cio october 1 2007 issue

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From The ediTor

Congratulations, Cio 100 award winners!We, at International Data Group, consider it a privilege to honor the smartest CIOs across

the country with what we believe is the biggest prize for Indian CIOs.

CIOs in India face enormous challenges in their line of work, especially in the context of

galloping economic growth. They strive hard to meet the accelerating demands of business,

often making do with skimpy resources. Also, they increasingly shape strategy while

keeping the lights on, so to say. The glue CIOs use to make it all stick together is innovation.

Hence the theme of our awards program this year, the second since inception.

We were very enthused by the participation of so many companies, and the competitive

spirit displayed by many CIOs. We

appreciate the value you place in this

awards program, and look forward to

similarly enthusiastic participation in

the future. The CIO 100 award is earned

and, unlike many other award programs,

not a handout that is given away freely.

We believe this is a key reason why the

CIO 100 award, more than any other in its category, is coveted by CIOs across the country.

In fact, it is prized by CIOs worldwide too. Two of our winners this year came all the way

from the United States to receive the award. They are: Cisco’s Chuck Trent, a globetrotter

and soon-to-be grandpa who accommodated our awards program in New Delhi Sept. 7 in

his busy schedule; and Mike Webb of Aricent, another tireless traveler to India. It might

be of interest to many that a third American to win the CIO 100 award this year is David

Briskman, the CIO of Ranbaxy Laboratories.

Flip to page 30 to read all about the awards program and the winners in this

special issue.

CIOs strive hard to meet the accelerating demands of business, often making do with skimpy resources. They also increasingly shape strategy while keeping the lights on.

This year’s CIO 100 awards program honored IT innovations in times of unprecedented growth and dynamism in the broader economy.

Bala Murali KrishnaExecutive [email protected]

Congratulations!

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Thought LeadershipWorlds beyond analysis | 66CIOs who test a technology must study its usage and scalability as much as its fundamentals, says Michael Schrage, senior adviser for security studies at MIT.interview by Kunal n. Talgeri

Innovation In ActionsTriKing The 30 -day bliTz | 72Though Indians are known to be resourceful, business expert Michael Hugos believes Indian CIOs fall short when it comes to innovation. Here’s what you can do about it..interview by sunil shah

Views from the TopCeos’ innovisions | 80For a direct understanding of how business leaders view IT innovation, CIO put together a panel of CEOs. True to their nature, they covered a lot of ground, converging onto one point: despite its risks, innovation is a path to business growth. interview by gunjan Trivedi

Awards CeremonyThe innovaTive hundred| 35CIO’s most innovative Indian CIOs. CIO’s most innovative Indian CIOs. CIO

Wacky InnovationsinnovaTions or WhaT? | 87The strangest IT innovations around, including using RFID to ensure the freshest sushi and an automatic milking machine.

more »

Innovation

COVER STORy hoW We meT innovaTion | 30The second annual CIO 100 awards celebrated one hundred organizations that showed resourcefulness in IT.Feature by bala murali Krishna

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content (cont.)

Trendlines | 19 Security | Empowering Cyber Cafes Cyber Crime | Thief Breaks into Caterpillar Server IT Management | Why Can’t CIOs Befriend CSOs? Wireless | Speeding Up Mammoth Data Transfer Blogs | Unemployed? Start Blogging Storage | Data Explosion Shakes Up IT IT Strategy | Diving Into A Virtual World E-mail | Routing Email To Handhelds Disaster Management | Despite 9/11 IT Remains Unprepared Privacy | Monster Data Stolen

Essential Technology | 97 Tracking Apps | Your RFID Battle Plan Feature By Galen Gruman

Web 2.0 | The Dark Side of Web 2.0 Column by Bernard Golden From the Editor | 2 Congratulations! By Bala Murali Krishna

Inbox | 18

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dEparTmEnTs

NOW ONLINE

For more opinions, features, analyses and updates, log on to our companion website and discover content designed to help you and your organization deploy IT strategically. Go to www.cio.in

c o.in

process SEVEn WAyS TO DEfLATE InnOVATIOn | 27Everyday, companies around the world deflate their enterprise’s innovation balloon. Are you guilty too? Column by Diann Daniel

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ManageMent

Publisher & editor n. bringi dev

Ceo louis d’Mello

editorial

editor-in-ChieF Vijay ramachandran

exeCutive editor bala Murali Krishna

bureau head - north Sanjay Gupta

sPeCial CorresPondents balaji narasimhan

Kanika Goswami

senior CorresPondent Gunjan Trivedi

ChieF CoPY editor Kunal n. Talgeri

senior CoPY editor Sunil Shah

trainee Journalist Shardha Subramanian

design & ProduCtion

Creative direCtor Jayan K narayanan

designers binesh Sreedharan

Vikas Kapoor; anil V.K.

Jinan K. Vijayan; Sani Mani

Unnikrishnan a.V; Girish a.V

MM Shanith; anil T

PC anoop; Jithesh C.C.

Suresh nair, Prasanth T.r

Vinoj K.n; Siju P

PhotograPhY Srivatsa Shandilya

ProduCtion T.K. Karunakaran

T.K. Jayadeep

Marketing and sales

vP, intl’ & sPeCial ProJeCts naveen Chand Singh

vP sales Sudhir Kamath

brand Manager alok anand

Marketing Siddharth Singh

Kishore Venkat

bangalore Mahantesh Godi

Santosh Malleswara

ashish Kumar, Chetna Mehta

delhi nitin Walia; anandram b;

Muneet Pal Singh;

Gaurav Mehta

MuMbai Parul Singh, Chetan T. rai,

rishi Kapoor,Pradeep nair

JaPan Tomoko Fujikawa

usa larry arthur; Jo ben-atar

singaPore Michael Mullaney

events

general Manager rupesh Sreedharan

Managers ajay adhikari, Chetan acharya

Pooja Chhabra

adverTiser index

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced by any means without prior written permission from the publisher. Address requests for customized reprints to IDG Media Private Limited, 10th Floor, Vayudooth Chambers, 15–16, Mahatma Gandhi Road, Bangalore 560 001, India. IDG Media Private Limited is an IDG (International Data Group) company.

Printed and Published by N Bringi Dev on behalf of IDG Media Private Limited, 10th Floor, Vayudooth Chambers, 15–16, Mahatma Gandhi Road, Bangalore 560 001, India. Editor: N. Bringi Dev. Printed at Rajhans Enterprises, No. 134, 4th Main Road, Industrial Town, Rajajinagar, Bangalore 560 044, India

AMD 1

APC 3

Avaya 4 & 5

CA 9

Ech Enn 98 & 99

Emerson BC

Fluke IBC

Fujitsu IFC

HID 21

HP 33

Interface 25

Krone 77

MAIA 11 - 16

Novell 79

Procurve (HP) 82 & 83

R&M 71

Ricoh 7

SAS 75

Sigma Byte 23 & 85

Vishwak 29

This index is provided as an additional service. The publisher does not assume any liabilities for errors or omissions.

abnash singh

Group CIO, Mphasis

alaganandan balaraMan

Vice president, britannia Industries

alok kuMar

Global head-Internal IT, Tata Consultancy Services

anwer bagdadi

Senior VP & CTO, CFC International India Services

arun guPta

Customer Care associate & CTO, Shopper’s Stop

arvind tawde

VP & CIO, Mahindra & Mahindra

ashish k. Chauhan

President & CIO — IT applications, reliance Industries

C.n. raM

head–IT, hdFC bank

Chinar s. deshPande

CIO, Pantaloon retail

dr. Jai Menon

director (IT & Innovation) & Group CIO, bharti Tele-Ventures

Manish Choksi

Chief-Corporate Strategy & CIO, asian Paints

M.d. agrawal

dy. GM (IS), bharat Petroleum Corporation limited

raJeev shirodkar

VP-IT, raymond

raJesh uPPal

Chief GM IT & distribution, Maruti Udyog

ProF. r.t. krishnan

Professor, Corporate Strategy, IIM-bangalore

s. goPalakrishnan

CEO & Managing director, Infosys Technologies

ProF. s. sadagoPan

director, IIIT-bangalore

s.r. balasubraMnian

Executive VP (IT & Corporate development),

Godfrey Phillips

satish das

CSO, Cognizant Technology Solutions

sivaraMa krishnan

Executive director, PricewaterhouseCoopers

dr. sridhar Mitta

Md & CTO, e4e

s.s. Mathur

GM–IT, Centre for railway Information Systems

sunil Mehta

Sr. VP & area Systems director (Central asia), JWT

v.v.r. babu

Group CIO, ITC

advisory board

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Destination OutsourcingI read the outsourcing story (Outsourcing Wisdom, September 1, 2007) Outsourcing Wisdom, September 1, 2007) Outsourcing Wisdom, September 1, 2007in its entirety, and found the article to be excellent. It provides a lot of insights into how a company like Dabur planned to farm out IT and how it has benefited from outsourcing. One aspect of the topic, I felt, CIO could have covered better was advice from technology leaders and experts for prospective companies that are looking to outsource. On the whole though, the coverage of outsourcing was good. I also found the interview with Kris Gopalakrishnan (Breaking It Down) to be excellent.Sivarama KriShnan

Executive Director (Business Solutions), PwC

On a Common FrontThe CIO 100 Symposium & Awards Ceremony was first-class. From start to Ceremony was first-class. From start to Ceremonyend, we were challenged and entertained. It was an honor being part of the event and such a prestigious gathering.

But apart from the entertainment and learning, the event also served to help us network. The conversations that were held could not have been of greater depth given the number of people to meet, the interesting sessions and the awards ceremony in the evening. However, it did set the stage. We CIOs

exchanged cards and contact details, and we can now talk among ourselves.Some of the interesting points that a few CIOs made showed me that we shared a number of problems. We’re all looking for faster networks and, in my specific case, the ability to fulfill reporting requirements at the earliest. Among other common challenges I heard during the wine session were talent management and data security. We met a few vendors and discussed our issues with them. All in all, it was a great event. viKram Saxena,

Senior GM-IT, Emami

Personally, I felt that the CIO speakers sessions during the CIO 100 event could have been rehearsed and edited before going live. The CIO fraternity views this award as very precious and respectable. In my opinion, Cyrus Broacha was not the right choice for the occasion.viShwaS G. LOnDhe,

Depity GM-Finance & IT, RCF

raising The BarThe programs and events conducted and organized by IDG India contain rich content and are handled professionally. On behalf of the CIO community, I can say with confidence that we have found these seminars and panel discussions to be very useful and illuminating.

IDG has been consistently raising

the bar, and an example of this was the keynote address ('Process, Innovation & Process Innovation') by Michael Schrage at the recently organized CIO 100 Symposium & Awards ceremony.arun PanDe,

VP-IT Colgate Palmolive

There could have been more slots for different speakers to give presentation on various IT technologies at the CIO 100 Symposium. There could have also been more panel discussions on varied topics of interest, with interaction between the panelists and speakers. Another suggestion I have is that case studies on specific topics across industry verticals be arranged in the interest of peer groups who could gain knowledge on the process of implementation within their companies.maniKKam SuBramaniam,

Head-IT, Henkel CAC

reAder feedbACk

What Do You Think?

We welcome your feedback on our articles, apart from your thoughts and suggestions. Write in to [email protected]. Letters may be edited for length or clarity.

editor@c o.in

CIOs share a number of problems. We all

want faster networks and the ability to meet reporting requirements at

the earliest.

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exchanged cards and contact details, and we can now talk among ourselves.Some of the interesting points that a few CIOs made showed me that we shared a number of problems. We’re all looking for faster networks and, in my specific case, the ability to fulfill reporting requirements at the earliest. Among other common challenges I heard during the wine session were talent management and data security. We met a few vendors and discussed Destination Outsourcing

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n e w * h o t * u n e x p e c t e d

Empowering Cyber CafesS e c u r i t y An information security foundation has proposed that police use key-logging software at cybercafés

to track interaction between terrorists.Computers at cyber cafes offer

terrorists anonymity, says Vijay Mukhi, president of the Foundation for Information Security and Technology (FIST) in Mumbai. Terrorists are known to use instant messengers

(IM) from companies like Microsoft and Yahoo, which do not share data from IM chats with the

police, he added.Keyloggers are software that record a user's key

strokes — whatever the user types — on a computer keyboard. Data from keyloggers can be uploaded to centralized servers, where it becomes available to the police for scrutiny. The keyloggers would be activated centrally when a suspect walks into a cyber café or when suspicious activity is noted, Mukhi says.

The move does not have the approval of the Mumbai police yet. A number of bloggers have criticized Mukhi's proposal, saying it will

put personal data of regular users at risk. But some other blogs point out that it is a small price to pay to protect society against terrorism. The police should put in place a mechanism for citizens to seek redress from any misuse of their private information, Mukhi says.

Bomb blasts by terrorists have killed a large number of people in the country. In July last year, seven bombs planted in Mumbai's suburban trains, killed over 200 people and injured another 700.

Terrorists are increasingly using the Internet to communicate with one another, as they are aware that telephone and mobile phone connections are under Indian government surveillance, says Mukhi.

FIST, a Mumbai-based nonprofit organization, focuses on cyber-security and has worked with the police on related issues. It aims to get keyloggers on computers in cybercafes throughout India, Mukhi says.

— By John Ribeiro

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thief Breaks into Caterpillar Serverc y B e r c r i m e An

IT engineer working for Caterpillar Inc.'s

engineering design center in India, allegedly used another employee's username and password to access and steal about 4,000 confidential documents from a company server in the US.

The individual behind the attack, identified as M.S. Ramasamy from Chennai, was arrested by the Cyber Crime Cell of India's Criminal Investigations Department in late July. He was charged with hacking into a server and stealing confidential data under the country's IT Act of 2000.

A Caterpillar spokeswoman based in China confirmed the incident and said

that a former Caterpillar employee at the company's center in Chennai had been arrested by local authorities. "We are doing everything possible to cooperate with the authorities to ensure a full and timely investigation," she says.

