The document interviews Hu Yoshida, VP and CTO of Hitachi Data Systems, about the role of IT decision makers. Yoshida emphasizes that IT decision makers should collaborate closely with vendors to jointly strategize innovative solutions that address business needs. He also stresses the importance of the next generation of CIOs taking a strategic approach and collaborating across departments to maximize the business impact of technology investments.

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
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& Sristi Maurya
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& 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?’
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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
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Some of the best practices are given below for
reference:
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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.

41. Hu Yoshida | interview
gigabytes; they have to have a lot
of spares and a lot of processing.
With more powerful processors,
I can put more RAMs in there. So,
we came up with 1.6 TB. Now, we
are at 3.2 TB and next year, it will
be 6.4 TB.
At Hitachi, we are able to
build controllers as we are an
engineering company.
It wouldn’t be wise to give less
weight to CIOs. CIOs need to look at
so much more technology. There’s
server, storage, networking,
BYOD, security, etc. In Mumbai,
we work with a successful CIO,
who initiates the conversation
with us, collaborates in planning,
strategising and throws challenges
at us as we come up with solutions
that suit his needs. He partners
with all vendors and leverages
their expertise.
But there are others who keep
vendors away. They believe vendors
bring a set of problems by offering
different set of solutions. They call
it ankle biting. CIOs need to manage
vendor relationships by being open
to them, by sharing their vision, get
the right insights from them and
complement their vision.
That’s the key. Vendors know
the best technologies; they are
subject experts as they have
created the technologies.
Also, with lot of technologies
coming to the front, CIOs must
be at the forefront and in control.
What’s new in storage that
could transform the work
environment?
Find other interviews online on
the website
www.itnext.
in/resources/
interviews
Flash has been extremely
transformative. However, its
widespread adoption as a
mainstream storage option has
been hampered by high costs,
limited endurance and suboptimal write performance.
The SSDs were not designed
for storage, but only for PCs
or commodity devices. They
optimise manufacturing cost, and
were expensive, initially. They
were very limited in processing
power and multi capability, and
had to be changed for enterprise
storage purposes. Today’s flash
technology is not only very
durable with only 2000 to
3000 writes. Also, the writes
are multiplied. With a hard disk,
you write it just once. But with
flash, you write it to a block and
the block fills up and you must
erase it. So, you must move this
somewhere else. Also, electrons
leak all the time. Over time, it
must be refreshed. So, you need
a large ECC to delay refreshing it.
We have quad core processing in
controller of our flash. By adding
more intelligence and building
technologies of enterprise storage,
we can increase the endurance
and performance; and with quad
core, we can do multi threading.
That’s why SSDs are 200 or 800
How do you see consumer
behaviour patterns changing,
from the storage perspective?
One change is eliminating the
Do-It-Yourself (DIY) approach.
It takes three months to do that.
Today, with so many applications,
you need to spin things up very
quickly. So, in our Unified Compute
Platform which is very different
from VBlock or VCE as they are
consortiums, we have our own
blade server and storage, we OEM
the Cisco brocade switch or now
we also OEM the VMWare…the
whole stack is there on one service
call. Some people object to that, they
call it vendor locking. But we do
virtualised storage, we can use the
existing storage behind it. We can
support Cisco server, Cisco brocade
switches. But the application
user does not really care what’s
underneath, all he cares is how to
spin up his application and who can
fix it quickly.
So, DIY doesn’t make sense. It’s
time consuming, expensive and a
management challenge.
What are the tangible and
intangible benefits in this
model that IT managers
look at?
Cost reduction, greater agility where
you can do things faster and lesser
errors because it’s automated. For
us, it’s easy as all our products—
server, block, file etc. are managed
by one set of tools. We just need to
provide that interface to vCenter.
vCenter manages everything. So,
we are going to make it compatible
to vCenter’s roadmap.
n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 3 | itnext
39

42. update
indulge
The hottest, the coolest and the funkiest next
generation gadgets and devices for you
Here is a preview of the latest tech toys
on the block to add to your arsenal.
