gartner. Analysts project world-wide semiconductor revenue to total USD 314 billion in 2011, a 4.6 percent increase from 2010.

The projected 2010 revenue for semiconductor industry has increased from Gartner's forecast in the second quarter of 2010, when it expected worldwide semiconductor sales to grow 27.1 percent in 2010. However, analysts warned that while semiconductor revenue is still poised to hit record levels this year, second half is expected to be below seasonal norms.

"Semiconductor growth in the first half of 2010 was very strong, but it is becoming increasingly clear that the industry cannot maintain the momentum in the second half of 2010 and into 2011," says Bryan Lewis, research vice president at Gartner.

The PC supply chain is showing evidence of a cor-rection, as can be seen Intel lowering its third quarter guidance. Smartphones drive the mobile phone semi-conductor market, representing 36 percent of overall 2010 mobile phone semiconductor revenue. In con-trast, NAND revenue is set to sustain a growth trajec-tory through 2013, with the NAND flash market driven by strong sales of smartphones and media tablets.

55.4%DATA BRIEFING

SOURCE: IDC

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A Gartner report projected that the number of smartphone devices in the worldwide mobile OS market will increase from the current 172 million to 573 million units in 2014. Launches of updated op-erating systems — such as Apple iOS4 and BlackBerry OS6 will help maintain growth and spur innovation.

QUICK BYTE ON WORLDWIDE MOBILE OS MARKET

Faster Launchpad. New integra-tion solution provides streamlined product lifecycle management process.WIPRO Technologies has entered into a co-development initiative with Oracle to

develop a product lifecycle management (PLM) solution for the Consumer Pack-aged Goods industry.

The new process integration pack solution is being developed using Oracle Appli-cation Integration Architecture (AIA), and intends to integrate Oracle's Agile PLM for Process with Oracle Process Manufacturing and Oracle Product Hub. The inte-gration aims to help achieve faster time to market with better compliance visibility.

Wipro's contribution will include CPG domain expertise as well as development skills and accelerators to co-develop the solution with Oracle. This solution intends to offer a business process-based integration that is easy to deploy, configure, oper-ate, maintain and upgrade, thereby offering an optimal TCO structure.

"Working with Wipro to co-develop integrations with Agile PLM should equip our Consumer Goods customers with new efficiencies across the Product Value Chain," says Bernard Goor, Vice President, Consumer Goods, Oracle. "Wipro brings a deep understanding of the CPG industry and skills around Oracle Appli-cations and Oracle AIA."

THEY SAID IT

PAULOTELLINI

With the recent acquisition of McAfee, Intel has looked to grow beyond its traditional market aimed at build-ing Intel's business outside computing, where its micro-processor chips dominate. Intel CEO, Paul Otellini, talks to the Wall Street Journal about how Intel and McAfee can improve security.

—Paul Otellini,

CEO, Intel

“The Holy Grail is to have the capability to look at the pat-tern of bits coming in [to your machine] and what they are trying to do. If you are smart enough and fast enough to know that, you can stop an attack because of what it's trying to do before it gets into the machine.”

E NT E R PR I S E RO U N D - U P



HP settles lawsuit over Hurd. Ex-CEO to give-up stock options worth $13.6 million.WITH THE resolution of litigation regarding Mark Hurd’s employment at Oracle, HP and Oracle seem to have reaffirmed their long-term strategic partnership . While the terms of the settlement are said to be confidential, Hurd reportedly will adhere to his obligations to protect HP’s confidential information while fulfilling his responsibilities at Oracle. Additionally, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Monday by HP stated that Hurd agreed to give up stock units granted by HP, worth about $13.6 mil-lion. The stock options were part of the sever-ance package Hurd was left with after being forced to step down by the HP board.

“HP and Oracle have been important partners for more than 20 years and are committed to working together to provide exceptional products and service to our cus-tomers,” said Cathie Lesjak, chief financial officer and interim chief executive officer, HP. “We look forward to collaborating with Oracle in the future.”

“Oracle and HP will continue to build and expand a partnership that has already lasted for over 25 years,” said Oracle CEO Larry Ellison.

Ellison had earlier slammed the 'vindic-tive' lawsuit filed by HP against its former CEO in a California state court, saying that

Web visitors using a mobile device grew with women increasing 43% YoY as compared to a 26% growth among men.

his hiring by Oracle had violated confiden-tiality provisions in his severance agree-ment. "Mark Hurd agreed to and signed agreements designed to protect HP's trade secrets and confidential information," HP had said in a statement. "HP intends to enforce those agreements."

Ellison had fired back, stating that the law-suit threatened to damage the working rela-tionship between the two companies.

"Oracle has long viewed HP as an impor-tant partner," Ellison said in a statement. "By filing this vindictive lawsuit against Oracle and Mark Hurd, the HP board is acting with utter disregard for that partnership, our joint customers, and their own shareholders and employees. The HP Board is making it virtually impossible for Oracle and HP to continue to cooperate and work together in the IT marketplace."

Oracle had hired Hurd as co-president a month after he left HP under immense pressure following an internal investigation into a sexual harassment complaint filed by a former HP contractor, Jodie Fisher, and accu-sations that he falsified expense reports to cover his personal relationship with Fisher.

Having spent five years at HP, Hurd was responsible for driving costs down and prof-its up. Additionally he completed the merger with Compaq and expanded HP's outlook.

Following Hurd's resignation, Oracle found-er and CEO Larry Ellison had vociferously crit-icized the HP board for "the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs many years ago."

With Hurd joining Oracle, Ellison com-mented "Mark did a brilliant job at HP, and I expect he'll do even better at Oracle. There is no executive in the IT world with more rel-evant experience than Mark."

Oracle and HP have been long-time part-ners. However, with Oracle looking to expand beyond its traditional software business, a move highlighted by its recent acquisitions, the buy-out of Sun Microsystems for USD 7.4 billion and Hurd's move to Oracle, there has been some bad blood between the IT behemoths. What remains to be seen is whether the two giants can carry on their long term strategic partnership, putting behind them the recent spate of events. A lot remains at stake, with joint customer bases liable to be affected.

GLOBAL TRACKER Internet access on the mobile

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Long Road to “Green”. Mobile phone industry needs to cleap-up its act for better sustainability.

ELECTRONIC DIARY

The eDiary is a simple, smart,

sleek and stylish note-book that

can be carried by everyone. It does

away with the need for typing or

looking for a source to charge the

lap-top, thus freeing up the users.

Costing just Rs. 9350, as little as

a - mid-end cell phone, the eDiary

frees the users to write normally

(on any paper of their choice) and

still be able to store the informa-

tion digitally.

The eDiary comes with a stan-

dard B5-sized paper notebook fit-

ted with a small base unit placed

on the top-margin and a special

electronic pen (e-Pen). The ePen

functions as any normal writing

instrument with a normal change-

able refill and has additional elec-

tronics that works with the base

unit to capture the handwriting

strokes. eDairy has built-in mem-

ory to save up to 100 pages of

written notes at a time, which can

later be downloaded to a PC with

the help of USB cable. Weighing

only 40 grams more than a regu-

lar diary of similar size, it is easy to

carry in a hand-bag, knapsack or

briefcase.

The software provided can

organises notes and if required,

convert the handwritten notes to

normal computer text. This porta-

ble device enables users to search

files by name, date and a specific

word within notes. eDiary also

incorporates features like schedule

to make it easy to work with to-do

lists and note appointments.

ACCORDING to International Data

Corporation (IDC), mobile phone recy-

cling is amazingly low today, with rates

of 10% considered good.

To better understand where the

mobile industry stands on sustainabil-

ity, IDC used five criteria (packaging,

materials, energy, end-of-life program,

and overall sustainability efforts) and

20 sub-criteria to create a green rank-

ing of 10 key mobile device manu-

facturers. The top 5 mobile device

manufacturers in terms of their sus-

tainability policies and practices are (in

MICROSOFT has launched the release candidate of Microsoft Lync, the next generation of Micro-soft’s unified communications software that enables people to connect in new ways, anytime, anywhere. Lync is the new family brand for the

Microsoft Lines-Up Lync for Unified Communications. More than 30 partners announce beta versions for Microsoft Lync-compatible products.

FACT TICKER

alphabetical order): Apple, LG, Nokia,

Samsung, and Sony Ericsson.

APPLE - recycles in 95% of the coun-

tries where its products are sold,

including the United States, India,

China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singa-

pore, New Zealand, Korea, and Aus-

tralia.

LG - has reduced the standby power

within its mobile chargers, and hand-

sets have a charger reminder that

beeps when it is fully charged.

NOKIA - 65% to 80% of any Nokia

device can be recycled and the rest,

primarily plastics, can be used to fuel

the recycling process.

SAMSUNG - All new model phones

were free of BFRs by January 1, 2009

and free of PVCs by July 1, 2009. Sam-

sung has set dates of December 31,

2012, for making mobile phones free

of phthalates, beryllium, brominated

compounds, and antimony trioxide.

SONY ERICSSON - has optimised

packaging to be more environmentally

friendly by including recycling mailers

and developing lighter boxes saving

80% on CO2 emissions from trans-

port versus the standard box. Sony

Ericsson completely replaced paper

manuals with electronic manuals and

saved 350 tons of paper on 1 million

phones, equaling 13,000 trees and

7,500 cubic meters of water.

products formerly known as Communications Server, Communications Online and Commu-nicator, and it also now includes Lync Web App, and Lync Online. The release candidates of Lync 2010 and Lync Server 2010 are now available for businesses of all sizes to try for free. This broad release candidate is the last step toward release to manufacturing and general availability scheduled for later this year.

“Over the past five years we have been on a jour-ney to transform communications with the power of software,” said Gurdeep Singh Pall, corporate vice president of Unified Communications at Microsoft. “Lync delivers on this vision by unify-ing enterprise voice, instant messaging and web-, audio- and videoconferencing into a new, con-nected communications experience.”

More than 120 enterprise customers and part-ners are enrolled in the Microsoft Technology Adoption Program (TAP) for Lync, testing early releases and providing feedback, and over 400 unified communications partners are involved in readiness activities, preparing for general avail-ability of the software later this year.

In addition, more than 30 partners announced beta versions of their Lync-compatible hardware, software and service products. Hardware prod-ucts include a variety of Internet protocol phones and USB endpoints optimized for Lync. Software solutions include contact centres, call recording, accounting and new applications that incorporate communications right within business processes.

recycles in 95% of the coun-

tries where its products are sold,

were free of BFRs by January 1, 2009

and free of PVCs by July 1, 2009. Sam

and developing lighter boxes saving

80% on CO2 emissions from trans-

port versus the standard box. Sony

65% to 80% of any Nokia

device can be recycled and the rest,

A Q U E S T I O N O F AN SWE RS PE RSO N ' S N A M E



Virtual data centres: Will instigate new ways of

buying and utilising IT



PAU L M A R I T Z A Q U E S T I O N O F AN SWE RS

PAUL MARITZ | VMware

VMware is certainly not giving up its position in the hypervisor market but that’s not something the company banks on. Paul Maritz, CEO of VMware speaks about how the company will rule the world in data centre automation and management space. Here is an excerpt:

What trends do you think the industry has witnessed to

reach the stage virtualisation is in today? The industry has witnessed three distinct stages to reach to the evolved stage of virtualisation. The first stage was when the industry tackled ineffi-cient hardware in the data centre and brought in efficient hardware. The second stage was when the industry was looking forward to resiliency in the line of business applications. The third and more contemporary stage is when the industry looked for a fun-damentally more agile environment

to serve the needs of business. The industry saw a very interesting

trend last year. IDC reports men-tioned that it was the first time in the history that applications deployed on virtualised servers surpassed the applications deployed on physical servers. It is clear where the focus of action needs to be.

