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INTERVIEW | Hu Yoshida, VP and CTO, Hitachi Data Systems | Pg36

“ITDMs should collaborate & strategize”

f o r t h e n e x t g e n e r at i o n o f c i o s

Ashish Khanna
AVP-IT, EIH Ltd

BossTalk

5 laws and 5
corollaries
Pg 06

Plus

Art of

Big Data:
Right Approach,
Right Solution

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

November 2013 | `100 | Volume 04 | Issue 10 | A 9.9 Media Publication
@itnext_magazine
www.itnext.com | facebook.com/itnext |

Pg 26
ITNEXT Magazine November 2013
Editorial

Productivity
at its Peak
What’s that?

With the industry constantly resonating
with the refrain ‘increase your agility,
enhance productivity, align with business
and contribute to the growth of the organization’, the senior
IT decision makers have laid out a plan.
They are not influenced anymore by the footprints or increased adoption
of any technology per se. IT managers are looking at addressing business
needs and are ready to absorb any technology that caters to the need. So
what’s new now? Senior IT decision makers have bought themselves into
the positive factors that desktop virtualisation has brought in, irrespective
of whether the technology has become all pervasive or not.
Senior IT managers are cognizant of the fact that it is critical to enhance
the agility in the business with enhanced productivity and reduction in
cost, and that appropriate technology such as desktop virtualisation is
most suited to this. However, the idea is to find effective ways to deploy the
technology and leverage the innovations around it.
IT Next’s cover feature on ‘Art of Virtual Deployment’ in the current
edition provides insights into how senior IT decision makers have evolved
effective mechanisms to deploy desktop virtualisation tools and found easy
ways to deploy them.
The most heartening aspect is that unlike the run of the mill technologies
that get deployed resulting in not so many benefits, deploying desktop
virtualisation was a well thought out plan. It was embarked upon in a
phased manner taking all the business stakeholders into account to ensure
that nothing went wrong.
IT managers were aware that the acquisition cost was high with regard
to desktop virtualisation, but that did not deter them from absorbing it as
the end effect was about enhancing employee productivity which, in turn,
impacted business growth positively.

“Senior IT managers are
cognizant of the fact that
it is critical to enhance
agility in the business with
enhanced productivity and
desktop virtualisation is
most suited to this”
Geetha Nandikotkur

Blogs To Watch!
2014 - The Year of DaaS
ttp://www.brianmadden.
com/blogs/gabeknuth/
archive/2013/10/30/vmwarecitrix-microsoft-desktops-asa-service-solutions-will-make2014-quot-the-year-of-daas-quot.
aspx
How to avoid the 7 pitfalls of
desktop virtualisation
http://blogs.citrix.
com/2013/04/18/how-toavoid-the-7-pitfalls-of-desktopvirtualization/
Attacking the high costs of
desktop Virtualisation
http://blogs.gartner.com/
gunnar-berger/attackingthe-high-costs-of-desktopvirtualization-part-1/
Microsoft Enterprise Desktop
Virtualisation (MED-V)
http://www.microsoft.com/
en-us/windows/enterprise/
products-and-technologies/
mdop/med-v.aspx

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

1
Content
NOVEMBER 2013

For the l atest technology uPDATES Go to itnext.in

Volume 04 | Issue 10

Facebook:
http://www.facebook.
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php?gid=195675030582
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ugrp_ovr

Art of
Virtual
Deployment
Page

12
cover story

12 Virtually Right

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

boss talk

interview

IT decision makers bring in innovative best practices to make desktop
virtualisation easy to deploy so as to enhance productivity and reduce cost

15 Easy Steps to Virtual Deployment

IT Managers are making conscious efforts to evolve an effective mechanism
to access desktop virtualization and deployment methods

19 BYOD and VDI : Harmoniously Aligned

VDI has become the primary enabler of BYOD due to its core ability to
stream data to mobile devices in an encrypted and containerised manner

21 DaaS is Taking Baby Steps

Desktop as a Service is on the anvil as most IT managers are
optimistic about its uptake with new platforms like Android and Mac
in enterprise scenario
INTERVIEW | HU YOSHIDA, VP AND CTO, HITACHI DATA SYSTEMS | Pg36

“ITDMs should collaborate & strategize”

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

Ashish Khanna
AVP-IT, EIH Ltd

BossTalk

5 laws and 5
corollaries
Pg 06

Plus

ART OF

Big Data:
Right Approach,
Right Solution

VIRTUAL
DEPLOYMENT

Pg 26

cover
Design: SHIGIL NARAYANAN
Photo: SUBHOJIT PAUL

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

November 2013 | `100 | Volume 04 | Issue 10 | A 9.9 Media Publication
@itnext_magazine
www.itnext.com | facebook.com/itnext |

2

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

06 Dr Hugh Thompson, Senior
VP, Blue Coat on enabling
business with security and 5
laws and 5 corollaries

36 Hu Yoshida, VP& CTO, Hitachi Data Systems, emphasises
the need for CIOs to collaborate
with vendors in strategising
itnext.in

Simplifying IT to
drive Pure value|

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

IT Managers leverage
converged IBM PureSystems
to radically transform and
simplify the IT lifecycle so as
to drive value

15 minute
manager
41 Countering Botnets I K J
Latesh, IT Security Professional
and Research Scholar, throws
light on challenges for IT
managers to identify bots across
their network and defuse them
from action

EDITORIAL

Page

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

32

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

Right
Solution, Right
Approach
26 Big Data Solutions | As big
data goes bigger, IT managers
are challenged with the task of
identifying data that qualifies for
big data and finding appropriate
solutions to process it

MARCOM

Designer: Rahul Babu
STUDIO

Chief Photographer: Subhojit Paul
Sr. Photographer: Jiten Gandhi

Open Debate

Update
08 Converged Networking
to Create Revenue I Cisco
has launched Network
Convergence System (NCS)
to help telcos in India in
monetization

cube chat
46 Do What You Love, | Feroz
Shaikh, Vice President-IT, Prime
Focus quotes Aristotle to express
his hunger to learn new things

45 Three Expert Panel |
Is Software Defined Networking
(SDN) different from Virtualisation
and Cloud?’

sales & marketing

Letters_ _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _ 04

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

Update_ _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _ 08

Production & Logistics

My Log_  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _ 48

Sr. GM. Operations: Shivshankar M Hiremath
Manager Operations: Rakesh upadhyay
Asst. Manager - Logistics: Vijay Menon
Executive Logistics: Nilesh Shiravadekar
Production Executive: Vilas Mhatre
Logistics: MP Singh & Mohd. Ansari

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

3
INBoX
INTERVIEW | RICHARD STALLMAN, SOFTWARE FREEDOM ACTIVIST AND COMPUTER PROGRAMMER | Pg 34

“Freedom is all that matters for users”

Open SOurce challenge | coveR stoRy
F O R T H E N E X T G E N E R AT I O N O F C I O s

BossTalk

Business
face to IT
Pg 08

Insight

Right Mix to Secure
Better: Embracing
BYOD

Is RecessIon

Pg 30

OPEN
CHALLENGE

Sharat Airani
CTO, Intellinet Datasys

RIngIng the

Dhananjay C Rokde
Global Head, Information Security,
Cox & Kings Group

open souRce

THE ECONOMIC SLOWDOWN IS COMPELLING SENIOR
IT DECISION MAKERS TO GO OPEN ON THE OPEN
SOURCE AS A COST SAVING STRATEGY ACROSS
STRATUMS Pg 14

October 2013 | `100 | Volume 04 | Issue 09 | A 9.9 Media Publication
facebook.com/itnext |
@itnext_magazine
www.itnext.com |

OCTOBER 2013

Bells?

Open Source has come a long way since its inception
to armour IT managers against recession

IT NEXT thanks
its Readers
for the warm
response

by SU b HAN KAR KU N DU

14

P H OTO / IL LU ST R AT IO N / IMAG IN G C R E D IT

P H OTO / IL LU ST R AT IO N / IMAG IN G C R E D IT

Desig n by HARI DAS bAl AN

N

illustr atio n by A N Il T

ow, with the recession alarm banging the ears of economy,
senior IT managers across industries are taking a re-look
at IT budgets. For the second time in last five years, the IT
industry is witnessing a slowdown. The buzz among IT
managers seems to be “how about open source?”
What is driving this trend? The major factors are rising software
licensing fees, CIOs operating under constrained budgets, internet
making way for new delivery models and evolving design architecture
considering BYOD.
In the current business environment, open source software and
technologies beyond software are becoming an integral part of the IT
landscape. This is particularly true in the internet age, where content

Itnext | o c t o b e r 2 0 1 3

InsIde
16 | Innovating with an Open mind
19 | Commercial Viability: A Proven Fact
20 | An Open Challenge?
25 | Setting up an Open Culture

o c t o b e r 2 0 1 3 | Itnext

15

IT NEXT values your feedback

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

Why Open Source
Congratulations to the IT Next team for publishing a
superb stream of articles analyzing the Open Source
segment in the Open Source Challenge Edition. The
issue features experts representing a cross section of the
industry ranging from IT companies to the Government to
activists, each providing meaningful insights that matter
the most in their respective segment.
IT users have long been grappling with the definition of
Open Source as opposed to Free Software and the question
if Free Software is really free. The interview with Richard
Stallman debunks a lot of myths and gives you a fresh
perspective.
The issue also covers all topical hot buttons or trends
in today’s IT scenario ranging from Cloud to Big Data to
Enterprise Security to BYOD. The presentation, the copy
and the design complement one another while assisting in
easy reading and comprehension.

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

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

Kapil Dev Singh, Founder, Coeus Age

Open Letter

DC Priyan, Managing Partner, Ogilvy Public Relations

5 Organization-Market Imbalances a
CIO Must Understand
Today, the hierarchies are eroding, boundaries are becoming more
porous and unclear, roles are fuzzy and evolving, strategies are fluid
and short term, power is distributed and goal is to become change ready.

4

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

I have identified 5 such areas
of imbalance - social imbalance,
technology imbalance, change
imbalance and role-shifts imbalance.
Understanding these imbalances
can help the CIO to become aware
of and do something about the
problems on the surface.  All
these imbalances also are highly
interdependent on each other i.e.
they feed into each other and do
not exist in isolation. Hence, to do
something about them, one needs
to adopt a whole systems approach.
Though these imbalances
need to be noticed, understood
and acted upon by the entire top
management (CEO, CXOs and the
CIO), I am urging the CIOs here to
take a special note.
The following questions the CIOs
must continuously ponder upon.
1.  ow are these five imbalances
H
manifesting in my organization?
2.  hat is the explanation for
W
the imbalances and the related
manifestations? What are the
consequences?
3.  hat needs to be done to handle
W
such imbalances?
4.  ow can IT help manage such
H
imbalances?
5.  hat is the preparedness of IT to
W
be able to handle the imbalances?
6.  hat needs to be done to
W
enhance the preparedness of
IT? How can SMAC help?

ITNEXTspace
your feedback
and send it to

56 78
76
*Special rates apply

I really liked the latest issue
(Open Challenge) of IT Next,
particularly the cover story
on ‘open source’. The industry
leaders’ views on this topic were
very insightful. I’m infact a
regular reader of the magazine
and it keeps me up to date with the
current trends and happenings
in the IT sector in India. I’d like
to congratulate the team for
constantly releasing such great
issues one after the other.
Altaf Halde, Managing Director South Asia, Kaspersky Lab India
ITNEXT Magazine November 2013
Boss talk |  Dr Hugh Thompson

En abl in g Business w i th S ecu r i t y

5 Laws, 4
Corollaries
of Security

W

here is the transformation happening? IT is being
aligned with business to
enable security officers to
rope in more security measures.

Security Perception Changes
Before evolving the laws and relevant corollaries, it is also essential to look back as
to why the field of information security is
evolving faster than ever. Now, senior leadership across enterprises are taking interest.

“A social science concerned with
analysis of attacker motivations and business
risk, hackernomics is characterised by 5
fundamental laws and 4 corollaries”

Shift in Attackers
Attackers are after much more than traditional monetizable data drive hacktivism, statesponsored attacks and IP attacks breaches.
Suggestion BOX

• In the absence of security education, people
make poor security decisions with technology
• Attackers usually don’t get in by cracking some impenetrable security control, they
look for weak points like trusting employees

Change in User Expectations
Corollary

Security is being woven into service level agreements and price, process maturity and scale can
only go so far--“assurance” is also key.

Today’s Social Concern: Hackernomics
A social science concerned chiefly with description and analysis of attacker motivations, economics, and business risk, hackernomics is
characterised by 5 fundamental immutable laws
and 4 corollaries.

5 Laws:
• Most attackers aren’t evil or insane; they just
want something.
• Security isn’t about security. It’s about mitigating
risk at some cost
• Most costly breaches come from simple failures,
not from attacker ingenuity

6

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

• No budget to protect against evil people but
against them who are looking for weaker targets
• In the absence of metrics, we tend to over focus on
risks that are either familiar or recent
• Bad guys can, however, be very creative if properly incentivised
• Systems need to be easy to use securely and difficult to use insecurely
• Business teams and users are already consuming the best technology at will

This book helps
you understand
how to think
in multiple
dimensions and
it’s a great bridge
between science
and business.

The three steps to business assurance are about
having continuity, agility and governance.

W r i t e r : D o u g l as H o fsta dt e r
Pu bl i s h e r : P e n g u i n Bo o ks

Dr Hugh Thompson, Senior VP Chief Security Strategist, Blue Coat

The Plateau Effect:
How enterprise is evolving
ITNEXT Magazine November 2013
Update
I n d u s t r y

Converged Networking
to Create Revenue
TRENDS | With Internet of Everything (IoE) being the buzzword around

the networking world, telecom service providers in India have been
constantly looking at solutions that could create the highly flexible and
manageable networking ecosystem to enhance their end users. Cisco
has launched Network Convergence System (NCS) to power it.
The Cisco NCS family consists of three key components that can
be managed as a single integrated system for business agility and
simplified operations - NCS 6000, NCS 4000 and NCS 2000.

With more
than 100 patents, it joins
Cisco Carrier
Routing (CRS)
and Aggregation Services
Router (ASR)
families

An overwhelming majority of organizations view their Big

a
Big Dat Data processing as mission critical.
According to a report, most companies
are using or planning to use dedicated
big data tools in their production
environment to cope up with the influx
of massive amounts of data. 56% of
respondents are planning to move
from RDBMS to a NoSQL data store.
30% of those using dedicated tools are
planning to combine NoSQL data store
with a Hadoop processing platform.
Source: Gigaspaces

8

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

Recent trends in big data tools and architecture

60.0%
50.0%
40.0%
30.0%
20.0%
10.0%
0.0%

NoSQL Data store...

Hadoop Distro...

trends
deals
products
services
people

jReal-Time Event...

Other products...

With the launch of NCS, Cisco
is trying to help service providers
to have the opportunity to play a
central role in enabling new and
unique experiences by building
on their current infrastructure
with NCS. Also, NCS adds
a dimension to networking,
allowing operators to leverage
network intelligence for greater
monetization pavements.
In India, Cisco is in talks
with leading telcos but no
announcement has been made.
Sanjay Rohatgi, Managing
Director, Service Provider Sales,
Cisco India and SAARC says, “It’s
a powerful solution for service
providers who are looking to
create robust networks, data
centers and applications that
have advanced capabilities in
areas such as programmability,
performance, resiliency and scale
in order to drive business growth.
We are bullish about the adoption
and success of NCS in India.”
Among the global service
providers –BSkyB (Sky), KDDI
and Telstra are deploying the Cisco
NCS to create new revenue streams,
simplify operations and deliver
exciting personalized experiences
to their customers.
NCS’s capabilities enable service
providers to not only accommodate
growing network traffic but also
seize the opportunity created by
trillions of programmable devicedriven events generated by the
IoE, the networked connection
of people, data, processes and
things. Cisco claims that NCS has
been designed to facilitate such
IoE events, which can be ongoing
“conversations” creating strings
of interactivity between people,
applications and devices.
Nikon D5300

Panasonic T31

Nikon India has launched the
compact and lightweight entry-level DSLR — the D5300.
It is Nikon’s first digital SLR
camera to offer built-in Wi-Fi and GPS functions. It packs in 24.2 megapixels along with a
new EXPEED 4 image processing engine.

It’s a budget Android
4.2 based smartphone
that runs on 4.2.2
Jelly Bean with a 4-inch
display with 800 x 480 pixels. It has a
1.3GHz dual-core processor, 512MB of
RAM, 4GB of inbuilt storage.

Logitech Z600
speakers
This allows multi-pairing
with three devices at
once, making it easy to
play music on smartphone, pc and tablet. It can be cou pled with Bluetooth
A2DP-enabled device.

Top Vertical Predictions for IT
in 2014 and Beyond: Gartner
TRENDS | In its annual Predicts
research on industry trends
titled “Top Industries Predicts
2014, it has featured strategic
planning assumptions that CIOs,
senior business executives and
IT leaders should factor into
their enterprise planning and
strategy-setting initiatives.
Top industry predictions:
By 2016, poor return on equity
will drive more than 60 per cent
of banks worldwide to process
transactions on cloud
By 2017, more than 60 per cent
of government organizations with
a CIO and a chief digital officer
will eliminate one of these roles.
By 2017, 40 per cent of utilities
with smart metering solutions

Many industries
face accelerating pressure for
fundamental
business transformation

will use cloud-based big data
analytics
By year-end 2015, inadequate
ROI will drive insurers to abandon 40 per cent of their current
customer-facing mobile apps
Full-genome sequencing will
stimulate a new market for

Around The World

medical data banks, with market
penetration exceeding three per
cent by 2016
By 2016, 60 per cent of U.S.
health insurers will know the
procedure price and provider
quality rating of shoppable
medical services in advance
Through 2017, K-12 online
education spending will increase
25 per cent
By 2018, 3D printing will result
in the loss of at least $100 billion
per year in intellectual property
globally
By 2017, 15 per cent of
consumers will respond to
context-aware offers based on
their individual demographics
and shopper profiles
By 2015, 80 per cent of life
science organizations will be
crushed by elements of big data,
exposing poor ROI on IT
investments

quick byte

Salesforce Identity to enable
CIOs deliver better identity
Salesforce.com has launched Salesforce Identity to
provide integrated identity services to connect every
employee, customer and partner to any app, on any
device. It eliminates complex identity silos—enabling
CIOs to deliver a simple, productive and customized
user experience across every web, mobile and onpremise app. IT administrators can now simplify
the process of provisioning and managing their
companies’ collection of mobile, cloud and onpremises applications.

Jorma Ollila, ex-chairman of Nokia

“Apple concentrated
exclusively on expensive
telephones. At Nokia, we
had thought of doing the
same, but the operators
wanted inexpensive
models instead”

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

9
ASK THE EXPERT
Ways to evolve new strategies
with changing IT landscape

Challenges
in the
Changing IT
Landscape
Lack of on-site resources,
resources deployed in
distributed environments
and emerging BYOD trend
pose a challenge for IT
managers. Here are some
tips on how to conquer the
major challenges
How do you help IT managers face the
challenges in the changing IT landscape?
Preparing for the future of the company’s IT infrastructure is key. Managers today are struggling to
do more with less space, money and time. Besides
network threats and the ever-changing IT, they
worry about equipment failure and lack of on-site
resources. Increasing demand for constant availability and changes in the way IT is deployed have
also heightened day-to-day challenges and pressures. We provide the backbone of physical IT
infrastructure by offering the most manageable and
most adaptable solutions, while at the same time
keeping them simple to configure, order and install.
Integrated infrastructure solutions include backup
power and power distribution, cooling, enclosures,
and management software. Adaptable solutions
scale from the smallest IT spaces up to multi-megawatt data centres.