Take your pick and then go splurging!
Razer
Ouroboros
HOT
Cooler Master
Notepal
Ergostand Lite
It’s a continuation of CM’s Notepal
U Laptop cooling stand legacy. The
ergonomic cooling stand supports upto 15-inch
laptop, sports an elegant mesh design for
better airflow and 160 mm fan with
adjustable position.
Price: ` 2000 INR
It was conceived as an ambidextrous
mouse. It works well for both left- and
right-handed users. Be it claw grip, palm grip
or fingertip user, it caters to all grip styles.
Just adjust the arch on the palm rest,
extend or retract the back, and add in
the side rests accordingly.
Price: ` 10999 INR
Logitech UE
Mobile Boombox
ZOTAC ZBOX
NANO ID65 Plus
The tiny palm-sized PC is
powered by high-performance 3rd
Generation Intel Core processors with
Intel HD Graphics 4000. The size and
performance makes it perfect for
everyday work and casual use.
It’s a neat little Bluetooth speaker.
The Mobile boombox can pair with up
to 8 devices over Bluetooth, which is
pretty great. It has two 1-inch full
range speaker along with a top
firing mini sub.
Price: ` 8995 INR
Price: ` 52,000 INR
NEW
Like something? Want to share your
objects of desire? Send us your wish-list or
feedback to editor@itnext.in
40
itnext | n o v e mb e r 2 0 1 3

43. 15minute
manager
training
Education
workplace
compensation
workforce trends
skills development
personal development
how to
ensure a
strong
back
Page 42
Strategy: Countering Botnets THIS page
Tips: Improving Posture and Ergonomics pag e 42
Product Review - Blackberry 9720 Page 44
Botnet Count Page 43
By K J Latesh
B
otnet is the latest and
exceptional security
threat causing major
concern among IT
managers. The term
bot is an acronym of “ROBOT.” It’s a
depraved dispense wicked programs
(also known as malware) that can turn
your computer into a bot (also known
as a zombie). When this happens, any
computer will execute programmed
(computerised) mission over the
Internet, without the user knowing it.
i mage: photos .co m
What and Why of Botnets
Botnets are groups of computers
connected to the Internet that have
been taken over by a hacker. The hacker
controls all the computers and they
behave like a “robot network” (a.k.a.
“botnet”). Botnets contain anywhere
from hundreds to thousands of
computers. The botmaster (the hacker
who controls the botnet) then uses these
computers to send spam email, spread
viruses, and attack other networks or
any other variety of malicious activity.
The Bot types are mainly identified
as IRC bots, Localised bots, P2P bots,
HTTP bots and Spy Eye.
A botnet operator sends out
viruses or worms, infecting ordinary
Security
Countering
BOTNETS
Challenges for IT managers and Infrastructure
manager include identifying bots across their
network and defuse them from action
n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 3 | itnext
41

44. 15-MINUTE MANAGER
How do Botnets Occur?
In distributed denial-of-service attacks,
multiple systems submit as many
requests as possible to a single Internet
computer or service, overloading
it and preventing it from servicing
legitimate requests. Adware advertises
a commercial offering actively and
without the user’s permission or
awareness, for example, by replacing
banner ads on web pages with those
of another advertiser. Spyware is a
software which sends information to
its creators about a user’s activities-typically passwords, credit card
numbers and other information that
can be sold on the black market.
Compromised machines that are
located within a corporate network can
be worth more to the bot herder, as they
can often gain access to confidential
corporate information. Several targeted
attacks on large corporations aimed to
steal sensitive information, such as
the Aurora botnet. Click fraud occurs
when the user’s computer visits
websites without the user’s awareness
to create false web traffic for personal
42
itnext | n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 3
healthy Tips
Ten Tips To ImprovE
Posture and Ergonomics
Strong Back
Over time, poor posture
may be caused by habits
from everyday activities
such as sitting in office
chairs, looking at the
computer, driving, standing
for long periods of time,
or even sleeping. The
following guidelines
suggest several ways
to improve posture and
ergonomics, especially for
people who work sitting in
an office chair for most of
the day.