The technology spans the globe and our customers range from the Healthcare to Dairy Farms to the Fashion industry. In the year 2010, more than 10 million virtual machines will be deployed world-wide - growing at 28 percent year

on year. VMware already serves 190,000 customers around the world. This technology has touched the entire economy.

What will this tipping point mean to the industry?

There are interesting indications coming out from the developments in the industry. As I mentioned ear-lier, there are now more applications on virtualised infrastructure than on physical. Now the enterprises no longer require investing more in mediating hardware. In other words, this cost saved from the hardware is

Making Seductive

Promises aReality



A Q U E S T I O N O F AN SWE RS PAU L M A R I T Z

largely taken over by an entirely new layer of software that we call extend-ed virtualisation. That extended vir-tualisation layer is not only mediat-ing access with other resources like CPU, memory, storage, networking etc. It is this layer which is forming a new layer in the infrastructure. It is this layer which is increasingly becoming the focus of innovation in the industry. This is not only true for VMware but for the entire industry.

Do you think this innovation, as you call it, is going to

gain acceptance? Will there be challenges?There are a few things which we should look at. This layer has start-ed providing hardware efficiency which will increasingly result in operational efficiency. We all know that approximately 60-70 percent of all IT dollars are spent in operating hardware in the data centre. We would like to take our customers on a journey where they can build resiliency, agility and efficiency. That would mean the addition of an automation layer into this. We need to make it cheaper so that enterpris-es can operate this infrastructure. The automation management has to span across the resources in the data centre. The industry, includ-ing ourselves, sees itself focusing now on the challenges around data centre automation and data centre management.

What could be the possible blockages to speed of this

innovation? Another very key need is enhanced security. The industry needs to ensure that this new infrastructure not only delivers improved security of the current physical infrastructure, but goes beyond to address the needs of logical infrastructure that is being built. Traditionally security is handled by putting checks at physical bound-aries. VMware is pioneering the work in this direction and has announced a slew of new products.

When you talk about VMware addressing the data centre

automation and management space, are you going to compete with the likes of HP, CA or BMC? This is a false notion. We are not going into the space of enterprise-wide management framework. VMware is going to provide a private cloud that users can operate efficient-ly with appropriate management tools for that cloud. That is the differ-ence between VMware on one side and CA, BMC and HP on the other. This is more akin to distributed operating systems than to enterprise management systems.

Do you think the role of OS is diminishing in today’s

infrastructure? We need to say where the innova-tion is occurring. Traditionally OS did two things. They coordinated the hardware and provided services to applications. The innovation in how hardware is coordinated today and how services are provided to applica-tions is no longer happening inside the traditional operating system. The innovation is now happening in the virtualisation layer. The innovation is around how to deliver a truly auto-mated data centre.

On the other hand, innovation is

How will this whole infrastructure be consumed?

It is very interesting to watch how this infrastructure will be con-sumed and paid for. How will this increased automation, management and security be manifested inside the data centre? Industry calls this private cloud. To me, private cloud is a collective effect of the three innovations I have spoken about. I think private cloud not only needs coordination between automation, management and security but new constructs to interact with the infra-structure. One of those key con-structs is virtual data centres.

Virtual data centre is a collection of applications and services shar-ing common set of policies. This construct will instigate new ways of buying and utilising IT. It is important to know on whose books the capital expenditure will reside. It is a very seductive promise but to make it a reality, the industry will have to work together. This includes players in the private cloud and an eco-system of service providers. The dream of putting these mammoth applications on to a virtual infrastructure will also require a whole set of standards that need to be addressed by the industry.

“One thing I have learnt after

spending 30 years in the industry is that money can’t

buy you time”

First stage was

when the industry

tackled inefficient

hardware in the

data centre.

Second stage

was when the

industry was

looking forward

to resiliency

Third stage is

when the industry

looked for a

fundamentally

more agile

environment

3 STAGES OF VIRTUALISA-

TION



A Q U E S T I O N O F AN SWE RS PAU L M A R I T Z

occurring in new programming frameworks. That is where the developer productivity is yielded today. If you are a programmer involved in writing apps using “Ruby on Rails” framework there is an operating sys-tem involved somewhere but it is almost irrelevant to you. Most programmers don’t care for it. I didn’t mean to say operating sys-tems are going to die but we have to focus on where the innovation is going to happen.

Virtualisation is great but don’t you think there will be a huge challenge

when it comes to security, governance and compliance? It is an important aspect. But my answer to this is that there isn’t a single silver bullet to get to a perfect stage. We are playing our role by working with the industry and allow-ing them to take up the capabilities that are built and apply those in this new highly dynamic virtualised world.

As I said earlier, it was easier to keep a check on who came in and went out of the physical data centre. In the hybrid cloud

environment, users won’t necessarily have a physical data centre. It can be quite fluid. We are working with various industry players to develop techniques to provide a secure and compliant environment.

Microsoft is catching up fast with you in this market. It claims to be

leading the pack now. How would you defend that? When we talk of numbers being quoted by the industry players, we have to be careful in what is to be counted and what not. Just between VMware and Microsoft there are many versions of Hypervisor – some of these are free and some are paid. Unfortu-nately, there is a tendency to count some and not the others, which brings a very different statistic on market share. If you go by the serious usage of Hypervisor in the business-es, we have the largest market share by any means. That being said, Microsoft is a com-pany with enormous resources. They sense the same change as we do. They are increas-ingly shifting their capabilities to address

the same issues as we are addressing. One thing I have learnt after spending 30 years in the industry is that money can’t buy you time. The key point here is that it is no longer about the hypervisor. It is about how you stitch all the resources in the data centre together into a coherent, usable, secure envi-ronment. That means, you have to be able to work with not just with traditional hypervi-sor technologies but you have to coordinate, storage, networking, security etc. VMware is no more a hypervisor company. If you want a hypervisor for free we have one. We no lon-ger make money by selling hypervisor. We make money by selling data centre automa-tion and management.

This interview is not derived from an exclu-sive one-on-one conversation with Paul Maritz. It is a result of collation of a lot of visionary thoughts and statements which he made during his keynote address and exclusive media brief-ings during the recently concluded VMworld 2010 in San Francisco.

—By Rahul Neel Mani

16B 21 SEPTEMBER 2010 CTO FORUM THE CHIEF


BEST OF

BREED

The grumpy feeling that confronts a CIO every time an organisation decides on IT budgets may not go away so soon. With the double-dip recession looming in the face of

the economy, it is perhaps time to prepare for yet another cycle of flat IT budgets, restructuring and ultimately a leaner organisation.

Immersive TelePresence The game changer for video communication. BY NIPUN SAHRAWAT

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Why TelePresence?TelePresence delivers real time, face-to-face interac-tion through a combination of life-sized projections, fluid motion, synced audio, high-definition cameras and optimised networks. It offers a visual conferenc-ing environment that helps companies cut travel costs and boost productivity.

To set it straight, TelePresence puts together all the

TONNES OF CARBON DI-OXIDE EMIS-SIONS WERE REDUCED BY CISCO USING TELEPRES-ENCE

15.5DATA BRIEFING

“Immersive TelePresence has changed the dynamics of traditional videoconferencing.”

AUTHOR SAYS:



T E L E PRE S E N CE B E S T O F BR E E D

pieces that a user might already be using and helps in real time collaboration.

“Corporates today look at three factors to boost business productivity: agility, time to market and control over costs. The most important reason why TelePresence was registered as a promising collaborative tool is cost control,” says Neeraj Gill, MD, India & SAARC, Polycom. “Earlier, most organisations had huge budgets to travel and conduct face to face meetings. But, when recession hit the industry, and IT organisations faced flat IT/Infrastructure budgets, TelePresence emerged as a viable technology which could not only reduce the time taken to do business but also equip businesses with quick decision mak-ing capabilities”.

Initially, the challenge of collaborating at a global scale and with multiple locations led to the widespread use of conventional videocon-ferencing. However, these videoconferencing tools are not very reliable.

There are a few challenges that users face in videoconferencing environment.

First, video calls are complex to set up and operate. They demand assistance of an on-site IT team. Scheduling such meetings is done in advance. “In addition, TelePresence solutions typically include no user-configurable settings (call speed, camera pan-tilt-zoom) or intimi-dating hand-held remotes that tend to confuse users,” says Minhaj Zia, National Sales Man-ager, Cisco India & SAARC.

The second major issue with traditional videoconferencing is that the connec-tions are unstable. Either calls do not go through, or the connections provide poor quality audio and video. “TelePresence suppliers have taken steps to ensure that their systems deliver a consistent experi-ence throughout the session. These include network assessments to ensure that the net-work traffic is properly engineered to avoid issues like congestion,” says Zia.

A combination of these factors has led to the advancement of Immersive TelePres-ence as the “game - changing” technology.

Says, Sanjay Bansal, Chairman of the Board and MD, Business Octane, “Immer-sive TelePresence has arrived on the scene to change the dynamics of traditional video-conferencing and take it one step forward. Earlier complexity of usage deterred users from using traditional systems.”

In videoconferencing images appear very small. Conference attendees can neither make eye contact nor have connect. A verac-ity of statements becomes very irritating. “Technical nags like poor audio, lagging video, jitters hugely change how the overall experience could be,” says Bansal.

On the other hand the improved internet connectivity can make Immersive TelePres-ence an instant hit and has a potential to create a high degree of keenness among employees. “Organisations can get a very high ROI as compared to videoconferencing - almost 10 times whereas the investment is only three times higher,” he says.

With the slowdown hitting businesses worldwide, there is growing demand for Tele-Presence since it can help cut costs on travel and save a lot of time. With India becoming a key market for the global industry, TelePres-ence has found tremendous acceptance here informs Minhaj Zia, National Sales Manager, Cisco India and SAARC.

In addition to technology companies, MNCs and Indian companies with a global presence are also interested in setting up TelePresence to help employees collabo-rate and reduce the time taken to make decisions,” he says.

Major Inhibitors However good and innovative this technol-ogy is, one of the biggest challenges for the adoption of this technology is its prohibitive deployment costs. An average TelePresence room can easily cost anywhere between US$34,900 and US$349,000.

That is one reason why the technology, despite offering great business support, is still at its nascent stages of adoption. Although the companies are surely cutting costs to save on operational expenditure and thus adopting a lot of collaborative tools, they are yet not prepared for TelePresence. That’s where economic tech tools such as IMs and videoconferencing score high.