10

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

dossier

Amod
Ranade
General Manager,
Datacenter Business Development,
Schneider Electric
IT Business brings
to light challenges
faced by IT managers in changing the
IT landscape

IT deployments are becoming more complex
with technology changes such as cloud and
virtualisation. How can IT managers align their
strategy with a solution to cope up with this?
Technologies like cloud computing and virtualisation,
have a promise for improving asset utilization on the IT
side, and thus reducing costs for the organization. But,
many of the benefits of Cloud and Virtualisation can get
lost, if the physical infrastructure for the data center
is unable to cope with this new architecture on the IT
side. The new technologies create workloads that are
not static in time and space, as a result it becomes very
difficult to channel the Power/Cooling to these dynamic
workloads, while ensuring right sizing of the infrastructure. IT managers need to design their data centers in
a modular fashion, and deploy management suites that
help them visualize the supply and demand of Power/
Cooling/Space/etc. Over 70 per cent of reported data
center outages are attributed to human error, and a
ask the expert
CUSTOM PUBLISHING

“ IT is driving corporates to move beyond challenges of
compliance, regulation, management and security ”
strong management and monitoring platform can go a
long way in preventing these.
Unlike space-filling, energy inefficient servers in
house, cloud computing allows you to pay only for the
services that you use.
By simply moving to cloud computing, a company
seeking to reduce energy consumption and energy
expenses can also cut its carbon emissions drastically. Companies are turning to energy efficient
strategies to minimise the energy needed to manage
all their data. But, there are gaps to fill. For example,
Greenpeace International reports that companies not
only need to measure how efficiently they are using
electricity, but also ensure that the electricity chosen
to manage their cloud is clean.

How do you see the IT Manager tackling BYOD?
The demand for 24/7 availability is ever increasing.
About 700 million WiFi technology users worldwide have
to be catered to. When the market for corporate mobile
phones was experiencing its first explosive period of
growth, the handsets were basic and functionality
restricted. So you pretty much used what you were given--the phones still had novelty value. But today, people
want to express themselves; add their own apps, social
sites and media--music, video and photos. At Schneider
Electric, we see an increasing number of people wanting to add their own laptops, tablets and smartphones
to the company network. It shows that the consumerisation of IT is driving corporates to move beyond
challenges of compliance, regulation, management and
security, to a point where half of all businesses might
be making BYOD available by 2017 as there is a business benefit. BYOD is transforming the economics of
corporate network computing. Against this backdrop,
IT managers should opt for modular IT infrastructure
to prepare themselves for increased dependence on IT.
Besides, maintaining constant uptime becomes critical
for which they should opt for monitoring and management solutions to track the health of IT which can
enable them to predict and prevent future problems.

How should IT managers tackle IT space
utilisation issues?

Space optimisation

62%
increase in
DC efficiency
is ensured
by deploying server
virtualisation
and optimized
power/cooling
techniques

Optimise open spaces through better organisation. Utilise
solutions that incorporate open frame racks, cable management, and wall-mounted enclosures to make the most
of available space in a cost-effective way.
Every building undergoes changes over time., resulting in
negative impact on building performance, lower productivity and higher energy and building maintenance costs.
To address this problem, many companies are “recommissioning” their buildings as a way to fine-tune and update
building performance.

Increased density and heat load
Ensure that you use proper cooling to manage the added
heat from the increased density in your space. Utilise row/
rack based cooling to provide proper air flow and ventilation
for an ideal IT environment. Row/Rack-based cooling is
also much more efficient while handling higher densities.

Remote site management
Remote sites can be easily managed with monitoring
software that allows you to manage and control all of your
environments from a single location or device. Having a
single centralised dashboard allows you to proactively
manage your IT environments and avoid potential downtime disasters.

Energy efficiency
Save energy by implementing energy efficient UPS systems
and provide clean power while simplifying the IT space.
Also, make sure your power and cooling are best designed
for your needs by rightsizing and implementing modular
designs to maximise efficiency.

Availability for Transition to the Cloud
Transitioning to the cloud can be a beneficial business
practice, but brings a greater need for constant availability. Ensure that you have a rightsized UPS solution which
provides enough runtime to get you through a blackout.
Consider an extended runtime UPS if you do not have a
generator, which will allow your equipment to ride through
longer blackouts.
The section BROUGHT YOU BY

We believe that the tips below would help in resolving
the IT space challenges

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

11
12

itnext | n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 3
art of virualising desktop | cover story

IT decision makers bring in innovative
best practices to make desktop
virtualisation easy to deploy so as to
enhance productivity and reduce cost
By Su b hank ar Ku nd u  n G e e t h a
Desi gn by hari das bal an | i l lu st rat i o n by s h i g i L narayanan

Innovations in desktop virtualisation are being increasingly leveraged by

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

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

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

13
“Having effective
management capabilities,

IT managers now need
not worry about how
to provision these
desktops or the apps
to be consumed on a
different device, but think

of effective ways of managing
the virtual desktops”
Srikanth Karnakota
Director – Server and Cloud Business, Microsoft.

Team IT Next embarked on a study to
find how desktop virtualisation is being
perceived and the effective mechanisms
of deploying the same. Interestingly, IT
managers are making concerted efforts
to build the right virtual environment in
terms of choosing the right virtualisation
hypervisor, choosing the right security
to make the virtual environment secure,

the right monitoring tools to evolve a
monitoring mechanism to ensure relevant
alerts, the perfect backup strategy for
valid backup and educating and documenting, which is a crucial step.
Srikanth Karnakota, Director – Server
and Cloud Business, Microsoft, says,
“The roots of desktop virtualisation
technology is not in desktop but in server
technology which is the backbone. If we

Why Desktop Virtualisation?
Enhanced productivity and efficiency
Improved management and maintenance, helpdesk tickets down
Power savings compared to traditional PCs
Optimum storage utilisation
D
 esktop virtualisation has enabled faster booting time of desktops, which earlier
used to run into minutes
Security and governance have improved. Antivirus, patch update etc., now
happen on the virtual layer/master image rather than on physical machines and
impacting its performance. Audit of end user systems has become much
simpler and consumes less time as compared to set-up with physical machines

14

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

look at Windows Server 2012, the latest
we launched a week back, we have taken
desktop virtualisation to a whole new
level altogether; because now, within the
server, IT managers can do different kinds
of activities--host desktop, pool desktop
or a hosted session.” “Having the server
platform, IT managers don’t need to buy
additional infrastructure, or any additional capabilities. Having effective management capabilities , IT managers now need
not worry about how to provision these
desktops or the apps be consumed on a
different device, but think of effective
ways of managing the virtual desktops
and ensure that the cost does not spiral
up on both storage and networking on a
different device,” says Karnakota.

Clear Strategy in Place
IT managers are taking a 360 degree
approach in evaluating various functions
which could be impacted with desktop
virtualisation deployment. For instance,
they are evaluating desktop as a service
model in working out a cloud model,
observing the BYOD trends to bring in
necessary interfaces.

imaging by pe terson pj

Right Virtual Strategy
art of virtualising desktop | cover story

Easy Steps
to Virtual
Deployment
IT decision makers are making conscious
efforts to evolve an effective mechanism to
assess the desktop virtualisation environment
and deployment methods
Is Virtual Deployment an Art?
Deploying virtualisation methodology
is an art, as deployment of desktop
virtualisation requires detailed
asessment of one’s IT environment, and
implementation strategy differs from one
organisation to another.
Anoop Handa, EVP  CIO, Fullerton
India says, “Deployment of endpoint infrastructure and embracing
new technology such as desktop
virtualisation for end-user computing
comes with its own challenges due to
its inherent impact on the end-users
across the organisation. Desktop
virtualisation deployment can be
termed an organisation-wide ‘IT enabled
Transformation/Change’ initiative.

To streamline deployment of
desktop virtualisation and make
it easier, the following key steps
are recommended:
Detailed assessment of current
desktop computing environment
Compilation of users and
categorisation of users basis
function, geography, data
requirements, data volume and need
for availability of local data
Appreciation and awareness of a
variety of end-user peripherals-printers, biometric devices,
scanners, etc
Review of bandwidth
availability at various locations
that access centralised data

centre environment
Evaluation of technology and final
selection of the most relevant and
most effective technology in
consideration of longer term vision
and organisational fitment
Selection of the ‘right’
implementation partner
Building up a comprehensive ROI/
business case and listing down all

“The very first step is to
do the profiling of users
after a successful proof of
concept of technology at
your organisation which
will further help in getting the
sizing right”

Sachin Jain
CIO, Evalueserve

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

15
cover story | Art of Virtualising desktop
benefits – both IT benefits as well
as beyond
Testing the waters through a pilot test
/ proof-of-concept
Evaluation of test results and
resolution of identified concerns/issues
“And only once you are confident
and the test results positive, should
you embark upon this journey on a
wider scale and progress with complete
deployment,” says Handa.
Nilesh Goradia, Head Pre-Sales, India
Subcontinent-Citrix, emphasises that the
first step of desktop virtualisation be to
identify user groups or user types in an
organisation.
“Areas to look at – what are the user
groups? What kind of things do you do
using a physical desktop? What kind of
applications do you use on it?
Within that, we also try to test the
compatibility of the application such
as a newer environment where the
application will run,” he says.
Goradia further adds, “The second
part would be the design of the solution.
Design is important because DV does
not work on a stand-alone mode as it
involves a lot of components such as
blade, servers, storage, applications,
networking; if tried on the Internet, there
will be critical security components
which will be involved.”
So, all these components have to work
in sync if one has to deliver a particular

solution effectively. The hard disk
components need to talk to each
other. A wrong design can lead to
wrong implementation. It leads to a
dissatisfied user.
According to HP’s Vikram K, Director,
ISS, HP India, some easy steps to deploy
virtual desktop are:
1.  nderstanding users’ application
U
and workload
2. Doing a proof of concept for a small
number of users with actual intended
deployment to test all use cases
3. Designing the solution which includes
choosing the right virtualisation
platform and methodology
4. Sizing virtualisation hosts (servers),
storage and networking infrastructure
for the requirement
5. Deploying the full solution in

production to enable users to have
access from their client devices like
tablet, smart phones etc
Sachin Jain, CIO, Evalueserve,
recommends that one should always
look for used cases from his/her
organisation to build a case of desktop
virtualisation. “The very first step
is to do the profiling of users after a
successful proof of concept of technology
at your organisation which will further
help in getting the sizing right.
These users should then be taken
through a test phase to further filter
or add more users on the basis of

“Deployment of desktop
virtualisation comes with
its own challenges due
to its inherent impact on
the end-users across the
organisation”

Anoop Handa
EVP  CIO, Fullerton India

16

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

performance and user acceptance. Post
that, the team should focus on execution
in a phased manner without disturbing
the entire organisation at the same
time. This approach will also help in
discovering and handling unexpected
challenges/issues,” adds Jain.

Best Practices to Sustain the
Strategy
Besides putting their best foot forward
to deploy effective methods, IT decision
makers are learning their best lessons by
way of putting in place the best practices.
Jayantha Prabhu, CTO, Essar
Services India, drives high availability,
security and backup recovery and
retention as the best practices in the
desktop virtualisation environment.
He adds, “High availability in the
VDI set-up is configured to provide
availability to end users and flexibility
to work without disruption.
This also enables the end user to be
connected to his workplace without any
disruption even when he is travelling.”
Prabhu ensured taking adequate
steps to keep the VDI set-up
intrusion-free as the company was
publishing VDI on the internet.
Frequent
Breakdowns
Communication happens through the SSL VPN solution,
which is integrated with dual factor token-based
authentication.
As a best practice, all backup of shared storage should
configure with retention time. Disaster recovery for virtual
desktop infrastructure (VDI) requires many of the same
measures one would take for conventional PCs: backup
methods and careful planning. In fact, VDI can make it
even easier to recover data because information is not
stored on end-user devices.

hampering your business?

Deploying virtualisation
methodology is an art,
as deployment of

desktop virtualisation
requires detailed
assessment of one’s
IT environment and
implementation plan

However, the lessons that Prabhu and his team learned
by way of applying best practices was to make sure the
reasons for the project were well-defined. In addition,
these were important:
Senior management support to address change management
How to support heavy users   
Making sure the network infrastructure is up to the task
You cannot have all users covered by a single vendor
Integration with the surrounding ecosystem
Program management and organisational structure for
the implementation
Ramesh Vantipalli (Head EUC India  South –Systems
Engineering  Technology), VMware, says the real value in
converting to a virtual desktop environment is realised only
when a variety of seemingly conflicting requirements are met:
a) the end users are happy, b) the corporation’s needs for
security and compliance are met, c) the IT organisation
has the control it needs without having to add costly
resources, and d) the overall system performance and cost
of ownership are improved.

in Control Rooms
®

Removes harmful gases
Prevents corrosion of electronic components

1. Achieving the best end user experience
An important consideration for selecting host rendering versus
client rendering is the quality of the end user experience. End
users care about the image display quality and experiencing no

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Some of the best practices are given below for
reference:

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cover story | art of virtualising desktop

Effective Steps in Deployment
Evaluation of Technologies
Approach document to Senior
Management with Executive
Summary
POC of Comparative Technologies
D
 etailed Business case with
Business, Quantitative and
Qualitative benefits
F
 inalisation of Solution in CIO
Council

Inputs of Detailed Information
Gathering)
Project Plan Finalisation
BOM Finalisation
Procurement
Installation and Configuration
Testing Phase: (Application testing
and ecosystem Integration)
GO-LIVE

Techno Commercial comparison
and Procurement.

Architecture and Configuration
Audit

D
 etailed Information Gathering:
(User and Application Profiling)

Project Handover and Sustenance

Architecture Finalisation: (On

perceptible delay in image rendering.
They also care about the response
time or latency of the system they
are using. They expect their desktop to provide nearly instantaneous
responses for any query regardless
of the type of information being
retrieved--just like a laptop.
Host rendering and client rendering
can both provide users with quality
experience and reasonable response
times for most environments.
The difference lies in which can
provide the best experience for the
changing network conditions. This
will help to determine which approach
is more suitable for your environment.
2. Making your organisation secur
and compliant
Many corporations have made
security and compliance their top
requirements when deploying a server
hosted virtual desktop environment.
The need for better security has been
demonstrated numerous times with
theft of laptops containing customer
account information and other mission critical data.
The risk of corporate confidential

18

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

Technical Support to the
Operations Team

information getting into the wrong
hands has never been higher.
3. Making your organisation secure
and compliant
Managing operating system
updates, application updates, firmware changes and more at the end
user’s desktop is a full time job for
most IT administrators.
In an environment that relies on
full laptop and desktop support,
organisations can spend $2,000 or
more per year on maintaining each
device. The IT organisation typically
has to have someone assigned to be
physically onsite in case one of the
users has an issue. Centralised management is an option only for a wellmanaged PC environment and the
restrictions that this implies are not
practical for most organisations. The
inefficiencies and escalating costs of
managing PCs at the endpoint are well
documented.
Most CIOs agree that zero management at the client is the most efficient,
easiest, the lowest cost-wise and the
most secure implementation for virtualising desktops.

4. Gaining Freedom from Application
and Video Format Dependence
Desktop virtualisation doesn’t tie the
user to a specific version of an application or a specific video format. It frees
the user and the IT organisation from
specific hardware and operating system
requirements and concerns that impact
application versions.
In this type of environment, future
applications just work since specific
hardware is not needed at the client.
Host side rendering allows desktop
virtualisation to accomplish.
For client-side rendering, this flexibility is lost because client side rendering requires specific CODECs at the
endpoint for video. Future video formats are not guaranteed to work with
client side rendering without IT intervention and upgrade at the endpoint.
Host-side rendering is completely
application and video format independent, which provides a virtualised
environment with no dependence on
any additional software or hardware.
Client side rendered environments
struggle to keep up with the latest
application user interfaces.
To future-proof one’s investment and
have a low maintenance solution, a solid,
host-rendered environment makes for an
excellent investment choice.
5.Optimising network bandwidth
consumption
Network bandwidth is at a premium
during peak hours in most organisations. Network administrators need
devices accessing the network to use the
available bandwidth wisely.
Peak hours don’t happen 100 per
cent of the time and, in fact, account
for less than half of daily operations.
During non-peak hours, administrators desire network devices to use
bandwidth optimally while still providing the best user experience.
The real goal of an IT organisation is to use network bandwidth and
resources intelligently, i.e., during
peak hours use less and exhibit a “fair
share” policy, and during non-peak
hours, use as much bandwidth as
needed and expand to provide the best
possible end user experience.
art of virtualising desktop | cover story

BYOD and VDI:
Harmoniously
Aligned
IT managers concur that VDI has become the primary
enabler of BYOD due to its core ability to stream data to
mobile devices in an encrypted and containerised manner
Most industry players, vendors
and senior IT managers agree that
desktop virtualisation and Bring Your
Own Device (BYOD) complement each
other as the former is imperative to
provide a robust and effective framework
and foundation for BYOD adoption.
Anoop Handa, EVP  CIO, Fullerton
India, who has deployed desktop
virtualisation, though, believes that
desktop virtualisation technology is

necessary to enable BYOD adoption.
He argues that they are two distinct
initiatives, which need to be dealt with
exclusively. Handa says, “While the initial
phase of implementation looks similar,
the extent of investments and the IT
infrastructure deployment at the backend differ from one to the other.”
In the case of Essar,
Jayantha Prabhu Chief Technology
Officer, Essar Services India says, “In our
case, desktop virtualisation has become
one of the primary enablers of BYOD
due to its core ability to stream data to
mobile devices in an encrypted and
containerised manner.”
Due to containerisation, the
existing applications continue
to run without modification
due to their decoupling from the
Local OS of the mobile device.

Prabhu says that the ability to restrict
the data flow from the VDI to the
local device also means that malware
protection resides on the server
rather than on individual devices,
making device security in a BYOD
environment far easier to maintain.
Another advantage that BYOD
would see, as per Ashish Khanna,
AVP-IT, EIH Ltd, is that with the
latest virtualisation technologies, it
is very imperative that organisations
devise their BYOD strategy along with
desktop virtualisation as both these
technologies provide benefit to the
mobile user force for connecting their
devices with the enterprise systems
while they are on the move.
Sachin Jain, CIO, Evalueserve,
looks at desktop virtualisation as an
infrastructure layer which is needed

“It is critical to create
separate environment for
corporate applications
and data and this can be
completely isolated, secured

and customised by the enterprise
IT admin”

Ramesh Vantipalli
Head EUC India  South-Systems
Engineering  Technology, VMware

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19
cover story | art of virtualising desktop
to build a secure and successful BYOD
strategy. “Our objective is to give people
complete desktop experience anywhere
and on any device. which helps them
maintain their efficiency level,” he says.
“Desktop virtualisation helps in
extending a restricted shell on a user’s
personal device which does not require
a two-way communication between the
user PC and virtual desktop,” says Jain.