1. Know the warning signs
of back pain caused by poor
As muscles tire, slouching,
slumping, and other poor
postures become more likely
ergonomics and posture.
2. Get up and move.
3. Keep the body in alignment while
sitting in an office chair and while
standing.
4. Use posture-friendly props and
ergonomic office chairs when sitting.
5. Increase awareness of posture
and ergonomics in everyday
settings.
6. Use exercise to help prevent
injury and promote good posture.
Regular exercise such as walking,
swimming, or bicycling will help the
body stay aerobically conditioned,
7. Wear supportive footwear when
standing. Avoid regularly wearing
high-heeled shoes.
8. Remember good posture and
ergonomics when in motion.
9. Create ergonomic physical
environments and workspaces
10. Avoid overprotecting posture.
Remember that it is important to
maintain an overall relaxed posture
to avoid restricting movements by
clenching muscles and adopting an
unnatural, stiff posture.
PHOTO /I LLUSTRATIO N/IMAG ING CRE DIT
users’ computers, whose payload is a
malicious application—the bot. The bot
on the infected PC logs into a particular
CC (Commands and Controller) server.
A spammer purchases the services
of the botnet from the operator. The
spammer provides the spam messages
to the operator, who instructs the
compromised machines via the control
panel on the web server, causing them
to send out spam messages. Botnets
are exploited for various purposes,
including denial-of-service attacks,
creation or misuse of SMTP mail relays
for spam (see Spambot), click fraud,
mining bitcoins, spamdexing, and the
theft of application serial numbers,
login IDs, and financial information
such as credit card numbers. The
botnet controller community features
a constant and continuous struggle
over who has the most bots, the highest
overall bandwidth, and the most
“high-quality” infected machines,
like university, corporate, and even
government machines.

45. 15-MINUTE MANAGER
Botnet
Count
“Compromised
machines
that are
located within
a corporate
network can be
worth more to
the bot herder”
Total number of suspected botnet IPs: 2109
Number of botnet IPs notified to network
operators: 1977
Number of Spam blocked: 44243
Recipient count of spam blocked: 1102959 *
K J Latesh
IT Security Professional and
Research Scholar
or commercial gain. Fast flux is a DNS
technique used by botnets to hide
phishing and malware delivery sites
behind an ever-changing network of
compromised hosts acting as proxies.
Android BOTs:
Security firm Kaspersky Lab has found
that a Trojan malware spread on Android
OS is being controlled by criminal groups.
Kaspersky Lab said that Obad.a, malware,
which Android powered devices,
was being distributed by botnets that
exploited user behaviour and infecting
the computer to be part of the network.
The firm has revealed that from the
total, 83 per cent of attempted infections
were recorded in Russia indicating that
the infections are likely to be limited to
Eastern European countries for the time
being. According to News24, the firm
explained that the versions of Obad.a
spread with Trojan-SMS .AndroidOS.
Opfake.a, by sending malicious message
to users, urging them to download it and
if the link is clicked the file containing the
malware is automatically downloaded on
the Smart phone or tablet.
Lifecycle of Botnet Infection
IRC Server(s)
Botnet
Botnet
Botnet
4.Join
Botnet
Botnet
install Bot
DNS Server
5.Botnet
Commands
3.DNS
Lookups
1. Find Exploitable Node
Host W/Valnerability
The top 10 countries by number of suspected
botnet IPs are:
Rank
Country # of suspected botnet
IPs
1
Taiwan
826
2
China
763
3
United States
92
4 Russian Federation
33
5
Argentina
30
6 Brazil
28
7
Spain
25
8
Colombia
19
9
Peru
17
10
United Kingdom
17
The malware then sends messages
to all the user’s contacts urging them
to repeat the process. The firm said
that the code was spreading especially
to devices running older versions
of Android. The report said that
Kaspersky has informed Google and
the vulnerability has been closed for
versions of Android 4.3, but antivirus
expert at the firm, Roman Unuchek said
that only a small percentage of devices
had the latest version of the OS.
