3G will improve employee productivity

GMR Group is one of the fastest growing infrastructure
organizations in the country with interests in airports, highways and urban
infrastructure, including SEZs. Employing the public private partnership model,
the Group has successfully implemented several infrastructure projects in India.
With a whole lot of businesses that run across various sectors like energy,
construction and agri business, IT infrastructure plays a big role in seamless
connectivity and smooth operations. Talking about new IT solutions for the
coming year and the security risks involved in day-to-day operations, Johny
Paramian, group CIO, GMR highlights his role in running IT infrastructure for a
large corporation. Excerpts

How have 3G and WiMax
delayed your plan to achieve better connectivity across the various centers in
India?

Availability of 3G would improve employee productivity because of the higher
bandwidth possible on mobile devices. This would facilitate users to work from
anywhere, anytime. Some of the applications that would be deployed on mobile
devices are-videoconferencing, access to company intranet, hence to all
applications as per the role of the employee and webcast, thus, empowering the
user, wherever he is. We have identified several innovative applications to be
deployed once 3G is available.

Convergence and WLAN, as well as cloud computing are
coming to India in a big way. Do you plan to implement any of these new
technologies in your business model?

We would definitely evaluate and consider bringing it into our business
model. It holds promise to drive IT costs down and at the same time add value.
Having said this, we would not jump onto the bandwagon immediately. We would
wait and watch. Cloud computing is creating the maximum buzz in the CIO circles
this year. However, in the true sense, it is still in its infancy. We would
start evaluating 'infrastructure in the cloud' and then move to running
'enterprise application in the cloud'. The concerns at this point in time are
many-including issues of licensing, privacy, security, compliance and network
monitoring. Another potential stumbling block is that enterprise applications
are interlinked with one system feeding into or reporting back to another. That
makes it pretty tough to pull out an application and run it in the cloud without
affecting every related application.

How have you secured your networks to make them more
robust?

We have information security governance framework in place which aligns with
the industry best practices. The framework comprises necessary policies and
technical standards that take care of network security and other information
security issues. In terms of security solutions, we have incorporated firewalls,
VPN, IPS, anti spam, web security, anti-virus solutions, etc, in our network
security architecture. To achieve compliance with the policies, periodic
security audits comprising vulnerability assessment and penetration tests are
conducted.

As the economy recovers from the recession, what are
the new technology solutions you are thinking of introducing? How focused will
be the investments in terms of improving bottomlines?

Some of the technology solutions/applications contemplated are
virtualization of hardware and applications, unified communications and identity
and access management. These are not very different from what leading
enterprises are doing today. Needless to say, these add value to business,
reduce cost of ownership and enhance the security situation. In terms of
improving bottomlines, these are strategic investments.

How big is bandwidth a constraint for you, when it
comes to connectivity?

We do not find bandwidth to be a constraint in majority of the cases.
However in remote project sites, last mile connectivity continues to be an
issue.

Are you looking at vendor consolidation and planning to
renew and renegotiate contracts with your IT and network providers? How have
SLAs changed over the period of time with your vendors?

As with all contracts, renegotiation is a regular process, and we
periodically engage our partners and vendors to derive optimized value. SLAs are
also reviewed periodically to achieve industry standards, and in several cases
to improve them. This is essential as business expectations keep growing as more
and more critical applications go online.

How have your IT and communications budget changed over
the past one year?

At present, we have a MPLS network and bandwidth comprising approximately
10% of the IT costs. The communications budget has gone up as additional project
sites have come up. As far as specific mandates are concerned, we would be
focusing on consolidation of our existing infrastructure.

Any new areas of telecommunications expansion in the
real estate segment?

Telecommunications will play a key role for the deployment of various
applications. Information availability and access at all places, and at all
times is what all consumers are looking for. Large intelligent buildings and
cities will need to provide the required telecommunications infrastructure as a
base offering. The services that would ride on this infrastructure would
include-streaming video/video on-demand, videoconferencing, remote security
management, remote building/city management, incident/emergency tracking and
management, vehicle tracking and bandwidth.

What are the major challenges that you are facing as a
CIO in terms of technology/network?

Our business is expecting greater productivity and continued
cost-efficiencies. Some of their expectations are improving business processes,
reducing enterprise costs, increasing use of analytics, managing change,
consolidating business operations and expanding into new markets/geographies.
This needs to be realized by IT being aligned with business. We also have
realized that the way forward is a number of smaller initiatives as opposed to
any 'one-point stop'.

Beryl M

berylm@cyberemedia.co.in