Virtualisation Vendors’
Take on BYOD
Desktop virtualisation vendors are keen
to know what IT managers are trying to
do and the outcome of their task when the
primary challenge is security.
Srikanth Karnakota, Director – Server
and Cloud Business, Microsoft, lists out
three key challenges for IT managers with
regard to aligning VDI with BYOD.
According to Karnakota, it is critical
to find how IT managers are providing
secure access to devices which are not
necessarily IT enabled or IT managed.
The second problem, according to
him, is deployment and provisioning of
different kind of apps running within
the firewall of the enterprise. The third
challenge is management: getting the
corporate data managed, as IT managers
don’t want any remote swip and putting
in place a concrete policy.
To address these challenges, a vendor
like Microsoft puts forth its system centre
(management tool) and windows server
together. “The technology we have built
around the second challenge is appstore
which has provisioning capability and is
built on top of the windows server. There
are certain apps which you can mark out,
like corporate apps that can be marked
out outside the firewall. They could be
consumed on the go,” he says.
Nilesh Goradia, Head Pre-Sales, India
Subcontinent-Citrix, relates an instance
of how its customer faced the challenge
of dissemination on iPad. “We enabled
the user to deploy the application on
the desktop virtualisation tool to enable
seamless access of information on iPad.”
Goradia says that the communication
between devices and servers that host
OS and apps pave the way for effective
control. Ramesh Vantipalli (Head EUC

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

“It is imperative that
organisations devise their

BYOD strategy along with
desktop virtualisation as
these technologies benefit
the mobile user force”
Ashish Khanna, AVP-IT, EIH Ltd
India  South--Systems Engineering
 Technology), VMware believes that a
majority of workers bringing in so many
of their personal devices, (and apps) into
organisations has ushered in trends such
as “bring your own device” (BYOD) and
“corporate-owned, personally enabled”
(COPE), which have become mainstay
essentials to delivering IT scale and
end-user choice. Vantipalli explains that
the VMware Horizon Suite’s solutions
enable users to access all their files
and applications at any time, across
devices.” “It is critical to create a separate
environment for corporate applications
and data and this can be completely
isolated, secured and customised by

the enterprise IT admin; it can prevent
corporate data leakage and preserve
the privacy of employees’ personal
information,” he says. Vikram K, director,
ISS, HP India, considers it a big deal for
CIOs as they try to transform their IT
departments from asset management
outfits to service delivery organisations.
“An agile, scalable, and cost-effective
desktop virtualisation infrastructure
helps CIOs achieve this metamorphosis
and provides measurable ROI,” he
avers. They need to align their client’s
virtualisation strategy to deliver both VDI
and BYOD, as today’s IT infrastructure
helps IT heads to achieve this seamlessly
from a single infrastructure.
art of virtualising desktop | cover story

DaaS is Taking
Baby Steps
Desktop as a Service is on the anvil, as most IT
managers are optimistic about its uptake with new
platforms like Android and Mac fuelling the growth
While the industry may not
find many instances or use cases
around Desktop as a Service to enable
cloud model around this technology,
there have been a lot of positive trends
towards this.
It is critical to discuss under what
circumstances DaaS can take off and

what factors can fuel this to the
maturity curve.
Anoop Handa, EVP  CIO,
Fullerton India, is confident that
DaaS (Desktop as a Service) is very
much on the anvil and its adoption
will increase over time.
“As we centralise end-user
computing environment in data
centres and make it accessible to endusers over a private cloud, we are
actually paving the way for adoption
of desktop as a service to end
users,” emphasises Handa.
Handa reiterates the fact
that several IT services
organisations are focusing

on this domain of provisioning and
supporting Desktop as a Service by
assuring Application Delivery as a
Service (AdaaS) model on a variety of
end-user devices.
IT teams today need to move from
application deployment to application
delivery and from monitoring
managing devices to delivering enduser performance.
“ADaaS deploys this approach to
break IT silos and deliver lowered
costs, greater productivity and IT
efficiency to businesses and that’s
what we have gone ahead within our
organisation,” says Handa.
Jayantha Prabhu, CTO, Essar

“The future is very bright.

Last year, we saw many
customers demanding
DaaS, as desktop hosting

has come a long way”

Nilesh Goradia
Head Pre-Sales, India Subcontinent-Citrix

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

21
“The penetration of
Android and MAC into
the environment will
see DaaS progressing
more quickly”

Jayantha Prabhu
CTO, Essar Services India Limited

Services India Limited, avers that it will
take some time to mature due to the
over dependency on Microsoft as the
primary solution provider.
“However, the penetration of Android
and MAC into the environment will see
DaaS progressing more quickly. Future

desktop architectures have a variety
of attributes in common--for example,
the ability to separate the system image
(OS, apps etc.) from the underlying
hardware, the ability to implement
disaster recovery, high availability,
mobility,” Prabhu adds.

Case Study 1

EIH Ltd (Oberoi Group)

Enabled Offline
Mode for Users on Travel
With Desktop Virtualisation, EIH has
experienced flexibility, improved IT agility
to enable a new user and ensure data
always remained secure and safe within a
data centre, says Ashish Khanna, AVP-IT,
EIH Ltd (Oberoi Group). As a best practice,
EIH Ltd has enabled users who travel to
work on their machines in offline mode and
to sync automatically with the server data
as soon as they plug back into the network.
“This approach has given a huge edge to
users of virtualisation; even in the event
of a disaster or a machine crash, they
are provided with a new machine to work

22

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

without any disruption to the data and
virtually no downtime, resulting in higher
productivity,” says Khanna. EIH started to
implement desktop virtualisation way back
in 2009 when its flagship hotel, The Oberoi
Gurgaon opened. After meeting with success in terms of accruing higher productivity of its team and functions, the IT team
followed the same strategy and deployed
virtualisation tools across all new hotels,
which opened afterwards; these included
Trident Hyderabad and Oberoi Dubai. The
organisation has virtualised 150 desktops
spread across three locations.

When delivered over the cloud,
desktops will combine capabilities
like mobility, ubiquitous access and
platform independence and will allow
emerging, lightweight ARM-based
tablets to access powerhouse x86
applications and vice-versa.

Phased Approach
“As the on-boarding or acquisition cost of the
desktop virtualisation technology was very high,
we decided to deploy desktop virtualisation in
the event of a new property or where a large
refresh of desktops/laptops was required,”
says Khanna. Khanna and team went in for a
PDCA (Plan, do, check and act) strategy with
regard to VDI and looked at specific needs
of laying thrust on the right profiling of users
and the right sizing of these profiles cutting
across sales, marketing, front office etc. After
evaluating several solutions, EIH deployed
VMware’s Horizon Mirage to provide centralised
image management for Windows desktops with
enhanced levels of backup and OS migration capabilities. Mirage helped in categorisation of the
data, so that the IT staff could perform more
granular management of the endpoint.
art of virtualising desktop | cover story
He sees MAC, Android, Linux or
Windows virtual machines hosted on
servers in the cloud made accessible to
users over a wide area network.

DaaS and Cloud go Hand in Glove
Most players argue that capex is the
biggest challenge now as CIOs
report to CFOs and cash outflow
is a major concern.
Nilesh Goradia, Head Pre-Sales,
India Subcontinent-Citrix, believes
cost effectiveness to be one of the major
factors why people are looking at DaaS
and getting onto an opex kind of a model.
“The future is very bright. Last year,
we saw many customers demanding
DaaS, as desktop hosting has come a
long way, enabling managed service
providers to explore new opportunities
to develop higher-value cloud-based
offers,” says Goradia.
Virtualisation vendors argue that the
explosion of mobile devices, mobile and
web applications, and enhanced interest
in the cloud is driving businesses to
re-evaluate their desktop strategy.
VMware recently announced the
acquisition of Desktone , in desktop-as-aservice (DaaS) with an advanced multitenant desktop virtualisation platform
for delivering Windows desktops and
applications as a cloud service.
According to Ramesh Vantipalli
(Head EUC India  South –Systems
Engineering  Technology), VMware,
the combination of VMware and
Desktone’s global partner network
will allow customers in all regions to
benefit from the economies of scale
provided by DaaS. “The addition of
the Desktone platform further extends
the benefits of desktop virtualisation
by offering an additional choice to
organisations looking for predictable
economics, flexibility of cloud
deployment or simple deployment
and management due to the lack of
resources or in-house VDI expertise,”
says Vantipalli.
The benefits of the DaaS platform,
as Vantipalli explains, were purposebuilt for service providers to
deliver windows applications and
desktops as a cloud service with

Case Study 2

Evalueserve

Easy-to-Manage
infrastructure
for Desktop and
Servers
Evalueserve’s business model
involved providing a variety of services
to clients while delivering the highest
possible levels of security and availability. With four data centres spread
across India, catering to the growing
demands of both employees and
clients, and managing the data centres was a challenge. Consequently,
Sachin Jain, CIO of Evalueserve, was
given the task of finding a solution to
address the manageability, scalability,
and security of Evalueserve’s servers
and desktops. To address their challenges, Sachin and his team evaluated
a number of solutions. Multiple vendors were evaluated on a number of
criteria to determine if they would be
able to meet the exacting standards
of a company that prides itself on the
highest level of service to its clients.
After running a month-long proof
of- concept from multiple vendors,
VMware vSphere and VMware View
were decided upon as the only viable
choices. “Features such as vMotion,
thin provisioning and high availability
were tested extensively with each of
Evalueserve’s critical applications,”
says Jain. VMware View was also
thoroughly tested in a number of
scenarios to ensure that the IT team
would have the best possible solution
for their desktop environment.
VMware View was leveraged to
deploy virtual desktops for employees throughout the organisation. The
additional security and manageability
of the virtual desktops has allowed
the IT team to focus on what it does
best--support the business. VMware
View enabled Evalueserve to maintain
the highest standards of compliance
and security, and IT team to provide
employees with flexi-seating.

unique capabilities, such as multitenancy, Self-Service and Grid-based
architecture for elastic scalability.
Multi-tenancy – A must for cloud
delivery. Each customer gets a
separate virtual environment to
ensure security while cloud
providers are able to manage
multiple customers under
one platform.
Self-service of virtual desktops –
Simple provisioning from the cloud
enables self-service for IT of full
VDI, shared session remote desktop
service (RDS) desktops and
applications without the need to
procure hardware or software.
Grid-based architecture for elastic
scalability – Advanced architecture
enables unlimited scalability across
multiple geographies and data centres.
Low cost of delivery – Open source
based technology eliminates
Microsoft licensing fees and thirdparty software management,
resulting in cost savings over
competitive desktop
virtualisation offerings.
In short, DaaS gives enterprises the
ability to manage costs, extend capacity
on-demand and reduce the time required
when desktop loads change.
While Srikanth Karnakota,
Director – Server and Cloud Business,
Microsoft, does not see a significant
uptake on DaaS, he does not rule out
the possibility of SMBs and branch
offices of large enterprises opting to
host it on third party cloud.
In order to support DaaS,
Microsoft has enabled Windows
licensing for third party.
HP’s Vikram K, director, ISS, HP
India, emphasises that the next stage of
the desktop virtualisation is Desktop-asa-service (DaaS) which is easier to deploy,
less expensive to manage and maintain
and is more flexible.
“However, due to higher network
bandwidth requirement for DaaS,
this is still in the early stages. With
application virtualisation and
hosted applications, a few selected
applications like Office365 are already
being hosted on the Cloud,” he says.

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

23
cover story | Art of virtualising desktop

What Can Justify
the Licensing
Cost in VDI?
While licensing for desktop virtualisation is high, reduction
in the cost of application rollout, provisioning, updates,
maintenance and training can justify the investment
IT heads are aware of the
fact that the licensing cost on the
deployment of desktop virtualisation
is relatively high, given that it is still
not ubiquitous. However, virtualisation
vendors do formulate certain theories
around how to perceive the licensing
cost to make it more cost effective and
justify the investment to drive RoI.
Ramesh Vantipalli (Head EUC India
 South –Systems Engineering 
Technology), VMware, recommends
IT managers to consider key aspects
when it comes to desktop virtualisation
software licensing:
OS and software licensing needs to be
strongly analysed, especially when
making the move to a VDI structure
Customers and organisations alike
need to follow the solution providers’
licensing structure, and necessary
controls need to be put in place to
ensure access to confidential
information for designated users
within enterprises
Misinformation is evil. Organisations
and users alike need to take
appropriate actions to ensure they
have all the necessary information
from the provider directly.
VMware allows organisations to choose
named-user licensing or concurrent-

24

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

user licensing for the product suite. “A
benefit of concurrent-user licensing
is that one can rotate in users and not
have to pay for licenses for users not on
the system. Concurrent-user licensing
is especially suited to call centre
environments with shift workers and
to educational environments where not
every individual is using the system at
one time,” says Vantipalli. The benefit

of named-user licensing for the suite is
that one named user can use as many
devices as he wishes at once, on any or
all of the products.
In a desktop virtualisation
phenomenon, the licensing models
existing are either per device, per
user or per concurrent. The challenge,
as Nilesh Goradia, Head Pre-Sales,
India Subcontinent-Citrix, observes

Innovations
3
 D engineering - Virtual delivery of
3D professional graphics
applications and workstations
Support to hardware-based GPU
sharing of OpenGL and DirectX Provisioning many users to share
a GPU
Hosted shared desktops (HSD)
Thin Clients
End-point devices and middleware
to multiple device
Active Directory integration for
dynamic desktop sessions
Enhanced security with support
for two-factor authentication

C
 itrix’s AppDNA Software
- Simplified overall installation,
setup and user environment to
accommodate a broader range of
enterprises, the channel and
global SIs.
Enabling offline mode for select
users
Secured access of desktop/laptop
of users on mobile platforms
Thin provisioning of applications
P
 rinting with Universal Print
Server
Personalized VDI
“VDI does not reduce
the licenses required.
Rather, it helps in
reducing operational
expenses by simplifying

desktops patching, OS and
application updates”
Vikram K
Director, ISS, HP India

is not primarily from a desktop
virtualisation perspective, it’s more of
an affiliated licensing, an application
licensing challenge.
“Most CIOs are unable to give clarity
on how applications are going to work.
That could make the licensing even
more complex,” says Goradia.
Many vendors’ licensing model
revolves around per concurrent and
per user modules, which is considered
to be complex.
Srikanth Karnakota, Director
– Server and Cloud Business,
Microsoft, says, “Moving away
from the concurrent user base, we
have introduced licenses based on a
particular machine or device. It’s per
device model. With this model, cost
reduction is ensured.”
Microsoft sees the reduction in cost
with the OS coming free along with the
windows server; there is no additional
cost, the cost is only around VDI.
Vikram K, Director, ISS, HP
India, observes, “Virtual Desktop
infrastructure environment does not
reduce the licenses required. Rather, it
helps in reducing operational expenses

by simplifying desktops patching,
OS and application updates and
infrastructure cost.”
“IT heads can consider solutions
like application virtualisation,
session virtualisation or presentation
virtualisation for better TCO,” he says.

Higher Cost, Higher Benefit?
Anoop Handa, EVP  CIO, Fullerton
India, believes that not all licensing
models have fully matured/aligned
to the changing environment for
end-user computing using desktop
virtualisation. In addition, this area
continues to be a challenge and has to
be checked, verified and included in
the business case.
Jayantha Prabhu, CTO, Essar
Services India Limited, says that to
accrue greater benefits from desktop
virtualisation licenses, we need to be
very clear with the licensing models of
the Desktop VDI solutions providers
and the Desktop OS vendor before
we choose to implement VDI. “It is
imperative that we have a detailed and
joint discussion with the Desktop VDI
solutions providers and the Desktop

OS vendor and have their sign off on
the Licensing Understanding,” avers
Prabhu. “Organisations that have
Enterprise Agreements tend to benefit
in this case as compared to those
having Select Agreements for specific
products only,” explains Prabhu.
Ashish Khanna, AVP-IT, EIH Ltd.,
agrees that currently the licensing
of virtualisation is very costly and
hence the on-boarding cost of desktop
virtualisation is very high. If the
number of users deployed is lesser, then
the ROI for the investment comes after
a long period, which doesn’t justify
the initial high capex. In order to have
more penetration in the market, this
technology has to come at a lower cost.
Sachin Jain, CIO, Evalueserve,
finds this not an easy puzzle to solve.
“Different virtualisation solutions
will lead to different licensing models
which are usually complicated and at
times do not sound logical. “One has
to examine the model, and find a best
fit for the solution he/she settles for,
based on other important factors such
as ROI, recurring cost, support cost,
etc,” he says.

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

25
insight | Right approach, right Solution

Right
Approach,
Right Solution
As big data goes bigger, IT managers are challenged
with the task of identifying data that qualifies for big data
and finding appropriate solutions to process it

very decade or every five years, the hype around one technological
innovation or trend creates a buzz in the IT community. It was
big cloud till the recent past. Not that people have stopped
talking about it. But big data is the new hero. The purpose of big
data is still multi-layered, multi-defined. Gartner’s 3Vs--Volume,
Variety and Velocity--focused more on the overall management
of data. Not all IT managers agree about 3Vs. It all depends on the organisational
need and what kind of big data solutions they plan to implement. There is another
V that IT managers like to add-- Value.
Why big data bothers?
Everyone has been pondering over the need of big data, but there is a tire kicking. The
confusion among IT managers and CIOs is around the alignment of these 4Vs in the real
need. It has been observed that the client may not have a need of big data solution as a
traditional data warehouse solution is good enough to meet the requirement.

“But there is an end of life which we
often overlook. It’s pertinent to review
the policies as IT managers might need
to redefine what part of data they should
retain, delete and archive”
Sunil Ranka
BI Professional and Consultant

26

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

ILUSTRATIO N: Anil t

E

by S un i l Ran k a
It’s easier to qualify a use case but
convincing some IT managers about
the adoption of a big data solution
is a daunting task, especially if the
organisation is coming from a pure
play data warehousing background. To
get to the right approach or solution, it
is critical for them to understand the
big data life cycle and take into account
its inherent challenges, changes in
approach to big data, taking cues from
big players, understand potential
issues with packaged solutions,
besides the changes required in the IT
thought leadership, and work out an
effective implementation plan.

Big Data Life Cycle
The data life cycle in big data environments
has four stages – acquire, organise,
analyse and decide large amounts of data
from both new data formats, as well as
traditional formats, in real time.
Big data grows incredibly fast. Each day,
we create 2.5 exabytes of data. Most big
data is fleeting by nature as the data mined

from timely sources such as sensor data,
social media and web logs, when used in
real time, is outdated before one knows it.
So, in the big data life cycle, acquiring
data from different sources and
organising them, paving the way for
intelligent analysis for better decision
making is what defines the entire lifecycle
of big data. As one scales the big data
environment, it is important to ensure that
life cycle requirements can be supported
within your current constraints of
storage capacity, bandwidth, processor
and memory speeds and metadata depth
which covers all the 3Vs.
But there is an end of life which we
often overlook. With the excitement
around big data, it’s normal practice not
to foresee the ephemeral nature of data
that no longer is necessary or to determine
what should happen when that day comes.