The potential exists for attacks
like these to target Internet banking
services that send mobile transaction
authentication numbers via SMS.
Many banks send authentication codes
to your phone via SMS each time you
do an online transaction. This means
that just stealing a login password is
no longer enough for criminals to raid
your account, but malware on your
phone, such as the Zeus-based Andr/
Zitmo (and similar versions targeting
Blackberry) are capable of intercepting
those SMS messages. Through the
use of a malicious Android app that
harvests SMS messages in real time
and in concert with a social engineering
attack, attackers open a brief window of
n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 3 | itnext
43

46. 15-MINUTE MANAGER
Product review
Blackberry 9720: The
Old School charm
BlackBerry has been clarifying time and again that with BB10 around, the
reports of OS 7’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. And the proof of the
pudding lies in eating it, clearly. With the new 9720, BlackBerry is back to appealing to the “BlackBerry Boys” crowd.
Unlike previous BlackBerry OS 6/ 7/ 7.1 devices, the 9720 doesn’t identify its
target segment with a prefix such as Bold or Curve. That’s probably because
we’re unlikely to see any high-end (Bold) devices running legacy operating systems. Instead we’re likely to see only economy phones in the segment
Just to prove what they were saying, the company launched the 9720 in the
Indian market. Will it work? Maybe.
Build Design: More of the old school charm
The design cues have been taken from the previous generation of Curve phones,
so much so that you will be hard pressed to actually identify any difference
from afar. The only real difference is the straight-line keyboard with flatter
keys, instead of the curves and angles of the previous gen. Below the screen
sit the traditional bunch of keys - call connect/disconnect, the optical trackpad,
Menu and Return. The trackpad is actually a bonus, because the touchscreen
itself ensures you can take care of a few tasks. But unlike the BB10 phones the Q5 and the Q10, the OS 7.1 isn’t the slickest for an all-touch usage scenario,
and the trackpad becomes more than a necessity.
The right side spine has the volume rocker, the play/pause key as well as the
convenience key that can also be used for activating the camera and subsequently for shutter control.
The battery cover has a nice soft finish to it, which helps immensely with the
grip. The white colour finish has a self-design, which feels good in the hand.
The BlackBerry 9720 is a decent hardware QWERTY keypad smartphone, but
unlike its BlackBerry 10 siblings, but offers a primitive operating system compared to Android, BB10, iOS and Windows Phone based smartphones.
source: thinkdigit.com
44
itnext | n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 3
opportunity to steal this token and use
it before you can stop them.
Challenge for CISOs
The key challenges for IT managers and
Infrastructure managers is to identify
these bots across their network and
diffuse them from action, since these
bots are not like EXE or COM programs
which reside in the disk or somewhere in
MBR so that they can be cleaned using
end point protection. More than 95 per
cent of all spam is via data/identity
theft and distributing other malware,
spyware/adware.
Is there any Protection against Botnets?
The geographic dispersal of botnets
means that each recruit must be
individually identified/corralled/
repaired and limits the benefits of
filtering. Some botnets use free DNS
hosting services such as DynDns.org,
No-IP.com, and Afraid.org to point a
sub domain towards an IRC server that
harbors the bots. Some botnets implement
custom versions of well-known protocols.
Vendors’ Take?
Security companies such as Afferent
Security Labs, Symantec, MacAfee,
Trend Micro, FireEye, Umbra Data and
Damballa have announced offerings to
counter botnets. Some newer botnets
are almost entirely P2P, with commandand-control embedded into the botnet
rather than relying on CC servers,
thus avoiding any single point of failure
and evading many countermeasures.