Another big issue in adopting TeleP-resence is interoperability. These video solutions have been woefully proprietary and thus don’t work with other solu-tions. Although this issue is being actively addressed by producers of the technology by joining hands and testing their products together but it is far from being resolved.

The Future Having seen both pros and cons, what does the future of TelePresence look like? Most experts view Immersive TelePresence as a promising technology which makes users feel as if they are sitting together in one big conference room. It helps in quick business decisions which wouldn’t have been possible otherwise. It can also help home office users (with HD screens) connect with their corpo-rate offices located far away.

Once the HD screens become cheaper and video processing technology adapts to improved quality of service over internet, the technology will go beyond traditional TelePresence rooms and reach out to mobile workers who can take advantage of what this technology promises to deliver.

IMMERSIVE TELEPRESENCE SUITE-BASED OFFERINGS

Cisco Polycom Business Octane LifeSize

Cisco TelePresence System 3000

Cisco TelePresence System 1300 Series

RPX Series

OTX Series

ATX Series

Collaborator Hypermax Series

Collaborator Turbomax Series

Collaborator TurbomaxHS Series

Collaborator Powermax SerieS

LifeSize Conference

LifeSize Conference 220

Note: All of the above offerings are suite-based with standard specifications such as HD video, synced lifelike audio, adjustable seating (numbers may vary), flexible content sharing.

TelePresence solutions typically include no user-configurable settings (call speed, camera pan-tilt-zoom) or intimidating hand-held remotes



Reliance Life Insurance Company Limited (RLICL), a unit of Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, was looking for a rapid, efficient and cost effective Customer Relationship Man-agement (CRM) solution to sustain customer satisfaction levels and improve service quality. The existing CRM solu-

tion was not up to the mark and had many limitations. Firstly, the CRM application was managed by a service provider, and

was not directly integrated with other applications within the company. Due to this segregation, service request resolutions often used to take more than a day to be addressed.

Secondly, any addition and/or modification of service categories in the CRM application took a couple of weeks and were carried out by the ser-vice provider with an additional cost of Rs 30,000 per category.

Finally, the service request resolution and the updates that were required to be filled back in the CRM application by the functional team took a couple of days which resulted in a longer resolution time.

“This resulted in customer grievances and affected customer satisfac-tion levels,” says C Mohan, Chief Technology Officer, RLICL.

Mohan wanted a solution that could handle surge in volumes, provide

Making it Easy

CASE STUDY | RLICL

CHALLENGE: Need for a rapid, efficient and cost effective CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT (CRM) solution to sustain customer satisfaction levels and improve SERVICE QUALITY.

BY ASHWANI MISHRA



CA S E S T U DY B E S T O F BR E E D

flexibility and scalability without degrading service quality benchmarks set by the organisation.

Making it easyThe IT team decided to replace the outsourced CRM sys-tems with an enhanced in-house CRM system which had the capability to draw agility from Service Oriented Archi-tecture (SOA) framework and Business Process Manage-ment (BPM) solution to integrate all the core insurance applications through an Enterprise Service Bus.

The team implemented a flexible, scalable, automated and secured CRM solution which was integrated with the core applications, leveraging SOA service. The new sys-tem was called Easy CRM.

With the deployment of this solution the company gradually improved its capability of managing customer complaints, request and enquiry and lead management capability for out-bound calling. The CRM solution was also integrated with the automated IVR system for com-

plaint/query logging and resolutions.By in-sourcing the CRM solution and its integration

with the core business applications through SOA, RLICL moved from a centralised to a decentralised complaint/enquiry process.

“With the solution in place, service requests could be raised not only at the contact centre, but also at the branches as the processes were transparent and available to the right users within the organisation,” says Mohan.

Reaping benefitsThe integration of various functions in the organisation using BPM, provided a seamless workflow and service request automation in the service category. This built agil-ity in the process with wider service delivery capabilities and eliminated multistage processing of requests and complaints by transforming it into a single step process. This also helped the company to address complaint reso-lution at the first instance and build multiple customer touch-points like the portal, the IVR, email and SMS along with the regular voice calls and branch walk-ins.

“All our processes were engineered as per customer demands and not what we desired,” says Mohan.

The company not only managed to increase customer satisfaction levels but also lowered its operating costs. It reduced the number of BPO staff to 200 from 300 plus and retained all of its customer service executives in the 1250 plus branches. In the back office department, the number of staff came down to 20 from 100 and they still managed to handle call volumes of 75,000 per month with complete call resolution.

In terms of overall business, with solutions like SOA, BPM and IVR, RLICL was able to handle 100 percent growth in call volumes (transactions) and 45 percent increase in customer base with reduced manpower and reduced operating costs.

The cost per call per month was brought down to Rs. 37 after implementation of Easy CRM from Rs. 94 before implementation. This translated into a yearly productivity increase by 150 percent and the savings for last financial year totalled to about Rs. 4.86 crore. According to com-pany estimates, taking a 20 percent year-on-year increase in call volumes, the overall saving over next three years would be around Rs. 8.39 crore.

With availability of multiple touch points like call cen-tre, portal, IVR, SMS and email the company was able to convert 1,27,090 leads generated through these channels to customers. Total value of this lead to cash conversion amounted to Rs.22 crore for financial year 2009-2010. Encouraged by this lead to cash conversion potential the company has now set a target of Rs. 100 crore for this financial year.

C MOHAN, CTO, Reliance Life Insurance Company Lim-ited provided multiple touch-points for facilitating effective customer services through a new CRM solution

COMPANY DASHBOARD

COMPANY:RELIANCE LIFE Insurance Company

Limited

ESTABLISHED:

2001

ASSOCIATE OF:

Reliance Capital Ltd.

SERVICES:

Life Insurance Plans,

Retirement Plans,

Protection Plans etc.

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COVE R S TORY CH A N G E M A N AG E M E N T

CHANGE WARRIORS



CH A N G E M A N AG E M E N T COVE R S TORY

The status quo, being what it is, and people being creatures of habit, managing and leading change can be one of the most difficult aspects of a CIOs job. The following case studies show how affecting change requires a combination of people skills and a will to succeed.Senior practitioners share how they made the change possible despite challenges on multiple fronts.

MANAGING AND LEADING CHANGE IS A TOUGH TASK. CIOS AND THOUGHT LEADERS SHARE THEIR LEARNING AND EXPERIENCES WHILE IMPLEMENTING CHANGE IN THEIR ORGANISATIONS.

I N S I D E22 | The Change Brigade24 | Effective Ways to Manage Change28 | CTO as an Architect of Change30 | Advantage CIO32 | Partners in Business

affecting change requires a combination of people skills and a will to succeed.Senior practitioners share how they made the change possible despite challenges on multiple fronts.


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What differentiates effective CIOs from ineffective ones? The answer has changed dramatically in the last decade or so. Ten years ago, technical expertise was the critical variable. Today, it’s how a CIO can do things differently, achieve business goals and gain competitive advantage.

“CIOs must go far beyond managing business requests, and in many cases actually take the lead in redefining the business. They need to be a part of the business prob-lem, else however good they maybe, they cannot drive change within the organisation,” says Rajendra Deshpande, CTO, Intelenet Global Services.

This change of mindset is in direct response to a turbulent, hypercompetitive business mar-ket, in which organisations increasingly turn to technology and process innovation for help.

CIOS ARE MAKING A TRANSITION TOWARDS A NEW WORLD OF BUSINESS-MINDED, IT LEADERSHIP By Ashwani Mishra




AGENTS OF A NEW ORDERLeading research firms across the globe have indicated a new class of CIOs who are committed to being enterprise change-agents. But, what does it take for a CIO to take the lead in change?

“First and foremost, this requires that CIOs deeply understand business far beyond the day-to-day operations,” says Deshpande.

The CIO must be conversant with the strategic goals of the business and look at alternative ways to meet these goals. Armed with this knowledge, the CIO can partner with the operating managers to create more powerful ways to do business.

Deshpande adds that in partnering with the business units to drive change, the CIO must engage at all three levels that include the senior management, operating manage-ment, and project management. This is what he and his team have been doing on a consistent basis within Intelenet.

Many of his team members are regularly participating in business strategy meetings. They understand the business pain areas and come up with ideas and solutions to overcome them. “In fact, a few members in my development team are from other busi-ness units,” says Deshpande.

While it is important that CIOs exhibit leadership authenticity as a change-agent role, they pretty well understand that transformation success will not be realised without commensurate leadership from key business executives.

Many CIOs opine that for organisations to be agile, they need to have a strong technol-ogy framework and transparency across the board. This will eliminate all obstacles and make it easier to drive both IT and business change. At the minimum, it is necessary for the IT function to have transparent plan-ning and prioritisation processes in place, and have a concrete track record for deliver-ing on commitments.

“IT needs to keep its house in order. I don't expect other parts of the business to get smarter about IT if the IT organisation isn't already smart about the business,” says Meenakshi Agrawal, Vice President - IT, Mumbai International Airport Pvt. Ltd.

According to Agrawal, a change manage-ment strategy should introduce initiatives to everyone affected by them, and should also

establish any new roles or expectations to team members, so that they are in sync with the what is being expected out of them.

Also, for many CIOs merely identifying new value opportunities is not enough. The business-minded CIO concurrently needs to assess the attitude toward change of the respective business units. This has two key components attached to it. One is to know the strength of the current business pro-cesses and the other is to understand how willing and able the business units are to make the changes necessary to reap the full potential of IT. The CIO can then engage various business units in joint programs of change management, with the ultimate deployment going much more smoothly.

“In such a scenario, there is less resis-tance, and much fuller use of the new capa-bilities,” says Agrawal.

Rajendra DeshpandeChief Technology Officer, Intelenet Global Services.

BREAKING BARRIERSA majority of CIOs cite three primary obsta-cles to transformational success: an internal culture resistant to change, organisational politics, and the existence of too many con-flicting priorities.

For some, relative immaturity of business processes and the people aspects of change management act as significant hurdles.

“In accepting this challenge, CIOs must proceed with caution, and understand the risks inherent in major transformation. However, they must also embrace the oppor-tunity, since it provides them with a means to highlight the value of IT to an organisation and contribute to breakthrough business per-formance,” says Agrawal.

At GE Capital India three key parameters drive change: speed, people and effective communication.

“The market dynamics change at a rapid

“CIOs MUST GO FAR BEYOND MANAGING BUSINESS REQUESTS AND TAKE THE LEAD IN REDEFINING BUSINESS”

speed. However, the speed at which CIOs can react to the change in terms of their internal infrastructure like operations or IT or sales force, will determine how effective their business is in the market place,” says Raghvendra Vaidya, CIO, GE Capital India.

In terms of the acceptance of solutions, GE Capital follows a well defined set of processes that are in place to make change effective. “CIOs need to build a culture of change management for the people to accept change more openly,” says Vaidya.

There is no doubt that today's CIO has opportunities far beyond the hopes and dreams that existed ten years ago. However, the key to success rests actively in engag-ing the business, partnering with business peers in the company to drive change. More than ever before, the CIO's effectiveness will determine the destiny of the company.

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Change management has been a topic of discussion and hindsight analysis for many years now. Why does it still remain an elusive topic?