Challenges in Approach
A typical data warehousing project
approaches a traditional waterfall
methodology, where in requirements,

design, implementation, verifications and
maintenance follows a serial approach.
In most of the cases, the only
thing that comes out at the end of
implementation is the solution. Due
to the tight deadline and serialisation,
there is always a rush to complete
all the individual states before the
final goal could be met, resulting in
rejecting key change requests and
delivering invaluable in the past and
may not count towards key decision
making in future.
Big Data projects have been
a new kid on the block; right
from the concept and project
execution. A different mindset and
methodologies are needed to drive this.

Hadoop and the Big Players
The Apache Hadoop project develops
open-source software for reliable,
scalable, distributed computing. It
has been designed to scale across
thousands of machines with fewer
setups with reduced latency and
high fault tolerance. Hadoop helps
enable a computing solution that is
scalable, cost effective, flexible, and
fault tolerant.

Change in Approach

Look at Solution from Top Down
rather than Bottom Up
Traditionally, IT tackles data problems
from the bottom up, as in after-thefact data analysis. But with big data,
the solution approach needs to be
top down, where in the power of the
solution is more on pro-active or
predictive analysis.

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27
insight | right approach, right solution
What goes into big data implementation plan?
4-6 weeks

12-15 weeks

Discovery Analysis
Interviewing Key Business Users
Confirming Problem Statement
Confirming Key Objective  Goal
Defining Data Sources and
Correlation
Build a Sandbox

Discovery Analysis
Project Kick Start
Iteration (1…)
KPI and Attributes
ETL/ MapReduce Data Pull
Application User Interface
Data Correlation
Test Case

Iterative feedback
Correlation
Guided Navigation Attributes

Developing Test Case and Unit Testing
Business Acceptance Testing

Defining Security Needs: User
Roles, Security Groups, etc
Defining Technical
Architecture and Design
Defining Release Plan

Build Solution for “Unknown
Unknown”
With limited storage space and shrinking
budget, IT pulls in only that data which
is the need of the hour. But with big
data, the approach needs to be more
on pulling in as much as data possible
for better predictability and analysis.

Build Now and Show Now
IT needs to build in big data application
with “Build Now and Show Now” attitude.

System Integration Testing
Implementing Security
Production Readiness
Go Live

of “Data Science.” It is a combination of
mathematics, computer programming
and computer science.

Newer Data Governance Policies
With big data, governance policies
need to be relaxed and should be
more favourable for data access. A
favourable and relaxed policy doesn’t
mean “Access To All.” Rather, it means it
needs to be relaxed compared to history.

A New Job Role: “Data Science”

Potential Issues with
Packaged Solutions

Big data is the emergence of a new stream

Big data, being a newer technology,

top 10 vendors for big data solutions
Splunk	

Turns machine data into valuable insights

Opera Solutions

Data-Science-as-a-Service

Mu Sigma

Data-Science-as-a-Service

Palantir

Big data software

Cloudera	

Apache Hadoop-based software, services and training

Actian 	

Big data applications, analytics engine, and Ingres database

1010data

Cloud-based analytics

10gen 	

MongoDB (open-source, document database)

Alteryx

Big data analytics platform

Guavus 	

28

Big data analytics solutions

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

Iterations

Designing  Developing

packaged solutions may not work as
anticipated for the companies whose
business model is unique. Having worked
with cloudera and Hortonworks, these
two packaged distribution of Apache
Hadoop-based solution have provided
immediate value to customers from
the technology stack. With vendor
locking, recurring support cost and
vendor uncertainty becomes an issue.

The Key to Success for any Big
Data project involves these:
Data identification
Ingesting and cleaning
Hardware and platform selection
Machine learning
Data storage
Sharing and acting

Desired Changes in IT Thought
Leadership

Source : Forbes

It’s not all about huge infrastructure. Big
data experts consistently report that 80
per cent of the effort involved in dealing
with data is cleansing. Because of the high
cost of data acquisition and cleansing, it’s
worth considering what you actually need
to source yourself.
Remember that big data is not a
Nirvana. You can find patterns and clues
in your data, but then what? Like any
investment, a tangible goal for big data
would always benefit.
ITNEXT Magazine November 2013
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Simplifying IT to

Drive PureValue

S

ince its launch in India in April 2012, IBM
PureSystems has been gaining momentum
across all verticals and businesses. In India,
IBM has more than 150 customers who have
adopted PureSystems. The PureSystems
family of offerings includes PureFlex,
PureApplication and PureData.
Thermax, an organisation in the utility vertical, was
among the early adopters of PureFlex systems.

32

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

In August 2012, Thermax went live with PureSystems as
it implemented a virtual desktop environment where it was
looking at multiple systems and chose IBM PureFlex.
Kashish M Karnick, Product Manager, STG, IBM ISA, said,
“IT managers look converged systems and PureSystems has
the power to transform the IT life cycle. IBM PureSystems has
the potential to radically simplify multiple aspects of the IT life
cycle and it delivers significant business value.”
The reason behind the growth in adoption is that the systems

I LUSTRATIO N: anil t

IT managers leverage converged PureSystems to
radically transform and simplify the IT life cycle so
as to drive value by SU B HANK A R K UN D U
Simplifying IT to drive pure value | insight
integration between servers, storage and networking as well as
software, applications and middleware was made simple and
easy through the use of a single management console.

IT Managers use Pure Systems in
Multifaceted Environment
In India, organisations of all sizes enlist the customer base
of pure systems as they are looking to virtualise their IT,
optimise their existing infrastructure, or want to adopt open
standards and green IT initiatives.
Anil Nadkarni, CIO, Thermax, says, “It’s just not the
hardware that transforms any work environment, a lot
also depends on the application that runs on it as it decides
the whole thing. The hardware costs come down due to the
virtualisation. The flexibility is definitely the differentiator
as it comes with 8-core machines. It gives me the flexibility
to make it a 4-core machine or 2-core.”
Anil has an internal team of 30 members. IBM took the
lead and deployed the infrastructure. The team was trained
during the implementation. For Thermax, it has been
not just the integration that IBM Pure Systems has been
pitching around the offering but it is more about flexibility,
enhancement, ability to connect with other devices and IBM
know-how about the technology and support.
Thermax bought the machine for 1,000 users but it’s
capable of handling 1,300 users which gives the organisation
the scope to ramp up the systems.

Bank deploys PureSystems to address
its Future Growth
The recent win, Dombivili Nagarik Sahakari (DNS) Bank
adopted PureSystems as a core component of its new IT strategy

to address its future needs and growth strategy.
The new IBM PureFlex System integrates the bank’s
hardware, cloud capabilities, network management and
virtualisation, allowing DNS Bank to expand its reach, gain new
clients and reduce operational expenses by 10 per cent - without
increasing its IT infrastructure footprint.
Milind Varerkar, DGM-IT, DNS Bank, says, “Implementing
PureSystems has helped the bank to monitor its resources in
much easier way than earlier rack based servers. DNS Bank is
already benefiting from the simplicity and control IBM PureFlex
provides and has reduced power consumption by 10 per cent.”
DNS found the system apt as it could expand its mobile
services such as Internet, mobile and SMS banking. The new
IBM PureFlex System integrates the bank’s hardware, cloud
capabilities, network management and virtualization. Pure Flex
has helped in reducing the manpower cost as it requires fewer
trained staff for monitoring the systems.
Very little change was made in infrastructure and that helped
in minimising deployment cost. Except for training the support
staff, no major change was necessary.
The Indian banking industry is growing more than 23 per
cent per year with its assets size poised to touch USD 28,500
billion by 2025. However, In India, dispersion of banking
services is fairly low: about 61 per cent of population has access
to a saving bank account, 19 per cent has debit cards and 1 per
cent has credit cards.
Varerkar asserts, “To tap into this growing market
opportunity and reach the tech-savvy younger generation, DNS
Bank needed to revamp the heart of its IT infrastructure. IBM
provided a solution built on PureFlex and including System x,
storage and WebSphere.”
PureFlex provides the security, flexibility and integration
capabilities the bank needed to leverage cloud technologies to
rapidly and efficiently deliver these mobile services across cities
and remote areas of Maharashtra, addressing completely new
client segments.
Karnick said, “IBM PureFlex allowed DNS to simplify their
experience, increase overall performance, and significantly
reduce operational and management costs.”

“India has 150 clients compared
to 6000+ in other markets.
So, India has the potential.
But we need to look at the
size of the market in terms
of its budget. I think other
markets have a much bigger
budget than India”
Kashish M Karnick
Product Manager, STG, IBM ISA

november

2 0 1 3 | itnext

33
“The flexibility is definitely the
differentiator as it comes with
8-core machines. It gives me
the flexibility to make it a
4-core machine or 2-core”
Anil Nadkarni, CIO, Thermax

The reason Nadkarni cites as the biggest influencer was that
PureSystems allowed them to put all sorts of CPUs in it.
He says, “The biggest advantage is that while virtualising a
system, multiple process is available. PureFlex systems help us
do it with ease. The monitoring tool it has makes life easier as it
makes the configuration really flexible.”
Nadkarni adds, “IBM was the big contender and the brand
definitely brings in certain value. I did not look at it purely
from PureSystems; Rather, I looked at it from a project
management angle--the execution of the project, the ability
to deliver on time. When I was involved with this project,
there was a case of I/O. IBM gave me a v3700 SSD. The CPUs
are fast but the bottleneck is in storage. IBM offered me
SSD which the competitor didn’t offer. This was definitely a
differentiator. PureFlex met the hardware requirement and I
didn’t have to look beyond it.”

So, is India One of the Larger Markets
for PureSystems?
Karnick smiles, “I would like it to be but we have 150 clients compared to 6000+ in other markets. So, India has the
potential. But we need to look at the size of the market in
terms of its budget. I think other markets have a much bigger
budget than India.”
Varerkar says, “The built-in softwares in PureSystems
helps in automating mundane activities such as configuration,
managing upgrades and backups. This reduces the time the
IT management has to spend and frees them to focus on
addressing business needs innovatively.”
Education is one vertical where adoption of PureSystems
has been witnessed. Recently, Indian Institute of Technology
(IIT) Madras, Indian Institute of Science Education and
Research (IISER), Bhopal, Karunya University – Coimbatore,
and the Shiv Nadar University (SNU) have selected IBM
PureSystems to help their high end research, improve
processes and IT infrastructure.
Karunya University has selected IBM PureSystems
solutions to improve online student services in processing
applications, online enrolment, exam scheduling and virtual
campus management.

Increased Footprint of PureSystems

“Implementing PureSystems
has helped the bank monitor its
resources in much easier way.
IBM PureFlex has reduced
power consumption by 10
per cent”
Milind Varerkar, DGM-IT, DNS Bank

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

IBM has deep expertise and a strong partner community to
help deliver PureSystems.
Karnick believes, “Business partners have a critical role
in the growth of PureSystems in India. For IBM Business
Partners, PureSystems generate an opportunity to help
clients solve the complexity of enterprise IT, reduce costs
and encourage innovation.”
More than 2.500 Business partners have received
PureSystems certifications.
Resellers, distributors and Independent Software Vendors
(ISVs) have been playing an important role in the growth of
PureSystems. Tens of thousands of existing ISV applications
across four operating environments including Windows,
Simplifying IT to drive pure value | insight

It can take up to

46

2/3

months

just to establish harware and software
infrastructure**

eadach
H

I

%

of IT professionals experience
downtime, that can last from anywhere between minutes to over a
week when performing an infrastructure upgrade**

of organizations fall behind
schedule when deploying
new IT capabilities***

es

T

55

Nearly

to

On average more than of IT
budgets are spent on operations and maintenance*

70

%

IT professionals face unnecessary delays and costs as
they deploy, maintain and update their capabilities
Sources: * IDC Analyst Matt Eastwood, IDC Directions Presentation, 2011
** A global survey of 500 IT Professionals conducted by Forrester Consulting in 2011
*** IBM Market Insights Study - 2011 Business Benchmarking Time-To-Value Study

Linux, AIX, and IBM operating system are run. Additionally,
business partners have created more than 250 new solutions
and applications that are optimised to run on PureSystems.
IBM PureSystems center provides access to PureSystems
assets, delivering expertise from a broad ecosystem,
spanning across 20 industries. It includes leading solutions
from some of the world’s largest ISVs, including ERP systems
and applications across verticals.
Karnick says, “To help address the new opportunity
that PureSystems presents, IBM also provides training,
marketing, certifications and technical validation support
to its business partners.”

Innovations Galore
IBM has been constantly releasing updates to pure system. Recently, a number of major additions to its Flex System portfolio was released which combine the latest server
technology with new virtualisation, networking and management tools, allowing clients to consolidate existing IT
infrastructure and reduce operating costs.
IBM claims this will help clients use smaller data center
environments to quickly deploy, manage and secure
increasingly larger clouds.
These additional Flex Systems products deliver the
features that provide clients with the choices they need as
they seek to reduce costs and invest in technologies that
provide future scalability. The offerings consist of three

systems built on both IBM POWER7+ and a “double dense”
x222 system built on x86 technology. Additionally, IBM
has upgraded the Flex System Manager so that clients can
monitor and manage up to 5,000 infrastructure end points
and do so from any location utilising iOS, Android and
Blackberry mobile devices.

Others in the block
The concept wasn’t unique when PureSystems was
launched. The idea of convergence in infrastructure has
been there in the block for some time now. Major vendors
in the data center infrastructure have been talking about
bundling all necessary hardware and management software.
The coalition of EMC, VMware and Cisco brought its Virtual
Compute Environment (VCE), Vblock.
But Karnick says there is a huge difference between
PureSystems and its competitions. With PureSystems, the
buyer can mix compute nodes — X86 and/or Power7 based
— in the same enclosure and even run different operating
systems — AIX, Linux, Windows — as needed.
Karnick asserts, “I don’t think any other system in
the market can offer consolidation of this sort, we offer
consolidation without migration and it has been designed
to deal with multiple nodes in one box.”
IBM PureSystems is a way to leverage the products it
already owns. Now, the industry has to keep an eye on how
both exisitng and new customers react to it.

november

2 0 1 3 | itnext

35
interview | Hu Yoshida

36

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

collaborate
 strategize
to stay ahead
Hu Yoshida, Vice President and CTO, Hitachi Data Systems, emphasises the
need for CIOs to work with vendors in strategising Hitachi’s strength in storage
and technologies. In Conversation with IT NEXT.

You have been forecasting the top IT industry
trends for storage for Hitachi.
What then are the directions
you want Hitachi to take?
Big data will continue to be the
primary concern for the IT industry. For example, exabytes will
enter into planning discussions
and petabytes will be the new
norm for large data stores. Much
attention will be on secondary data
generated for copies and backups.
The total cost of ownership (TCO)
for storage will change as operational costs decrease and capital
costs creep up.
IT professionals will have
to tackle these challenges with
budget and time constraints.
Simultaneously, they must extract
business value from big data to
support growth and development.
Hitachi should take into account
the new trends and align customer
strategy accordingly.
1.  ramatic Changes in OPEX
D
and CAPEX: Over the past 10
years, the total cost of storage
has increased by about 7 per
cent annually, mainly due to

operational costs (OPEX), while
the cost of hardware (CAPEX)
has been relatively flat.
2. ew Consumption Models:
N
Instead of buying all their
storage today and spreading
CAPEX over the next 4 to 5 years,
organisations will buy what they
need when they need it. So, they
must leverage technologies and
capabilities like dynamic storage
provisioning, virtualisation and
nondisruptive data migration.
3.  anaging the Explosion of
M
Data Replication: Replication
multiplies data growth and
backups are the biggest driver of
data replication.
4.  he Emergence of Enterprise
T
Flash Controllers: The use of
high-performance flash solid
state drives (SSDs) has been
slow due to their high price and
limited durability compared
to hard disk drives. 2013 will
see the introduction of flash
controllers with advanced
processors built specifically for
enterprise storage systems and
increase durability, performance
and capacity of flash memory.

5. 
N ew
Requirements
for
Entry Enterprise Storage
Systems: The increasing use of
hypervisors like VMware and
applications such as VDI have
changed the requirements for
midrange storage systems. The
gap between enterprise and
midrange storage architectures
is narrowing as the industry
begins to demand entry
enterprise storage systems.
6. 
The need for object-based
file systems: The growth of
unstructured data will require
larger, more scalable file systems;
hence, object-based file systems.
7.  ccelerating use of content
A
platforms for data archives
and data sharing: This will
accelerate as users try to
correlate information from
different applications.
8. Hardware Assist Controllers to
Satisfy Increasingly Complex
Workloads: Storage controllers
will be equipped with advanced
processors and hardware assist
ASICs to address increasingly
complex workloads and higher
throughput.

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

37
interview | Hu Yoshida
9.  reating a Secure Platform
C
for the Adoption of Mobile
Devices: Adoption of mobile
devices increases productivity
and innovation, but also
creates a nightmare for
corporate data centres.
10.  ore Tightly Integrated
M
Converged Solutions: Certified,
pre-configured and pre-tested
converged infrastructure
solutions are gaining traction.

So, what initiatives have you
planned for Hitachi?
Technology-wise, there is a sea
change. We’re hearing a lot about
about big data, Cloud is getting
more real now. The next big thing
would be machine-to-machine.
Some call it industrial internet.
Cisco is building Internet-ofEverything where machines talk
to machines with intelligence at
the endpoint. But the danger is
that vendors will then deal more
directly with end users than with
IT, creating more silos.
For example, in health care,
there is a standard around medical
imaging. Fujitsu makes it for
cardiology, Siemens for oncology…
all the information gathered are
in silos. So, the patient cannot get
a holistic view. Hence, they are
approaching IT/ITes as they realised
the need of vendor neutral archives.
Hitachi is moving towards big
data. We have the verticals, we have
the IT. So, we are going to enable
enterprises to offer solutions. We
like to work with the GEs, the
Siemens. If we don’t start doing it
now, then we bypass IT.
How will these trends impact
the role of a CIO?
In data centres, we hear of shadow
IT: applications people bringing
public cloud, the BYOD trend, etc...
But employees today need to be
given that kind of flexibility and
capability. However, it has to be
done behind the firewalls. That’s
one area CIOs must focus on.

38

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

Another thrust area is enabling
BYOD as a business trend and not
controlling it. This will be driven
by CEOs because they are using
Apple products (smiles)....So,
mobility is the big trend.
A recent 2013 survey suggested
that internet traffic in mobile
devices has surpassed internet
usage on desktops. Integration,
access to the data anywhere
has become the need. We have
HCP Anywhere solution from
Hitachi. It’s a fully integrated,
on-premises solution for safe,
secure file synchronisation and
sharing. It’s built end-to-end to be
enterprise-ready, and hardened
for uncontrolled Internet; HCP
Anywhere uses the Hitachi
Content Platform object store to
store, protect, secure and manage

“ It wouldn’t be wise to
give less weight to CIOs.
CIOs need to look at so
much more technology.
But there are CIOs who
keep vendors away.
They believe vendors
bring a set of problems
by offering a different
set of solutions”
data in the most efficient, easily
scalable and highest-density object
storage platform.