She refuses to provide any further details on the incident, saying, "The matter is in the hands of local authorities."

Newspaper reports, quoting a statement by the Cyber Crime Cell in Chennai, identified Ramasamy as having formerly worked for a Caterpillar facility located in the Ascendas IT Park near the city.

According to media reports, Ramasamy hacked into Caterpillar's Research and Engineering Documents Inquiry System,

known as REDI, located in Illinois, in January and February, and illegally downloaded about 4,000 documents. The access was accomplished using a colleague's user credentials, but a closed-circuit camera recording connected Ramasamy to the alleged crime.

He was working for another Indian IT company near Bangalore at the time of his arrest. Police have recovered the tape and disks containing the illegally downloaded data, according to Indian newspapers.

The Cyber Crime Cell officials were not available for comment.

—By Jaikumar Vijayan

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i . t . m a n a g e m e n t You'd think that IT chiefs and security officers were likely to view the corporate world similarly from their c-level positions, but often, that's not the case.

At The Security Standard conference in Chicago, the CIO of one company and the CSO of another explained why.

If CIOs were more forthcoming with their technology plans and consulted CSOs in advance, security professionals wouldn't be put in the position of always having to retrofit security, says Andy Ellis, senior director of IS and chief security architect with Akamai. "Maybe in the long run, we could reduce the amount of risk we have," he says.

But Geir Ramleth, senior VP and CIO at Bechtel, has a different impression of what happens when CIOs ask CSOs for advice. "Security people have this phrase, 'yes, but...we should really have a policy on this.'"

Ellis also has a pet-peeve phrase: "When I bring a risk forward and take the time to explain it, I get 'I don't see why that matters.' Maybe I didn't communicate the risk well enough, but it's often used as a defense mechanism."

Both executives agree that part of the conflict stems from the fact that they have different missions. For most CIOs, security is important, but not the top priority.

"Speed, agility, and serving the needs of the business often drive us. It doesn't mean we do all those things and then think about security, but it's not top priority," Ramleth says. "We're a project company, so risk is anything that changes the scope, budget, and schedule of a project. The CSOs out there change the scope, increase the budget, and what they do takes longer than I expected."

Having more data about business drivers behind technology decisions would help CSOs understand these priorities, Ellis adds. "If we understand the business problem and get security in there first, maybe we can do it in an agile function," he says.

Ramleth says the vocabulary used in each position also vary greatly; CIOs use words like speed, simple and easy, while CSOs talk about things that are critical and essential.

The two executives agree that the relationship between CIOs and CSOs can be harmonious, despite diverging priorities. "I appreciate security professionals, but I feel like I'm talking to my life-insurance guy who insists that I pay a lot of premiums when I'm alive so others can benefit when I'm dead," Ramleth says.

— NetworkWorld

Why Can’t CIOs Befriend CSOs?


Why Can’t CIOs

SPEEDING UPSPEEDING UPSPEEDING UPSPEEDING UPMAMMOTH

DATA TRANSFERDATA TRANSFERDATA TRANSFERDATA TRANSFERW i r e l e S S Imagine a wireless network that could achieve Imagine a wireless network that could achieve Imagine a wireless network that could achieve bandwidth high enough to transfer an entire video presentation from bandwidth high enough to transfer an entire video presentation from bandwidth high enough to transfer an entire video presentation from your laptop directly onto a conference room projector! your laptop directly onto a conference room projector! your laptop directly onto a conference room projector!

Several firms are designing products that use multigigabit Several firms are designing products that use multigigabit wireless networks that can send large amounts of data over short distances within a matter of seconds. In contrast to Bluetooth, which runs on a frequency band of 2.4GHz to 2.4835GHz, these new wireless networks would use the unlicensed 60GHz band to allow quick wireless transfers of large files.

"When you talk about huge file transfers, Bluetooth won't hack it because customers can't wait for minutes to transfer files," says Abbie Mathew, VP of business development at NewlANS, a company that is developing wireless applications for the 60GHz band. "This enables you to transfer files very quickly."

How fast? Think in terms of whole gigabits sent in less than a second. Scientists at the Georgia Electronic Design Center (GEDC) in the Georgia Institute of Technology have designed a system that can transfer data at 5Gbps at a range of five meters.

Joy laskar, GEDC's director, says he imagines several business applications for multigigabit networks, especially in the field of large-scale data transfer. "Imagine you have a portable device that's essentially an evolved iPod with hundreds of gigs of storage," he says. "one scenario would be to have several kiosks around an office that could wirelessly send information to your device."

Another potential application for multigigabit wireless networks is the fast transfer of HD video. SiBEAM, a fabless semiconductor company, unveiled its omnilink60 technology this summer, which lets HD video and audio files be shared between portable devices through the 60GHz band. Essentially, omnilink60 works through a chipset that connects different electronic devices. one device acts as the coordinator of the network, sending out beams to the other devices and knowing each of the devices' individual functions. So, if you brought your laptop into a conference room with a projector that had an omnilink60 chip installed, the technology would automatically detect and identify the projector as one that could receive signals from the laptop.

SiBEAM CEo John lenMoncheck says the omnilink60's range is roughly 10 meters, which would make it optimal for transferring the amount of information contained in a DVD from one side of a room to another.

"The 60GHz technology is going to become very important," says Craig Mathias, a principal with the wireless and mobile consultancy Farpoint Group. "It won't entirely replace other wireless lANs, but for gigabit lANs, it looks like the best candidate."

— By Brad Reed

S t o r a g e In just three years, the bytes of data generated by digital cameras, mobile phones, businesses IT systems and devices will equal the number of grains of sand on the world's beaches, according to IDC.

over the next few years, corporations will face tough decisions on how to store and find data and comply with regulations, says Stephen Minton, IDC's VP of worldwide IT markets and strategies. He forecasted what IT managers can expect from what's being labeled the 'information explosion'.

While 85 percent of this data is predicted to come from consumers snapping photos, surfing Web pages and sending e-mail,

about 60 percent of that consumer data will still cross corporate networks, Minton says. Much of this is unstructured, which makes it more difficult to use, he adds.

But technologies that enable deep analysis of the data are emerging, and could help business unlock what's important and improve their operations.

The mass of data companies are collecting — Wal-Mart, for example, generates 1TB of transactional data a day — represents huge business opportunities "if companies can really get to a point where they can successfully analyze the data going back and forth on their network," Minton says.

Companies are "still a long way short of being able to analyze the unstructured data on their networks," he says. The data is coming from Web services such as the photo-sharing site Flickr, Skype and even the virtual world Second life.

The business opportunities are the positive side. But the security concerns still abound, as well as regulatory compliance and liability worries.

"This explosion in the number of applications and devices has created an explosion in the number of security vulnerabilities," Minton says.

— By Jeremy kirk

B l o g S It's proven that writing can accomplish plenty, but now it can also land you a job. As blogging becomes more pervasive, CIOs are finding blogs as being truly useful to their careers.

According to Rebecca Foreman, VP at executive recruiting service firm Polachi, blogs are an excellent way to highlight not only your career accomplishments but also your personal interests. And 67 percent of senior executives from US technology companies who blog, include personal information in their blogs, according to a recent Polachi survey. Foreman says that she often looks for personal interests that align with the position she is trying to fill.

For example, in looking to fill a position at Segway, she wanted someone with a passion for transportation. That's not something you'd put on a résumé, but it's something you might write about in a blog. Foreman searched blogs for executives who had interests in bicycling or Harleys, or were trained as private pilots and enjoyed flying in their free time.

Many people might have the necessary skill set, but personal affinities like being a mountain biker can make you the ideal candidate, she says. A solid third of the

Polachi survey respondents said they've been contacted by recruiters who wanted to speak with them after reading their blog. The survey also showed that 80 percent of executives who blog think it helps them with professional networking.

It worked for the County of San Diego's new CIO, Bill Crowell, who blogged about his career quest on CIO.com at ‘CIO Job Search: A Real Life Chronicle.’ The blog proved to be a powerful personal marketing tool and fodder for his final-and successful interview with the county, says Crowell.

Best practices

1Always include your subject matter expertise. If you've just been through an

Oracle implementation or have moved to on-demand software delivery, write about it. Technology executives read each other's blogs for best practices. Who knows who could benefit from your experience and what contacts you might make as a result?

2 Showcase your writing skills. Foreman says she is always talking about written

and oral communication skills, even at the executive level. Great as you might be in a face-

to-face interview, expressing your thoughts clearly in writing will set you apart.

3Don't talk politics because you could ostracize your audience. Stick to business

topics, technology expertise or personal interests. Be true to the subject you've chosen for your blog. Also, use the right keywords; you want your blog to be among the results of keyword searches for your topic of interest.

—By Margaret Locher

Data Explosion Shakes Up IT

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Polachi survey respondents said they've been contacted by recruiters who wanted to speak with them after reading their blog. The survey also showed that 80 percent of executives who blog think it helps them with

It worked for the County of San Diego's new CIO, Bill Crowell, who blogged about his career quest on CIO.com at ‘CIO Job Search: A Real Life Chronicle.’ The blog proved to be a powerful personal marketing tool and fodder for his final-and successful interview with the

Always include your subject matter expertise. If you've just been through an

Oracle implementation or have moved to to-face interview, expressing your thoughts

Unemployed? Start Blogging

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i . t . S t r a t e g y While companies are turning increasingly to virtual worlds for employee collaboration and as a way to strengthen relationships with customers, few have developed comprehensive strategies to deal with places like Second Life or Kaneva, according to a recent report by ‘The Conference Board.’

"Although virtual worlds appear to mimic the real world, this is an illusion," says Edward M. Roche, the author of the report. With that in mind, companies must address a bevy of questions around corporate strategy, cost and IT requirements before making the jump into a virtual world, the report notes.

Devise an entry strategy. While some companies may view virtual worlds as a new frontier, others that operate 24/7 may be eyeing virtual worlds as a way to ‘cheat the clock’ and break down internal barriers to global operations. Early results from virtual environments point to higher degrees of collaboration and openness, the report notes. Only time will tell if this is a fundamental shift or just a reaction to an engaging technology.

Outline your corporate purpose. Are you entering the virtual world to ‘stake a claim’ or to provide customers with more data about products and services? Companies should also determine who will be in charge of managing the virtual world initiative; some might opt for a committee, while others could use their existing sales and marketing department.

Decide how much you want to spend. This might be hard, since no benchmarks have been established. But companies will need to budget to hire a consultant to create the concept, deal with requirements and build the virtual world presence. Plus, companies that plan to link IT systems should take building and maintenance costs, double them and allot 65 percent of that amount to systems integration work.

Figure out if IT is upto it. It's hard work to launch and maintain a presence in a virtual world. "The IT function in most companies is one of the most under-rated and under-appreciated groups," Roche says. "And continual nagging from users and extremely difficult technical challenges tend to make IT resistant to change."

— By Heather Havenstein

e - m a i l A hosted exchange e-mail provider using technology from Akamai Technologies says that it helps ensure and speed up delivery of e-mail to users of Blackberries and Windows Mobile smartphones.

Gulf Breeze, a US-based AppRiver llC, has cut calls to its help desk by a third and reduced traffic at its main data center, while delivering e-mail faster and more reliably to its mobile and Web mail users since it began using an application performance solution.

Better known as a provider of hosted spam and virus filtering services, AppRiver started offering hosted Exchange e-mail service in early 2006. It services 2,000 companies with 20,000 mailboxes total today, Cutler says.

"We knew our e-mail systems weren't going down," says Scott Cutler, executive VP at AppRiver, referring to calls from users complaining that they couldn't get their e-mail. "What we didn't have control over was outside the data center, on the Internet."

The problem, Cutler says, is that Exchange was originally created for local area networks, not for delivering e-mail through the Internet globally to customers using mobile devices whose wireless connections can be prone to interference, he says. The interference causes erroneous transmissions, which forces the wireless device to re-request the same packets all the way from the server.

Akamai can use its global network of over 25,000 servers to cache multimedia content for faster delivery to end users. What Akamai does for AppRiver, says Neil Cohen, senior product marketing manager at Akamai, is nuanced variation on this theme. Error checking can be done between the wireless device and a nearby Akamai server temporarily caching the content. That speeds up both the error-checking process and the re-sending of packets.

This, says Cutler, makes ‘the Internet more lAN-like.’Cohen declined to say how much Akamai's service costs,

apart from saying it is priced per application. But a story in CIo’s sister publication, o’s sister publication, o Network World, reported that the price starts at Rs 4 lakh per application.

Besides third-party SAAS and hosted software providers, Akamai is targeting enterprises that are hosting internal applications for employees.

— By Eric lai


Routing email to Handhelds

Diving IntoDiving IntoA Virtual World

Diving IntoA Virtual World

Diving Into

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d i S a S t e r m a n a g e m e n t Six years after 9/11, many IT operations are overconfident about their ability to handle a disaster, says a Forrester report. The survey of 189 data center decision makers found a severe lack of IT preparation.

For example, the report found that 27 percent of the respondents' data centers in North America and Europe do not run a failover site to recover data in the event of a disaster. About 23 percent of respondents said they do not test disaster recovery plans, while 40 percent test their plans at least once a year. About 33 percent of respondents described their operations as ‘very prepared’ for a manmade or natural disaster while 37 percent called their sites simply ‘prepared’ for such events.

Stephanie Balaouras, a senior analyst at Forrester, says she is surprised at how

‘overly confident' enterprises are about their ability to confront disasters when their preparation is actually minimal.

"Without regular testing, the chance that your disaster recovery plan will execute flawlessly during a disaster is pretty slim," said Balaouras, who authored the report.

She says that many enterprises are wary of conducting tests of disaster recovery plans because they can be disruptive to data center operations.