Over the years, working in a variety of projects from implementing new strategies, to process redesign, structure changes and IT implementation one factor that has been ubiquitous is the stated need for change management. However, when you try and

pin it down to specifics, change management seems as elusive as a mythical unicorn. Everyone agrees it is essential at the start of an initiative. In presentations, it is shown as a bar across the duration of the project labelled “Change Management”, usually just below the bar that says

DO’S AND DON’TS By Alagu Balaraman




“Project Management”. After that, in most cases, everyone feels that due respect has been given to the principle and they go about doing their work. Why does this happen? What should you do, if you know you are going to deal with large scale change?

THERE ARE DIFFERENT KINDS OF CHANGES POSING DIFFERENT CHALLENGESA smoothly handled change can be a delight. For example, when we shifted our data centre the entire project was handled without any user being aware of the fact. This is probably not very uncommon, espe-cially in pure technology projects.

However, if your company has attempted a major reorganisation, a merger or launching a new division, you will know that it is not always smooth. There is a lot of time wasted in getting people to see the point. There are argu-ments over how to go about it. The project team is criticised for not considering “obvious” issues. Everyone hopes that we will somehow push through the change, things will settle down and we can forget about it later.

The easiest types of change to deal with are purely technical ones, where the impacted people are trained in the same discipline; all of them understand and agree on the objective and know who will do what to reach it. The most difficult types of change are those that affect relationships, career paths and earnings. Try implement-ing restructured compensation benefits, or an incentive system. Shifting a data centre seems child’s play in comparison.

The broad types of change, in my experi-ence, can be categorised into technology change, process change, capability change and relationship change. It goes harder as you progress along the list. Change gets more difficult the closer you get to impact-ing future livelihood (closing a factory or a business division), to chances of future bet-terment of lifestyle and status (a restructur-ing to flatten companies or a change in ben-efits), to altering relative status (who moves into the new office block? “Our company cars are too old fashioned”).

MANAGING THE CHANGE PROCESSMost managers know that managing the change process is critical for success. There

have been numerous studies and cases to show that preparing people for change is essential for success. Each of us intuitively knows this as well. When there are small children at home how you introduce a pro-posed trip or a change of house or school makes the difference between whether it is a fun time for all or tantrums and sulks.

What is needed to make change energis-ing rather than an unwanted ordeal? Here’s a list drawn up from experience:

An extremely clear, specific goal:When our company needed to embark on a huge cost reduction exercise, the MD per-sonally travelled around the country speak-ing to town halls and explaining the criti-cality and urgency to people. People asked questions and were probed to understand mindsets. At the end of it, there was a broad base of acceptance of the need for change and what we are gunning for. The larger the change, the more the different types of people who are affected by it, the simpler and more direct the message has to be. This is the starting point. Without it, people will soon start pulling in different directions and the change will disintegrate and disappear.

An overarching goal:When implementing a sales system, it was clear that people in Finance, Logistics and Production would all be affected. Had the goal been defined as implementing a sales system, people outside Sales would have felt it was not their responsibility. By looking at the underlying need for the system – to drive profitability through better customer service and improved cash collection – people could relate to why it was important for them to be involved. The identified and

articulated goal must address all the people who are impacted by the change. It should rise above normal organisational divisions and turfs. They should be able to under-stand how the change will benefit them as a group and, where possible, as individuals. This is most important where the change is going to result in one subset of people having more work, less pay or lowered sta-tus for the sake of the common good (“our company must become more competitive to survive this period of downturn” – survival is at stake)

Clarity and speed of communication:An administration manager had a problem of providing seating space in a office where headcount was growing rapidly. At the same time people who were seated near a coffee vending machine were complaining that there was a lot of noise and disturbance dur-ing the day. To kill two birds with one stone, the manager moved the coffee machine to the cafeteria and created more cubicles in its place. He felt that he was meeting both the need for a more conducive work area and accommodating more people. However, it was viewed as an attempt to move the coffee machine to a more distant location to reduce usage and save money. The man-ager was left defending a move that he truly thought was beneficial to all.

That was a trivial example of a change that was misunderstood. People often say you cannot over communicate when you want people to change. They are correct. Insuf-ficient communication leads to specula-tion reinforced by the rumour mills. Word spreads on the grapevine and is soon so embedded that it cannot be rooted out.

Pre-emptive communication (sometimes

Alagu BalaramanVice President & Process Architect, Britannia Industries Ltd.

“THE MOST DIFFICULT TYPES OF CHANGE ARE THOSE THAT AFFECT RELATIONSHIPS, CAREER PATHS AND EARNINGS”



COVE R S TORY CH A N G E M A N AG E M E N T

termed pro-active communication to be “politically correct”) is essential. Setting a thought or idea in someone’s mind is easier than changing one. Especially, if the incor-rect thought is more sensational or conspir-atorial. So, it is important to get your idea in place quickly and clearly.

What do you communicate? The objec-tives, the impact and also how the change will affect them. Allow people to envision the change before it actually happens. This is a bit like running a pilot before imple-menting a large system. People should be able to work out potential pitfalls, ask questions and get answers. Allay their real and imagined concerns. Be patient about it. Remember “communication” is two-way, not just a broadcasting system.

How do you communicate? The more critical and difficult changes must be addressed in face to face discussions, either singly or as relevant groups. The biggest threat to effectively implementing change in the corporate world today is email. Complex changes cannot be communicated through a medium where we are conditioned to flick open, make a hair trigger judgment and hit the appropriate disposal button. Email is fine to send subsequent updates, but it is terrible to initiate and mould thought.

Staying on track – consistency and ownershipDriving difficult change is like pushing a boulder uphill. It is a difficult task and if you take a small break, the boulder rolls back. Starting to push it uphill the next time is more difficult and you are more tired. You have done all the things that are listed above. Everyone has agreed. Then, in the middle of work people come up with fresh (or old) doubts, reasons why it’s the wrong time to attempt this change, why it will harm other goals or relationships and sug-gest that maybe we should revisit what we are attempting to do.

Often people do not budget time for deal-ing with issues like this. So, in a packed project schedule, you try to overcome these tactics rationally or by aggression. In reality the stated objections are just a smokescreen. Addressing them will not make people go back and get to work. They will just go back and think up two more reasons not to take this initiative. After all, you are the one with

the deadline, not the people who are trying to defer or block unpleasant change. You must not underestimate the time needed to handle these issues.

This is best handled by having senior spon-sorship for the change, not just at the begin-ning of the initiative, but all through. The communication must stay consistent and per-sistent. This is best done through a disciplined set of reviews to track progress and make course corrections. These are formal reviews of progress with a well defined schedule.

However, this is not enough. It is easy to come up with why things can’t work and

to say “Tell me what to do and I’ll do it”. People need to be made a part of the solu-tion and not a part of the problem. The goal is a given and the communication must repeat that the goal has not changed. At the same time, the ownership for delivery has to be formally assigned to specific individuals and consistently insisted upon in the formal reviews. While you can accept changes to how the goal is met, a change to the goal itself is not accepted.

In most change initiatives, there is a point, usually just after the worst resistance, when things start becoming smooth. It is

ONCE a CIO said to me: "It's time to increase the IT-smarts of the rest of the business. They are demanding more direct control and they are ready for it."

I replied, "Congratula-tions and condolences. Get ready, for an uphill climb."

Boosting IT-smarts is a change-management chal-lenge. But classic change-management approaches fall short because they focus on the logical, rather than psychological, aspects of change.

Here are four important steps to creating an IT-smart enterprise:

1. Assess current performance: Survey business and IT leaders to assess how they perceive the importance and value of IT and manage the IT asset.

2. Make sure the IT house is in order: Make sure that transparent IT planning and prioritisation processes are in place; and IT has a solid track record for delivering on commitments and running efficiently.

3. Focus efforts where the pain is worth the gain: Find out where Pareto (the 80-20 rule) lives and target your IT-smart efforts accordingly. Demonstrate the impact of IT-smarts in the foreground, where the results will be noticed.

4. Tell a good story and make sure that it is written collaboratively: Sketch the outline and get others engaged in filling in the details. Make sure the story balances issues of the past with promises for the future, benefits the external customers, and taps into the hopes, needs, fears, and conflicts of the business.

(Extracted from HBR Blog, with prior permission from the Author)

—Susan Cramm: is the author of " Eight Things We Hate About IT " and president of Valuedance, an executive coaching and leadership development firm specialising in informa-

tion technology.

IT-SMARTS

Susan Cramm

INCREASING




as if the boulder has crested the hill and is starting to roll downwards. People can see that success as a distinct possibility. Resis-tance seems to vanish. There is another hid-den risk here; the risk of losing intensity.

In climbing a hill, the last step has to be as firm as the first. It is easy to move most of the way to the goal and fall short because everyone’s attention has moved to the next crisis. The need for consistent and persis-tent review is as important when things are smooth as they are when things are tough. Closure happens only when the goal is met, not when it is within grasp.

COMMON CAUSES OF FAILURE There are times when well meaning changes have spun out of control, leaving a mess of unhappy people, lost opportunities and wasted money. While working on the principles of delivering successful change it is equally important to keep an eye out for some commonly faced problems.

Looking too much to the pastWhen we want to change something, it usually means there is already something in place. It could be how we worked in the past, how we were organised or what we aimed to do.

A common reaction is the line of thinking that “if we need to change how we work, it is because what we were doing earlier was wrong. If something we were doing is wrong, then someone made a mistake. If there is a mistake, someone has to take the blame. I better make sure that some-one is not me. I better not accept the need of change because I might be blamed for doing a bad job in the past.”

Many changes are lost causes because the initiation dwells too much on the past. The past and how we got here is important to design the change, but spend too much time on it and people will be concerned that a witch hunt will start. What’s important is where we are going, not how we got here.

Getting deflected from the goalIf the change you are driving is the only thing happening in your organisation, you are in change nirvana. In reality, there are several other plans and programmes underway. Resources are scarce. People have different objectives, especially if the

change you are shepherding arose because of a need mid-year. So, people will often look to deflect you from the goal to ensure that they meet other commitments.Ignoring these is fatal. You will expend more and more energy in trying to work around so many problems that you will lose impact, miss schedules and eventually lose credibility. Face the objections and have them tabled for resolution at the appropri-ate level. Get everyone aligned, not just in thought, but also in terms of their own goals, priorities and resources.

Another way you may be deflected is when people embrace the change but want you to do something else. For example, while leading a large supply chain cost reduction initiative, you might be asked to re-design the supply chain IT architecture because it is something that the organisation has wanted to do for some time. Will that actually lead to a significant cost reduction? Will it give more saving than some other process change? If not, then the idea must be turned down. Mak-ing exceptions to the goal and the consistency of demands made will weaken credibility and will lead to other people losing faith in the importance and urgency of the change. So, even if the deflection is seductively attractive, it is important to stay on course.

Using the wrong style”I agree you have problems, but that does not change our company’s goal for this initia-tive and you’ll just have to accept that and

carry on”. Familiar? We hear this in several projects, but can you imagine this approach working when you suddenly realise that a project will require resettling a thousand employees to a different city? Will they be committed to the change after that? So, is change best handled by building consensus or is it more straightforward to issue diktats?