Against this backdrop, how is
the role of CIOs changing?
It was thought that CIOs would
get a seat at the corporate
table as a technology person.
Now, his role is evolving as an
implementer. In tough economic
times, the CFO’s role is getting
more crucial. The problem then is
that the CFO does not look at the
back end integration part, which
the CIO is more responsible for.
ITNEXT Magazine November 2013
ITNEXT Magazine November 2013
ITNEXT Magazine November 2013
ITNEXT Magazine November 2013
ITNEXT Magazine November 2013
ITNEXT Magazine November 2013
ITNEXT Magazine November 2013
ITNEXT Magazine November 2013
ITNEXT Magazine November 2013
ITNEXT Magazine November 2013
ITNEXT Magazine November 2013
ITNEXT Magazine November 2013

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ITNEXT Magazine November 2013

  • 1. INTERVIEW | Hu Yoshida, VP and CTO, Hitachi Data Systems | Pg36 “ITDMs should collaborate & strategize” f o r t h e n e x t g e n e r at i o n o f c i o s Ashish Khanna AVP-IT, EIH Ltd BossTalk 5 laws and 5 corollaries Pg 06 Plus Art of Big Data: Right Approach, Right Solution Virtual Deployment IT decision makers bring in innovative best practices in deploying desktop virtualisation technology to enhance productivity Pg12 November 2013 | `100 | Volume 04 | Issue 10 | A 9.9 Media Publication @itnext_magazine www.itnext.com | facebook.com/itnext | Pg 26
  • 3. Editorial Productivity at its Peak What’s that? With the industry constantly resonating with the refrain ‘increase your agility, enhance productivity, align with business and contribute to the growth of the organization’, the senior IT decision makers have laid out a plan. They are not influenced anymore by the footprints or increased adoption of any technology per se. IT managers are looking at addressing business needs and are ready to absorb any technology that caters to the need. So what’s new now? Senior IT decision makers have bought themselves into the positive factors that desktop virtualisation has brought in, irrespective of whether the technology has become all pervasive or not. Senior IT managers are cognizant of the fact that it is critical to enhance the agility in the business with enhanced productivity and reduction in cost, and that appropriate technology such as desktop virtualisation is most suited to this. However, the idea is to find effective ways to deploy the technology and leverage the innovations around it. IT Next’s cover feature on ‘Art of Virtual Deployment’ in the current edition provides insights into how senior IT decision makers have evolved effective mechanisms to deploy desktop virtualisation tools and found easy ways to deploy them. The most heartening aspect is that unlike the run of the mill technologies that get deployed resulting in not so many benefits, deploying desktop virtualisation was a well thought out plan. It was embarked upon in a phased manner taking all the business stakeholders into account to ensure that nothing went wrong. IT managers were aware that the acquisition cost was high with regard to desktop virtualisation, but that did not deter them from absorbing it as the end effect was about enhancing employee productivity which, in turn, impacted business growth positively. “Senior IT managers are cognizant of the fact that it is critical to enhance agility in the business with enhanced productivity and desktop virtualisation is most suited to this” Geetha Nandikotkur Blogs To Watch! 2014 - The Year of DaaS ttp://www.brianmadden. com/blogs/gabeknuth/ archive/2013/10/30/vmwarecitrix-microsoft-desktops-asa-service-solutions-will-make2014-quot-the-year-of-daas-quot. aspx How to avoid the 7 pitfalls of desktop virtualisation http://blogs.citrix. com/2013/04/18/how-toavoid-the-7-pitfalls-of-desktopvirtualization/ Attacking the high costs of desktop Virtualisation http://blogs.gartner.com/ gunnar-berger/attackingthe-high-costs-of-desktopvirtualization-part-1/ Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualisation (MED-V) http://www.microsoft.com/ en-us/windows/enterprise/ products-and-technologies/ mdop/med-v.aspx n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 3 | itnext 1
  • 4. Content NOVEMBER 2013 For the l atest technology uPDATES Go to itnext.in Volume 04 | Issue 10 Facebook: http://www.facebook. com/home.php#/group. php?gid=195675030582 Twitter: http://t witter.com/itnext LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/ groups?gid=2261770&trk=myg_ ugrp_ovr Art of Virtual Deployment Page 12 cover story 12 Virtually Right IT decision makers bring in innovative best practices in deploying desktop virtualization technology to enhance productivity boss talk interview IT decision makers bring in innovative best practices to make desktop virtualisation easy to deploy so as to enhance productivity and reduce cost 15 Easy Steps to Virtual Deployment IT Managers are making conscious efforts to evolve an effective mechanism to access desktop virtualization and deployment methods 19 BYOD and VDI : Harmoniously Aligned VDI has become the primary enabler of BYOD due to its core ability to stream data to mobile devices in an encrypted and containerised manner 21 DaaS is Taking Baby Steps Desktop as a Service is on the anvil as most IT managers are optimistic about its uptake with new platforms like Android and Mac in enterprise scenario INTERVIEW | HU YOSHIDA, VP AND CTO, HITACHI DATA SYSTEMS | Pg36 “ITDMs should collaborate & strategize” F O R T H E N E X T G E N E R AT I O N O F C I O s Ashish Khanna AVP-IT, EIH Ltd BossTalk 5 laws and 5 corollaries Pg 06 Plus ART OF Big Data: Right Approach, Right Solution VIRTUAL DEPLOYMENT Pg 26 cover Design: SHIGIL NARAYANAN Photo: SUBHOJIT PAUL IT decision makers bring in innovative best practices in deploying desktop virtualisation technology to enhance productivity Pg12 November 2013 | `100 | Volume 04 | Issue 10 | A 9.9 Media Publication @itnext_magazine www.itnext.com | facebook.com/itnext | 2 itnext | n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 3 06 Dr Hugh Thompson, Senior VP, Blue Coat on enabling business with security and 5 laws and 5 corollaries 36 Hu Yoshida, VP& CTO, Hitachi Data Systems, emphasises the need for CIOs to collaborate with vendors in strategising
  • 5. itnext.in Simplifying IT to drive Pure value| MANAGEMENT Managing Director: Dr Pramath Raj Sinha Printer & Publisher: Vikas Gupta IT Managers leverage converged IBM PureSystems to radically transform and simplify the IT lifecycle so as to drive value 15 minute manager 41 Countering Botnets I K J Latesh, IT Security Professional and Research Scholar, throws light on challenges for IT managers to identify bots across their network and defuse them from action EDITORIAL Page Group Editor: R Giridhar Editor: Geetha Nandikotkur Senior Asst. Editor: Subhankar Kundu 32 DESIGN Sr. Creative Director: Jayan K Narayanan Sr. Art Director: Anil VK Associate Art Director: Anil T Sr. Visualisers: Manav Sachdev, Shokeen Saifi & Sristi Maurya Visualiser: NV Baiju Sr. Designers: Shigil Narayanan, Haridas Balan & Manoj Kumar VP Designers: Charu Dwivedi, Peterson PJ, Pradeep G Nair Dinesh Devgan & Vikas Sharma Consulting Sr. Art Director: Binesh Sreedharan Right Solution, Right Approach 26 Big Data Solutions | As big data goes bigger, IT managers are challenged with the task of identifying data that qualifies for big data and finding appropriate solutions to process it MARCOM Designer: Rahul Babu STUDIO Chief Photographer: Subhojit Paul Sr. Photographer: Jiten Gandhi Open Debate Update 08 Converged Networking to Create Revenue I Cisco has launched Network Convergence System (NCS) to help telcos in India in monetization cube chat 46 Do What You Love, | Feroz Shaikh, Vice President-IT, Prime Focus quotes Aristotle to express his hunger to learn new things 45 Three Expert Panel | Is Software Defined Networking (SDN) different from Virtualisation and Cloud?’ sales & marketing Letters_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 04 Product Manager: Shreyans Daga (0999949343) Senior Vice President: Krishna Kumar (09810206034) National Manager -Print , Online & Events: Sachin Mhashilkar (09920348755) North: Deepak Sharma (09811791110) West: Samiksha Ghadigaonkar (+91 9833608089) Brand Manager: Varun Kumra Assistant Product Manager: Kshitij Garg Assistant Product Manager-Digital: Manan Mushtaq Ad co-ordination/Scheduling: Kishan Singh Update_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 08 Production & Logistics My Log_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 48 Sr. GM. Operations: Shivshankar M Hiremath Manager Operations: Rakesh upadhyay Asst. Manager - Logistics: Vijay Menon Executive Logistics: Nilesh Shiravadekar Production Executive: Vilas Mhatre Logistics: MP Singh & Mohd. Ansari RegulArs Editorial _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 01 Office Address Nine Dot Nine Mediaworx Pvt Ltd A-262 Defence Colony, New Delhi-110024, India Certain content in this publication is copyright Ziff Davis Enterprise Inc, and has been reprinted under license. eWEEK, Baseline and CIO Insight are registered trademarks of Ziff Davis Enterprise Holdings, Inc. advertiser index HP IFC Canon 05 Page Emerson 07 48 Microsoft Lenovo IBC 30-31, BC Please recycle this magazin e and remove inserts before recycling Published, Printed and Owned by Nine Dot Nine Mediaworx Private Ltd. Published and printed on their behalf by Vikas Gupta. Published at A-262 Defence Colony, New Delhi-110024, India. Printed at Tara Art Printers Pvt ltd., A-46-47, Sector-5, NOIDA (U.P.) 201301. Editor: Geetha Nandikotkur © All rights reserved: Reproduction in whole or in part without writt en permission from Nine Dot Nine mediaworx Pv t Ltd is prohibited. n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 3 | itnext 3
  • 6. INBoX INTERVIEW | RICHARD STALLMAN, SOFTWARE FREEDOM ACTIVIST AND COMPUTER PROGRAMMER | Pg 34 “Freedom is all that matters for users” Open SOurce challenge | coveR stoRy F O R T H E N E X T G E N E R AT I O N O F C I O s BossTalk Business face to IT Pg 08 Insight Right Mix to Secure Better: Embracing BYOD Is RecessIon Pg 30 OPEN CHALLENGE Sharat Airani CTO, Intellinet Datasys RIngIng the Dhananjay C Rokde Global Head, Information Security, Cox & Kings Group open souRce THE ECONOMIC SLOWDOWN IS COMPELLING SENIOR IT DECISION MAKERS TO GO OPEN ON THE OPEN SOURCE AS A COST SAVING STRATEGY ACROSS STRATUMS Pg 14 October 2013 | `100 | Volume 04 | Issue 09 | A 9.9 Media Publication facebook.com/itnext | @itnext_magazine www.itnext.com | OCTOBER 2013 Bells? Open Source has come a long way since its inception to armour IT managers against recession IT NEXT thanks its Readers for the warm response by SU b HAN KAR KU N DU 14 P H OTO / IL LU ST R AT IO N / IMAG IN G C R E D IT P H OTO / IL LU ST R AT IO N / IMAG IN G C R E D IT Desig n by HARI DAS bAl AN N illustr atio n by A N Il T ow, with the recession alarm banging the ears of economy, senior IT managers across industries are taking a re-look at IT budgets. For the second time in last five years, the IT industry is witnessing a slowdown. The buzz among IT managers seems to be “how about open source?” What is driving this trend? The major factors are rising software licensing fees, CIOs operating under constrained budgets, internet making way for new delivery models and evolving design architecture considering BYOD. In the current business environment, open source software and technologies beyond software are becoming an integral part of the IT landscape. This is particularly true in the internet age, where content Itnext | o c t o b e r 2 0 1 3 InsIde 16 | Innovating with an Open mind 19 | Commercial Viability: A Proven Fact 20 | An Open Challenge? 25 | Setting up an Open Culture o c t o b e r 2 0 1 3 | Itnext 15 IT NEXT values your feedback We want to know what you think about the magazine, and how we can make it a better read. Your comments will go a long way in making IT NEXT the preferred publication for the community. Send your comments, compliments, complaints or questions about the magazine to editor@itnext.in. Why Open Source Congratulations to the IT Next team for publishing a superb stream of articles analyzing the Open Source segment in the Open Source Challenge Edition. The issue features experts representing a cross section of the industry ranging from IT companies to the Government to activists, each providing meaningful insights that matter the most in their respective segment. IT users have long been grappling with the definition of Open Source as opposed to Free Software and the question if Free Software is really free. The interview with Richard Stallman debunks a lot of myths and gives you a fresh perspective. The issue also covers all topical hot buttons or trends in today’s IT scenario ranging from Cloud to Big Data to Enterprise Security to BYOD. The presentation, the copy and the design complement one another while assisting in easy reading and comprehension. www.linkedin.com/ groups?gid= 2261770&trk= myg_ugrp_ovr 300 members read this issue online http://www.itnext. in/resources/ magazine Kapil Dev Singh, Founder, Coeus Age Open Letter DC Priyan, Managing Partner, Ogilvy Public Relations 5 Organization-Market Imbalances a CIO Must Understand Today, the hierarchies are eroding, boundaries are becoming more porous and unclear, roles are fuzzy and evolving, strategies are fluid and short term, power is distributed and goal is to become change ready. 4 itnext | n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 3 I have identified 5 such areas of imbalance - social imbalance, technology imbalance, change imbalance and role-shifts imbalance. Understanding these imbalances can help the CIO to become aware of and do something about the problems on the surface.  All these imbalances also are highly interdependent on each other i.e. they feed into each other and do not exist in isolation. Hence, to do something about them, one needs to adopt a whole systems approach. Though these imbalances need to be noticed, understood and acted upon by the entire top management (CEO, CXOs and the CIO), I am urging the CIOs here to take a special note. The following questions the CIOs must continuously ponder upon. 1. ow are these five imbalances H manifesting in my organization? 2. hat is the explanation for W the imbalances and the related manifestations? What are the consequences? 3. hat needs to be done to handle W such imbalances? 4. ow can IT help manage such H imbalances? 5. hat is the preparedness of IT to W be able to handle the imbalances? 6. hat needs to be done to W enhance the preparedness of IT? How can SMAC help? ITNEXTspace your feedback and send it to 56 78 76 *Special rates apply I really liked the latest issue (Open Challenge) of IT Next, particularly the cover story on ‘open source’. The industry leaders’ views on this topic were very insightful. I’m infact a regular reader of the magazine and it keeps me up to date with the current trends and happenings in the IT sector in India. I’d like to congratulate the team for constantly releasing such great issues one after the other. Altaf Halde, Managing Director South Asia, Kaspersky Lab India
  • 8. Boss talk |  Dr Hugh Thompson En abl in g Business w i th S ecu r i t y 5 Laws, 4 Corollaries of Security W here is the transformation happening? IT is being aligned with business to enable security officers to rope in more security measures. Security Perception Changes Before evolving the laws and relevant corollaries, it is also essential to look back as to why the field of information security is evolving faster than ever. Now, senior leadership across enterprises are taking interest. “A social science concerned with analysis of attacker motivations and business risk, hackernomics is characterised by 5 fundamental laws and 4 corollaries” Shift in Attackers Attackers are after much more than traditional monetizable data drive hacktivism, statesponsored attacks and IP attacks breaches. Suggestion BOX • In the absence of security education, people make poor security decisions with technology • Attackers usually don’t get in by cracking some impenetrable security control, they look for weak points like trusting employees Change in User Expectations Corollary Security is being woven into service level agreements and price, process maturity and scale can only go so far--“assurance” is also key. Today’s Social Concern: Hackernomics A social science concerned chiefly with description and analysis of attacker motivations, economics, and business risk, hackernomics is characterised by 5 fundamental immutable laws and 4 corollaries. 5 Laws: • Most attackers aren’t evil or insane; they just want something. • Security isn’t about security. It’s about mitigating risk at some cost • Most costly breaches come from simple failures, not from attacker ingenuity 6 itnext | n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 3 • No budget to protect against evil people but against them who are looking for weaker targets • In the absence of metrics, we tend to over focus on risks that are either familiar or recent • Bad guys can, however, be very creative if properly incentivised • Systems need to be easy to use securely and difficult to use insecurely • Business teams and users are already consuming the best technology at will This book helps you understand how to think in multiple dimensions and it’s a great bridge between science and business. The three steps to business assurance are about having continuity, agility and governance. W r i t e r : D o u g l as H o fsta dt e r Pu bl i s h e r : P e n g u i n Bo o ks Dr Hugh Thompson, Senior VP Chief Security Strategist, Blue Coat The Plateau Effect: How enterprise is evolving
  • 10. Update I n d u s t r y Converged Networking to Create Revenue TRENDS | With Internet of Everything (IoE) being the buzzword around the networking world, telecom service providers in India have been constantly looking at solutions that could create the highly flexible and manageable networking ecosystem to enhance their end users. Cisco has launched Network Convergence System (NCS) to power it. The Cisco NCS family consists of three key components that can be managed as a single integrated system for business agility and simplified operations - NCS 6000, NCS 4000 and NCS 2000. With more than 100 patents, it joins Cisco Carrier Routing (CRS) and Aggregation Services Router (ASR) families An overwhelming majority of organizations view their Big a Big Dat Data processing as mission critical. According to a report, most companies are using or planning to use dedicated big data tools in their production environment to cope up with the influx of massive amounts of data. 56% of respondents are planning to move from RDBMS to a NoSQL data store. 30% of those using dedicated tools are planning to combine NoSQL data store with a Hadoop processing platform. Source: Gigaspaces 8 itnext | n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 3 Recent trends in big data tools and architecture 60.0% 50.0% 40.0% 30.0% 20.0% 10.0% 0.0% NoSQL Data store... Hadoop Distro... trends deals products services people jReal-Time Event... Other products... With the launch of NCS, Cisco is trying to help service providers to have the opportunity to play a central role in enabling new and unique experiences by building on their current infrastructure with NCS. Also, NCS adds a dimension to networking, allowing operators to leverage network intelligence for greater monetization pavements. In India, Cisco is in talks with leading telcos but no announcement has been made. Sanjay Rohatgi, Managing Director, Service Provider Sales, Cisco India and SAARC says, “It’s a powerful solution for service providers who are looking to create robust networks, data centers and applications that have advanced capabilities in areas such as programmability, performance, resiliency and scale in order to drive business growth. We are bullish about the adoption and success of NCS in India.” Among the global service providers –BSkyB (Sky), KDDI and Telstra are deploying the Cisco NCS to create new revenue streams, simplify operations and deliver exciting personalized experiences to their customers. NCS’s capabilities enable service providers to not only accommodate growing network traffic but also seize the opportunity created by trillions of programmable devicedriven events generated by the IoE, the networked connection of people, data, processes and things. Cisco claims that NCS has been designed to facilitate such IoE events, which can be ongoing “conversations” creating strings of interactivity between people, applications and devices.
  • 11. Nikon D5300 Panasonic T31 Nikon India has launched the compact and lightweight entry-level DSLR — the D5300. It is Nikon’s first digital SLR camera to offer built-in Wi-Fi and GPS functions. It packs in 24.2 megapixels along with a new EXPEED 4 image processing engine. It’s a budget Android 4.2 based smartphone that runs on 4.2.2 Jelly Bean with a 4-inch display with 800 x 480 pixels. It has a 1.3GHz dual-core processor, 512MB of RAM, 4GB of inbuilt storage. Logitech Z600 speakers This allows multi-pairing with three devices at once, making it easy to play music on smartphone, pc and tablet. It can be cou pled with Bluetooth A2DP-enabled device. Top Vertical Predictions for IT in 2014 and Beyond: Gartner TRENDS | In its annual Predicts research on industry trends titled “Top Industries Predicts 2014, it has featured strategic planning assumptions that CIOs, senior business executives and IT leaders should factor into their enterprise planning and strategy-setting initiatives. Top industry predictions: By 2016, poor return on equity will drive more than 60 per cent of banks worldwide to process transactions on cloud By 2017, more than 60 per cent of government organizations with a CIO and a chief digital officer will eliminate one of these roles. By 2017, 40 per cent of utilities with smart metering solutions Many industries face accelerating pressure for fundamental business transformation will use cloud-based big data analytics By year-end 2015, inadequate ROI will drive insurers to abandon 40 per cent of their current customer-facing mobile apps Full-genome sequencing will stimulate a new market for Around The World medical data banks, with market penetration exceeding three per cent by 2016 By 2016, 60 per cent of U.S. health insurers will know the procedure price and provider quality rating of shoppable medical services in advance Through 2017, K-12 online education spending will increase 25 per cent By 2018, 3D printing will result in the loss of at least $100 billion per year in intellectual property globally By 2017, 15 per cent of consumers will respond to context-aware offers based on their individual demographics and shopper profiles By 2015, 80 per cent of life science organizations will be crushed by elements of big data, exposing poor ROI on IT investments quick byte Salesforce Identity to enable CIOs deliver better identity Salesforce.com has launched Salesforce Identity to provide integrated identity services to connect every employee, customer and partner to any app, on any device. It eliminates complex identity silos—enabling CIOs to deliver a simple, productive and customized user experience across every web, mobile and onpremise app. IT administrators can now simplify the process of provisioning and managing their companies’ collection of mobile, cloud and onpremises applications. Jorma Ollila, ex-chairman of Nokia “Apple concentrated exclusively on expensive telephones. At Nokia, we had thought of doing the same, but the operators wanted inexpensive models instead” n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 3 | itnext 9