And as budgets continue to tighten, IT operations and infrastructure staff, face growing challenges to justify spending on disaster recovery programs and testing, Balaouras notes. Companies can validate such programs by determining the potential cost of downtime during disasters, including revenue lost by not closing monthly books on time, due to

late payment costs and to lost worker productivity, she says.

Forrester asserts that many companies must scramble to create disaster recovery programs as partners and suppliers increasingly require them to have redundant systems running offsite.

She also contends that companies should have an easier time creating such operations due to improvements server virtualization technology, the availability of larger bandwidth pipes, declining telecommunications costs and storage area network (SAN)-based replication.

"That alternate site doesn't have to be just idle. you can study read-only workloads there, you can study read-only workloads there, ylike reporting, or have secondary workloads like application development and testing, or you can offload backup," she remarks.

— By Brian Fonseca

monSteR data ta t StolenP r i v a c y Attackers using a Trojan horse stole more than 16 lakh records belonging to users of Monster Worldwide's online job search service, the company acknowledged this week.

The malicious program, called 'Infostealer.Monstres,'utilized the pilfered data to send Monster.com users phishing e-mails that plant malware on their machines, said researchers at Symantec Corp. The stolen records include the names, e-mail addresses, home addresses, phone numbers and résumé identification numbers of 13 lakh users of Monster's services, says Amado Hidalgo, senior security response manager at Symantec. The theft was discovered on August 17. Monster.com disclosed that it found a remote server used by the attackers to store the stolen information.

"Monster has identified and shut down a rogue server that was accessing job

seeker contact information through unauthorized use of compromised legitimate employer-client log-in credentials," stated New York-based Monster Worldwide in a statement."The company is currently analyzing the number of job seeker contacts impacted by this action, and will be communicating with those

affected as appropriate," the statement said.

Hidalgo said that the legitimate log-ins were likely stolen from recruiters

and corporate human resources personnel.

—By Gregg Keizer

eR data ta t Stolen Attackers using a Trojan

horse stole more than 16 lakh records belonging to users of Monster Worldwide's online job

called 'Infostealer.Monstres,'utilized the pilfered data to send Monster.com users phishing e-mails that plant malware on their machines, said researchers at Symantec Corp. The stolen records include the names, e-mail addresses, home addresses, phone numbers and résumé identification numbers of 13 lakh users of Monster's services, says Amado Hidalgo, senior security response manager at Symantec.

"Monster has identified and shut down a rogue server that was accessing job

seeker contact information through unauthorized use of compromised legitimate employer-client log-in credentials," stated New York-based Monster Worldwide in

statement said. Hidalgo said that the legitimate log-

ins were likely stolen from recruiters

Desppite 9/11IT Remains Unprepared: ForresterUnprepared: Forrester

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Seven Ways to Deflate InnovationEveryday, companies across the world slay innovation. Are you guilty too?

Innovation may be the obvious business mandate, but plenty of companies are guilty of creating a culture where a good idea has as much opportunity to take root as most of us have of winning the lottery. What gives?

For starters, the creative process can be fragile and requires support and nurturing. That can be tough in today’s environment of rapid technological change and marketplace competition — but this also makes innovation essential. Here is our list of innovation killers. Find out if your company is crushing good ideas or allowing growth and change to flourish.

Innovation killer #1: Believe that innovation will ‘just happen’.Trusting that innovation will take care of itself is like believing a vegetable garden will just appear in your yard one day. Innovation requires time and money, and it requires a process to support it, according to Thomas Koulopoulos, founder of the innovation consultancy Delphi Group. Like a garden, the innovation process requires a place for ideas to root. It also requires weeding, protection against predators, and consistent nurturing and care.

Attention to innovation is required today, says Koulopoulos. Even in industries, where margins are slim — such as manufacturing and sourcing — innovation is a must. “Here’s the irony,” he says. “Just because I can't afford to take a big risk, that doesn’t mean that somewhere on the globe I won’t be challenged.” Standing still makes you vulnerable, he says pointing to the American auto industry, which is losing to foreign carmakers; the competitors did think it was important to innovate.Innovation tip: Lobby for the importance of innovation, the dollars and owners to support it.

Diann Daniel Diann Daniel Diann Daniel innovation

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Innovation killer #2: Hold a brainstorming session, then call it a day.Great ideas are the seeds of innovation; they are not innovation itself. “Everyone [for example] has the idea for a book in their head,” says Koulopoulos, “but there’s a huge gap between ‘book in the head’ and the laborious process of writing the thing.”

Invention and innovation are two different things and you need both. Koulopoulos points out that companies that get innovation right have a holistic view of innovation and create a culture to ensure that it flourishes. This means a process to support innovation is created, implemented and communicated, so that everyone knows how it works and is able to participate.Innovation tip: Create a process to ensure ideas are nurtured.

Innovation killer #3: Lay the success of innovation solely on IT’s shoulders.Technology should support the role of innovation, not lead it, says Koulopoulos. This is because innovation is first an issue of corporate culture, concerning inspiration and motivation. In any situation, you get two activities: the invention and the innovation, or the actual process of innovating. Koulopoulos draws a hard line between the two and says technology’s role falls after invention.

IT should be involved with implementing the technology that best supports the innovation process. For example, many companies are turning to vendors that offer idea management technology, such as iBank and Brightidea.com.Innovation tip: Realize — and convey — IT’s role in innovation.

Innovation killer #4: Create an obstacle course for ideas.Guaranteed way to kill the innovative spirit? Model your processes on your typical parking clerk’s office. Bureaucracy and Byzantine processes discourage enthusiasm and participation. When employees’ ideas are treated with derision or disrespect or the process is confusing and difficult to navigate, enthusiasm is likely to deflate. That’s just what Koulopoulos found when he surveyed 374 senior IT execs: 22 percent of respondents reported losing interest in championing their idea due to internal bureaucracy.Innovation tip: Make the innovation process transparent and clear-cut, and create ways to support everyone's involvement.

Innovation killer #5: Different and new is bad.Ever watched a new idea shot down at time-warp speed with a derisive ‘that won’t work’? Chances are the naysayer was one

Diann Daniel innovation

Web ExclusiveFeaturesClean, Green Machines When VistaPrint revamped its data centers to contain rising energy costs, the company helped the planet along with its bottom line..

Being Big Brother Are you being asked to monitor employees as they use corporate IT? That’s a slippery slope, as litigation shows. Here’s how to do it right.

Read more of such web exclusive features at www.cio.in/features

Resources

Whitepapers:Software: CIO Unified Protection and Management This white paper examines employing a strategic approach to enterprise application archiving...

Business Continuity: Virtualization Technologies and Their Impact on Disaster RecoveryVirtual server technologies provide reduced costs, simplified IT management, and minimized...

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Columns

Should Innovation Stay In-house? After arguing for years that IT development is best kept in-house, our columnist decides that creativity has moved on and moved out.

A Matter of Scale You are a successful mid-market CIO who is ready to apply your IT leadership talents on a larger stage. But before you start sending your résumé to the Fortune 10, you may want to ask yourself a critical question: how scalable are my skills?

Read more of such web exclusive columns at www.cio.in/columns

Coloumn Seven Highly Effective Ways to Kill Innovation - 01.indd 28 10/3/2007 3:26:03 PM

of the more entrenched execs. “This is the single greatest trap companies fall into,” says Koulopoulos, “and it’s a people issue: when you’ve invested yourself [in how things are], the last thing you want is for them to change.”

Not being open to change is a big mistake, he says. Take the newspaper industry’s initial refusal to acknowledge the disruption by the Internet. As a consequence, ad sales — a primary source of revenue — flatlined in 2006.

Is your company going to stick to its ‘values’ about the way things should be? Or will it respond to the need for innovation? Internal resistance is difficult to overcome, Koulopoulos says, but few companies can afford to cling to the past.Innovation tips: Study stories of companies that took risks. And: Learn why fear of change is hardwired into our bodies.

Innovation killer # 6: Hand good ideas over to the legal and accounting departments.Ideas are fragile, easily broken or squashed. On the surface, giving the care of those ideas to legal or accounting may make sense, since one of the greatest issues with inventions are legal ones. And there are financial considerations as well. But those with the most influence over the idea process must be the

innovation champions, and that emphasis must come from the top, says Koulopoulos. Research by CIO in the US bears this out. At 61 percent, the highest-scoring critical ingredient of an innovative culture was innovation-focused leadership, according to CIO’s survey of 2007 CIO 100 winners. (Winners are chosen for innovations in IT that have transformed the company.)Innovation tip: Create support and ownership for innovation at management’s uppermost tiers.

Innovation killer #7: Be very afraid of failure.Failure-tolerant management was the third most important ingredient in creating an innovative culture, according to CIO’s survey. There’s a reason why this factor is so important.

Here’s the scary truth: you will fail sometimes. Like a child learning to ride a bike, you simply cannot move ahead without taking a few knocks. The question is: are you the kind of organization that can embrace innovation in spite of that?Innovation tip: What doesn’t work out is merely a learning experience.Use case studies, research and other support to show naysayers why learning experiences are a must in today’s corporate environment. CIO

Send feedback on this column to [email protected]

Diann Daniel innovation

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Coloumn Seven Highly Effective Ways to Kill Innovation - 01.indd 29 10/3/2007 3:26:03 PM

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Cover Story.indd 30 10/3/2007 3:27:55 PM

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Innovation. It is a gift inherent to IT. Innovation comes in many shapes and sizes and CIO 100, in its second annual awards program, honored enterprises that showed IT resourcefulness in achieving business ends.

By Bala Murali Krishna

27 I 7 Ways To Deflate Innovation35 I Gallery: The 2007 Honorees66 I Q&A: Schrage on Shared Risks72 I Q&A: Hugos on Agility80 I Views From The Top87 I Wacky Innovations

INDEX

Cover Story | IntegrationCOVER STORY I INNOVATION


Still, innovations don’t come easy, and certainly don’t come to Still, innovations don’t come easy, and certainly don’t come to everybody. That’s why you have periodic exhortations to ‘think out of the box’, or ‘think different’, as the Apple ad ungrammatically urged in the late 1990s. Successful innovations are few and far between, which is why we celebrate innovation and honor their creators.

Right down history, technology has been a hub of innovation. The wheel is a good example not only of an invention but also of an innovation. This is because, the wheel has, since its of an innovation. This is because, the wheel has, since its invention, been transformed in myriad ways and today is a marvel of engineering. Besides, it still is the focus of much innovation. The point is: there is always room for innovation. If you can create innovations around the wheel, one of the earliest creations of mankind, you can innovate in just about anything.

For cricket lovers, the recent Twenty-20 format is a clear example of how innovation can charmingly work even for a centuries-old game. If you look around at other sports, it is much the same. Almost every sport has been transformed from the way it was played even as recently as ten years ago. In the world of technology, if anything it is further accentuated. That is because technology often is a catalyst for change. The Internet, as we have witnessed for over a decade, has led to a groundswell of innovation worldwide.

Among the earliest Internet stars was Yahoo. Today, it stands eclipsed by many others, most significantly by Google. How did Google upstage almost everybody else in the Internet space? After all, it was not even the first technology company that offered Internet search capabilities. Google succeeded through its innovations, the most remarkable being the way it approached the task of searching hundreds of millions of Web pages. To be

sure, its innovations didn’t stop there. It added blazing speed to its wide-ranging searches and provided a clean, minimalist interface that has been hailed by users.

In enterprise innovations — the focus of our CIO 100 awards program — the CIO is the unquestioned master. We recognize those that do by understanding changing business needs and by using IT to create competitive advantage for their companies.

Last year’s Last year’s CIO 100 awards program ranked companies by awards program ranked companies by their size. Consequently, smaller companies got little play. That is

Innovation isn’t new. It’s age-old and intrinsic to mankind. As

our history establishes, it has been practised, with remarkable success

perhaps, over the ages. Evolution could, in some ways, be seen as the

result of a series of innovations.

Vol/2 | ISSUE/223 2 o C t o b E r 1 , 2 0 0 7 | REAL CIO WORLD

The inauguralCIo 100 awards in 2006 honored companies and their CIos based on the size of their IT Infrastructure. This year, the CIo 100 Awards recognized enterprise IT innovation, allowing companies small and big to compete equally for the honor.

We solicited applications for the awards through ads in CIo and our online newsletters, as well as electronic mailings to our print subscribers. Hundreds of companies filled out the applications. Companies had to demonstrate that they were able to create new value using IT and execute their project well but also that they did so in uncommon, innovative ways: pioneering a new technology, applying a familiar technology to a new purpose, or setting the bar higher for their competitors.

Each application was reviewed by a panel of CIo editors, who evaluated them according to three criteria: innovation, business impact and technology. The awards jury examined how each company stacked up against the others in the pool, and sought to honor the most exciting initiatives for the CIo 100 honor.

The companies we selected for this year’s CIo 100 Awards cut across a range of organizations — both in terms of revenue and industry.

How We ChoseTHE InnOvATIvE 100

why we chose to focus on innovation, regardless of the size of the companies. This has allowed small- and medium-sized companies to compete on the strength of their innovations. In fact, one of our winners reported annual revenues of just Rs 7 crore.

Most of the innovations from this year’s CIO 100 award winners were created against the backdrop of high and rapid growth of the broader economy. Consequently, most innovations targeted ways in which IT could tap new markets and bring new efficiencies to businesses. Few were aimed merely at cost-cutting, though most innovations achieved that too.

Unsurprisingly, the creative use of wireless technologies was a significant feature of the CIO 100 award winners. Many tapped it to boost business efficiencies in geographic areas where wired services were either non-existent or dysfunctional. Some like Hero Honda and Sheela Foam, for example, tapped the potential of the SMS — or short messaging service — not only to bring new efficiencies but also to transform business processes.

Allergan India, the subsidiary of a US pharmaceutical corporation, simply put a PDA in the hands of sales representatives twiddling their thumbs as they spent long hours waiting in doctors’ offices. This raised their productivity, besides ensuring faster and easier transmission of key data from remote places. Kingfisher Airlines, a late entrant into India’s booming aviation sector, smartly placed mobile devices in the hands of its staff. This made up for a dire lack of space at our congested airports, making passenger check-ins a breeze and ensuring timely departure of its flights.