There are people in each camp. Usually they have succeeded in the past using one of these and that remains their preferred style. Having a single approach can be very dangerous when driving large scale change when there is a diversity of problems.

Looking ahead to see what can go wrong nextThings go wrong. The unexpected happens. In any project that involves substantial change, it is essential that some person or people are constantly thinking ahead of what can go wrong, what can be misunder-stood or what unplanned obstacle has the potential for rearing its head. These need to be identified, evaluated and risk mitigation plans drawn up as a part of a regular review.

Under resource the change initiative”I know it should be done, but where’s the time”. We often under resource the change management aspect of any initiative. As a result, it is left to people who have technical roles or ad hoc involvement of senior people to get things back on track. However, this can be very expensive in terms of delays and sub-par results. The reason we under resource is because the requirement, ben-efits and risks are not evaluated thoroughly. What’s not understood is not funded. So, very often change management simply remains as a bar on a Powerpoint slide or as gravely, but vaguely, stated intentions.

Businesses today operate in an environ-ment that has more uncertainty and change than ever before. At the same time, good people are a scarce resource to attract and retain. It is more important than ever before to marry these two trends in a self reinforc-ing manner by making change an energis-ing experience, rather than the ordeal that we have to get through.

—The author is Vice President & Process

Architect at Britannia Industries Ltd.

PEOPLE NEED TO BE MADE A PART OF THE SOLUTION AND NOT A PART OF THE PROBLEM. THE GOAL IS A GIVEN AND THE MESSAGE MUST REPEAT THAT THE GOAL HAS NOT CHANGED



IT IS THE BIGGEST CHANGE DRIVER IN AN ORGANISATION; THUS THE CIO

IS ALWAYS IN THE HOT SEAT By K R Sreenivasan




Since the creation of the universe and the origin of life on earth there has been a continuous evolution in living organisms – the evolu-tion has been driven primarily

by “change” in climatic conditions. Those organisms which “adapted” to the chang-ing environment survived and the best amongst them flourished. Those that did not, or could not, adapt to the changes did not survive – a la the dinosaur which finally became extinct.

Question: Does the above apply to busi-ness organisations?

Till a few decades ago, most business organisations around the world grew in a vertically integrated manner, leveraging internal strengths and resources, or by

or software (ICE) – saw very rapid develop-ments. These developments provided busi-ness leaders an enabler to meet the new challenges of complexity, competition and the increasing collaborative requirements. CTOs were amongst the first managers to recognise the power of “advances in tech-nology”. They could envision the need to adopt the changes in their own function and leverage technology to derive competitive advantage for their organisations. A

Information and technology being all per-vasive in an organisation necessitated the CTO to acquire competencies in handling change across the organisation to ensure adoption of technology.

The IT function therefore became the thread stringing together various

on the personal front or at work. People over a period of time find a “comfortable” way of going about their tasks. Change demands they move out of this comfort zone and that is the toughest challenge. Changing the way we work is as difficult as changing a habit. A habit is a state where we are “unconsciously competent” in performing largely repetitive tasks, be it at work or at home.

Gain the acceptance of the need to change through outlining what the ben-efits to the company are and also answers “What is in it for me?” for each employee. The communication must be clear on “why change” - encompass the advantages of and the consequences of not doing so.

Create an awareness throughout the organisation that change is not a threat but an opportunity for each one of us to better our lives.

Change needs to be led from the front and by example – not only by senior management but by handpicked “Change agents” within the organisation. People relate better when they see leaders adopting change rather than talking about it in conferences.

Focus on the low hanging fruits and reward the early adopters.

Create an environment which allows the individual or team to “own” the change process impacting him/ her.

Help equip the employee with new com-petencies required to handle the tasks in a different manner as required now – hand hold for some time till it takes root and the employee sees the benefit. This will ensure sustenance and prevent a relapse to the ear-lier way of doing things.

Managing change is like being on a con-tinuous journey whether we like it or not – as a CTO we understand it better since it is occurring in our functional area at a rapid pace. Clichés evolve for a reason, “The only thing constant in the world is change”.

—The author is Consultant Advisor, Passenger

Car Business (Commercial) Tata Motors Limited.

The views expressed here are of the author

alone and not Tata Motors'.

K R SreenivasanConsultant Advisor, Passenger Car Business (Commercial) Tata Motors Limited.

“AN UNDERSTANDING OF HUMAN NATURE AND RELEVANT KEYS TO MODIFY BEHAVIOUR IS PARAMOUNT HERE”

mergers and acquisitions. Subsequently, complex changes in the business environ-ment occurred – the key ones being – break-down of geographical and trade borders, cost pressures, discerning and demanding customers, increased domestic and cross border competition. To survive, organisation strategy changed to focus on “core com-petencies” while leveraging the strengths of other organisations – in a way moving towards “collaborative” business operations.

These fundamental changes in the operat-ing environment were similar to the ones faced by the dinosaurs – businesses that adapted, survived and the ones that did not, disappeared. This paradigm shift in the business model posed a unique challenge for business leadership world over – one of coping with and handling change.

During the same period, technology, especially in the area of Information Tech-nology – be it hardware, communications

functions of the “extended” organisations of today. This is the reason why today’s CTO is better prepared and equipped, than other C level functionaries, to drive organisational change.

A lot has been written and spoken about the increasingly critical role of the CTO in today’s information and technology driven world. Look around – many successful organisations have a CTO driving not only technology changes and adoption but s/he is a core member of the team charged with driving change within the organisation.

Based on my experience let me list a few key factors which will help you, the CTO, architect and successfully deploy change in your company:

Change is about human behaviour modification. An understanding of human nature and relevant keys to modify behav-iour is paramount here. In life most things we do each day are routine in nature – be it



RAGHVENDRA VAIDYA, CIO AT GE CAPITAL INDIA BELIEVES THAT CIOS SHOULD PARTNER WITH BUSINESS LEADERS AND OTHER FUNCTIONS AND BE READY TO LEAD. By Ashwani Mishra




GE Capital started its operations in India in 1993 and is one of the leading non-banking finan-cial companies in the country. Last year, it brought together its

consumer finance and commercial finance businesses. During this process, the busi-ness went through a transformation in terms of the products that needed support and the ones that were to be discarded. These decisions were made instantaneously.

“Being a financial services company, any change in the business mix, strategy or focus areas needs to be preceded or followed-up by changes in the IT environment. Post this decision of integration, our technology infrastructure has undergone some major changes and work is still underway,” says Raghvendra Vaidya, CIO, GE Capital India.

For example, the IT team is currently run-ning a project to consolidate lending plat-forms for both consumer and commercial finance businesses. The initiative is driven with the focus of creating scale that can be managed effectively from cost and efficiency standpoint. The platform also aims to define the company’s go-to market strategy.

Vaidya adds that when any business is in a phase of a new product introduction or NPI, the features of the product are defined by business users and invariably the relat-ing solutions for the product is deployed by IT. He cites an example of launching a new credit card, which offers a different value proposition for users. The marketing team would introduce the product to the business and IT would be a part of the discussion.

“In such a scenario, IT has to decide and put forth its view on how it can support the product at a reasonable cost and within the requisite timeframe. Technology is instru-mental in how NPI shapes from the concept stage till the product is rolled out and it is very true for our consumer side of busi-ness,” says Vaidya.

Such discussions at GE Capital are a regu-lar feature where the IT team adds value to the business by suggesting solutions through which the product can be modified and made better. These suggestions could

either be related to offer a better value prop-osition to the customer or better operating efficiencies or it might just be a quick way of getting the product in the market.

However, Vaidya is quick to add that some challenges arise when IT plays a proac-tive role in the business and the foremost amongst them is the resistance to change. He advises CIOs to show maturity in ensur-ing that this resistance is mitigated by devel-oping processes that are beneficial to the overall business.

Vaidya agrees that IT will have to play

a key role in change management. CIOs need to enable business and transition themselves as a partner with other business leaders and help them either realise their numbers or plans through the right use of technology or both.

“As IT leaders, we have a unique advan-tage of working across functions, and have a better understanding of the business than our other peers in the organisation. Technology as a function has to move from becoming an enabler to becoming a partner in growth,” says Vaidya.

ONE OF THE risk factors in initiating change is understanding the rate of change the organisation can absorb. The change will be more likely to be accepted, if you introduce it gradually. If you try a big bang, the odds of making a successful change go down.

There’s no easy answer to changing an organisa-tion’s attitude toward change. You have to under-stand the organisation, its goals, and its culture to assess what rate and volume of change it can absorb. While evaluating your own organisation's tolerance for change you will want to think about:

Does your company rou-tinely explore new ideas

and processes? There is always some risk in doing new things, but if they openly accept change, the organisation is probably more attuned to risk evalu-ation and does things that generally mitigate risk.What is your organisa-tion’s level of risk toler-ance? Some organisations are much more risk averse than others.

How critical is the change to the company strategy? If the change is incidental to the operation of the company, easing the change in a bit more slowly may be more acceptable. However, if it’s mission critical, the company may support a more rapid change because everyone will understand that the

change is important to growth or even survival.

Can the risk be miti-gated, if not eliminated? Lowering the risk by put-ting together detailed plans for change and phasing the change in will help by giv-ing the company a chance to absorb the changes more gradually.

How does your organi-sation plan for and imple-ment change? Does it have a formal change pro-cess or is it ad hoc? More companies are finding that a formal change process is desirable.

Mike Scheuerman—This article has been

published with prior permis-sion from www.cioupdate.com.

ESTABLISHINGA CULTURE OFCHANGE

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FROM BEING A SUPPORT FUNCTION TO A BUSINESS ENABLER, THE IT TEAM AT VODAFONE ESSAR IS NOW LOOKING TO RISE TO THE NEXT LEVEL — BEING A PARTNER TO THE BUSINESS. By Ashwani Mishra




It is important for all leaders to step back and recognise the patterns in change and factor out the noise. For CIOs it’s even more critical. Apart from dealing with rapid technological changes, they also

have an added responsibility to shape their organisations’ business.

Navin Chadha, Director-IT at Vodafone Essar realised this quite early and wanted to get his act right, and at the first instance.

In mid 2007, global telecom major Voda-fone had acquired Hutchison Essar and the company was rechristened as Vodafone Essar. The IT operations of the company during this period were not centralised for the 16 circles where the company operated.

“We were in a chaotic stage. There were IT heads for all of these circles and each one had their own IT strategy,” says Chadha.

This resulted in delays and ineffective decision making capabilities for the busi-ness. The IT team realised that by letting things be as they were, meeting business demands and growth would not be easy.

To address these concerns, Vodafone Essar signed an outsourcing deal with IBM in December 2007. IBM was assigned the task of managing the company’s end-to-end IT operations, handle growth, leverage skills, optimise cost and reduce delivery cycle times. Though the company looked at other service providers, IBM emerged as the clear choice due to its partnership with Vodafone globally.

“This was the first turning point in our change management strategy,” recalls Chadha.

During the three month transformation phase, the IT team directed its efforts to bring in change within the organisation. These changes were related to introduction of new business processes like ITIL, governance etc.