Commanders can be identified just
through secure keys and all data except
the binary itself can be encrypted. For
example, a spyware program may
encrypt all suspected passwords with
a public key hard coded or distributed
with the bot software. Only with the
private key (which is known only by
the commander) can the data captured
by the bot be read.
One major protection method for
every organisation IT infrastructure
is to empower protection measures
like Application Security, System
Security, LAN Security, Endpoint
Security, Android Security Apps, UTM
(Firewall).

47. update
Is SDN Different from
Virtualisation and Cloud?
Amandeep Singh
Dang
Country ManagerNetworking, Dell
As an industry trend,
Software Defined Networking (SDN) is as potent, vital
and impactful as virtualisation and cloud in IT space.
Virtualisation is a technology to splice physical IT
assets into virtual need
based assets. Cloud is commercial/non-commercial
business process modelling
using virtualisation as the
technology, while SDN is the
technology enabler that will
allow virtualisation of networks or for cloud business
modelling. All three are not
the same; but they are interrelated and concurrent to
the overall IT virtualisation
wave that we are experiencing from a business process
IT or technology standpoint.
Sajan Paul
Director, Systems
Engineering, India
SAARC, Juniper
Networks
If IT managers are ready
to jump aboard the SDN
bandwagon, they might
wonder where to begin. The
answer is to start with virtualisation. Network Functions
Virtualisation (NFV) is a key
part of a service provider’s
broader SDN strategy. While
NFV and SDN are often seen
as separate technologies,
the reality is that the two are
highly complementary and
it is in combination that they
deliver the most value. NFV
allows for the deployment of
network components as software via virtual machines.
Virtualising network functions is the first step towards
building an agile network and
truly leveraging SDN.
Ashish Khanna
Assistant Vice
PresidentInformation
Technology, EIH
Limited
SDN concept is still evolving, a lot of people are
confused between SDN
and network virtualisation,
although in functionality, there is a thin line of
difference between both
technologies. The major
difference is that network
virtualisation focuses on
combining a few hardware resources (from one
vendor) and presenting
them to the application and
administrators as one common resource, while SDN
abstracts the traditional
networking hardware layers
into software and hardware
for efficient management of
hardware and data flow.
Your views and opinion matter to us. Send us your feedback on stories and the
magazine to the Editor at editor@itnext.in
book For you
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Leadership
This book brings critical new
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questions about the importance
of leaders.
Author: Barbara Kellerman
Publisher: Harper Business
This book comes from one of the pioneers in the field of leadership studies
that does a stimulating check of how
people lead in the digital age. In The
End of Leadership, Barbara Kellerman
enumerates the numerous contradictions, inconsistencies, and irrelevance
of what passes for leadership thought
and training today and reveals a new
way of thinking about leadership and
the followers in today’s world. Building
off the strengths and insights of her
work as a scholar and a teacher, Kellerman critically examines the most
strongly-held assumptions about the
role of leadership in driving success.
Revealing which of our beliefs have
become obsolete due to social media
culture, she also calls into question
the value of the so-called “leadership
industry” itself. Asking whether leadership can truly be taught, Kellerman
forces us to think critically and expansively about how to thrive as leaders in
a global information age.
IT NEXT Verdict
It raises questions about leadership,
comprehensive examination of how
leadership has changed and how and
why we lost faith in leaders.
Star Value:
PHOTO IMAGI NG : peterson pj
open Debate
A platform to air your views on the latest
developments and issues that impact you
n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 3 | itnext
45

48. cube chat | Feroz Shaikh
Love
what
you do
“Pleasure in the job puts perfection
in the work” Feroz Shaikh, Vice
President – IT, Prime Focus
Technologies, loves the Aristotelian
quote as he puts the philosophy into
action in each day at work.
By Sub hank ar Ku nd u
M
Give your 100% to
whatever role you
are playing
46
itnext | N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 3
onday mourning…oops, Monday mornings are something
very few people look forward to.