Our encounter with innovations revealed another facet of what CIOs are doing: putting computers within reach of every worker. This is significant in the Indian context. For one, it still is a novel thing in most factories, and even offices; for another,

it raises the prospect of increasing labor productivity in a nation notorious for its low levels of real productivity. This tilt at pervasive computing is important for another reason. Many such projects seek to empower the worker with knowledge. By accumulating and assimilating a variety of information, these databases serve as a treasure trove of knowledge. Tata Motors and Hyundai Motors, to name two, have built ‘knowledge portals’ that seek to make their workers a lot smarter. Many of our CIO 100 awards winners have embarked in the same direction, sure in their belief that knowledge increasingly will be a key differentiator in today’s competitive economy.

A third broad trend we noticed in the entries for the CIO 100 awards was the frenetic pace at which Indian companies — including many truly large ones and many public sector units — deployed complex ERP systems. While these may seem basic, these can be challenging in the Indian context — both in terms of the geographies and in terms of transitioning from disparate legacy systems. Underneath this transition is the conviction that holistic IT systems are the building blocks for modern companies, and there is no other way to go.Geographically, we had the north and West dominating the awards. Thirty-five of the winners came from Mumbai alone; and the West won a total of 43 awards. The national Capital Region claimed 30, and the north won an overall 31. The South had 23 winners and the East had 3.

The sectoral distribution of the winners was dispersed with as many Old Economy companies as there were from the new Economy. CIO

Executive editor Bala Murali Krishna can be reached at [email protected]

it raises the prospect of increasing labor productivity in a

Innovation came in all sizes — being resourceful, apparently, has nothing to do with how big your pockets are.

IT/ITes

Manufacturing

BFSI

Auto

Energy

Others

13

17

9

88

45

Note: The 'others' category comprises aviation, consumer durables,FMCG, infrastructure, pharma and healthcare, services and t elecom.

By The SectorInnovation wasn't limited to the fast-growth sectors.

COVER STORY I INNOVATION

Vol/2 | ISSUE/223 4 o C t o b E r 1 , 2 0 0 7 | REAL CIO WORLD

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The Cost of Innovation

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In the second year of the CIO 100 awards program,

CIO India honors the nation’s most

innovative IT leaders — CIOs who have shown innovation and resourcefulness in tackling both business and IT challenges.

Winners - Photo Section - Cover.indd 35 10/3/2007 3:29:01 PM

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1 Ravi TandonCIO, Abhishek Industries 2 Bhushan AkerkarExecutive Director,IS & Technology, AC Nielsen ORG MARG South Asia3 Pankaj ShahDGM Systems, Adani Wilmar 4 Jai MenonDirector-IT & Innovation,Bharti Airtel 5 Dr R.S. TyagiDirector & Head Computer Facility, AIIMS6 K.T. RajanDirector Operations IS & Projects, Allergan India7 Mike WebbVP & CIO, Aricent Technologies 8 N. ChandrasekaranGM-IT, Ashok Leyland9 Manish ChoksiChief-Corporate Strategy & CIO, Asian Paints10 PinnamaneniMahesh KumarCIO, Aurobindo PharmaP

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used properly, no other business

weapon can come even close

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Winners - Photo Section - 01.indd 37 10/3/2007 3:31:00 PM

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1 N. NatrajCTO, Aztecsoft 2 Anil KhopkarGM-MIS, Bajaj Auto3 Rajkumar UpadhyayDGM-IT, BSNL4 Subrata BanerjeeGM-IT, Bharat Aluminium5 S.P.GathooExecutive Director-IIS, BPCL6 Atul BansalHead-IT, BLA Industries7 K B SinghHead-IT, BSES (Reliance Energy) 8 Shikha RaiAssistant Director IT, Canon 9 Sanjaya DasGM-Projects, CRIS10 Anwer BagdadiCTO, CFC India Services

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“When building a team for an innovative project, look for attitude, commitment, interpersonal skills, social grace, negotiation skills, business etiquette and motivation.”

— N. Nataraj

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1 Chuck TrentDirector-IS & IT Infrastructure, Cisco2 Kamal KarnatakHead-IT, DCM Shriram3 Arvind SaksenaCIO, Deccan Aviation4 Satyanarayan B.CIO & VP, Dimexon Diamonds5 Surinder KapoorCIO, DSIIDC 6 Mrinal ChakrabortyGM-IT OPS & Process, DTDC Courier & Cargo7 D.S. SrivastavCEO, Electronica Machine Tools8 Tamal ChakravortyCIO, Ericsson9 Sumant KelkarCIO, Essar Information Technology10 Sachin JainHead-IT & CISO, eValueserve

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“One of the crucial lessons I have learnt is that innovation should go hand-in-hand with uses that are visible and beneficial.”

— Sumant Kelkar

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“Here's what I took away from my innovation project: innovation is more about doing things differently than about doing different things. ”

— Manish Gupta10

2

Honorees 2007


1 Ajay KhannaDGM & Head-IT, Eicher Motors2 Vikram SaxenaSr. GM IT, Emami 3 Carasel D'SouzaChief Manager-IT, Flat Products Equipments (I)4 Manish GuptaCIO, Fortis Healthcare5 S.R. BalasubramanianEVP, IT & Corporate Development, Godfrey Philips6 C.N. RamHead-IT, HDFC Bank7 R. ArivazhaganGM-IT, Housing Development Finace Corparation8 Sunil RawlaniHead-IT, HDFC Standard Life Insurance Company9 Manikkam Subramaniam Head-IT, Henkel CAC10 Ravi SudSr. VP, Hero Honda Motors

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“Human will, focus and state-of-the-art technology can surmount perceived glitches. Technology innovation can help meet the blistering pace of business growth.”

— Pravir Vohra

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1 Falgun ShuklaSr. GM-IT, Hikal2 Sanjeev GoelCIO, Hindalco3 Gopal ShuklaVP, Business Systems Group,Hindustan Coca-Cola4 Satish PendseCIO, Hindustan Construction Company5 Nishi VasudevaExecutive Director-IT & ERP, HPCL6 Mohit AgarwalCIO, HT Media7 M.Suresh GM-IT, Hyundai Motor India 8 Pravir VohraCTO, ICICI Bank9 Sanjay Sharma IT Adviser, IDBI10 S.C. MittalExecutive Director-Systems, IFFCO

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1 J. SivashankarVP and Head-IS, Infosys 2 Rajendra DeshpandeCTO, Intelenet Global 3 Tridib BordoloiHead-IT, Indian Express Newspapers (Mumbai ) 4 Swaranjit Singh SoniExecutive Director, Optimization & IS,Indian Oil Corporation5 S.V. KonkarVP Systems, IPCL 6 H. KrishnanAVP-IT, Indian Rayon7 V.V.R. BabuGroup CIO, ITC8 Chandrashekar NeneVP-IT, Kingfisher Airlines 9 Dhiren SavlaCIO, Kuoni India 10 S. Anantha SayanaHead Corporate IT, L&T

“If I had magic powers, there's

one change I would make:I would have

made all hackers, virus-creators

and other IT criminals

into owls.”

—Swaranjit Singh Soni

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1 Daya PrakashCIO, LG Electronics 2 M. VisweswaranCIO, MacMillan 3 Arvind G. TawdeVP & CIO, M&M4 Rajesh UppalGM-IT, Maruti Udyog5 Amit KumarGroup CIO, Max New York Life and Max Healthcare6 V. Muthu KumarSr. GM-IT, Moser Baer 7 Abnash SinghGroup CIO, Mphasis8 Avinash AroraDirector-IS, New Holland Tractors (India)9 Dinesh KumarExecutive Director-IT, NTPC10 V. SubramaniamCIO, Otis

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“You can never overdo planning, reviews, communication and the follow-up process. They always help in improving the quality of the end result. ”

—Abnash Singh

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1 Anil PunjwaniIT Head, Phillips Electronics2 Raja Ramesh TummalaGM & Chief IT Architect,PointCross (India)3 R.I.S. SidhuGM-IT, Punjab National Bank4 David BriskmanVP & CIO, Ranbaxy 5 Vishwas G LondheDeputy GM, Finance & IT, Rashtriya Chemicals & Fertilizers6 Rajeev ShirodkarVP-IT, Raymond 7 Sumit Dutta ChowdhuryCIO, Reliance Communications8 Satyendra P TripathiGM, Reliance Industries9 Rajesh ChopraVP-IS, Samsung 10 Anil KhatriHead-IT, SAP India

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“If there is one lesson I have learnt from our innovation project it is this: it’s all about people and managing change.”

—Rajeev Shirodkar

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“To leverage global talent, it is essential to have an environment where associates are able to seamlessly collaborate across the globe as a virtual team.”

—Alok Kumar

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1 Pertisth MankotiaAGM-IT, Sheela Foam 2 Virender PalCTO, Spicejet3 G. Radhakrishna PillaiHead-IT, SRL Ranbaxy 4 Ashwini Kumar SharmaDeputy MD, State Bank of India 5 Johny ParamianVP, Sterlite Industries (India)6 Atul KumarAGM-IT, Syndicate Bank7 Vikas GadreCIO, Tata Chemicals 8 Alok KumarVP and CIO, TCS 9 Probir MitraGM-IT, Tata Motors10 G RajagopalanCIO, The Tata Power Company

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“Simple, small, discrete and integrable innovations are more effective and practical than a single large complex system.”

—T.G. Dhandapani

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1 Manas Ranjan PadhiCIO, Tata Refractories 2 Shreekant MokashiChief-IT, Tata Steel 3 Navin ChadhaCIO, Tata Teleservices4 N. KailasanathanVP & CIO, Titan Industries5 Jyoti BandopadhyayVP-IT, Torrent6 N. GajapathyCIO-Asia, Transworks7 T. G. DhandapaniGroup CIO, TVS Motor Company8 T.K. SubramanianDivisional VP-IS, United Spirits9 Laxman BadigaCorporate VP & CIO, Wipro 10 Vinod SadavarteCIO, Patni Computer Systems

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CIOs who test a technology must study its usage and scalability as much as its fundamentals, says Michael Schrage, senior adviser for security studies at MIT.

Highly-educated Indians sometimes spend more time analyzing a problem than doing a quick experiment, says business consultant Michael Schrage.

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Interview - MS.indd 66 10/3/2007 4:55:39 PM

For one, a collaborative environment is bound to breed innovation, he says. Then, the technology apps must be built for use. Or as Schrage would say, “Innovation isn’t what innovators do....it’s what customers and clients adopt.” Most importantly, the implementation of the idea and the lessons thereof pave the way for better innovations. In this interview to CIO India, replete with cases from Schrage’s own experience, he delves into each step along the way towards “user experience” — the best proof of an innovation.

It is a buzz phrase for the man who has come a long way from being Rolling Stone columnist on the technology of music to an advisor/consultant to companies such as Accenture, Johnson & Johnson, and British Telecom.


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Businesses tend to get lost in the quest of the Big Idea. But effective innovations in enterprise are a result of simpler and more focused steps, notes Michael Schrage, senior adviser to MIT’s Security Studies Program and the author of Serious Play: How the World’s Best Companies Simulate to Innovate.AnAly SiS

By Kunal n. Talgeri


As a senior adviser at MIT today, Schrage explores the role of models, prototypes and simulations as collaborative media for managing innovation and risk.

CIO: You have written on the need for ‘shared spaces’ in enterprises. How can a CIO bring about collaboration?MICHAEL SL SL CHRAgE: There is a very simple answer to that: a CIO can’t. Nobody can do that. The idea that an individual can be responsible for other people sharing — if you will forgive me for speaking like an American — is like socialism. It failed. Organizations do not want a Collaboration Czar, but somebody who makes tools and mechanisms to make it easier for people to share. You want to have a culture of exchange, of trade, and of sharing.

The question is not about how you get people to share, but how you create an environment where it makes sense to share. Just 10 years ago, IT companies were selling knowledge management systems. Remember how you had to fill all these forms, which cost millions of dollars? And how many of them are alive today? None, because it cost millions. Now, you have wikis and blogs, and you allow people to link. How much does that cost? Hundreds of dollars, if that.

And how are they doing? They are much better now. Are there flaws because they are semi-structured? Yes, but if you combine their search engine and do tagging in a different way, then all of a sudden, you get 90 percent of the benefits of a knowledge management system for less than 10 percent of the cost. And people are volunteering to do it. You aren’t telling them to do it.

It’s not a CIO’s role to have everybody love each other. His role is to provide tools and technologies that make it easier for people to do what they want to do. If you want to have people collaborate, you must have the culture for it. How do you do you that? Give them collaborative tools. That’s what my book (Shared Minds: The New Technologies of Collaboration) was about: collaborative tools.

What factors are conducive to a shared environment in an organization?

When I was doing work on When I was doing work on Shared Minds, I studied 60-70 organizations, including those that had great success and those that had no success adopting collaborative tools. This correlation came up: the organizations that had the most effective adoption and deployment of collaborative tools were those that did 360-degree job reviews.

If you think about it, it’s obvious. Because in the old hierarchy, you didn’t care about what other people said. The only person you cared about was the person you reported to. But if you have a 360-degree review, you better be collaborative. Because if you don’t, they’ll say, “Doesn’t collaborate, didn’t help us… didn’t share.”

Now, not everything has to stay 360-degrees; that can vary. But if you have an environment where it becomes silly and counterproductive not to collaborate, people are going to err on the side of collaboration. I would like to point out that as much as I like collaboration, I believe that it is a means to an end just like innovation. When you collaborate in business, you want to make sure that you accomplish something. Sometimes, collaboration is important. Sometimes, coordination is important. But if a client has asked us to do something that I or you can’t do individually, then we would be idiots not to collaborate.