As these changes in the business process-es were happening, there were other chang-es needed in the culture of the IT organi-sation in order to convert it from being a support function to become an enabler.

were now being invited for business strat-egy meetings. Earlier IT was informed a few days in advance about a business launch and it was asked to be ready with the sys-tems and processes.

“We have now realised that IT being merely an enabler will not help, we now want to be partners with the business,” says Chadha.

In recent strategy meets, the IT team interacts freely with business units and offers ways and means on how top and bot-tom lines of other functions can improve if they follow a particular approach. The team is also driving cost saving initiatives, launching innovation portal, transforming IT with portfolio management to reduce cycle time and more importantly talking the language that business understands.

Chadha developed and introduced a vision of IT strategy for the next three years and also launched various programs within the organisation like starting a newsletter that gave other business functions the visibility of the work done by IT. By creating a culture of trust and equality, he encouraged his team to think, decide and execute their thoughts.

He directed his team to interact with other business units on a regular basis and find out their pain points and how IT could help. There were series of meetings conducted with marketing, customer service and other enterprise business functions. “So we transitioned ourselves from being a support organisation to being an enabler for busi-ness,” says Chadha.

Suddenly, all business functions started to look up at the technology team and they

Paul MaritzCEO, VMware

“ONE THING I HAVE LEARNT AFTER SPENDING 30 YEARS IN THE INDUSTRY IS THAT MONEY CAN’T BUY YOU TIME”

Read the full interview on page 12

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NEXTHORIZONS

Instant Gratification: Google redefines 'New' with Google Instant. Pg 36

FEATURES INSIDE

Technology and mobility in the workplace go hand in hand. Laptops have allowed us to leave our offices and have given us the freedom to travel

anywhere in the world and still be able to access files stored in corporate databases.

Cell phones and smartphones have extended that freedom, allowing us to set up virtual offices from just about anywhere. Cloud computing technologies potentially extend this mobility even further by provid-ing access to critical files from almost every-where on the planet. We’re no longer limited to files on our computers, and we don’t have to tunnel into the corporate network via VPN. Technology has un-tethered the world.

As Peter Parker quoted his Uncle Ben in Spiderman, “With great power comes great responsibility.” We can amend the phrase to read, “With great freedom comes great responsibility,” or even, “With greater mobility in the workforce comes a huge challenge for companies to manage.”

The logical solution is to hire a mobile operations manager for the IT department to oversee the increasing use of virtual employees, virtual teams and the mobile technologies that allow this to happen.

In reality, the solution isn’t so simple. In the last 20 years, since the evolution of technologies that enable mobility, the

Mobile WorkforceTips for CIOsCIOs need to think more about managing mobility as part of the company’s culture. BY SCOTT ARCHIBALD

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boundaries between work, leisure and fam-ily responsibilities have blurred. Mobile technologies are no longer just part of our work lives; they are ingrained in our everyday lives and are part of our culture. Therefore, CIOs need to look beyond man-aging mobility as a technology and think more about managing mobility as part of the company’s culture.

Fortune 500 companies are at an inflec-tion point: Call it the corner of mobility and culture. Mobility will change the fabric of how employees interact with each other, partners, vendors and customers. If com-panies leave mobility unmanaged or try to manage it from a narrow focus, such as IT or HR, the likely result will be a frustrated workforce, which will reinforce generational divides among workers.

As an example, in a recent conversation, a Fortune 500 CIO said, “Baby boomer work-ers think that our younger workers are lazy because they sit on couches with their lap-tops, and they forward their office phones to their mobile phones.”

Leaving this situation unmanaged from a broad business and cultural perspective will create a divide between experienced and relatively inexperienced workers.

In addition, Generation X, Y and Z work-ers, who have grown up with mobile and wireless technology, have been entering the workforce in large numbers. These younger workers not only use technology, but are also eager to find new uses for it.

The bottom line is that mobility is not just about technology anymore. However, chances are high that IT, specifi-cally the CIO, will be responsible for any mobile initiatives within the company. So, CIOs need to take a broad view of mobility and understand the effect this tech-nology will have on departments such as HR, sales, marketing, legal, security and facilities, as well as IT. Below are five tips that can help CIOs successfully manage enterprise mobility:

1Use it! Start using an iPhone, a Google Android smartphone, a Blackberry or similar device. If your company uses

salesforce.com, try the mobile version of that application. Use TripTracker or any of

the airline applications for travel informa-tion. Download your favorite news channel applications and get breaking news. There is probably a sports or special interest applica-tion that may be of value to you as well. Then you’ll understand what your workers love.

2Provide mobile device support. Cre-ate a process to support different smartphones and mobile devices used

by employees as new form factors (such as the iPad) come to market. With the mobile landscape changing so quickly—and an increasing number of employees using their own mobile devices for work and personal activities—companies should reconsider which employees get mobile devices. Let employees purchase their own devices and ensure that minimal security is placed on the device. Let’s face it, the days of support-ing only one or two corporate-controlled smartphone platforms are behind us.

3Create mobility teams. Create a cross-organisational team to address facili-ties, HR, legal and security issues

with employees who will inevitably be roaming coffee shops, soccer fields and the workplace while using mobile devices. Some companies are finding that, between telecommuting and shared workplaces, not every employee needs a dedicated cube. Understand the HR and legal ramifications of employees who plan to use their own devic-es to access corporate data.

A “We don’t support that” attitude won’t suffice. Gen X, Y

and Z employees will figure out how to use their own devices to access corporate data. It’s much better to get ahead of the issue and have processes and procedures in place to accommodate this behavior.

4Security isn’t everything. Don’t get bogged down in the security argu-ments that will inevitably happen.

Your CISO will most likely want to lock down mobile devices to a point at which they become useless paperweights, but this is unrealistic. Security is, and always will be, important—especially as devices get small-er, get lost and get stolen more frequently with each passing year. However, education and some security measures— such as password protection and remote wipe (in which the help desk can remotely wipeclean a device that’s been reported lost or stolen)—will meet the needs of most businesses. Companies need to carefully balance risk, usability and cost.

5Go mobile. Challenge application-development teams to design every-thing for a mobile platform. This will

encourage application developers to think about and embrace mobility, and will likely be a big hit with employees who are already using mobile devices.

If your company is advanced in its approach to mobility and its value to the workforce, go ahead and create a mobile application that encourages feedback from employees to rate their mobile experience at work. Find out what their likes and dislikes are when it comes to using mobility inside (or outside) the workplace to get work done. Learn what improvements your mobile users recommend.

CIOs might be surprised at the feedback they get.

— Scott Archibald is a managing director at

Bender Consulting, an Austin, Texas-based

consulting firm focused on transformation

projects. He’s had two decades of leadership

experience in the high-tech industry.

This article has been published with prior

permission from CIO Insight.

MO B I L I T Y N E X T H OR I ZO N S



94%MOBILE

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Mobility is not just about technology anymore. Chances are high that IT, specifically the CIO, will be responsible for any mobile initiatives within the company.

Instant GratificationGoogle redefining 'New' with Google Instant. BY PAM BAKER

In a bit of twist, Google topped its own search ranking lists this week with the release of Google Instant, which is essentially predictive text that guesses

the user's intent and offers search bar auto-fill options and short-tail "instant" results.

But, the reviews are mixed. Some hailed it as useful, particularly for mobile where tiny screens and key-boards make typing a chore. Others wrung their hands over what this means to the multi-billion dollar SEO industry.

"Most folks in my circles don't use the Google home page search," says Eric Bryant, director of Gnosis Arts Multimedia Communica-tions, an online marketing firm. "Rather, they use the search bar in a toolbar as I do."

New... againWhatever judgment ultimately befalls Google Instant, one thing it can't be labeled as is "new". Yahoo had the technology as far back as 2005 but was too timid to push it forward. Bing's API also powered instant search services before and will likely do so again.

"The fact that the underlying technology and product of Instant Search pre-exists, Google Instant doesn't change the fact that it is a game changer, both for Bing and search engine marketers," explained Brian Provost, a Search Marketing expert for Focus, a business research group. "It's a total PR win for Google, as usual."

Bing, said Provost, finds itself in a "no-win situation as users are now likely to demand instant search and Bing may simply not have enough data to do Instant as well as Google."

Beyond general search competitors, vertical search engines have also had instant search long before Google's "big" unveiling.

"The search functionality Google introduced to the general public this week has been available to ecommerce sites since 2009, and mil-lions of consumers have already used it on sites like Abt.com," says Sanjay Arora, CEO of Nextopia Software. However, the point may be moot as users may choose habit over new and improved anyway.

"I don't think you are going to see Google Instant affect market share for Google or for Bing," said Rich Kahn, CEO of search engine and search marketing company eZanga. "So this is Google's newest feature. People will likely be interested to try it out, but will settle back into their old search habits."

What's next for search?The prevailing prediction for the future is the expansion of semantic search, which adds user's intent and the context of meaning to the search function. Google and Bing already use semantic search to some degree "so it may not prove to be a huge competi-tive advantage but it will definitely be a big boon to users" said Rakkhi Samarasekera, CEO of RS Security Consulting.

"HTML 5 allows for microcontent tagging," explained Samarasekera. "XHTML never really worked because

it was too hard, but with HTML5 you can now tag right in code, use autocode builders like blogging sites (Tumblr, Posturous, Blogger) and even microblogging and social network sites could integrate this automatically."

The immediate future will also likely see image and music search, both mature technologies, finally come of age in multiple product offerings. The walled gardens of such sacred social media cows as Facebook will open as well. In fact, they are cracking open now.

"Real-time search, another new Google product at google.com/realtime, is in its infancy and attempts to index our social interac-tions online," explains Lisa Raehsler, SEM Strategy Consultant and programming committee chair at Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA). She said that if Google can link conversations across Twitter using the 'Full conversation' link, they will be able to link conversations across different social networks. "This will likely be a data miners dream and a personal privacy nightmare."

Meanwhile, the future of search fuels many debates. "Some people say the social graph, some say mobile search is

next," said Ben Fox, SEM and Content Editor for Appliances Online. "I'd say you're asking the wrong question."

Fox believes the next big change for search will come "with the next big change in the Web – whether that's social media that pays you for taking part (like http://www.beaddictive.com); browsers with interfaces that are endlessly customisable and let you choose how you see the world; or, a translate function that totally removes lan-guage barriers – it’ll change the way we navigate the Web." —A prolific and versatile writer, Pam Baker's published credits include

numerous articles in leading publications including, NY Times, and

Knight-Ridder/McClatchy newspapers.

This article is published with prior permission from www.cioupdate.com.

N E X T H OR I ZO N S I N T E RN E T S E A RCH





N O H O LDS BARR E D PE RSO N ' S N A M E

De-duplication has gone from being nice-to-have to a must-have technology in an organisation



M I K E PR I E TO N O H O LDS BARR E D

What are the three ways of curtailing information explo-

sion in an organisation?In terms of optimisation and data reduction – thin provisioning, dedu-plication and tiering are the three ways to manage the explosive data. Thin provisioning is the ability of the system to distribute data to a large number of users to be used efficiently. It is more like a debit system, rather than employees having 1 GB of available storage, they have a 100 MB, and as they use that 100 MB you are given more as you require. The clear benefit of thin provisioning is that it gives you reduction in disk space.