Cribbing why-can’t-weekendsbe-a-little-longer tends to make
things gloomy at the work bay. All that is required to
run to work rather than drag oneself is the motivation to “do new, think new and create new.”
That’s how the day starts for Feroz Shaikh. Feroz,
VP-IT, Prime Focus, starts every day with a splash
of energy. When he wakes up, he starts with giving
himself a dose of hope with positive thinking:
“It’s not going to be a monotonous day for me, as
something new must be waiting at work.”
He loves thinking of innovative ways to inspire
his clients and embraces the challenge every day.
Prime Focus is very special to me. I have been
with this company almost since its inception. The
entire journey till now has been great.”
So, what drove Feroz to IT? Feroz has been
passionate about riding the tide of ever-challenging
technologies since the time he kicked off his career
in IT. The constant uncertainty of every technology
is what keeps him motivated, and the range of
opportunities in information technology grabbed
his attention in the initial phase of his career.
Feroz recollects, “My career has been much
diversified as I started with the service industry
and then moved to BPO/KPO, exploring market
research and analytics.”
About 7 years back, he moved to Media and
Entertainment which he believes is a major
transition from Analog to Digital. He considers
this move to be a strategic decision in his career, as
content will play a very important role in the future.
At Prime Focus, he executes end-to-end deployment
for every new client. His customer centric focus
helps him understand client requirements in

49. cube chat
Fact File
Full nam e
Feroz S hai kh
C urrent d es ignatio n
Vi c e Pres i d ent
C urrent role
Head, Tec hni c al
Operations
Expertis e
S oluti on Arc hi tec t/
I nfrastruc ture
Work experi enc e
17 years
Favouri te quote
You m ust be the
c hange you wis h to
s ee in the world –
M ahatm a Gand hi
Favouri te book
S even Habits of Hig h ly
Effec ti ve People
“Media is about working against stringent
timelines. It demands solutions to optimise
costs whether it’s content streaming for
sports or workflow designing”
detail, as his responsibility spans the entire
IT backbone support operations including
inception of new verticals and giving
unparalleled support to clients.
His motivation is his team. He makes it a
point to motivate his team in the work they
do; which, in turn, encourages him to keep
innovating and keep the wheel spinning.
The entertainment often has cost
constraints. Feroz says, “Media is about
working against stringent timelines with no
options. It demands innovative solutions to
optimise costs, whether it’s related to content
streaming for sports or workflow designing.”
For the first time during IPL 2010, Feroz
was involved with the exciting project
of streaming real time content on the web.
With a last minute confirmation of the
project implementation, he had little or no
Favouri te food
I tali an
Favouri te d esti natio n
S c otl and
Favouri te gad get fo r
work
M ac book Pro
Favouri te gad get fo r
pers onal us e
i Phone
time to execute it. It was indeed a challenge
to set up the entire infrastructure, testing the
workflow and ensuring a robust back up.
With pride, Feroz asserts, “In spite of so
many challenges and time constraints, we
successfully streamed the content.”
As for inspiration, he does not have to
look far. He says, “My role model is my CEO
Ramki Sankarnarayanan as I am always
inspired by his desire, drive and discipline.”
His mantra for prosperity is staying fit.
And his list on how to stay fit is long: tennis,
swimming and cycling. His interests include
aquariums right from fishes in fresh water
to reef tanks. An unfulfilled and exciting
dream is “to do some heavy lifting.”
On the work front, he has a bunch of
innovative ideas which he wants to implement
and test in a live environment.
N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 3 | itnext
47

50. my log
Sangita thakur varma
Managing Editor, India Now
The Unsung
Leaders
I LLUSTRATIO N BY PHOTOS .CO M
Let’s look home nearer for true
lessons of leadership
48
itnext | N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 3
a battle with fatal illness and looking at
the prospect of his business being wiped
out. Though the rats (read partners)
abandoned the ship, the captain had held
aloft and kept the flag flying.