Such challenges have forced leadership of organizations to rethink what kind of working environments they want to create. My belief is that for a lot of business challenges of the future particularly dealing with multiple cultures and markets, collaboration is efficient — not a waste. I think Infosys and Wipro have discovered that as their clients become more demanding, they have to collaborate differently with their clients and internally.

Are there trends in innovation that are unique to India? I have one intellectual prejudice about India based on my I have one intellectual prejudice about India based on my

interactions with well-educated Indians in organizations and at MIT. Highly-educated Indians believe in the virtue of analysis. On average, they sometimes spend more time analyzing a problem than doing a quick experiment because they believe that they will get a better return on analysis than on iterative experimentation.

Indian businesses, particularly overseas, will be more effective if they can better balance their analytical skills and their modeling, iterative and interactive skills. In the past five-six years, I think that Infosys and Wipro have moved away from analyzing things to basically sending people to customer sites and observing and saying, ‘What if you tried this?’ So, some companies are coming up with a better balance.


How many companies experiment to innovate? How many companies experiment to innovate? How manyless than half, said michael Schrage during his keynote address at the CIo 100 Symposium. “ 100 Symposium. “ 100 Symposium most organizations would rather do a $20-million rollout that may work than simple and cheaper experiments,” he noted.

but, innovative ideas can be realized swiftly if enterprise CIos do the simple things right — and develop a philosophy to experiment, said Schrage citing a method he recommended: ‘the 5-by-5x teams’ approach. “get five people from different parts of the organization to come up with five experiments in five days. Each experiment must not cost more than $5000 or take more than five weeks to do. and you have to build a business case for $5 million dollars,” he explained.

large organizations that have six such teams will have a pool of 30 ideas to choose from. “there are three or four experiments, which you can present to senior management’,” said Schrage. “We have the tools and technologies today that are imagination multipliers, expertise multipliers and intellect multipliers. the people in charge of those technologies and tools are CIos,” said Schrage.

— K.n.t.t.

ThoughT LeadershipThoughTLeadership

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Michael Schrage's keynote address at CIO 100, 2007 was brought to you by: AIRTEL ENTERPRISE SERVICES.TO DOWNLOAD SCHRAgE'S PRESENTATION VISIT WWW.CIO100.IN

But I don’t want to pick on the Indians. The reality is that intellectual organizations are inclined to do analysis. In the US, in the sphere of engineering, we have a tradition of tinkering. I don’t know what the Indian tradition is, but in my view if you pass the exams at IIT, it is because you are good at analyzing. We need to be careful that our major strengths don’t become our weaknesses. If you are very good at improvising, you spend less time on process. That’s good for a while, but you still should be paying attention to process.

How far have CIOs come in understanding the need to innovate towards what customers and clients adopt?

The most damaging criticism that can be made of CIOs is that they have done a much better job of understanding what technologies can do in terms of features and functions, rather than getting users to take advantage of those features and functions.

Let’s be serious: we have Google and social networking, but how many organizations have good search capabilities? Most people are shocked, disappointed and angry that they can do better search and e-mail outside their organization than inside it. Six years ago, that wasn’t true. Outside-the-firewall innovation is driving inside-the-firewall demand. Why? Because people are using it. What is easier to use: Oracle databases or Google?

Amazon, eBay, Orkut and Myspace — all these offerings are successful not because they are the most sophisticated technologies, but because they are designed for ease of use. If you are in business, that’s what you need to focus on. I see fascinating technologies all the time, but some of it never leaves the laboratory because people like the idea more than they like the notion of people using the idea. It’s only when technical innovators focus on how people will get value from an idea that they begin to address ease of use, accessibility, intuitive interfaces, allowing people to learn from interaction. This is not easy. Very gifted technical people find it hard to collaborate with people who want to make their complex innovation more accessible to others.

You can’t have consistent performance without accessible, usable and transparent performance. You want the technology to be usable. You want it to be understood and upgradable. So, each step of the way, you can add value and create a virtuous cycle of innovation.

Can you share stories of organizations that cut out complexity?

The real advantage of the Web technologies in general and Web 2.0, in particular, is that it has forced people to closely

couple the backend and front-end. Google has a very complex search engine. Amazon has a complex recommendation engine, but it’s easy for users to access both. Remember, as complex as these engines are, they are designed and thought out to be usable. Accessibility is not just an IT issue. Intuitive-usability issues transcend product design and process- and services-design.

In your experience, how do prototypes stack up against their final versions?

It is a complete bell curve distribution! Some of them are exactly the same, while some go in the exact opposite direction. A prototype is a hypothesis. The problem is a lot of people come up with prototypes, and view it as a version of the finished product. My point is: it’s a hypothesis — what do you want to learn?

Some people like to learn and will change. Others will say, ‘The wrong customer is interacting with us.’ Take Google, for example. What kind of company is Google? A search company? Wrong, I say. It’s not a search company. It’s an instant-search company? Let’s say, Google improved the quality of the search but you’d have to wait six minutes to get a result. How valuable would Google then be? Not much. How do we know that it is positioning itself as an instant-search company? Because Google has a minimalist design, but the one thing they always show you is the time taken for a search.

It may seem obvious, but it’s not. You have to have an idea of the user experience.

New market segments create new opportunities for innovation — and new innovations create new market segments. Prototypes are as good as how much you learn from them.

So what catches your eye when you see a prototype? Are there any features that are unique to them?

When an organization presents me with a model or a version of an innovation, my question to them is always: what does the prototype ask you to do?’ What did Google ask you to do? Type in a word. What did eBay ask you to do? Put something up for bid.

Second, in exchange for using the innovation, what value does it give the user? And what are you asking the user to do? If you ask him to learn individual linear programming, he’d probably do it if you let him into IIT or MIT.

The designers of an innovation need to be very aware of what they are asking users to do. They have to bring that kind of design sensibility to the prototype. It should tap into one’s curiosity for



the value, but must also ask the user to do something reasonable in return.

In your experience, how much space does top management give to an innovator to focus on a prototype?

It depends on the company. Genuinely- It depends on the company. Genuinely-good top managements make it easy for teams to self-assemble. They cast the original team, but create an environment for collaboration. Good leaders, I’ve observed, put people in a position to succeed. They don’t do so by giving a person everything he wants, but by giving him a legitimate challenge and resources to succeed, and by having an honest mechanism to study what they have learnt and what they have not.

My father has a saying: never show fools unfinished work. Some top-managements cannot appreciate a technical prototype, so show them the finished product. Management needs to create a vision and a strategic intent of the enterprise that makes it easy for people to say, “If that’s our goal and what we’re going to be measured on, these are the kinds of innovations we need to be exploring. And these are the kinds of prototypes we should be building inside with key suppliers and key customers.”

You’re a technology writer, a consultant and an MIT adviser. What is the common thread?

My main interest has been popular My main interest has been popular culture and the business of popular culture. As we have seen in the music industry, changes in technology determine the business of pop culture. An iPod or Napster can completely transform this business. That’s one of the reasons why I have remained interested in technology because it isn’t interesting just as a productivity tool — it is also interesting as a cultural influence and an enabler of cultural change.

I wrote an essay some years ago about how technology is not about information revolution, but about changing relationships. Technologies revolutionize how we manage relationships more than

how we manage information. For example, mobile phones are about managing relationships. Texting is about managing relationships. Networking a video game in World of Warcraft and virtual worlds — that is a social experience or a pop culture experience.

So, I have been interested in the double-edge: technology as culture and technology as a tool. CIO

Chief copy editor Kunal N. Talgeri can be reached at [email protected]

Understand how your organization defines process investment. And measure your ‘Return on Process Improvement’Schrage: For years, Cisco’s internal It wanted to give its sales force accountability t wanted to give its sales force accountability ttools, text reports and so on, so that they could do analytics and segmentation. but, sales people hate filling out reports — they want to sell. When Cisco studied how they were getting value from the sales force, it was “time spent with customer.” Ithad to therefore put the sales force in a position to maximize time with customers, and minimize time on sales reports.Focus on developing partnershipsSchrage: It teams spend too much time on requirements analysis. Instead, do quick prototypes and iterate around the prototypes to determine requirements. this is much better than just the voice of the client. Clients are happy to throw out your work. they think twice while throwing out their own work. that’s what partnership means. Partnership means shared risk. CIos must seek to be co-developers of an emerging process rather than implementers of somebody else’s process. CIOs are in the best position to determine the top down-vs.-bottom up value of technology investments.Schrage: the CIo must not just manage processes, but help the organization to define the processes by which it makes process interoperable. It’s not about coming up with good ideas, it’s about what his customers adopt. determine the value from use.

— K.n.t.t.

Notes from Schrage’s address at CIO 100.


Process CultureHOW TO eVOLVe YOUR OWN

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Though Indians are known to be resourceful, business expert Michael Hugos believes Indian CIOs fall short when it comes to innovation. Here’s what you can do about it.

Former CIO and business consultant Michael Hugos stresses on the need for IT heads to cut complexity across operations.

By sunil shah

STrIkIng THe 30-Day Blitz

Interview - MH.indd 72 10/3/2007 4:54:06 PM

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This apathy is creating an island of traffic as business crawls around IT, honking. It isn’t too late to do something yet, he says. In this interview, on the sidelines of the CIO 100 Symposium, Hugos, former CIO of an $8-billion (Rs 32,000 crore) distribution cooperative in the U.S., innovator, turnaround specialist, author and acclaimed speaker shares a method for swift, cheap and reliable innovation and agility. He calls it the 30-day Blitz and over the last year, he has brought it to Indian companies.

CIO: Can you explain the concept behind the 30-day Blitz?MIChEAL hugOs: My motto for the 30-day Blitz is: think big, start small, deliver quickly. By think big, I mean lay out the big picture. Make sure you understand what the business people hope to do over the next two to three years.

Numbed by torrid growth, Indian CIOs are showing poor discipline, says Michael Hugos. He believes they might be as wasteful as IT leaders were during the heady dotcom days. IT deployments in India tend to be too reactive, time-consuming and expensive, he says.


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You can figure that out in two days. Really. Everyone knows what’s going on and although no one can predict the future, most people have a good idea of what they think is going to happen.

By start small, I mean look at what can be achieved in 30 days. This forces CIOs to break the problem down to little pieces — but each piece has to have value in its own right. Each piece has to produce a usable production system that people can start to use and that will either lower cost or increase revenue.

Then, deliver quickly. CIOs need to put the first piece in place within 30 days, and then they have to do it again. Subsequently, they build on that first piece and put another chunk over the next 30 days. Let business use it for a couple of weeks after which they will want more things. It’s a game of continuous movement.

Here in India, as business keeps growing, why wait, why study business for six months and then wait another year to put something in place? It will become obsolete. If your competitors can move faster, they will take market share.

Isn’t 30 days too short for complex operations? IT has become too complex. We are all highly educated people IT has become too complex. We are all highly educated people

with Master’s degrees if not Ph.Ds, so it is an occupational hazard to come up with solutions that are more complex. CIOs need to step back and say that business is not that complex. Most businesses are about very simple things.

Successful business people have learnt to respond to situations quickly and we, from IT, should be able to do the same.

Say, your company has a new opportunity and suddenly there is a new market. Your product is selling much faster than you ever thought possible and you have to increase production and customer service. A lot of it is about letting people know what’s going on and then ensuring that you automate all the repetitive things in the new business process because these have no value-addition. That’s what computers should do. Yet, strangely enough, in the IT business, we want to automate the really complex things to show how smart we are. Instead, we should automate the simple things and let people do the complex things because they are good at it.

how can your agility theory help with these complexities?

The 30-day Blitz places constraints. Working with these constraints, instead of fighting them, is the basis of the Blitz.

I worked with a global manufacturing company that also produces software and has a development center in Hyderabad. They have a product that is selling at an enormous volume and are trying to get visibility into their supply chain to find out the mistakes in their product. They challenged me to show them how to get things done in very short periods, especially because the holiday season at the end of the year is among their biggest sale times. I said that we should give ourselves 30 days.

Everyone’s attention should be focused in those 30 days. If you ask a business person what they want, they’ll tell you all sorts of things. But you ask them what they want in the next 30 days, then suddenly you’re not the bad guy. When you give them 30 days, they already begin to narrow down their requirements. And then when you get it done in 30 days, they tell themselves that maybe they can trust this IT person. IT people have to earn their trust every month. You need to place constraints.

But why 30 days? Why not 90? Do you feel that this is the attention span of most organizations?

Ninety days is one quarter. Business lives on a quarter-by-quarter basis. A public company has to report earnings every quarter. So, you need to get something developed and in production every quarter that makes a difference to the company’s operating model and its ability to increase revenue.

Business is willing to trust its CIOs for 30 days. And this is why 30 days works. They won’t extend themselves for six months or a year, because they have done that and have already been disappointed.

What other skills are needed for the 30-day Blitz? The 30-day Blitz requires very specific skills. The Blitz is

composed of what I call the six core techniques.


how are you managing huge growth from an infrastructure perspective?

Alaganandan Balaraman: at britannia, and my previous company, we had the same issue: rapid growth and the need to look at new areas of business — an inherently risky proposition. the question was: how do we provide business with the kind of services that allows it to start off

something very small and scale as and when necessary. What I did at my last job was to set up an infrastructure

architecture which allowed people to start with a system and as the need grew, chuck it out and bring in something bigger, while retaining data. there’s a reason why we did this. the business couldn’t support us if we tried to introduce a large application; the costs were just too high. they’d end up asking us to leave it aside and manage with Excel. We called these disposable systems. the idea was to chuck them out as business grew. that’s how we handled business uncertainty.

— From the workshop hugos held at the CIo 100 Symposium

When you’re done with the building, where does the scaffolding go?

InnovatIon In actIonInnovatIon In actIon

disposableINNOvATION

The first is JAD (joint application design) facilitation. I do an intensive two-day workshop with business and IT during which we map out the big picture. This is the ‘think big’ stage.