With de-duplication you reduce the requirement of disk capacity. Tiering enables you to organise the data require-ments that you have and push it to vari-ous devices. This has the ability to opti-mise the data that you need in various scenarios. The benefits are in the form of management and automation.

Unstructured Data – how to we solve the mess?

It is one of the biggest problems in storage. We have various products that specialise in handling unstruc-tured data. They enable you to man-age that, together with de-duplication and disk to disk backup.

What according to you are the biggest challenges for

storage virtualisation?From my perspective the biggest challenge is around the planning and understanding of what-its-going-to-take-to-get-there. It needs to be well thought out. The real benefit will be in virtualising an infrastructure end-to-end. You must not treat virtualisation in silos. Most organisations work on the server piece and forget about the rest.

You are going to get the best ROI when you have an end-to-end virtu-alised infrastructure. That’s where we can really help. We can provide this service to help you virtualise everything. We have IP in all areas including desktops, servers etc. to help organisations get there.

What approaches should be taken while adopting a hybrid

model with the cloud for storage?It is a hard question to answer. There is no straight answer to this. You may have to go case by case. You may typi-cally go with a consulting organisa-tion to help you – it will depend on the size of the organisation and the number of data centres they have.

You would want the best returns from the investments that you have made in hardware by virtualising it – this is the underline while planning and assessing the systems.

You would also need to classify the application with the kind of service levels that you need with them. It needs to be well thought out. It leads me back to the question that you asked me about storage virtu-alisation challenges. This is one of them – of being able to understand the service levels of applications in the application layer. You must understand which are the mission critical apps, tier 2 apps, etc. before you virtualise.

Mike Prieto, Vice President and General Manager, StorageWorks Division, HP Asia Pacific and Japan in conversation with Geetaj Channana about the ways to curtail information explosion.

DOSSIER

COMPANY:HP StorageWorks

BUSINESS AREAS:

Storage products

including storage

networking

PRODUCTS: Disk

and tape storage

systems, storge

blades, NAS and more

Save onSpace

N O H O LDS BARR E D M I K E PR I E TO

How have the backup policies changed with the advent of cloud

and virtualisation?It is a very good question. Am not sure about India, but in certain countries in the APJ region, I can tell them that it is a risk and opportunity at the same time. I see customers are still not addressing data processing well enough. I am seeing cus-tomers who have made a significant invest-ment in hardware in SAN technology for example to find out later on that there is no data protection strategy in place in the system. This is a huge risk.

With virtualisation you have the ability, but it is still not enough and you need a good DR strategy in place. It is important that you answer the questions of Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO). Some of the first questions that need to be answered are: how critical is your data and how fast do you need it back. The next step is to figure out the technology that you may want to invest in. Virtualisa-tion and cloud add to the choice.

How important is de-duplication? Where should it be on the storage

roadmap of the organisation? I think de-duplication has gone from nice-to-have to a must-have in an organisation. It is critical in terms of being one of the key pillars of the enterprise converged infrastruc-ture strategy. The four pillars of this strategy are Platform Convergence, Storage Optimisa-tion, Virtualisation and Management.

De-duplication is a key part of storage optimisation. It has become a necessity from being a luxury.

Please tell us more about your Store Once product.

There are different technologies today for de-duplication. From a regional branch where you have a single node, to a regional office that has a few nodes to a data centre with many nodes you may need different technologies for de-duplication. You may have to do the de-duplication process again and once you go from one site to another, depending on the technology. Store Once on

the other hand allows you to do de-duplica-tion from one location for all the nodes.

This technology has been developed from the ground up by HP Labs. It is a single software design that reduces complexity end-to-end. It runs on all our disk-to-disk backup products available in the market.

Any final thoughts?I would like to make a couple of

key points here. Firstly, we are leading the charge in terms of breaking down the boundaries between server storage and network. We have got devices now that are purposefully built for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). We are seeing a lot of demand. Though a lot of people are not adopting it they are showing a lot of interest in it. We have recently finished a big instal-lation in Korea.

We are also driving very hard on industry standard hardware. We have a lot of products that are based on the x86 platform that makes management a lot more easier. This helps in bringing the costs down substantially.

Management advice and technology suggestions from CIOs at Xerox, Procter & Gamble, Independent Bank and Miami-Dade College, about achieving workforce efficiency. BY DON REISINGER

POINTS5

STRIKE A BALANCE:

High productivity while

nurturing morale

BOOST COMMUNICATION:Articulate a clear

enterprise model

RESPONSE SPEED:Faster workers want

faster resolutions

MOBILITY: Use mobile tech to

service better

COLLABORATE: Use tools like

Sharepoint

BOOSTING IT WORKER PRODUCTIVITY

T E CH F OR G OVE R NAN CE PRO D U C T I V I T Y



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“There is a steady drumbeat for lower prices and stable operating margins that [exerts] enormous pressure,” Xerox CIO John McDermott tells CIO Insight. “Our expecta-tions will, at best, stay steady, but they will probably go up, so we need lots of ideas to drive productivity.”

These same difficult economic conditions and increased demands on the workforce are taking their toll on employee morale. A Deloitte “Ethics & Workplace Study” pub-lished in summer 2010 finds that 34 percent of the 750 employed Americans surveyed plan to look for a new job when the economy gets better. Among these prospective job-seekers, 46 percent say they are motivated primarily by a lack of transparent communi-cation from their senior management.

As managers, CIOs need to strike a delicate balance: driving workers to reach new heights of productivity, while simultaneously nurturing morale, being clear about goals and rewarding top performers. It all starts with understanding which areas of your organisation represent the greatest productivity pitfalls for your IT workers. Among the top drains on their time are: resolving help desk and service calls deploying new projects, software and architecture maintaining and updating servers, infrastructure and software time binds created by the eight-hour workday.

Communication Is Key Procter & Gamble (P&G) is focusing heavily on improving communication through the use of video, according to the company’s CIO, Filippo Passerini. His staff is spread out around the world, which has made video the best way for IT employees to collaborate on projects.

“We are aggressive at deploying video collaboration, so [employees] can cooperate from any point,” Passerini says. “Humans in person operate better than on e-mail or the phone.” Passerini says using video has helped P&G do a better job of managing staff “on a per-unit cost basis.”

Brand Velocity, a company that specialises in helping com-panies implement IT initiatives, urges its top-level employees to learn how to communicate in ways that facilitate effec-tive collaboration among team members. One such example, says Brand Velocity CEO Jack Bergstrand, “is to [articulate] a clear enter-prise model to make sure people are seeing a project in the same way.” He adds that it’s important to inform all IT team members of the key factors involved in projects—the “who, what, when, where and why”— to ensure that they understand the goals of any collaborative effort. “It sounds painfully simple, but it almost never happens in prac-tice,” Bergstrand says.

Out With the Old, In With the New New ideas and tools to make teams produc-tive abound, but leadership skills ultimately play the major role in determining whether IT productivity efforts succeed or fail. An organisation’s vice presidents, project man-agers and team leaders are all looking to the CIO for direction. Factors have emerged in the past five years that make the CIO’s job more challenging—and require more insight to keep IT workers productive.

One of the most important new factors facing CIOs is the rapid pace of commu-nication. Miami- Dade College’s CIO Karl Herleman manages more than 180,000 stu-dents and 6,000 employees with only 300 IT workers on staff. The pressures of serving this über-connected communication envi-ronment are greater than ever. “Everything has gotten much more rapid with mobile technology, social media and everything in real time,” Herleman says. “There used to be more time to react and plan.”

P&G CIO Passerini agrees. He says that the speed with which business moves today has made his own leadership style become “much more decisive” over the past five years. “We have less time to debate,” he says. Young generations entering the workforce are challenging CIOs. A recent study from IT staffing firm TEKsystems found that 73 percent of all IT workers are under age 45; 21 percent of these employees

were born between 1980 and 2000. While earlier genera-tions learned how to use new technology in the midst of their careers, young workers grew up with computers and gadgetry, and feel right at home in IT. For CIOs, this means changing the way they lead to accommodate the generational shifts occur-ring in the workforce.

“We have every end of the [age] spectrum,” says Miami-Dade College’s Herleman. “The employees who have been here a long time are definitely not comfort-able with new technologies such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Microsoft Share-Point. But that’s how the younger employ-ees communicate. They want to be text-mes-saged and talked to in their own ways.”

Xerox CIO McDermott says that young workers are “all about speed.” He believes

As the Great Recession continues to affect companies around the globe, increased productivity is becoming more coveted than ever. CEOs are trying desperately to get employees to do more with less while increasing revenue in the process. This desire for productivity plus profit is also a strong motivator for the CIO. As a top-level executive, the CIO is expected to use appropriate leadership skills and the right technology solutions to make IT workers perform most efficiently.

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that capitalising on that need for speed helps increase productivity. “[Younger generations] have seen that speed is an opportunity in business,” he says. “They’re impatient, and they want to get things done. As a CIO, you want to harness that.”

Unlike some seniors, younger workers perceive a “fluid boundary” between busi-ness and IT, and this is a positive trend for IT departments, notes McDermott. “They expect their careers to bounce between IT and business roles,” he says.

P&G’s Passerini agrees, saying that for IT workers to be productive, they need a strong desire to be profitable contributors to the bottom line. “There is a unique opportunity for people with an expertise in technology to employ a leadership role,” he says. “We need to ask if what we’re doing is relevant for the business. If it isn’t, then we become a commodity in the work we do.”

The Role of Technology Various technology solutions can help CIOs reshape their IT departments from commodities to drivers of corporate strat-egy. Among the tools found to be most effective are: mobile and wireless solutions self-service portals for employees that reduce help desk burdens for IT collaborative tools such as Google Docs and Microsoft SharePoint. Mobile solutions are one of the most obvi-

ous ways in which companies are increas-ing IT productivity. IT has always been a 24/7 proposition. Mobile products, includ-ing laptops and smartphones, facilitate an unprecedented level of remote access. This means IT workers who once had to travel to the office in the middle of the night to fix problems can now handle many issues remotely. “Being productive on the IT side means providing laptops, smartphones and even iPads,” says Peter Graves, senior vice president and CIO of Ionia, Mich.-based Independent Bank, which currently oper-ates more than 100 locations in the state.

Giving end-user employees more options to fix their own problems is another way in which some CIOs have increased IT worker productivity. Herleman of Miami-Dade Col-lege obviously needs to worry about employ-ees, but he also needs to address the issues students might be having while using

the institution’s network. The university deployed a help desk tool called Parature. In addition to handling help desk calls, it gives his IT staff the ability to engage in live online chats to quickly answer queries.

This fall, Miami-Dade College will roll out a Facebook integration. When that is com-plete, students and employees who use the social network will be able to get IT support on the institution’s Facebook pages. Each page will offer a knowledge base where students can troubleshoot problems before they call the help desk. “Our students are much more tech savvy than they’ve ever been, and thanks to self-help … they’ll find their own answers,” says Herleman.