It was a lesson in courage from two
middle-aged gents, who abandoned their
high-flying corporate careers, one in India
and the other in Silicon Valley to chase
their dreams. Today, with successful
ventures under their belt they have become
inspirational stories for other SME startups to follow. There was another gentleman
who had nothing but his mechanical
training in industrial sewing machines
and Rs 1,500 in his bank account to fund
his dreams. Today, his company employees
120 people and its turnover is Rs 50 crore.
His credo: “Your work is your respect.
The owners have to be honest punctual
hard working… all these motivate your
workers.” And so, he is the first to arrive in
office and the last to leave. If the office has
to remain open on a non-working day, he is
there with his workers. Needless to say, his
workers are a happy and devoted lot.
Unafraid of failure, these gentlemen
have floated initiatives powered by
unique ideas. From jazz-food enterprise
in a largely Punjabi culture dominated
north Indian set-up, to funding for
innovative SME social enterprises, to
genuine factory seconds to employee
training, they are everywhere.
Time we looked at them for a few novel
lessons in leadership.
3 Essential
Reads
INTERVIEW | HU YOSHIDA
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. Dramatic Changes in OPEX
and CAPEX: Over the past 10
years, the total cost of storage
has increased by about 7 per
cent annually, mainly due to
36
operational costs (OPEX), while
the cost of hardware (CAPEX)
has been relatively flat.
2. New Consumption Models:
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. Managing the Explosion of
Data Replication: Replication
multiplies data growth and
backups are the biggest driver of
data replication.
4. The Emergence of Enterprise
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.
ITNEXT | N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 3
5. New
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. Accelerating use of content
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
N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 3 | ITNEXT
37
Hu Yoshida, VP and CTO, Hitachi
Data Systems, emphasises on the
need for CIOs to work with
vendors Pg 36
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.
Simplifying IT to
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
Drive PureValue
IT managers leverage converged PureSystems to
radically transform and simplify the IT life cycle so
as to drive value BY S U B H A N K A R K U N DU
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
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
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
“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.”
ILU ST RAT IO N : AN I L T
I just wrapped up a story on small and
medium enterprises (SMEs) for one of our
custom publications. I call it my fortune
to have interacted with an intersection of
‘leaders’ who normally remain unsung,
unfortunately, due to the low profile
nature of their sector. It is our want to look
up at media savvy public figures, forgetting all the while that leadership is not
exclusive to any particular category.
Coming back to the SME entrepreneurs,
their life stories were lessons in
leadership— they knew what they wanted;
took initiative, were dauntless, leading
from the front and ready to take risks.
They were not afraid to make mistakes
rather found lessons in those mistakes,
led their employees by example, were
generous and were team players. Each one
had a unique story to unfold. Some were
middle aged, many young, and most were
first generation entrepreneurs using their
hard-earned savings to fund that dream.
After meeting them, I came away
shamefaced. How often we crib over the
smallest hurdle in our professional path.
We want our goals to be an unchallenged
easy run. And here was a story of
unending struggle spanning more than
30 years where the paraplegic protagonist
while combating a progressive disease
reinvented himself and his business,
rising from the ashes like the proverbial
phoenix again and again, never losing
sight of his goal. He even had to struggle
through a phase where he was fighting
Kashish M Karnick
Product Manager, STG, IBM ISA
ITNEXT | N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 3
NOVEMBER
2 0 1 3 | ITNEXT
Simplifying IT to drive Pure Value
with IBM Pure Systems Pg 32
CUBE CHAT | FEROZ SHAIKH
CUBE CHAT
Love
what
you do
FACT FILE
FUL L N A M E
FE R OZ S H A I K H
C UR R E N T D ES I G N AT I ON
VI C E P R ES I D E N T
C UR R E N T R OL E
H E A D, T EC H N I C A L
OP E R AT I ON S
EXP E RT I S E
S OLUT I ON A R C H I T EC T /
I N FR AST R UC T UR E
WOR K EXP E R I E N C E
17 YE A R S
FAVOUR I T E QUOT E
YOU M UST B E T H E
C H A N G E YOU WI S H TO
S E E I N T H E WOR L D –
M A H AT M A GA N D H I
“Pleasure in the job puts perfection
in the work” Feroz Shaikh, Vice
President – IT, Prime Focus
Technologies, loves the Aristotelian
quote as he puts the philosophy into
action in each day at work.