To record everyone’s ideas, we use a process map. As people chalk out all the things they do, we draw out the process in any graphical specification, so that the business people understand what we are doing and add processes we might have missed.

The third of the six techniques is logical data modeling. We draw boxes for various processes and tell business what different boxes stand for. Each box records an event that we want to collect information about. Business people can look at that and make additions.

The fourth technique is system prototype. This has two aspects. The first is the story-boarded screens that represent a user interface and the other is the technical architecture. Business people love the story-boarded screens because they understand it and can make changes. Then, all we have to do is figure out which technical architecture will support it.

Now, I choose object-oriented design. With a specific data model, a user interface and technical architecture, I want to know what the object model looks like. I tell the programmers not to start programming until we have the object model. This also helps with documentation.

The sixth is system testing and rollout. If we are building a system object by object, then no object

should take more than two to three days to build. If it does, it means that it’s a compound object that needs to be broken down into smaller objects. Every programmer is responsible for unit testing their objects. They unit-test their own code and drop it into the test environment and then the business analyst, who worked earlier with the business to create the storyboard, puts it together in logical sequences. Then they do string testing, assembling the strings and alpha test.

What are some of the drawbacks of this quick and dirty approach?

People say I’m creating throwaway code. I say I’m creating simple but industrial-strength code. It’s like the international space station and the way different countries are building different modules of the station. All those modules fit together. But they are not throwaway. The space station itself can’t be built all at once. But as countries keep adding modules over time, it gets bigger and more functional.

I worked with the commodities exchange in Chicago. They were in the middle of a multi-year, multi-million dollar reporting system that showed how close each company was getting to their

risk tolerance value. It was real-time and complex and after a year it bogged down, which is when they called me.

I suggested that we simplified the requirements. Instead of streaming in real time, every 20 minutes we made batch jobs of data, which were pushed out to a standalone database that was running a

server. We gave them the most important stuff. We created a system in three weeks. And then, we built more modules around that.

What’s the most common argument you have found against the 30-day Blitz?

It seems too simple. Highly-paid and highly-trained CIOs have told me: ‘You mean, I could create a system that could support a multi-million dollar supply-chain by using a relational database, small chunks of code, some Web browser screens, some spreadsheets as the access to my data and some macros on my spreadsheet to produce reports? Are you insulting my intelligence?’

Business doesn’t care about technology. They want a solution and they want it fast. Most of the time, we IT people are creating marvelous, complex systems that don’t work or take too long or cost too much, and the business people hate us for that.

We all, especially early in our careers, want to do resumé building projects. We want to install fancy ERP systems. Because once we’ve done that, the recruiters call us up and we get a 100 percent raise when we leave. So, junior programmers hate doing simple things because it does not advance their careers.

To ensure success of this process, what needs to change in the broader organizational environment?

You need to wed IT with business. In the last six months, I’ve seen a very large gap in a critical skill: the business analyst skill. It’s a person who understands business and technology.

CIOs need to get good business analysts and put them into small development teams. A team of five to seven people: two business analysts, data modeler and two to three really good programmers.



“Early in our careers, we want to do resumé

building projects. Because, once we’ve

done that, recruiters call us up and we

get a 100-percent raise when we leave.”



This development team should be led by what I call a system builder. This person is totally committed to making things happen in 30 to 60 day increments. A system builder should also understand his seniors and the business and have experience as data modeler or a programmer. Teams like this can produce results that are amazing.

During your workshop you said that Indian CIOs might be a little indisciplined. What did you mean?

Let me draw an analogy. Seven years ago, we had the dotcom Let me draw an analogy. Seven years ago, we had the dotcom bubble in the States. This was when people were throwing money at us. And then all of a sudden, the game changed. It changed so fast we didn’t see it. We had been in a state of euphoria. We were making tons of money and spending millions of dollars — without discipline. We weren’t getting anything done. It wasn’t entirely our fault; business people were just as much at fault. But when the music suddenly stopped, who got blamed? IT.

I don’t think it is going to happen quite so suddenly here in India. But during those heady days, if we had been more disciplined, if we had focused on simpler solutions and delivering more quickly, we would not have had the big downfall we had.

how can CIOs get around this? It starts with a sense of urgency. Without that, CIOs wind

up with a feeling that they can spend more time and more money.

Right now, India is going through this growth phase. All the CIOs in America look at India and wish they were here. They wish they had these challenges because now in the States, we’re outsourcing half our operations. We’re not seeing the 20-30 percent growth unlike India.

But in that feeling of infinite growth, Indian CIOs are probably tempted to spend more money and take too long. Unless Indian CIOs discipline themselves to get things done in small increments,they will miss a great opportunity.

Do you think Indian CIOs innovate enough? It is easy to criticize but I believe that it is hard for Indian

CIOs [to innovate] because business is so good. Indian CIOs, like American CIOs, are not subjecting themselves to enough discipline. They are not really innovating because they don’t have to. They are talking about it, they’re thinking about it but they aren’t doing it. They are installing expensive ERPs; there’s nothing innovative there.

Innovation is about doing things quicker and cheaper than anyone thought possible and still producing stable systems. The Indian CIOs and developers that I worked with, spend more time arguing about the constraints, and how they can’t do something in 30 days. They say they need 50 days. I tell them that of course they can do it in 50 days, but the discipline is to do it in 30 days.

It takes innovation to do it in 30 days. Right now, given the business environment, most Indian CIOs don’t want to embrace constraints. The only reason American CIOs are doing this is because we’ve been beaten. The last five to six years, the IT business in America has been really tough.

Finally, you wear a lot of hats including CIO and business consultant. Yet, you chose to be called CIO-at-large. Why?

First, I was a CIO. Once a CIO, always First, I was a CIO. Once a CIO, always a CIO. I think that the CIO position is a hard one. Also, in many ways, consultants are people who can tell you a hundred ways to do something but they haven’t done it. A lot of people call themselves experts but they haven’t done the work. And when people see my business card, they smile. It’s a good ice breaker. CIO

Sunil Shah is senior copy editor of CIO India. Send your CIO India. Send your CIO India

feedback on this interview to [email protected]


how are you juggling growth, infrastructure and a business model?Rajeev shirodkar: the group that I work for now, raymonds, is a company with significant vintage. With that comes a legacy of systems and silos: you name the oS, database or client — we had it all.

What I missed in the session this morning was empathy. I think it is important for a CIo to develop empathy with the

business. For me, empathy is a key word if you are going to roll out systems. I hear the 30-day blitz — I’m sure you are sharing it because you have done it — but in companies like raymonds, where the tenure of people is long, how do you go about with your work?

We did a couple of things. We decided to put in place an infrastructure that works 24x7, without a host of engineers running around. We struck good partnerships with business. all the business heads and I mapped our process explicitly. We made a drive to convert tacit knowledge into explicit processes. based on this, we decided to open one front and roll systems out. I don’t think there is one cap that fits all.

— From the workshop hugos held at the CIo 100 Symposium

Creating empathy with the business could be your best chance for quick results.

GET BUSINESS on your Side

For a direct understanding of how business leaders view IT innovation, CIO put together a panel of CEOs. True to their nature, they covered a lot of ground, converging onto one point: despite its risks, innovation is a path to business growth.


By gunjan trivedi

CEoINNOVISIONS

Panel Discussion.indd 80 10/3/2007 4:34:22 PM

K.K. Modi, chairman of the K.K. Modi group, Daljit Singh, president of Fortis Healthcare, and B.S. Nagesh, MD & CEO of Shopper’s Stop, agreed with Mittal. Together, they constituted a panel of CEOs that exchanged views on balancing growth, risk and innovation, and the role that CIOs play in enabling growth. The discussion was held at the CIO 100 Symposium and Awards Ceremony 2007, and was moderated by Vijay Ramachandran, editor-in-chief of IDG Media. Modi, Singh and Nagesh echoed the sentiment that growth is the mantra for any business before proceeding to their experiences.

The sky is the limit for growth in the nascent healthcare sector, said Daljit Singh. As the captain of one of the fastest-growing healthcare organizations in the country, Singh said he looks forward to going from 13 to 40 hospitals by 2010. That’s about seven new hospitals every year until 2010.

Shopper's Stop's Nagesh also faces a future where only imagination limits business. "Organized retailers, who enjoy only 4.5 percent of the $350 billion retail industry, are looking for a much larger share," he said. “We are looking at every avenue of growth," asserted Singh, summing up the need for growth.

Innovation Is the KeyNot all companies have been so lucky, as Mittal noted. "In India, Internet penetration did now grow at the rate we expected. Even today, the number of regular online users is too low to give rise to a vibrant online ecosystem," said the head of People Group that has developed a series of websites around weddings, including astrology and wedding planning, and has even expanded to mobile content and real estate.

So, what's his way out of this growth dead-end? Innovation."You can strategize all you want but if the industry isn’t growing fast

enough, you will have to find different ways to grow. For us, growth is a combination of two things: innovative strategy and opportunity. Both have to go hand-in-hand," said Mittal. "Our business is driven by innovation. We don't have a separate innovation strategy to launch new products or services. It is the very foundation of our business. We cannot grow without constantly innovating," he added.

Until a few years ago, Mittal said they worried about running out of online users at shaadi.com. In 2004, they introduced a brick-and-mortar concept. It took them a year, but they broke away from the school of thought, which believed that the online business wouldn’t cope with the additional overheads of traditional business. “At shaadi.com centers, we took the Internet to users,” he said.

By the next year, Shaadi’s competition had opened its own centers. But the People Group wasn’t standing still. It started makaan.com, an online real estate business. "We analyzed brokers since they would be major revenue drivers. We found that only 15 percent of half a million brokers in the country have email addresses. We had two options: target only that specific part of the market or innovate and come out with a portal that was accessible to everyone," he explained.

“We introduced a mobile application so that a broker never has to actually get online. They just use their phones,” said Mittal. Innovations like these, he added, will hopefully bring his company closer to the growth rates they have defined.

Singh concurred: "It is important for us to recognize that innovation is a key driver of business. It is a process that creates commercial value, preferably at zero costs. Sometimes, the simplest idea can give maximum value," he added. Propagating the organization's DNA across enterprise was the biggest challenge Fortis Healthcare faces, he said. To address the problem, Singh ushered in an innovative solution: the Fortis Operating System. It would ensure uniform patient experience across all its hospitals. "We used to run a hospital at Mohali (near Chandigarh). We ran it well, but when we moved to Delhi and opened three to four hospitals and added five more hospitals with the Escorts acquisition, the complexities increased multifold," he recalled.

The new project will break the hospital down into several asset classes, each with about 20 processes. Each of these processes is being reengineered and documented. "We are beginning to measure every

“We don't have a separate innovation strategy. It forms the very foundation of our business.”

—Anupam MittalPresident & CEo, People Group

“If you are constantly running, your competition will bite you sooner or later. But if you stand still, the competition will definitely swallow you.” That is how Anupam Mittal, chairman of People Group — better known for its Shaadi.com offering — put the problem of business.


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Views from the top

aspect of the patient’s interaction with us. For example, the time a patient waits to see a doctor. Why can’t we have an outer limit on how long it takes a doctor to see a patient? With the new system, we will be able to systematically identify and remove bottlenecks, and create an ecosystem that will ensure that a patient can access a doctor in, say, less than 10 minutes," Singh pointed out.

Balancing Innovation with Risk With growth opportunities and associated innovation comes risk. How does an organization mitigate these?

Modi felt that when an enterprise is strategizing to mitigate risks, survival must be of utmost importance. "There are two aspects to risk: survival and growth. Managing the risk of survival takes top priority. For instance, we compete with ITC, which has a market share of 76

“CEOs bank on CIOs to educate them on the benefits technology can provide.”

— Daljit SinghPresident, Fortis healthcare

Arun Gupta, CTO, Shopper's Stop: technology is a means technology is a means tto an end, and so are processes and people. it influences it influences itboth but is not embraced by all. How do we change this?Daljit Singh: many CEos are not technology literate, so we bank upon our CIos to keep their eyes and ears open and educate their business colleagues and us about the benefits technology can provide. this doesn’t happen enough. the translation of new developments into in a language that we understand, does not take place.

H. Krishnan, AVP-IT, Indian Rayon: if CiOs know business processes inside out, can we switch jobs with CeOs?K.K. Modi: Why not? We did an experiment sometime ago where our Cto transformed his role into a function that combined corporate development and technology.

We have seen better results when we have raised the platform of the CIo to include chief strategy officer. B.S. Nagesh: I would like to encourage as many CIos to change their designation from chief information officers to chief insight officers. CEos depend on CIos not to get technology to run, but to give them insights, since CIos have access to all process in the organization and know everything that’s going inside an organization. I think CEos and boards will love CIos much more for this.

Q&a CEOs on the panel faced tough questions from CIOs.

percent. The risk of a monopoly gobbling us up exists. For survival, the cost of investment is immaterial. In today's economy, there is no survival for smaller companies unless there is high growth involved. Even traditional companies are looking at 25 or 30 percent of year-on-year growth," said Modi.

WITH THE AUDIENCE

Views from the topViews from the top

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outsourced or stays in-house. You can outsource as long as you can connect the customer back to the innovator. Innovation is also not one person's domain. It is about teamwork and it is important for every team member to know about the entire business, rather than being a functional specialist. As long as all your processes are linked, I don't think there is an issue with outsourcing," he said.

Singh believed that business heads and CEOs should be able to understand what technology can do for their organizations. "If a CEO doesn't have deep understanding of what technological developments exist and how these can be innovatively applied, he will never champion it,” said Singh.

He then spread the responsibility downwards. “It is also important for a CIO to understand the business,” Singh continued, “as he can be the biggest driver of productivity to the organization.