When it comes to collaborative tools, some CIOs we spoke with are comfort-able with free services, such as Google Docs, which allows users to collaborate on a document in real time over the Web. However, others say they favor Microsoft SharePoint. “SharePoint is a big produc-tivity booster,” says Herleman. He says the software helps all his employees deter-mine where they and their colleagues “are headed and what they should be working

on.” Independent Bank is also looking into SharePoint.

Keeping IT working CIOs in companies of all sizes face the same problems: They want to cut down on help desk inquiries, reduce the time it takes to implement new projects, and limit the amount of time IT staff is forced to spend maintaining current infrastructure. And, they need to give their IT employees tools to achieve a work-life balance. Ser-vices such as Facebook can be optimised to cut down on help desk inquiries; collabora-tion tools can help IT teams quickly imple-ment new technologies; and wireless solu-tions, such as laptops and smartphones, can empower employees when they’re away from the office.

—This article has been published with prior

permission from CIO Insight.

Services such as Facebook can be optimised to cut down on help desk inquiries.

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Succession Planning: Are You Prepared?Whether you are moving out, or moving up the ladder, you must have somebody in line. BY ARTHUR LANGER

I have written in the past about the plight of the CIO, and lately I’ve recognised another problem that only adds to the dilemma.

Recently, I have had a number of conversations with executives who say they are seeing the same faces and people recycled among various firms when new CIO positions become available. The question I always ask is: Why not promote from the inside?

The typical answer is disturbing: There is no one even close to taking on the position, especially in the eyes of executive management. Why is that the case?

Upon further investigation, I concluded that there are two major problems:

The CIO has not provided a long-term plan for the role of technology in the firm. Many CIOs simply tell me that their executive management is not interested. But I think the problem is much deeper— one that sug-gests that the CIO has not provided a vision of where IT fits in.

So, logically, one can conclude that when that CIO leaves, the execu-tive team is not clear on what IT’s role needs to be. As such, top execu-tives frequently see an opportunity to bring in someone from the outside with fresh ideas. The downside, of course, is that your secon-din- command managers are devastated because they feel passed over.

Perhaps more relevant is the lack of succession planning to fill your own role— regardless of whether you are promoted, moving on or retiring. I have received a number of calls from CIOs asking if I know of candidates who could fill their own position. This usually occurs when those CIOs move into more senior “operational” posi-tions. It is amazing how many have not prepared their replacement.

Here are my suggestions:

1Take inventory of your staff. Do you have someone who can potentially fill your job? If not, either recruit someone quickly or

provide a path for someone over time. Also, you should have more than one candidate. Allowing multiple candidates to compete for the job is not such a bad thing. You might lose one of them, but that is part of management development.

2Clarify your vision. Are you able to provide at least a short-term vision of IT’s role? It’s not only important for the enterprise; it’s

also essential for succession planning. No one wants to wait for a promotion to a job that they don’t understand. Your vision must be clear and have structure, or candidates will lose confidence in your ability to get them into the C-suite.

3Bring your deputies to more meetings. Let them participate, and allow your peers to get to know them. Executive manage-

ment often decides to go outside because they simply do not know your senior managers. Allowing more executive interface opportu-nities for your people can be a great motivator in building interest in your role.

Remember, all great managers—and great companies—focus on the importance of succession. It’s a fundamental executive responsi-bility: You should be influencing your successor. But you cannot influ-ence at the last minute. In the end, it might take one to two years of preparation. If you have not established a successor yet, I suggest you do so soon —especially if you want that next promotion.

—Arthur Langer is senior director of the Center for Technology, Innova-

tion and Community Engagement at Columbia University.

This article has been published with prior permission from CIO Insight.

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T E CH F OR G OVE R NAN CE SU CCE S S I O N PL A N N I N G



HIDDENTANGENTTHE AUTHOR IS Executive Editor, CTO Forum GEETAJ CHANNANA

[email protected]

Bench and Shelf StrengthAre you prepared for the good and bad times?

It is time that you start creat-ing your bench strength again.

IT WOULD be an understatement to say that the recession has left a big dent. Be it businesses, cash reserves or staff strength – everything has taken a hit. But, the good part is that we are already talking about reces-sion in the past tense. It is almost behind us and business is seeing growth – the market sentiment is improving.

For the IT organisation it means that you will have to manage growth with the same staff strength which was optimised at the time of slow-down. You are without the bench strength that you had before the crunch happened. This is also the time when you may have to be care-ful about your staff moving out to greener pastures. The market is opening up, opportunities are knock-ing and the job market is filled with vacant positions again. It’ll not be long before some of your employees are tempted to take that lucrative option due to low/no salary hikes in the past one year.

It is time to pull up your socks and

ecosystem of applications to the tablet and made it into a killer device itself.

There are two important things here – choice of the right technology, at the right time, for the right device and the ability of Apple to shelf an overwhelming technology for years together in order to introduce it at the right time to make the most busi-ness sense.

The result is that both products and the applications in the iOS/ iTunes ecosystem are selling faster than hot cakes. They are selling an iPad every three seconds. Would this have happened if they had intro-duced the iPad first?

We all know that business trumps technology, but it is most important that we do not let go of the technol-ogy and the people who will make it happen to keep the bench warm and ready to go.

start motivating your team. Also, it is time that you start creating your bench strength again. Not only for contingencies, but for inorganic growth too.

But, what about technology? Is your IT organisation ready? Let me state an example here, and I would go back to Apple again – as I so often do. What do you think was created first – the iPad or the iPhone? The iPhone was launched first but Multi-touch and rubber-band scrolling was first demonstrated in the Apple offic-es on a tablet like device, a.k.a., iPad. This was said by Steve Jobs himself in an interview with Walt Mossberg, principal technology columnist for The Wall Street Journal.

He said that after he saw the technology working on a tablet – he thought that it would work brilliantly for a phone – much better than a tablet. Not that the tablet was not a breakthrough product. Apple chose to create a phone and an ecosystem of applications around it. Once that was established they took the same



HIDE TIME | BOOK REVIEW



Auth

or: T

heje

ndra

BS“What a coincidence.

Even I am going nowhere.”

In Conversation with Devilish God From Office workloads to religion and everything else in between.

almost all topics that can be under the auburn sky. God, as in the book, might seem fairly dismissive about the ills that plague mankind, but on delving deeper and reading between the lines, one finds that rather than us being disappointed with the recalcitrant, it is quite the opposite with God actually, giving up on us. Over the years, as man has taken the path of technological advancement, with godly ambitions visible through things like cloning and stem-cell research, it has taken us away from celestial path of right and wrong. The God, as in Thejendra's book seems to be holding a grudge against us for the same. Though, towards the end he softens up, and mentions that in spite of himself, he can't help but protect his children, though they pray or not. And even though he doesn't make a promise to help and aid man-kind, he gives sufficient hints that we are still his wards, come what may.

The conversation between Mr. Human and Mr. God is fairly racy and quite contemporary with lots of puns on economics, politics and

THE VERY title of the book God is no Angel, is an oxymoron to say the least. In the sense, we all know that god is no angel, after all, he is the celestial being who created every-thing else except himself and thus effectively, he is the father (or for that matter the mother) of angels. And hence, as author Thejendra BS states he can't possibly be an angel. But then, the term angel is used more in the adjective sense, rather than a noun. So, essentially the author wants us to know is that god isn't 'angelic'. Considering that god so impudently lords over the universe, and seems to be rather nonchalant with the affairs of men, the accusa-tion weighs heavily. Thus, when the author bumps into the divine entity on his bus-ride to Timbuktu, and strikes up a conversation, one has a fair bit of idea of what to expect.

And yet, nothing prepares us as to what enfolds in the following pages. Over the next 300 odd pages, the conversation between the exasper-ated but excited author and rather brash and presumptuous God covers

religion-logics. Thejendra, who by the way is a senior IT manager and has authored quite a few books on IT Service Management and DR, man-ages to hook your interest through the pages. With every flip of the page, the conversation leads to angles that were not hitherto alluded to. This dis-parate flow is the USP and also the weakness of the book. For instance, personally speaking there are quite a few topics which could be edited out, or if not, the flow could be tightened up with some snip editing.

Nonetheless, God is No Angel is an inviting book that can be read over the weekend. After reading it, the reader will be compelled to spare some thoughts on divine machina-tions and wonder if what the book says is true. There are no definitive answers to that one, and like all good books this one promises none.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Shashwat DC

is the Associate

Editor of IT Next,

a magazine for

senior IT profes-

sionals

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Steve Duplessie

is the founder of

and Senior Analyst

at the Enterprise

Strategy Group.

Recognised

worldwide as

the leading

independent

authority on

enterprise storage,

Steve has also

consistently been

ranked as one of

the most influential

IT analysts. You

can track Steve’s

blog at http://www.

thebiggertruth.com

VIEWPOINTSTEVE DUPLESSIE | [email protected]



WE LOVE to be the leader. We grow up being taught that the view from behind is a nasty one. We spend a lot of our energy in this business trying to position ourselves as the leader.

Established companies do the same exact thing, by the way, but they won’t necessarily die because of it. Startups very well may.

Tech companies, perhaps more than all others, absolutely love to be able to claim that they lead the pack. Perhaps because it’s so hard to build a tech product that will appease our egos if we feel like ours truly is better at something than the other guys’. The problem is that people don’t buy leading tech. They wait. They follow or they lag. Hell, we spend a ton of money trying to have Gartner put us in the top right of the magic quadrant–to show we are visionary leaders. The problem is no one with money cares about visionary leaders until after they have already bought from them.

There are three types of customers – Leaders, Followers, and Laggards.

The leader is the one out front,

that is the worst place to market. Why? Because by default those com-panies have already made their deci-sions. They are going to accelerate adoption of decisions already made. Spending any time or money trying to undo that decision, at this stage, is futile. Game over.

Most companies position and message to the leading edge buyer–wrongly–at the expense of the follow-ers and laggards. In the virtualisation world, for example, all of the money in the next five years will come from followers and laggards. VMware already owns the leaders, but the followers and laggards are still up for grabs. They represent 75% of the market! They will spend 90% of the money. The leaders will grow their deployments at 20%. The followers will grow at more than 50%. So you want to try to turn around a decision already made because your stuff is “better” versus spending your time and energy intersecting a bigger, fast-er moving market where those deci-sions have yet to be made? Lunacy, but it’s exactly what happens.

who tests the limits of their own organisations and implements new technologies and processes to try to drive business value. Everyone who sells products wants to position themselves directly at this slice of the market. The problem is, this is not a profitable slice. This is a death march. The only ones who make money in this area of the market are the ones who are anointed. There is no room for anyone else. So stop wasting your time. You come in first in this slice or you don’t come in at all.

For example, we recently did a ton of research on server virtualisation adopters, across a wide spectrum of functional areas (storage, server, network, security, etc.). We then categorised the market into the three aforementioned buckets. We found about 25% of enterprises were “lead-ers” when it comes to server virtuali-sation–which sounds like a lot, but it isn’t. To be a leader in this area, you had to have deployed virtualisation to at least 40% of your environment.

Tech companies market to the lead-ing edge buyer, but I would argue

Leading Into the Abyss: Why

Startups Die

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Change Warriors

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