FAVOUR I T E B OOK
S E VE N H A B I TS OF H I G H LY
E FFEC T I VE P EOP L E
“Media is about working against stringent
timelines. It demands solutions to optimise
costs whether it’s content streaming for
sports or workflow designing”
BY S U B H A N K A R K U N DU
M
Give your 100% to
whatever role you
are playing
46
ITNEXT | N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 3
onday mourning…oops, Monday mornings are something
very few people look forward to.
Cribbing why-can’t-weekendsbe-a-little-longer tends to make
things gloomy at the work bay. All that is required to
run to work rather than drag oneself is the motivation to “do new, think new and create new.”
That’s how the day starts for Feroz Shaikh. Feroz,
VP-IT, Prime Focus, starts every day with a splash
of energy. When he wakes up, he starts with giving
himself a dose of hope with positive thinking:
“It’s not going to be a monotonous day for me, as
something new must be waiting at work.”
He loves thinking of innovative ways to inspire
his clients and embraces the challenge every day.
Prime Focus is very special to me. I have been with
this company almost since its inception. The entire
journey till now has been great.”
So, what drove Feroz to IT? Feroz has been
passionate about riding the tide of ever-challenging
technologies since the time he kicked off his career
in IT. The constant uncertainty of every technology
is what keeps him motivated, and the range of
opportunities in information technology grabbed
his attention in the initial phase of his career.
Feroz recollects, “My career has been much
diversified as I started with the service industry
and then moved to BPO/KPO, exploring market
research and analytics.”
About 7 years back, he moved to Media and
Entertainment which he believes is a major
transition from Analog to Digital. He considers
this move to be a strategic decision in his career, as
content will play a very important role in the future.
At Prime Focus, he executes end-to-end deployment
for every new client. His customer centric focus
helps him understand client requirements in
detail, as his responsibility spans the entire
IT backbone support operations including
inception of new verticals and giving
unparalleled support to clients.
His motivation is his team. He makes it a
point to motivate his team in the work they
do; which, in turn, encourages him to keep
innovating and keep the wheel spinning.
The entertainment often has cost
constraints. Feroz says, “Media is about
working against stringent timelines with no
options. It demands innovative solutions to
optimise costs, whether it’s related to content
streaming for sports or workflow designing.”
For the first time during IPL 2010, Feroz
was involved with the exciting project
of streaming real time content on the web.
With a last minute confirmation of the
project implementation, he had little or no
FAVOUR I T E FOOD
I TA L I A N
FAVOUR I T E D EST I N AT I ON
S C OT L A N D
FAVOUR I T E GA D G E T FOR
WOR K
M AC B OOK P R O
FAVOUR I T E GA D G E T FOR
P E R S ON A L US E
I P H ON E
time to execute it. It was indeed a challenge
to set up the entire infrastructure, testing the
workflow and ensuring a robust back up.
With pride, Feroz asserts, “In spite of so
many challenges and time constraints, we
successfully streamed the content.”
As for inspiration, he does not have to
look far. He says, “My role model is my CEO
Ramki Sankarnarayanan as I am always
inspired by his desire, drive and discipline.”
His mantra for prosperity is staying fit.
And his list on how to stay fit is long: tennis,
swimming and cycling. His interests include
aquariums right from fishes in fresh water
to reef tanks. An unfulfilled and exciting
dream is “to do some heavy lifting.”
On the work front, he has a bunch of
innovative ideas which he wants to implement
and test in a live environment.
N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 3 | ITNEXT
47
Feroz Shaikh, VP-IT, Prime Focus
emphasises on working with
passion, constant learning and
hunger to innovate Pg 46
33