  • 12. ASK THE EXPERT Ways to evolve new strategies with changing IT landscape Challenges in the Changing IT Landscape Lack of on-site resources, resources deployed in distributed environments and emerging BYOD trend pose a challenge for IT managers. Here are some tips on how to conquer the major challenges How do you help IT managers face the challenges in the changing IT landscape? Preparing for the future of the company’s IT infrastructure is key. Managers today are struggling to do more with less space, money and time. Besides network threats and the ever-changing IT, they worry about equipment failure and lack of on-site resources. Increasing demand for constant availability and changes in the way IT is deployed have also heightened day-to-day challenges and pressures. We provide the backbone of physical IT infrastructure by offering the most manageable and most adaptable solutions, while at the same time keeping them simple to configure, order and install. Integrated infrastructure solutions include backup power and power distribution, cooling, enclosures, and management software. Adaptable solutions scale from the smallest IT spaces up to multi-megawatt data centres. 10 itnext | n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 3 dossier Amod Ranade General Manager, Datacenter Business Development, Schneider Electric IT Business brings to light challenges faced by IT managers in changing the IT landscape IT deployments are becoming more complex with technology changes such as cloud and virtualisation. How can IT managers align their strategy with a solution to cope up with this? Technologies like cloud computing and virtualisation, have a promise for improving asset utilization on the IT side, and thus reducing costs for the organization. But, many of the benefits of Cloud and Virtualisation can get lost, if the physical infrastructure for the data center is unable to cope with this new architecture on the IT side. The new technologies create workloads that are not static in time and space, as a result it becomes very difficult to channel the Power/Cooling to these dynamic workloads, while ensuring right sizing of the infrastructure. IT managers need to design their data centers in a modular fashion, and deploy management suites that help them visualize the supply and demand of Power/ Cooling/Space/etc. Over 70 per cent of reported data center outages are attributed to human error, and a
  • 13. ask the expert CUSTOM PUBLISHING “ IT is driving corporates to move beyond challenges of compliance, regulation, management and security ” strong management and monitoring platform can go a long way in preventing these. Unlike space-filling, energy inefficient servers in house, cloud computing allows you to pay only for the services that you use. By simply moving to cloud computing, a company seeking to reduce energy consumption and energy expenses can also cut its carbon emissions drastically. Companies are turning to energy efficient strategies to minimise the energy needed to manage all their data. But, there are gaps to fill. For example, Greenpeace International reports that companies not only need to measure how efficiently they are using electricity, but also ensure that the electricity chosen to manage their cloud is clean. How do you see the IT Manager tackling BYOD? The demand for 24/7 availability is ever increasing. About 700 million WiFi technology users worldwide have to be catered to. When the market for corporate mobile phones was experiencing its first explosive period of growth, the handsets were basic and functionality restricted. So you pretty much used what you were given--the phones still had novelty value. But today, people want to express themselves; add their own apps, social sites and media--music, video and photos. At Schneider Electric, we see an increasing number of people wanting to add their own laptops, tablets and smartphones to the company network. It shows that the consumerisation of IT is driving corporates to move beyond challenges of compliance, regulation, management and security, to a point where half of all businesses might be making BYOD available by 2017 as there is a business benefit. BYOD is transforming the economics of corporate network computing. Against this backdrop, IT managers should opt for modular IT infrastructure to prepare themselves for increased dependence on IT. Besides, maintaining constant uptime becomes critical for which they should opt for monitoring and management solutions to track the health of IT which can enable them to predict and prevent future problems. How should IT managers tackle IT space utilisation issues? Space optimisation 62% increase in DC efficiency is ensured by deploying server virtualisation and optimized power/cooling techniques Optimise open spaces through better organisation. Utilise solutions that incorporate open frame racks, cable management, and wall-mounted enclosures to make the most of available space in a cost-effective way. Every building undergoes changes over time., resulting in negative impact on building performance, lower productivity and higher energy and building maintenance costs. To address this problem, many companies are “recommissioning” their buildings as a way to fine-tune and update building performance. Increased density and heat load Ensure that you use proper cooling to manage the added heat from the increased density in your space. Utilise row/ rack based cooling to provide proper air flow and ventilation for an ideal IT environment. Row/Rack-based cooling is also much more efficient while handling higher densities. Remote site management Remote sites can be easily managed with monitoring software that allows you to manage and control all of your environments from a single location or device. Having a single centralised dashboard allows you to proactively manage your IT environments and avoid potential downtime disasters. Energy efficiency Save energy by implementing energy efficient UPS systems and provide clean power while simplifying the IT space. Also, make sure your power and cooling are best designed for your needs by rightsizing and implementing modular designs to maximise efficiency. Availability for Transition to the Cloud Transitioning to the cloud can be a beneficial business practice, but brings a greater need for constant availability. Ensure that you have a rightsized UPS solution which provides enough runtime to get you through a blackout. Consider an extended runtime UPS if you do not have a generator, which will allow your equipment to ride through longer blackouts. The section BROUGHT YOU BY We believe that the tips below would help in resolving the IT space challenges n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 3 | itnext 11
  • 14. 12 itnext | n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 3
  • 15. art of virualising desktop | cover story IT decision makers bring in innovative best practices to make desktop virtualisation easy to deploy so as to enhance productivity and reduce cost By Su b hank ar Ku nd u n G e e t h a Desi gn by hari das bal an | i l lu st rat i o n by s h i g i L narayanan Innovations in desktop virtualisation are being increasingly leveraged by Inside Pages 15 | Easy Steps to Virtual Deployment 19 | BYOD VDI: Harmoniously aligned 21 | DaaS is taking Baby Steps 24 | VDI’s Licensing cost justification business functions and units to make the processes effective and efficient, which in turn results in enhanced productivity. Senior IT managers at large are working on use cases around quick IT infrastructure delivery time for service centres in order to put business-critical plans in place. Manufacturing plant users are hopping on to the desktop virtualisation platform over WAN to enable cost saving through procurement of thin clients rather than desktops or laptops. There is little doubt that desktop virtualisation is making inroads across enterprises and IT heads are ready to embrace the technology so as to drive down cost and enhance productivity; this, despite the fact that the acquisition cost on the desktop virtualisation is considered to be high. However, the key difference here is to find out if IT managers are taking the right approach to meeting their business demands and boosting productivity. n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 3 | itnext 13
  • 16. “Having effective management capabilities, IT managers now need not worry about how to provision these desktops or the apps to be consumed on a different device, but think of effective ways of managing the virtual desktops” Srikanth Karnakota Director – Server and Cloud Business, Microsoft. Team IT Next embarked on a study to find how desktop virtualisation is being perceived and the effective mechanisms of deploying the same. Interestingly, IT managers are making concerted efforts to build the right virtual environment in terms of choosing the right virtualisation hypervisor, choosing the right security to make the virtual environment secure, the right monitoring tools to evolve a monitoring mechanism to ensure relevant alerts, the perfect backup strategy for valid backup and educating and documenting, which is a crucial step. Srikanth Karnakota, Director – Server and Cloud Business, Microsoft, says, “The roots of desktop virtualisation technology is not in desktop but in server technology which is the backbone. If we Why Desktop Virtualisation? Enhanced productivity and efficiency Improved management and maintenance, helpdesk tickets down Power savings compared to traditional PCs Optimum storage utilisation D esktop virtualisation has enabled faster booting time of desktops, which earlier used to run into minutes Security and governance have improved. Antivirus, patch update etc., now happen on the virtual layer/master image rather than on physical machines and impacting its performance. Audit of end user systems has become much simpler and consumes less time as compared to set-up with physical machines 14 itnext | n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 3 look at Windows Server 2012, the latest we launched a week back, we have taken desktop virtualisation to a whole new level altogether; because now, within the server, IT managers can do different kinds of activities--host desktop, pool desktop or a hosted session.” “Having the server platform, IT managers don’t need to buy additional infrastructure, or any additional capabilities. Having effective management capabilities , IT managers now need not worry about how to provision these desktops or the apps be consumed on a different device, but think of effective ways of managing the virtual desktops and ensure that the cost does not spiral up on both storage and networking on a different device,” says Karnakota. Clear Strategy in Place IT managers are taking a 360 degree approach in evaluating various functions which could be impacted with desktop virtualisation deployment. For instance, they are evaluating desktop as a service model in working out a cloud model, observing the BYOD trends to bring in necessary interfaces. imaging by pe terson pj Right Virtual Strategy
  • 17. art of virtualising desktop | cover story Easy Steps to Virtual Deployment IT decision makers are making conscious efforts to evolve an effective mechanism to assess the desktop virtualisation environment and deployment methods Is Virtual Deployment an Art? Deploying virtualisation methodology is an art, as deployment of desktop virtualisation requires detailed asessment of one’s IT environment, and implementation strategy differs from one organisation to another. Anoop Handa, EVP CIO, Fullerton India says, “Deployment of endpoint infrastructure and embracing new technology such as desktop virtualisation for end-user computing comes with its own challenges due to its inherent impact on the end-users across the organisation. Desktop virtualisation deployment can be termed an organisation-wide ‘IT enabled Transformation/Change’ initiative. To streamline deployment of desktop virtualisation and make it easier, the following key steps are recommended: Detailed assessment of current desktop computing environment Compilation of users and categorisation of users basis function, geography, data requirements, data volume and need for availability of local data Appreciation and awareness of a variety of end-user peripherals-printers, biometric devices, scanners, etc Review of bandwidth availability at various locations that access centralised data centre environment Evaluation of technology and final selection of the most relevant and most effective technology in consideration of longer term vision and organisational fitment Selection of the ‘right’ implementation partner Building up a comprehensive ROI/ business case and listing down all “The very first step is to do the profiling of users after a successful proof of concept of technology at your organisation which will further help in getting the sizing right” Sachin Jain CIO, Evalueserve n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 3 | itnext 15
  • 18. cover story | Art of Virtualising desktop benefits – both IT benefits as well as beyond Testing the waters through a pilot test / proof-of-concept Evaluation of test results and resolution of identified concerns/issues “And only once you are confident and the test results positive, should you embark upon this journey on a wider scale and progress with complete deployment,” says Handa. Nilesh Goradia, Head Pre-Sales, India Subcontinent-Citrix, emphasises that the first step of desktop virtualisation be to identify user groups or user types in an organisation. “Areas to look at – what are the user groups? What kind of things do you do using a physical desktop? What kind of applications do you use on it? Within that, we also try to test the compatibility of the application such as a newer environment where the application will run,” he says. Goradia further adds, “The second part would be the design of the solution. Design is important because DV does not work on a stand-alone mode as it involves a lot of components such as blade, servers, storage, applications, networking; if tried on the Internet, there will be critical security components which will be involved.” So, all these components have to work in sync if one has to deliver a particular solution effectively. The hard disk components need to talk to each other. A wrong design can lead to wrong implementation. It leads to a dissatisfied user. According to HP’s Vikram K, Director, ISS, HP India, some easy steps to deploy virtual desktop are: 1. nderstanding users’ application U and workload 2. Doing a proof of concept for a small number of users with actual intended deployment to test all use cases 3. Designing the solution which includes choosing the right virtualisation platform and methodology 4. Sizing virtualisation hosts (servers), storage and networking infrastructure for the requirement 5. Deploying the full solution in production to enable users to have access from their client devices like tablet, smart phones etc Sachin Jain, CIO, Evalueserve, recommends that one should always look for used cases from his/her organisation to build a case of desktop virtualisation. “The very first step is to do the profiling of users after a successful proof of concept of technology at your organisation which will further help in getting the sizing right. These users should then be taken through a test phase to further filter or add more users on the basis of “Deployment of desktop virtualisation comes with its own challenges due to its inherent impact on the end-users across the organisation” Anoop Handa EVP CIO, Fullerton India 16 itnext | n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 3 performance and user acceptance. Post that, the team should focus on execution in a phased manner without disturbing the entire organisation at the same time. This approach will also help in discovering and handling unexpected challenges/issues,” adds Jain. Best Practices to Sustain the Strategy Besides putting their best foot forward to deploy effective methods, IT decision makers are learning their best lessons by way of putting in place the best practices. Jayantha Prabhu, CTO, Essar Services India, drives high availability, security and backup recovery and retention as the best practices in the desktop virtualisation environment. He adds, “High availability in the VDI set-up is configured to provide availability to end users and flexibility to work without disruption. This also enables the end user to be connected to his workplace without any disruption even when he is travelling.” Prabhu ensured taking adequate steps to keep the VDI set-up intrusion-free as the company was publishing VDI on the internet.
  • 19. Frequent Breakdowns Communication happens through the SSL VPN solution, which is integrated with dual factor token-based authentication. As a best practice, all backup of shared storage should configure with retention time. Disaster recovery for virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) requires many of the same measures one would take for conventional PCs: backup methods and careful planning. In fact, VDI can make it even easier to recover data because information is not stored on end-user devices. hampering your business? Deploying virtualisation methodology is an art, as deployment of desktop virtualisation requires detailed assessment of one’s IT environment and implementation plan However, the lessons that Prabhu and his team learned by way of applying best practices was to make sure the reasons for the project were well-defined. In addition, these were important: Senior management support to address change management How to support heavy users    Making sure the network infrastructure is up to the task You cannot have all users covered by a single vendor Integration with the surrounding ecosystem Program management and organisational structure for the implementation Ramesh Vantipalli (Head EUC India South –Systems Engineering Technology), VMware, says the real value in converting to a virtual desktop environment is realised only when a variety of seemingly conflicting requirements are met: a) the end users are happy, b) the corporation’s needs for security and compliance are met, c) the IT organisation has the control it needs without having to add costly resources, and d) the overall system performance and cost of ownership are improved. in Control Rooms ® Removes harmful gases Prevents corrosion of electronic components 1. Achieving the best end user experience An important consideration for selecting host rendering versus client rendering is the quality of the end user experience. End users care about the image display quality and experiencing no Get in touch with us today! y ed b Back Serv ice ® ISO 9001:2008 14001:2004 CERTIFIED Phone: +91 11 23906777 • E-Mail: bryairmarketing@pahwa.com www.bryairfiltration.com 30.04.2013 RB/BA/1319HVCA1 Some of the best practices are given below for reference: Gas Phase Filtration • Most efficient system for purifying the air • Based on advanced Honeycomb technology using chemical filters • Bry-Air EcoScrub looks sleek and works quietly • Designed to complement the servers 28 cm x 10.3 cm
  • 20. cover story | art of virtualising desktop Effective Steps in Deployment Evaluation of Technologies Approach document to Senior Management with Executive Summary POC of Comparative Technologies D etailed Business case with Business, Quantitative and Qualitative benefits F inalisation of Solution in CIO Council Inputs of Detailed Information Gathering) Project Plan Finalisation BOM Finalisation Procurement Installation and Configuration Testing Phase: (Application testing and ecosystem Integration) GO-LIVE Techno Commercial comparison and Procurement. Architecture and Configuration Audit D etailed Information Gathering: (User and Application Profiling) Project Handover and Sustenance Architecture Finalisation: (On perceptible delay in image rendering. They also care about the response time or latency of the system they are using. They expect their desktop to provide nearly instantaneous responses for any query regardless of the type of information being retrieved--just like a laptop. Host rendering and client rendering can both provide users with quality experience and reasonable response times for most environments. The difference lies in which can provide the best experience for the changing network conditions. This will help to determine which approach is more suitable for your environment. 2. Making your organisation secur and compliant Many corporations have made security and compliance their top requirements when deploying a server hosted virtual desktop environment. The need for better security has been demonstrated numerous times with theft of laptops containing customer account information and other mission critical data. The risk of corporate confidential 18 itnext | n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 3 Technical Support to the Operations Team information getting into the wrong hands has never been higher. 3. Making your organisation secure and compliant Managing operating system updates, application updates, firmware changes and more at the end user’s desktop is a full time job for most IT administrators. In an environment that relies on full laptop and desktop support, organisations can spend $2,000 or more per year on maintaining each device. The IT organisation typically has to have someone assigned to be physically onsite in case one of the users has an issue. Centralised management is an option only for a wellmanaged PC environment and the restrictions that this implies are not practical for most organisations. The inefficiencies and escalating costs of managing PCs at the endpoint are well documented. Most CIOs agree that zero management at the client is the most efficient, easiest, the lowest cost-wise and the most secure implementation for virtualising desktops. 4. Gaining Freedom from Application and Video Format Dependence Desktop virtualisation doesn’t tie the user to a specific version of an application or a specific video format. It frees the user and the IT organisation from specific hardware and operating system requirements and concerns that impact application versions. In this type of environment, future applications just work since specific hardware is not needed at the client. Host side rendering allows desktop virtualisation to accomplish. For client-side rendering, this flexibility is lost because client side rendering requires specific CODECs at the endpoint for video. Future video formats are not guaranteed to work with client side rendering without IT intervention and upgrade at the endpoint. Host-side rendering is completely application and video format independent, which provides a virtualised environment with no dependence on any additional software or hardware. Client side rendered environments struggle to keep up with the latest application user interfaces. To future-proof one’s investment and have a low maintenance solution, a solid, host-rendered environment makes for an excellent investment choice. 5.Optimising network bandwidth consumption Network bandwidth is at a premium during peak hours in most organisations. Network administrators need devices accessing the network to use the available bandwidth wisely. Peak hours don’t happen 100 per cent of the time and, in fact, account for less than half of daily operations. During non-peak hours, administrators desire network devices to use bandwidth optimally while still providing the best user experience. The real goal of an IT organisation is to use network bandwidth and resources intelligently, i.e., during peak hours use less and exhibit a “fair share” policy, and during non-peak hours, use as much bandwidth as needed and expand to provide the best possible end user experience.