Companies will not survive if CEOs and CIOs don't work together, asserted Nagesh. "A CEO is fooling himself if he thinks he is not dependent on his CIO to run his business. The reason CEOs depend on CIOs is not to ensure that technology runs smoothly. CEOs seek insight from CIOs. If CIOs can make a transition from chief information officer to chief insight officer, then I am sure the top management and board will love CIOs even more," said Nagesh. CIO

senior correspondent gunjan Trivedi can be reached at [email protected]

“To disrupt an existing market, a business needs to create something that does not exist anywhere.”

— K.K. ModiChairman, K.K. modi Group

“CEOs depend on CIOs not to get IT to run, but to give them insights, since CIOs have access to all processes.”

— B.S. Nageshmd & CEo, Shopper’s Stop

Nagesh tied in survival with a company’s preparedness. "When you’re in the consumer space, you need to be prepared for what's going to happen three years down the line. You need to know how your consumers behave and how their habits are changing. That's why we have always been an early adopter of technology. In 1997-98, when our turnover was Rs 28 crore, we implemented a Rs 10-crore system. Newspapers called us mad, but the system ensures an extra edge of information to mitigate these risks," said Nagesh.

Mittal too underlined the need for innovation via IT. "Being close to your customers all the time and figuring out their evolving needs is critical to adopting innovation. Your opportunities grow through IT systems, as they give real-time feedback. With technology, we can also get real feedback, which tells whether things are working or not. We give our innovative strategies a second chance, and if things are still not working, we pull out," said Mittal.

Nagesh felt that a combination that always works to balance innovation with risks, is: a sound strategy and a progressive approach backed by gutsy decision-making. "For some reason, when it comes to anything else in the business, it is the heart that is used. When it comes to technology, people stop using their heart and only their minds. I think we should use a combination of both. I believe that it is a fantastic enabler, and I am yet to see a business that cannot make IT work for its customers," he stated.

Can Innovation be Outsourced?

With any innovation that can increase customer satisfaction and better the business, said Nagesh, “it doesn't make a difference whether it is

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Views from the topViews from the top

Everything that can be invented has been invented. said Charles H. Duell, commissioner, US Office of Patents, back in 1899. We’d love to see the look on his face today.

IT companies are among the world’s top ten creators of patents. IBM itself has over 3,000. But here’s the strange part: Indian IT firm have filed very few.

Granted, it takes a lot more than a good idea for an innovative concept’s rubber to hit the road. And good luck if you’re an enterprise CIO. First, there’s all that credibility to build. Then you have to test your idea endlessly. In the meanwhile, you have to find a way of getting your smart little idea to sell itself with hard ROI numbers, before you get in front of it and protect it from being gunned down.

It’s terrible.

But let’s forget all this for a while and remember the euphoria of the epiphany that led to your great idea. Imagine the bounce in the step of the guy who thought that the sushi he served was fresh. (Pg 94) Or relief in the dairy hand’s back, who invented an automatic milking machine. (Pg. 93)

If you’re among those who believe that only the top five ideas in any company get implemented, then you probably think that the automatic milking machine got through the gate - but it’s hard to bet on it. Some folks pooh-poohed the thought that computers would make it big. Some like the chairman of IBM in 1943, Thomas Watson. He thought there was “a market for maybe five computers.”

InnovatIonsor What!

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Out Of the BOxOut Of the BOx

Ever wonder why traffic reports are so wrong and what can be done about it? The answer may be in your cell phone.

Most traffic data is collected by roadside sensors that cost more than $50,000 per mile to install and maintain, according to Tom Bouwer, vice president of sales and marketing at AirSage. Bouwer’s company has developed a cheaper solution, which will make accurate traffic data widely available for a host of very cool applications. “What you hear on the radio is incident data,” Bouwer explains. “It doesn’t tell you severity or impact on travel times.” Moreover, only 10,000 miles of driving routes in the United States are currently covered by sensors, he said. AirSage plans to use ‘anonymous signaling data’ from drivers’ cell phones, working in partnership with major mobile phone carriers. The solution is a ‘black box’ that will go beyond simple cell-tower triangulation, running a series of algorithms on the wireless signals to determine cars’ speed and location.Bouwer says the traffic data will then be Il

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delivered to government planners, travel information programs such as 511, handheld and on-dash navigation systems, mobile phone applications, and the media. “This is actually a very disruptive technology,” says Bouwer, who claims that when fully deployed it will enable innovative applications, including real-time re-routing to reduce congestion and commute times.

“In Katrina, they didn’t have a regionwide view of traffic conditions, which would have enabled a much more efficient evacuation of people and better identification of pockets of noncompliance,” he says. “People look at accuracy as mile-per-hour differences across speed bands,” he explains. “For a 20-minute morning drive, you don’t care if it’s 10 percent slower at 22 minutes, but you do if it’s 25 or 26 or 27.” CIO

—By David l. Margulius

CurIngroad ragewith Cell Phones

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Data’s collaborative GPS-based GeoOps software to integrate mission planning, dispatching, and movement monitoring. Moreover, the system integrates text messaging to facilitate the identification of friendly forces. As with any machine-based military application, text messaging as a means for ally identification can only be as effective as soldiers can manage under duress. But if there is one war issue this country can reach consensus about, it is certain to be that reducing friendly fire deaths is a worthwhile objective. CIO

—By jeff Angus

Fog oF War


Regardless of one’s stance on armed conflict, the death of servicemen by friendly fire is a troubling eventuality of war that stirs a very high level of discomfort in all. In the confusion of battle, the risk of being wounded or killed by comrades-in-arms is by no means trivial, and while the Pentagon states that the rate of deaths by friendly fire has diminished in recent conflicts, it still occurs in Afghanistan and Iraq.

This risk is compounded when coalition forces include multiple services or troops from multiple countries, as the coordination of maneuvers and means of identification becomes that much more complex. The Friendly Force Tracking application, currently being sold to the Department of Defense by WinMagic and Comtech Mobile Data, applies a large number of emergent technologies, including text messaging to decrease the likelihood of friendly fire deaths by helping allies keep informed of plans and positions in near real time. The Friendly Force Tracking system deploys mobile battlefield terminals that use WinMagic’s latest password and PKI encryption methods in its SecureDoc full-disk encryption software, to limit access to only authenticated users. It also applies Comtech Mobile


Clearing the

Fog oF War



To the road warrior, the PDA is an essential tether to the enterprise — one on which any given sales call may ultimately depend. But to the thousands of endangered plant species across the globe, an enterprise-ready handheld might just prove the difference between existence and extinction.

SenseIT, a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) grant program, undertaken by the Advanced network Computing laboratory in conjunction with the botany and computer science departments at the University of Hawaii, was launched to create a self-organizing, self-healing microsensor network that could be used to monitor endangered plant species in Hawaii Volcanoes national Park.

The unwritten rule of technical research gathering in national parks is, ‘If you can see it, it can’t be there.’ My group had to think outside the box and opted to hide its microsensors in fake rocks and tree branches we called PODS. The group implemented a custom gradient-routing variation of the 802.11b ad-hoc wireless protocol to equip the networked microsensors with self-healing and self-organizing functionality. Tucked safely in their PODS, these PDA-based microsensors were then placed along the Chain of Craters Road within Volcanoes national Park, from the rain forest to the desert of the west rift zone. The iPaq PODS snapped high-resolution digital images of targeted endangered plants. The microsensors bundled this image with various environmental measurements,

wind speed, temperature, and so on, and beamed it all to a Postgres database over an encrypted link.

Fake rocks used to house the microsensors. During the research gathering exercise, photographs of a film crew resting on the crater rim were taken by the ‘rocks’ around them without arousing their suspicion. next time you’re in Volcanoes, beware, you never know when a PDA might just be watching. CIO

—By Brian Chee



endangered Plants

WatChIng over



Somewhere along the line, every IT manager has had a nutcase to deal with. none, likely, are as daunting as the one faced every year by Paramount Farms, the world’s largest grower and processor of almonds and pistachios. Pistachios, in particular, are a tough nut to crack because their ultrashort six-week fall harvest season requires superefficient processing of as much as 20 million pounds of nuts per day. This means receiving loads of nuts from 400 participating growers; weighing the nuts and sampling for quality; and then cleaning, hulling, drying, and packaging them.Furthermore, the potential for damage to or discoloration of the nuts from the moment they’re mechanically shaken off the tree, until they’re fully processed is quite high, placing a huge premium on speed and efficiency. Heat in particular can spoil the nuts en route to the plant or waiting to be processed.

Paramount’s solution: Deploy an RFID system as part of an overall software suite to manage the flow of nuts from tree, through processing. With software from Microsoft and RFID



rFid Comes to

nut’s resCue

components from Intermec, Paramount set up a system that pinpoints crucial information as each truckload arrives — which grower sent the nuts, what the harvest method was, the load’s current temperature, and total weight. This data is then relayed to workers carrying handheld units who can prioritize the processing of each load accordingly.“If a load’s at a very high temperature, say, over 100 degrees, which could speed up spoilage, they reroute it to the front of the line to get processed,” explains Chris Kelly, Intermec director of RFID business development. The system is geared to reduce ‘turn time,’ Paramount’s primary operational metric.

“It’s basically fleet management RFID,” Kelly says. “They were looking to get more efficiency out of the facilities they had, because their business is like the retail Christmas season — it’s very peaky.”

And, thanks to high tech in an arid agrarian setting, the pistachio harvest season is a little less nutty. CIO




Remember the cafeteria scene in Animal House, when Bluto john Belushi cuts the line and proceeds to stuff his tray and mouth with everything from jell-O to bananas to mashed potatoes, generally causing mayhem, and even taking a bite of a sandwich and then putting it back?

now, imagine Bluto having to disable a secure biometric point-of-sale system before running amok in the cafeteria, and you can understand why this scene isn’t likely to happen at Sawtry Community College in Cambridgeshire, England. The college recently installed a cafeteria management solution from Toshiba and Datasym incorporating a fingerprint sign-on and rules engine allowing it to increase throughput and provide more visibility into, and control over, student consumption during the busy lunch break. The system replaced an existing smart-card setup that was costly because students kept losing the cards and the readers kept breaking down. The school had also recently gone from two lunch breaks to one, resulting in throughput logjams at the registers.

The new system enables students or their parents to upload money to their accounts before lunch, then sign in with the fingerprint reader before making their food selections. It gives parents a better idea of what their kids are eating, and it can flag food items that students may be allergic to. Planned enhancements to the system include functionality to give parents the ability to remotely limit what their kids can spend on any given meal, as well as a tracking system to generate

detailed inventory reports to improve procurement planning and reduce waste.

As for a map mashup for overlaying the trajectories of items thrown in an Animal House-esque consumables melee, well, that just might have to wait for a Google Food Fight. CIO



weird teCh: FingerPrinting

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selF-serviCeWacky Innovations # 6

complete with the necessary medications and nutritional supplements. The corporate workstation metaphor is apt, if thin. The cow’s udder and teats are washed with an antiseptic cleanser and are air-dried, after which a robotic arm swings a group of teat cups into place. The cups find their proper location through what Delaval calls a ‘high-performance teat visualization system’ that employs a camera and dual lasers to aid in proper positioning.

Once out of the cow, the milk is robotically handled according to health regulations and stored until pickup by the dairy co-op or wholesaler. The entire process within the milking barn is dealt with by robots controlled by information from an information-rich database. Consider it a highly specialized BI silo, one that when coupled with the VMS’s robotic architecture lends dairy farmers considerable competitive milking advantage. CIO

—By Curtis Franklin jr.

A boon to the dairy farmer’s bottom line, dairy cows’ constant milk production is a bane to farmhand productivity, as one fact rules every dairy farmer’s life: Cows must be milked. Twice. Every day. So great is this bovine workflow tyranny that Delaval, a Swiss dairy technology supplier, has constructed an innovative technological solution that relieves farmers of this duty and places the onus of milking essentially on the cows themselves.

True to the Web 2.0 end-user empowerment formula of many of today’s emergent technologies, Delaval’s VMS (voluntary milking system) puts the cows in charge of their own milking schedules. Each cow is outfitted with an RFID collar. When the cow enters the milking parlor, the tag is scanned, providing the VMS with information about the cow’s expected production and medical requirements. The cow enters a milking stall, and a gate lowers over its neck to keep it in place. To keep the cow happy during its temporary milking confinement, feed is provided,



When James Allard lived in japan as a student in the 1990s, he frequented kaiten sushi restaurants, which keep prices low by circulating dishes on a conveyor belt rather than making nigiri, sashimi, and sushi rolls to order. The problem, he observed, was that dishes stayed on the belt too long, losing freshness and becoming unappetizing. So, when Allard and a partner opened their first kaiten-style Blue C Sushi restaurant in Seattle in 2003, they implemented a bar-code system that notified them when a plate had been on the conveyor more than 90 minutes, so they could remove it. But that wasn’t good enough for Allard, a former technology entrepreneur. In 2006, following the lead of Department of Defense, tiny Blue C Sushi installed RFID technology, so it could precisely monitor which dishes people were buying, at what time of day, and how long they stayed on the conveyor belt.