  • 21. art of virtualising desktop | cover story BYOD and VDI: Harmoniously Aligned IT managers concur that VDI has become the primary enabler of BYOD due to its core ability to stream data to mobile devices in an encrypted and containerised manner Most industry players, vendors and senior IT managers agree that desktop virtualisation and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) complement each other as the former is imperative to provide a robust and effective framework and foundation for BYOD adoption. Anoop Handa, EVP CIO, Fullerton India, who has deployed desktop virtualisation, though, believes that desktop virtualisation technology is necessary to enable BYOD adoption. He argues that they are two distinct initiatives, which need to be dealt with exclusively. Handa says, “While the initial phase of implementation looks similar, the extent of investments and the IT infrastructure deployment at the backend differ from one to the other.” In the case of Essar, Jayantha Prabhu Chief Technology Officer, Essar Services India says, “In our case, desktop virtualisation has become one of the primary enablers of BYOD due to its core ability to stream data to mobile devices in an encrypted and containerised manner.” Due to containerisation, the existing applications continue to run without modification due to their decoupling from the Local OS of the mobile device. Prabhu says that the ability to restrict the data flow from the VDI to the local device also means that malware protection resides on the server rather than on individual devices, making device security in a BYOD environment far easier to maintain. Another advantage that BYOD would see, as per Ashish Khanna, AVP-IT, EIH Ltd, is that with the latest virtualisation technologies, it is very imperative that organisations devise their BYOD strategy along with desktop virtualisation as both these technologies provide benefit to the mobile user force for connecting their devices with the enterprise systems while they are on the move. Sachin Jain, CIO, Evalueserve, looks at desktop virtualisation as an infrastructure layer which is needed “It is critical to create separate environment for corporate applications and data and this can be completely isolated, secured and customised by the enterprise IT admin” Ramesh Vantipalli Head EUC India South-Systems Engineering Technology, VMware n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 3 | itnext 19
  • 22. cover story | art of virtualising desktop to build a secure and successful BYOD strategy. “Our objective is to give people complete desktop experience anywhere and on any device. which helps them maintain their efficiency level,” he says. “Desktop virtualisation helps in extending a restricted shell on a user’s personal device which does not require a two-way communication between the user PC and virtual desktop,” says Jain. Virtualisation Vendors’ Take on BYOD Desktop virtualisation vendors are keen to know what IT managers are trying to do and the outcome of their task when the primary challenge is security. Srikanth Karnakota, Director – Server and Cloud Business, Microsoft, lists out three key challenges for IT managers with regard to aligning VDI with BYOD. According to Karnakota, it is critical to find how IT managers are providing secure access to devices which are not necessarily IT enabled or IT managed. The second problem, according to him, is deployment and provisioning of different kind of apps running within the firewall of the enterprise. The third challenge is management: getting the corporate data managed, as IT managers don’t want any remote swip and putting in place a concrete policy. To address these challenges, a vendor like Microsoft puts forth its system centre (management tool) and windows server together. “The technology we have built around the second challenge is appstore which has provisioning capability and is built on top of the windows server. There are certain apps which you can mark out, like corporate apps that can be marked out outside the firewall. They could be consumed on the go,” he says. Nilesh Goradia, Head Pre-Sales, India Subcontinent-Citrix, relates an instance of how its customer faced the challenge of dissemination on iPad. “We enabled the user to deploy the application on the desktop virtualisation tool to enable seamless access of information on iPad.” Goradia says that the communication between devices and servers that host OS and apps pave the way for effective control. Ramesh Vantipalli (Head EUC 20 itnext | n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 3 “It is imperative that organisations devise their BYOD strategy along with desktop virtualisation as these technologies benefit the mobile user force” Ashish Khanna, AVP-IT, EIH Ltd India South--Systems Engineering Technology), VMware believes that a majority of workers bringing in so many of their personal devices, (and apps) into organisations has ushered in trends such as “bring your own device” (BYOD) and “corporate-owned, personally enabled” (COPE), which have become mainstay essentials to delivering IT scale and end-user choice. Vantipalli explains that the VMware Horizon Suite’s solutions enable users to access all their files and applications at any time, across devices.” “It is critical to create a separate environment for corporate applications and data and this can be completely isolated, secured and customised by the enterprise IT admin; it can prevent corporate data leakage and preserve the privacy of employees’ personal information,” he says. Vikram K, director, ISS, HP India, considers it a big deal for CIOs as they try to transform their IT departments from asset management outfits to service delivery organisations. “An agile, scalable, and cost-effective desktop virtualisation infrastructure helps CIOs achieve this metamorphosis and provides measurable ROI,” he avers. They need to align their client’s virtualisation strategy to deliver both VDI and BYOD, as today’s IT infrastructure helps IT heads to achieve this seamlessly from a single infrastructure.
  • 23. art of virtualising desktop | cover story DaaS is Taking Baby Steps Desktop as a Service is on the anvil, as most IT managers are optimistic about its uptake with new platforms like Android and Mac fuelling the growth While the industry may not find many instances or use cases around Desktop as a Service to enable cloud model around this technology, there have been a lot of positive trends towards this. It is critical to discuss under what circumstances DaaS can take off and what factors can fuel this to the maturity curve. Anoop Handa, EVP CIO, Fullerton India, is confident that DaaS (Desktop as a Service) is very much on the anvil and its adoption will increase over time. “As we centralise end-user computing environment in data centres and make it accessible to endusers over a private cloud, we are actually paving the way for adoption of desktop as a service to end users,” emphasises Handa. Handa reiterates the fact that several IT services organisations are focusing on this domain of provisioning and supporting Desktop as a Service by assuring Application Delivery as a Service (AdaaS) model on a variety of end-user devices. IT teams today need to move from application deployment to application delivery and from monitoring managing devices to delivering enduser performance. “ADaaS deploys this approach to break IT silos and deliver lowered costs, greater productivity and IT efficiency to businesses and that’s what we have gone ahead within our organisation,” says Handa. Jayantha Prabhu, CTO, Essar “The future is very bright. Last year, we saw many customers demanding DaaS, as desktop hosting has come a long way” Nilesh Goradia Head Pre-Sales, India Subcontinent-Citrix n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 3 | itnext 21
  • 24. “The penetration of Android and MAC into the environment will see DaaS progressing more quickly” Jayantha Prabhu CTO, Essar Services India Limited Services India Limited, avers that it will take some time to mature due to the over dependency on Microsoft as the primary solution provider. “However, the penetration of Android and MAC into the environment will see DaaS progressing more quickly. Future desktop architectures have a variety of attributes in common--for example, the ability to separate the system image (OS, apps etc.) from the underlying hardware, the ability to implement disaster recovery, high availability, mobility,” Prabhu adds. Case Study 1 EIH Ltd (Oberoi Group) Enabled Offline Mode for Users on Travel With Desktop Virtualisation, EIH has experienced flexibility, improved IT agility to enable a new user and ensure data always remained secure and safe within a data centre, says Ashish Khanna, AVP-IT, EIH Ltd (Oberoi Group). As a best practice, EIH Ltd has enabled users who travel to work on their machines in offline mode and to sync automatically with the server data as soon as they plug back into the network. “This approach has given a huge edge to users of virtualisation; even in the event of a disaster or a machine crash, they are provided with a new machine to work 22 itnext | n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 3 without any disruption to the data and virtually no downtime, resulting in higher productivity,” says Khanna. EIH started to implement desktop virtualisation way back in 2009 when its flagship hotel, The Oberoi Gurgaon opened. After meeting with success in terms of accruing higher productivity of its team and functions, the IT team followed the same strategy and deployed virtualisation tools across all new hotels, which opened afterwards; these included Trident Hyderabad and Oberoi Dubai. The organisation has virtualised 150 desktops spread across three locations. When delivered over the cloud, desktops will combine capabilities like mobility, ubiquitous access and platform independence and will allow emerging, lightweight ARM-based tablets to access powerhouse x86 applications and vice-versa. Phased Approach “As the on-boarding or acquisition cost of the desktop virtualisation technology was very high, we decided to deploy desktop virtualisation in the event of a new property or where a large refresh of desktops/laptops was required,” says Khanna. Khanna and team went in for a PDCA (Plan, do, check and act) strategy with regard to VDI and looked at specific needs of laying thrust on the right profiling of users and the right sizing of these profiles cutting across sales, marketing, front office etc. After evaluating several solutions, EIH deployed VMware’s Horizon Mirage to provide centralised image management for Windows desktops with enhanced levels of backup and OS migration capabilities. Mirage helped in categorisation of the data, so that the IT staff could perform more granular management of the endpoint.
  • 25. art of virtualising desktop | cover story He sees MAC, Android, Linux or Windows virtual machines hosted on servers in the cloud made accessible to users over a wide area network. DaaS and Cloud go Hand in Glove Most players argue that capex is the biggest challenge now as CIOs report to CFOs and cash outflow is a major concern. Nilesh Goradia, Head Pre-Sales, India Subcontinent-Citrix, believes cost effectiveness to be one of the major factors why people are looking at DaaS and getting onto an opex kind of a model. “The future is very bright. Last year, we saw many customers demanding DaaS, as desktop hosting has come a long way, enabling managed service providers to explore new opportunities to develop higher-value cloud-based offers,” says Goradia. Virtualisation vendors argue that the explosion of mobile devices, mobile and web applications, and enhanced interest in the cloud is driving businesses to re-evaluate their desktop strategy. VMware recently announced the acquisition of Desktone , in desktop-as-aservice (DaaS) with an advanced multitenant desktop virtualisation platform for delivering Windows desktops and applications as a cloud service. According to Ramesh Vantipalli (Head EUC India South –Systems Engineering Technology), VMware, the combination of VMware and Desktone’s global partner network will allow customers in all regions to benefit from the economies of scale provided by DaaS. “The addition of the Desktone platform further extends the benefits of desktop virtualisation by offering an additional choice to organisations looking for predictable economics, flexibility of cloud deployment or simple deployment and management due to the lack of resources or in-house VDI expertise,” says Vantipalli. The benefits of the DaaS platform, as Vantipalli explains, were purposebuilt for service providers to deliver windows applications and desktops as a cloud service with Case Study 2 Evalueserve Easy-to-Manage infrastructure for Desktop and Servers Evalueserve’s business model involved providing a variety of services to clients while delivering the highest possible levels of security and availability. With four data centres spread across India, catering to the growing demands of both employees and clients, and managing the data centres was a challenge. Consequently, Sachin Jain, CIO of Evalueserve, was given the task of finding a solution to address the manageability, scalability, and security of Evalueserve’s servers and desktops. To address their challenges, Sachin and his team evaluated a number of solutions. Multiple vendors were evaluated on a number of criteria to determine if they would be able to meet the exacting standards of a company that prides itself on the highest level of service to its clients. After running a month-long proof of- concept from multiple vendors, VMware vSphere and VMware View were decided upon as the only viable choices. “Features such as vMotion, thin provisioning and high availability were tested extensively with each of Evalueserve’s critical applications,” says Jain. VMware View was also thoroughly tested in a number of scenarios to ensure that the IT team would have the best possible solution for their desktop environment. VMware View was leveraged to deploy virtual desktops for employees throughout the organisation. The additional security and manageability of the virtual desktops has allowed the IT team to focus on what it does best--support the business. VMware View enabled Evalueserve to maintain the highest standards of compliance and security, and IT team to provide employees with flexi-seating. unique capabilities, such as multitenancy, Self-Service and Grid-based architecture for elastic scalability. Multi-tenancy – A must for cloud delivery. Each customer gets a separate virtual environment to ensure security while cloud providers are able to manage multiple customers under one platform. Self-service of virtual desktops – Simple provisioning from the cloud enables self-service for IT of full VDI, shared session remote desktop service (RDS) desktops and applications without the need to procure hardware or software. Grid-based architecture for elastic scalability – Advanced architecture enables unlimited scalability across multiple geographies and data centres. Low cost of delivery – Open source based technology eliminates Microsoft licensing fees and thirdparty software management, resulting in cost savings over competitive desktop virtualisation offerings. In short, DaaS gives enterprises the ability to manage costs, extend capacity on-demand and reduce the time required when desktop loads change. While Srikanth Karnakota, Director – Server and Cloud Business, Microsoft, does not see a significant uptake on DaaS, he does not rule out the possibility of SMBs and branch offices of large enterprises opting to host it on third party cloud. In order to support DaaS, Microsoft has enabled Windows licensing for third party. HP’s Vikram K, director, ISS, HP India, emphasises that the next stage of the desktop virtualisation is Desktop-asa-service (DaaS) which is easier to deploy, less expensive to manage and maintain and is more flexible. “However, due to higher network bandwidth requirement for DaaS, this is still in the early stages. With application virtualisation and hosted applications, a few selected applications like Office365 are already being hosted on the Cloud,” he says. n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 3 | itnext 23
  • 26. cover story | Art of virtualising desktop What Can Justify the Licensing Cost in VDI? While licensing for desktop virtualisation is high, reduction in the cost of application rollout, provisioning, updates, maintenance and training can justify the investment IT heads are aware of the fact that the licensing cost on the deployment of desktop virtualisation is relatively high, given that it is still not ubiquitous. However, virtualisation vendors do formulate certain theories around how to perceive the licensing cost to make it more cost effective and justify the investment to drive RoI. Ramesh Vantipalli (Head EUC India South –Systems Engineering Technology), VMware, recommends IT managers to consider key aspects when it comes to desktop virtualisation software licensing: OS and software licensing needs to be strongly analysed, especially when making the move to a VDI structure Customers and organisations alike need to follow the solution providers’ licensing structure, and necessary controls need to be put in place to ensure access to confidential information for designated users within enterprises Misinformation is evil. Organisations and users alike need to take appropriate actions to ensure they have all the necessary information from the provider directly. VMware allows organisations to choose named-user licensing or concurrent- 24 itnext | n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 3 user licensing for the product suite. “A benefit of concurrent-user licensing is that one can rotate in users and not have to pay for licenses for users not on the system. Concurrent-user licensing is especially suited to call centre environments with shift workers and to educational environments where not every individual is using the system at one time,” says Vantipalli. The benefit of named-user licensing for the suite is that one named user can use as many devices as he wishes at once, on any or all of the products. In a desktop virtualisation phenomenon, the licensing models existing are either per device, per user or per concurrent. The challenge, as Nilesh Goradia, Head Pre-Sales, India Subcontinent-Citrix, observes Innovations 3 D engineering - Virtual delivery of 3D professional graphics applications and workstations Support to hardware-based GPU sharing of OpenGL and DirectX Provisioning many users to share a GPU Hosted shared desktops (HSD) Thin Clients End-point devices and middleware to multiple device Active Directory integration for dynamic desktop sessions Enhanced security with support for two-factor authentication C itrix’s AppDNA Software - Simplified overall installation, setup and user environment to accommodate a broader range of enterprises, the channel and global SIs. Enabling offline mode for select users Secured access of desktop/laptop of users on mobile platforms Thin provisioning of applications P rinting with Universal Print Server Personalized VDI
  • 27. “VDI does not reduce the licenses required. Rather, it helps in reducing operational expenses by simplifying desktops patching, OS and application updates” Vikram K Director, ISS, HP India is not primarily from a desktop virtualisation perspective, it’s more of an affiliated licensing, an application licensing challenge. “Most CIOs are unable to give clarity on how applications are going to work. That could make the licensing even more complex,” says Goradia. Many vendors’ licensing model revolves around per concurrent and per user modules, which is considered to be complex. Srikanth Karnakota, Director – Server and Cloud Business, Microsoft, says, “Moving away from the concurrent user base, we have introduced licenses based on a particular machine or device. It’s per device model. With this model, cost reduction is ensured.” Microsoft sees the reduction in cost with the OS coming free along with the windows server; there is no additional cost, the cost is only around VDI. Vikram K, Director, ISS, HP India, observes, “Virtual Desktop infrastructure environment does not reduce the licenses required. Rather, it helps in reducing operational expenses by simplifying desktops patching, OS and application updates and infrastructure cost.” “IT heads can consider solutions like application virtualisation, session virtualisation or presentation virtualisation for better TCO,” he says. Higher Cost, Higher Benefit? Anoop Handa, EVP CIO, Fullerton India, believes that not all licensing models have fully matured/aligned to the changing environment for end-user computing using desktop virtualisation. In addition, this area continues to be a challenge and has to be checked, verified and included in the business case. Jayantha Prabhu, CTO, Essar Services India Limited, says that to accrue greater benefits from desktop virtualisation licenses, we need to be very clear with the licensing models of the Desktop VDI solutions providers and the Desktop OS vendor before we choose to implement VDI. “It is imperative that we have a detailed and joint discussion with the Desktop VDI solutions providers and the Desktop OS vendor and have their sign off on the Licensing Understanding,” avers Prabhu. “Organisations that have Enterprise Agreements tend to benefit in this case as compared to those having Select Agreements for specific products only,” explains Prabhu. Ashish Khanna, AVP-IT, EIH Ltd., agrees that currently the licensing of virtualisation is very costly and hence the on-boarding cost of desktop virtualisation is very high. If the number of users deployed is lesser, then the ROI for the investment comes after a long period, which doesn’t justify the initial high capex. In order to have more penetration in the market, this technology has to come at a lower cost. Sachin Jain, CIO, Evalueserve, finds this not an easy puzzle to solve. “Different virtualisation solutions will lead to different licensing models which are usually complicated and at times do not sound logical. “One has to examine the model, and find a best fit for the solution he/she settles for, based on other important factors such as ROI, recurring cost, support cost, etc,” he says. n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 3 | itnext 25
  • 28. insight | Right approach, right Solution Right Approach, Right Solution As big data goes bigger, IT managers are challenged with the task of identifying data that qualifies for big data and finding appropriate solutions to process it very decade or every five years, the hype around one technological innovation or trend creates a buzz in the IT community. It was big cloud till the recent past. Not that people have stopped talking about it. But big data is the new hero. The purpose of big data is still multi-layered, multi-defined. Gartner’s 3Vs--Volume, Variety and Velocity--focused more on the overall management of data. Not all IT managers agree about 3Vs. It all depends on the organisational need and what kind of big data solutions they plan to implement. There is another V that IT managers like to add-- Value. Why big data bothers? Everyone has been pondering over the need of big data, but there is a tire kicking. The confusion among IT managers and CIOs is around the alignment of these 4Vs in the real need. It has been observed that the client may not have a need of big data solution as a traditional data warehouse solution is good enough to meet the requirement. “But there is an end of life which we often overlook. It’s pertinent to review the policies as IT managers might need to redefine what part of data they should retain, delete and archive” Sunil Ranka BI Professional and Consultant 26 itnext | n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 3 ILUSTRATIO N: Anil t E by S un i l Ran k a