The system consists of RFID tags made by 3M fixed on the bottom of each plate, Intermec RFID readers and antennas, Microsoft’s BizTalk RFID event processing platform, and Ebisu inventory management software from local integrator Kikata. RFID antennas are placed at the chefs’ cutting boards so they can designate which dish goes on which plate, and also around the

conveyor belt to read tag information from the passing plates.“They’re beginning to see some nice operational payoff, building

a database of time of day and year and what people want,” says Chris Kelly, Intermec director of RFID business development, who worked on the project. “They’re getting better demographics on consumption. It’s a novel use of the technology.” Each chef has a touchscreen display to show what’s selling in real time, Kelly says. Moreover, Kelly adds, the system automates the billing process, resulting in fewer errors on customer’s checks and fewer unpaid bills. CIO



that smelly FishrFId




determines that the plant needs to phone for help, it makes use of Xbee and Xport open source RF communication equipment to contact a PHP script with the plant’s ID number and specific need. The PHP script then packages information about the specific plant stored in the database and passes it on to Asterisk. The call is placed to the plant’s caregiver by Asterisk, which plays an audio file in the “voice” of the plant expressing its need.“It’s so exciting to see how people can use our technology so creatively,” says Mark Spencer, CTO of Digium, and Asterisk’s creator. Asterisk’s VoIP chops, traditionally used for automated call processing for call center or queuing applications, has attracted some innovative applications through the years, including a bicycle-powered phone. Few, however, are as eccentric as this one, which opens the door to stew of emergent vegetableware solutions, not to mention the possibility of a burgeoning social-networking-fueled MyPot community platform. CIO

—By jeff Angus


vegetation’s needs

voIPvoICes


Current studies indicate that working with or in proximity of plant life increases productivity and inspires a more upbeat demeanor. In fact, horticultural therapy has become a common component of the rehabilitation and coping regimens of persons afflicted with cancer or autism, for example. But for IT departments looking to harness the feel-good productivity power of plants without distracting patients, er, staff from their primary IT duties, there’s Botanicalls, a VoIP-based service that enables plants to phone their human partners as needed and describe their tending needs in detail.

At the core of this “Feed me, Seymour” architecture are a half-dozen open source tools, including Digium’s Asterisk, the open source VoIP platform that ultimately lends voice to plants’ pleas.

Here’s how Botanicalls works: light and moisture sensors on the plant communicate to an embedded system programmed in Arduino, an open source electronics prototyping platform for hardware and software. When a plant’s microcontroller



When some 22nd-century civilization exhumes our 2007 use of technologies, it will no doubt hold symposia on why turn-of-the-millennium life-saving applications — trailing the profitability of entertainment gadgets — had to borrow technology from teenagers’ cootie-blasting video game consoles. Today’s video game and HDTV markets are in large part defined by the graphics capabilities of GPU (graphics processing unit) multi-threaded cell processors, such as PlayStation 3’s RSX from nvidia and the Cell Microprocessor from the IBM-Toshiba-Sony consortium. But although the culture’s passion for bringing down Shinra or watching Celebrity Poker Showdown re-runs in high definition justifies vendors’ investments in optimizing complex graphics processing, an inadvertent beneficiary of this billion-dollar R&D industry is high-speed 3-D image rendering, such as that used in the medical industry.

So, when IBM and the Mayo Clinic announced earlier this year that they could move medical imaging into the fourth dimension—time — it should have come as no surprise that game technology was behind it. The Mayo Clinic’s Image Registration Application aggregates an interpreter’s viewing changes over time to depict subjects such as tumors. Using chips developed for entertainment, that app can now render data nearly 50 times faster — cutting diagnosis times dramatically. last year, Mercury Computer announced it would

be using the IBM-Toshiba-Sony consortium’s GPU designs to produce medical-related imaging hardware. And with companies such as Rapidmind building non-game-oriented development platforms for leveraging multicore hardware, expect medical software to further its altruistic use of technology funded in large part by our desire to be entertained. CIO

—By jeff Angus


taPPing

to save livesgame teCh


Out Of the BOx


Your RFID Battle Plan By Galen Gruman

TRACKING APPS | Keeping tabs of chemicals through the manufacturing and distribution process is a critical requirement for Dow Chemical in order to ensure safety and operational efficiency. In 2004, identification technologies such as RFID tags had gained significant buzz due to initiatives by the Defense Department and Wal-Mart to mandate their use in supply chain and inventory management applications. So, CIO Dave Kepler periodically asked his IT staff whether Dow could take advantage of these technologies. The repeated answer: RFID was not mature enough.

But Kepler wasn’t sure the skepticism was warranted. So in late 2005, he asked his staff to think about RFID differently. His request: define the problems first, then see which technologies might be useful to address them — viewing RFID technology as a possible tactic in the larger product tracking strategy. “He didn't want technology for technology's sake, but he did want tight alignment to the corporate strategy,” recalls Dave Asiala, a shared services IT director at Dow, who served as a member of the strategy development committee and assumed leadership of the implementation efforts.

Today, Dow has several pilot projects in place to test RFID and other location-oriented technologies such as GPS, two-way radios and traditional bar codes. Early projects have shown

Electronic tags still don’t top CIO

strategy lists. But as a tactical

weapon, RFID can be used to fight old

problems in new ways.

technologyessential From InceptIon to ImplementatIon — I.t. that matters

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that sometimes — such as when it's paired with a sensor log to transmit environmental readings during shipments — the use of RFID makes sense. But at other times bar codes still prove cheaper and easier.

Dow's not alone: despite years of discussion and ‘here's what you could do’ stories from vendors, RFID remains in the pilot stage at many firms, especially outside the established retail warehouse and distribution use on pallets and shipping containers. Both the RFID technology and marketplace are fragmented and slow-moving, analysts say, and costs remain high. A recent Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) study showed that while 84 percent of providers expect to offer RFID technology in the next three years, 66 percent say their customers have yet to implement RFID.

Dow's ‘keep your eyes open’ approach is the right one, says Colin Masson, a research director at AMR Research. By itself, RFID is still not a strategic technology that CIOs should have high on their agendas. But it can be useful in service of those strategies.

Making Your CaseTesting the business case for an RFID project is the first consideration for a CIO. Sometimes, RFID is the wrong solution. For example, Dow uses bar codes and handheld readers to track the large metal containers used to transport chemicals. RFID tags cost more, so Dow would want to reuse them to minimize the overall price. But it's hard to find RFID tags that can survive the sandblast cleaning the containers go through as their chemical contents are replaced, Asiala notes. So applying a bar code is simpler and cheaper.

In other cases, using RFID does make sense for Dow. The company is testing active tags placed over the fastener that holds each shipping container closed; the tags connect to an internal sensor and clock. The combination lets Dow track environmental conditions such as temperature or moisture, so a log is stored on the tag — essentially, a shipment e-pedigree. That log can be checked as the container passes through various points on its journey, giving early alerts to

possible problems, Asiala says. The same tag is also used in a more traditional inventory management application: to locate and redirect a container in transit, for instance, when a customer cancels an order but a different customer wants the materials. When the container enters a port, the shipping firms can find the affected container and move it to a new ship destined for the new customer, rather than ship it back to its origin first, as had been standard practice, Asiala says.

Most experimentation today, in using RFID beyond inventory management is happening in the medical industry, notes Michael Liard, a research director at ABI Research. Like Dow’s Kepler, hospital CIOs have discovered that RFID can sometimes be a useful tactical weapon to support a larger strategic need.

Reducing medication errors is a common goal at hospitals. That’s why the Friedrich Schiller University Hospital in Jena, Germany, is testing the use of RFID tags on patients’ ID bracelets, nurses’ ID badges, and drugs and drug containers. Before a nurse administers a drug, she scans herself, the patient and the drug. A software system checks the patient and drug IDs against the pharmacy instructions to make sure there are no medication errors. The drug type and amount, as well as the time of delivery and the ID of the nurse who administered it, are all logged, so the hospital can quickly analyze medication history in case of a problem, says vice CIO Martin Specht.

While the hospital could use bar codes to accomplish the same goal, it decided to test an RFID-based system from SAP and Intel. Specht envisions using a similar approach to track blood products — where RFID-sensor combinations could also monitor temperature to ensure blood does not get spoiled before use. It made sense to start with an RFID infrastructure given the likely future uses, he says.

Rich Schaeffer, vice president and CIO of St. Clair Hospital in Pittsburgh, started with a bar code-based system for tracking and validating medication dispensing. But nurses were convinced the scanning of

9 8 O C T O B E R 1 , 2 0 0 7 | REAL CIO WORLD

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their ID, patient bracelet and drug package container slowed them down, even though Schaeffer's studies showed otherwise. He added RFID tags to patient bracelets and nurses’ IDs (at the cost of about Rs 40 each), so that nurses could scan faster with their handheld readers. But he kept bar codes on the medications, mainly to save costs — “it's too costly given the number of tags we'd need,” he says — and because the robotic drug dispensary system supports only bar codes. To support both bar codes and RFID tags, he uses a dual-technology reader from Socket Mobile.

At the University of Ghent Hospital in Ghent, Belgium, CIO Bart Sijnave has decided to keep his bar code-based system for drug dispensation tracking. “It's a cheap solution that works,” he says.

But Sijnave is testing other RFID uses where the productivity benefit seems to outweigh the costs. To reduce emergency response time in the intensive care unit, the hospital has installed a dense wireless LAN to connect various monitors so they can transmit readings to the patients’ electronic medical records and to nurses’ monitoring stations. It uses the same Cisco wireless LAN and location software from AeroScout to detect where these often portable monitors are on the floor (by seeking a signal from the RFID tag). It highlights the location to the nurses if a monitor's alarm goes off. “The nurses can now act more quickly,” Sijnave says.

Extending RFID's ReachRFID's initial applications have centered around inventory management, such as tracking shipping containers across the supply chain, and now many enterprises are exploring how to get additional benefit from those investments. Wholesale drug company H.D. Smith has used RFID on pallets for several years, plus individual RFID tags on narcotics bottles, “increasing the security of each product along the supply chain,” says Rob Kashmer Jr., the company's vice president of IT. The firm expects state governments to soon require the individual

tags on drug bottles for safety purposes. Kashmer’s team aims to have a leg up when those RFID compliance requirements go into effect.

Denver law firm Kamlet Shepherd & Reichert is using RFID tags in a traditional inventory management approach, tracking movement of case files within the law office, and expects to expand the business benefits over time, says its technology director Adam Yantorni. By adapting the firm's FileTrial software to cover other materials, such as furniture and computer equipment, Yantorni plans to build a general-purpose automated inventory management plan. The firm will also grab opportunities to integrate its RFID database with its document management software, to improve workflow.

Another established use of RFID is for security applications, such as door locks that read RFID-enabled badges, notes Rebecca Wettemann, a vice president at Nucleus Research. But oil giant BP is testing a new twist on that approach at its refineries and oil and gas platforms. BP personnel wear RFID-equipped security badges that broadcast their whereabouts each second to a tracking application, so safety managers can see where everyone is. The system also helps analyze fast-moving loads and alerts drivers if they are on a collision course, says Curt Smith, BP's application director.

RFID cost and deployment barriers are falling, notes Wettemann. “A few years ago, the CIOs’ questions were all about tag technology and costs. Now, it’s all about how do we evaluate the technology for specific uses,” she says. Even if RFID doesn't turn out to be the right tactical approach for a current business need, it may be the right tactic down the line, she says. CIO

Galen Gruman is a frequent contributor to CiO. send

feedback on this feature to [email protected]

ESSEntIal technology

VOl/2 | ISSUE/22


The Dark Side Of Web 2.0There's a right way and a wrong way to do Web 2.0. Unfortunately, too many companies are finding the wrong way.By Bernard Golden

Pundit

Web 2.0 | I took my son to see Disney’s new movie, Ratatouille. Expecting it to be crowded after the rave reviews in the paper, I thought I’d buy tickets online on Fandango. We saw the movie. It was great. Much fun.

The next day, I got an email from Fandango asking me — a member of the Fandango community — to review the movie. Member of the community? I bought some tickets. A transaction, not a relationship. The next day, another email reminder that I hadn't taken the opportunity to review the movie.

I work with lots of companies on open source stuff as well as Web 2.0, and community is a common thread in all of them.

When I talk to companies about building community, I always stress on delivering value first, then asking for engagement.

Fandango didn't do that. We engaged in one kind of relationship — a transaction — and then they assumed that it meant they could treat me as a friend. How is an unwelcome email addressing you as a community member significantly different from spam, especially when I didn't respond to the first request? There is a phrase for this kind of thing: overly familiar.

Since I never volunteered to be a member of the Fandango community, nor, review movies for it, I decided to go look at my Fandango profile. Sure enough, it had a check

mark in the ‘ask me to review movies’ line. The only thing is: I never would have agreed to do that, so it was a hidden opt-out during registration. I immediately opted out.

I get the same kinds of invitations from Amazon, and so I decided to look at my profile there. There are opt-out options there, though not one for ‘ask me to review things I bought’. I shrug off Amazon invites, while the Fandango thing put a burr under my saddle. Why the difference in reaction?

For one, I've gotten lots of value from Amazon, so they've earned some slack. Also, I identify Amazon's value as being tied up with user reviews, so though I

don't usually want to participate in them, I understand it.

Fandango, on the other hand, hadn't delivered any community value. They sold me a ticket (and did a good job doing it) but because I didn't have any community relationship with the company, I saw their email as a clumsy attempt to foster a faux relationship.

So, what could Fandango have done differently to make me more positively disposed to participating in its community? Remember, value precedes engagement.

They could have figured out how to deliver value before asking me to do something for them. Like sending me an email, offering

to let me see other reviews. (It's always a concern about the level of innocence in a movie you're taking a child to, and the ratings can be more tolerant than I am.) They could have offered me that option while I was going through the selection process — even though that might have put me off. But in a relationship, don't you sometimes sacrifice short-term gain for longer-term engagement? Then, if I read some reviews, they could ask me to contribute a review. I'm sorry to pick on Fandango so much, but the experience illustrates the difficulty companies have as they grapple with this new, more transparent world. It's always

harder to maintain a relationship than to engage in a transaction, which is why service businesses are always tougher than product businesses. Merely slapping on some ‘Web 2.0’ decoration in the wrong way is like putting lipstick on a pig.

The move to transparency and customer engagement is very real and moving fast. Thinking through how you'll accomplish it in a way that provides value to the customer is critical. CIO

Bernard Golden is Ceo of navica, an open source

consultancy, and the author of Succeeding With open

Source (addision-Wesley, 2004). Send feedback on

this column to [email protected]

Merely slapping on some ‘Web 2.0’ decoration in the wrong way is like putting lipstick on a pig.

essenTial technology

Vol/2 | issUe/221 0 0 o C T o B e r 1 , 2 0 0 7 | REAL CIO WORLD

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