  • 29. It’s easier to qualify a use case but convincing some IT managers about the adoption of a big data solution is a daunting task, especially if the organisation is coming from a pure play data warehousing background. To get to the right approach or solution, it is critical for them to understand the big data life cycle and take into account its inherent challenges, changes in approach to big data, taking cues from big players, understand potential issues with packaged solutions, besides the changes required in the IT thought leadership, and work out an effective implementation plan. Big Data Life Cycle The data life cycle in big data environments has four stages – acquire, organise, analyse and decide large amounts of data from both new data formats, as well as traditional formats, in real time. Big data grows incredibly fast. Each day, we create 2.5 exabytes of data. Most big data is fleeting by nature as the data mined from timely sources such as sensor data, social media and web logs, when used in real time, is outdated before one knows it. So, in the big data life cycle, acquiring data from different sources and organising them, paving the way for intelligent analysis for better decision making is what defines the entire lifecycle of big data. As one scales the big data environment, it is important to ensure that life cycle requirements can be supported within your current constraints of storage capacity, bandwidth, processor and memory speeds and metadata depth which covers all the 3Vs. But there is an end of life which we often overlook. With the excitement around big data, it’s normal practice not to foresee the ephemeral nature of data that no longer is necessary or to determine what should happen when that day comes. Challenges in Approach A typical data warehousing project approaches a traditional waterfall methodology, where in requirements, design, implementation, verifications and maintenance follows a serial approach. In most of the cases, the only thing that comes out at the end of implementation is the solution. Due to the tight deadline and serialisation, there is always a rush to complete all the individual states before the final goal could be met, resulting in rejecting key change requests and delivering invaluable in the past and may not count towards key decision making in future. Big Data projects have been a new kid on the block; right from the concept and project execution. A different mindset and methodologies are needed to drive this. Hadoop and the Big Players The Apache Hadoop project develops open-source software for reliable, scalable, distributed computing. It has been designed to scale across thousands of machines with fewer setups with reduced latency and high fault tolerance. Hadoop helps enable a computing solution that is scalable, cost effective, flexible, and fault tolerant. Change in Approach Look at Solution from Top Down rather than Bottom Up Traditionally, IT tackles data problems from the bottom up, as in after-thefact data analysis. But with big data, the solution approach needs to be top down, where in the power of the solution is more on pro-active or predictive analysis. n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 3 | itnext 27
  • 30. insight | right approach, right solution What goes into big data implementation plan? 4-6 weeks 12-15 weeks Discovery Analysis Interviewing Key Business Users Confirming Problem Statement Confirming Key Objective Goal Defining Data Sources and Correlation Build a Sandbox Discovery Analysis Project Kick Start Iteration (1…) KPI and Attributes ETL/ MapReduce Data Pull Application User Interface Data Correlation Test Case Iterative feedback Correlation Guided Navigation Attributes Developing Test Case and Unit Testing Business Acceptance Testing Defining Security Needs: User Roles, Security Groups, etc Defining Technical Architecture and Design Defining Release Plan Build Solution for “Unknown Unknown” With limited storage space and shrinking budget, IT pulls in only that data which is the need of the hour. But with big data, the approach needs to be more on pulling in as much as data possible for better predictability and analysis. Build Now and Show Now IT needs to build in big data application with “Build Now and Show Now” attitude. System Integration Testing Implementing Security Production Readiness Go Live of “Data Science.” It is a combination of mathematics, computer programming and computer science. Newer Data Governance Policies With big data, governance policies need to be relaxed and should be more favourable for data access. A favourable and relaxed policy doesn’t mean “Access To All.” Rather, it means it needs to be relaxed compared to history. A New Job Role: “Data Science” Potential Issues with Packaged Solutions Big data is the emergence of a new stream Big data, being a newer technology, top 10 vendors for big data solutions Splunk Turns machine data into valuable insights Opera Solutions Data-Science-as-a-Service Mu Sigma Data-Science-as-a-Service Palantir Big data software Cloudera Apache Hadoop-based software, services and training Actian Big data applications, analytics engine, and Ingres database 1010data Cloud-based analytics 10gen MongoDB (open-source, document database) Alteryx Big data analytics platform Guavus 28 Big data analytics solutions itnext | n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 3 Iterations Designing Developing packaged solutions may not work as anticipated for the companies whose business model is unique. Having worked with cloudera and Hortonworks, these two packaged distribution of Apache Hadoop-based solution have provided immediate value to customers from the technology stack. With vendor locking, recurring support cost and vendor uncertainty becomes an issue. The Key to Success for any Big Data project involves these: Data identification Ingesting and cleaning Hardware and platform selection Machine learning Data storage Sharing and acting Desired Changes in IT Thought Leadership Source : Forbes It’s not all about huge infrastructure. Big data experts consistently report that 80 per cent of the effort involved in dealing with data is cleansing. Because of the high cost of data acquisition and cleansing, it’s worth considering what you actually need to source yourself. Remember that big data is not a Nirvana. You can find patterns and clues in your data, but then what? Like any investment, a tangible goal for big data would always benefit.
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  • 34. Simplifying IT to Drive PureValue S ince its launch in India in April 2012, IBM PureSystems has been gaining momentum across all verticals and businesses. In India, IBM has more than 150 customers who have adopted PureSystems. The PureSystems family of offerings includes PureFlex, PureApplication and PureData. Thermax, an organisation in the utility vertical, was among the early adopters of PureFlex systems. 32 itnext | n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 3 In August 2012, Thermax went live with PureSystems as it implemented a virtual desktop environment where it was looking at multiple systems and chose IBM PureFlex. Kashish M Karnick, Product Manager, STG, IBM ISA, said, “IT managers look converged systems and PureSystems has the power to transform the IT life cycle. IBM PureSystems has the potential to radically simplify multiple aspects of the IT life cycle and it delivers significant business value.” The reason behind the growth in adoption is that the systems I LUSTRATIO N: anil t IT managers leverage converged PureSystems to radically transform and simplify the IT life cycle so as to drive value by SU B HANK A R K UN D U
  • 35. Simplifying IT to drive pure value | insight integration between servers, storage and networking as well as software, applications and middleware was made simple and easy through the use of a single management console. IT Managers use Pure Systems in Multifaceted Environment In India, organisations of all sizes enlist the customer base of pure systems as they are looking to virtualise their IT, optimise their existing infrastructure, or want to adopt open standards and green IT initiatives. Anil Nadkarni, CIO, Thermax, says, “It’s just not the hardware that transforms any work environment, a lot also depends on the application that runs on it as it decides the whole thing. The hardware costs come down due to the virtualisation. The flexibility is definitely the differentiator as it comes with 8-core machines. It gives me the flexibility to make it a 4-core machine or 2-core.” Anil has an internal team of 30 members. IBM took the lead and deployed the infrastructure. The team was trained during the implementation. For Thermax, it has been not just the integration that IBM Pure Systems has been pitching around the offering but it is more about flexibility, enhancement, ability to connect with other devices and IBM know-how about the technology and support. Thermax bought the machine for 1,000 users but it’s capable of handling 1,300 users which gives the organisation the scope to ramp up the systems. Bank deploys PureSystems to address its Future Growth The recent win, Dombivili Nagarik Sahakari (DNS) Bank adopted PureSystems as a core component of its new IT strategy to address its future needs and growth strategy. The new IBM PureFlex System integrates the bank’s hardware, cloud capabilities, network management and virtualisation, allowing DNS Bank to expand its reach, gain new clients and reduce operational expenses by 10 per cent - without increasing its IT infrastructure footprint. Milind Varerkar, DGM-IT, DNS Bank, says, “Implementing PureSystems has helped the bank to monitor its resources in much easier way than earlier rack based servers. DNS Bank is already benefiting from the simplicity and control IBM PureFlex provides and has reduced power consumption by 10 per cent.” DNS found the system apt as it could expand its mobile services such as Internet, mobile and SMS banking. The new IBM PureFlex System integrates the bank’s hardware, cloud capabilities, network management and virtualization. Pure Flex has helped in reducing the manpower cost as it requires fewer trained staff for monitoring the systems. Very little change was made in infrastructure and that helped in minimising deployment cost. Except for training the support staff, no major change was necessary. The Indian banking industry is growing more than 23 per cent per year with its assets size poised to touch USD 28,500 billion by 2025. However, In India, dispersion of banking services is fairly low: about 61 per cent of population has access to a saving bank account, 19 per cent has debit cards and 1 per cent has credit cards. Varerkar asserts, “To tap into this growing market opportunity and reach the tech-savvy younger generation, DNS Bank needed to revamp the heart of its IT infrastructure. IBM provided a solution built on PureFlex and including System x, storage and WebSphere.” PureFlex provides the security, flexibility and integration capabilities the bank needed to leverage cloud technologies to rapidly and efficiently deliver these mobile services across cities and remote areas of Maharashtra, addressing completely new client segments. Karnick said, “IBM PureFlex allowed DNS to simplify their experience, increase overall performance, and significantly reduce operational and management costs.” “India has 150 clients compared to 6000+ in other markets. So, India has the potential. But we need to look at the size of the market in terms of its budget. I think other markets have a much bigger budget than India” Kashish M Karnick Product Manager, STG, IBM ISA november 2 0 1 3 | itnext 33
  • 36. “The flexibility is definitely the differentiator as it comes with 8-core machines. It gives me the flexibility to make it a 4-core machine or 2-core” Anil Nadkarni, CIO, Thermax The reason Nadkarni cites as the biggest influencer was that PureSystems allowed them to put all sorts of CPUs in it. He says, “The biggest advantage is that while virtualising a system, multiple process is available. PureFlex systems help us do it with ease. The monitoring tool it has makes life easier as it makes the configuration really flexible.” Nadkarni adds, “IBM was the big contender and the brand definitely brings in certain value. I did not look at it purely from PureSystems; Rather, I looked at it from a project management angle--the execution of the project, the ability to deliver on time. When I was involved with this project, there was a case of I/O. IBM gave me a v3700 SSD. The CPUs are fast but the bottleneck is in storage. IBM offered me SSD which the competitor didn’t offer. This was definitely a differentiator. PureFlex met the hardware requirement and I didn’t have to look beyond it.” So, is India One of the Larger Markets for PureSystems? Karnick smiles, “I would like it to be but we have 150 clients compared to 6000+ in other markets. So, India has the potential. But we need to look at the size of the market in terms of its budget. I think other markets have a much bigger budget than India.” Varerkar says, “The built-in softwares in PureSystems helps in automating mundane activities such as configuration, managing upgrades and backups. This reduces the time the IT management has to spend and frees them to focus on addressing business needs innovatively.” Education is one vertical where adoption of PureSystems has been witnessed. Recently, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Bhopal, Karunya University – Coimbatore, and the Shiv Nadar University (SNU) have selected IBM PureSystems to help their high end research, improve processes and IT infrastructure. Karunya University has selected IBM PureSystems solutions to improve online student services in processing applications, online enrolment, exam scheduling and virtual campus management. Increased Footprint of PureSystems “Implementing PureSystems has helped the bank monitor its resources in much easier way. IBM PureFlex has reduced power consumption by 10 per cent” Milind Varerkar, DGM-IT, DNS Bank 34 itnext | n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 3 IBM has deep expertise and a strong partner community to help deliver PureSystems. Karnick believes, “Business partners have a critical role in the growth of PureSystems in India. For IBM Business Partners, PureSystems generate an opportunity to help clients solve the complexity of enterprise IT, reduce costs and encourage innovation.” More than 2.500 Business partners have received PureSystems certifications. Resellers, distributors and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) have been playing an important role in the growth of PureSystems. Tens of thousands of existing ISV applications across four operating environments including Windows,
  • 37. Simplifying IT to drive pure value | insight It can take up to 46 2/3 months just to establish harware and software infrastructure** eadach H I % of IT professionals experience downtime, that can last from anywhere between minutes to over a week when performing an infrastructure upgrade** of organizations fall behind schedule when deploying new IT capabilities*** es T 55 Nearly to On average more than of IT budgets are spent on operations and maintenance* 70 % IT professionals face unnecessary delays and costs as they deploy, maintain and update their capabilities Sources: * IDC Analyst Matt Eastwood, IDC Directions Presentation, 2011 ** A global survey of 500 IT Professionals conducted by Forrester Consulting in 2011 *** IBM Market Insights Study - 2011 Business Benchmarking Time-To-Value Study Linux, AIX, and IBM operating system are run. Additionally, business partners have created more than 250 new solutions and applications that are optimised to run on PureSystems. IBM PureSystems center provides access to PureSystems assets, delivering expertise from a broad ecosystem, spanning across 20 industries. It includes leading solutions from some of the world’s largest ISVs, including ERP systems and applications across verticals. Karnick says, “To help address the new opportunity that PureSystems presents, IBM also provides training, marketing, certifications and technical validation support to its business partners.” Innovations Galore IBM has been constantly releasing updates to pure system. Recently, a number of major additions to its Flex System portfolio was released which combine the latest server technology with new virtualisation, networking and management tools, allowing clients to consolidate existing IT infrastructure and reduce operating costs. IBM claims this will help clients use smaller data center environments to quickly deploy, manage and secure increasingly larger clouds. These additional Flex Systems products deliver the features that provide clients with the choices they need as they seek to reduce costs and invest in technologies that provide future scalability. The offerings consist of three systems built on both IBM POWER7+ and a “double dense” x222 system built on x86 technology. Additionally, IBM has upgraded the Flex System Manager so that clients can monitor and manage up to 5,000 infrastructure end points and do so from any location utilising iOS, Android and Blackberry mobile devices. Others in the block The concept wasn’t unique when PureSystems was launched. The idea of convergence in infrastructure has been there in the block for some time now. Major vendors in the data center infrastructure have been talking about bundling all necessary hardware and management software. The coalition of EMC, VMware and Cisco brought its Virtual Compute Environment (VCE), Vblock. But Karnick says there is a huge difference between PureSystems and its competitions. With PureSystems, the buyer can mix compute nodes — X86 and/or Power7 based — in the same enclosure and even run different operating systems — AIX, Linux, Windows — as needed. Karnick asserts, “I don’t think any other system in the market can offer consolidation of this sort, we offer consolidation without migration and it has been designed to deal with multiple nodes in one box.” IBM PureSystems is a way to leverage the products it already owns. Now, the industry has to keep an eye on how both exisitng and new customers react to it. november 2 0 1 3 | itnext 35
  • 38. interview | Hu Yoshida 36 itnext | n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 3
  • 39. Hu Yoshida | interview collaborate strategize to stay ahead Hu Yoshida, Vice President and CTO, Hitachi Data Systems, emphasises the need for CIOs to work with vendors in strategising Hitachi’s strength in storage and technologies. In Conversation with IT NEXT. You have been forecasting the top IT industry trends for storage for Hitachi. What then are the directions you want Hitachi to take? Big data will continue to be the primary concern for the IT industry. For example, exabytes will enter into planning discussions and petabytes will be the new norm for large data stores. Much attention will be on secondary data generated for copies and backups. The total cost of ownership (TCO) for storage will change as operational costs decrease and capital costs creep up. IT professionals will have to tackle these challenges with budget and time constraints. Simultaneously, they must extract business value from big data to support growth and development. Hitachi should take into account the new trends and align customer strategy accordingly. 1. ramatic Changes in OPEX D and CAPEX: Over the past 10 years, the total cost of storage has increased by about 7 per cent annually, mainly due to operational costs (OPEX), while the cost of hardware (CAPEX) has been relatively flat. 2. ew Consumption Models: N Instead of buying all their storage today and spreading CAPEX over the next 4 to 5 years, organisations will buy what they need when they need it. So, they must leverage technologies and capabilities like dynamic storage provisioning, virtualisation and nondisruptive data migration. 3. anaging the Explosion of M Data Replication: Replication multiplies data growth and backups are the biggest driver of data replication. 4. he Emergence of Enterprise T Flash Controllers: The use of high-performance flash solid state drives (SSDs) has been slow due to their high price and limited durability compared to hard disk drives. 2013 will see the introduction of flash controllers with advanced processors built specifically for enterprise storage systems and increase durability, performance and capacity of flash memory. 5. N ew Requirements for Entry Enterprise Storage Systems: The increasing use of hypervisors like VMware and applications such as VDI have changed the requirements for midrange storage systems. The gap between enterprise and midrange storage architectures is narrowing as the industry begins to demand entry enterprise storage systems. 6. The need for object-based file systems: The growth of unstructured data will require larger, more scalable file systems; hence, object-based file systems. 7. ccelerating use of content A platforms for data archives and data sharing: This will accelerate as users try to correlate information from different applications. 8. Hardware Assist Controllers to Satisfy Increasingly Complex Workloads: Storage controllers will be equipped with advanced processors and hardware assist ASICs to address increasingly complex workloads and higher throughput. n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 3 | itnext 37
  • 40. interview | Hu Yoshida 9. reating a Secure Platform C for the Adoption of Mobile Devices: Adoption of mobile devices increases productivity and innovation, but also creates a nightmare for corporate data centres. 10. ore Tightly Integrated M Converged Solutions: Certified, pre-configured and pre-tested converged infrastructure solutions are gaining traction. So, what initiatives have you planned for Hitachi? Technology-wise, there is a sea change. We’re hearing a lot about about big data, Cloud is getting more real now. The next big thing would be machine-to-machine. Some call it industrial internet. Cisco is building Internet-ofEverything where machines talk to machines with intelligence at the endpoint. But the danger is that vendors will then deal more directly with end users than with IT, creating more silos. For example, in health care, there is a standard around medical imaging. Fujitsu makes it for cardiology, Siemens for oncology… all the information gathered are in silos. So, the patient cannot get a holistic view. Hence, they are approaching IT/ITes as they realised the need of vendor neutral archives. Hitachi is moving towards big data. We have the verticals, we have the IT. So, we are going to enable enterprises to offer solutions. We like to work with the GEs, the Siemens. If we don’t start doing it now, then we bypass IT. How will these trends impact the role of a CIO? In data centres, we hear of shadow IT: applications people bringing public cloud, the BYOD trend, etc... But employees today need to be given that kind of flexibility and capability. However, it has to be done behind the firewalls. That’s one area CIOs must focus on. 38 itnext | n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 3 Another thrust area is enabling BYOD as a business trend and not controlling it. This will be driven by CEOs because they are using Apple products (smiles)....So, mobility is the big trend. A recent 2013 survey suggested that internet traffic in mobile devices has surpassed internet usage on desktops. Integration, access to the data anywhere has become the need. We have HCP Anywhere solution from Hitachi. It’s a fully integrated, on-premises solution for safe, secure file synchronisation and sharing. It’s built end-to-end to be enterprise-ready, and hardened for uncontrolled Internet; HCP Anywhere uses the Hitachi Content Platform object store to store, protect, secure and manage “ It wouldn’t be wise to give less weight to CIOs. CIOs need to look at so much more technology. But there are CIOs who keep vendors away. They believe vendors bring a set of problems by offering a different set of solutions” data in the most efficient, easily scalable and highest-density object storage platform. Against this backdrop, how is the role of CIOs changing? It was thought that CIOs would get a seat at the corporate table as a technology person. Now, his role is evolving as an implementer. In tough economic times, the CFO’s role is getting more crucial. The problem then is that the CFO does not look at the back end integration part, which the CIO is more responsible for.