WIPRO SPECTRAMIND: "Consolidation will lead to better services and lower cost for enterprises"

The BPO industry has a distinct advantage when it comes to adopting
futuristic technologies, as it has no legacy systems to address. As early
adopters of the latest communication technologies, compared to any other
industry segment, it is also the first to face the challenges of new
technologies, Rajiv Gerela discusses with VOICE&DATA. Excerpts:

CIOs are always under pressure from their bosses to
get the best from the partners and also reduce IT and telecom budgets. So how do
you keep a balance between the two?

It is a challenge that every CIO faces on a daily basis. The balance
is done largely with the end-customer expectations in mind. While new technology
innovations help in optimization, their adoption is a dual-edged sword. So, too
soon an acceptance could leave you with huge support issue (apart from the
increased initial cost burden) and too late an adoption could straddle you with
technology that is likely to become obsolete soon. The role of a CIO is to judge
this fine line correctly and ensure you cross over to new technologies at just
the right time in their growth/adoption curve to gain the maximum benefit, both
for the organization and also for the end customer.

Rajiv Gerela, general manager, technology, Wipro Spectramind

Further, we have regular meetings with our partners and continuously give
them feedback about their service levels and pricing. Also, by creating a
healthy competition we get the advantage of both better pricing and improved
service levels.

How imperative is the communication/network
infrastructure to your enterprise in its current and future business
prospects? What are some of the key issues you witness in your communication and
network infrastructure?

The communication/network infrastructure forms the backbone of our
enterprise as all our services fully depend on this for their functioning. We
being a call center, it further becomes the most critical piece of our services.
In the last few years we have seen a phenomenal growth in our operations size
and the number of centers we operate from. Thus the complexity of our
communications system has also grown manifold. We take full advantage of the
advances in technology by proactively evaluating new technologies on the horizon
and after considerable weighing of the risks, taking the lead in being an early
adopter of new breakthroughs, which have also benefited us since we have seen a
good RoI on most of such decisions.

What is the technology roadmap that you have charted
out for your company?

As mentioned above, we have been continuously keeping ourselves
abreast with new technologies on the horizon and ensuring that we adopt the best
of the breed at the correct point in time of the technologies' development
curve to ensure maximum gain. Thus, we were the early consolidators of bandwidth
from 2 Mb pipes to 45 Mb pipes. We were the early adopter of Cisco MGX WAN boxes
(which are actual telco-grade boxes) in place of Cisco IGX boxes. As of now, we
are actively evaluating MPLS-based solution and are talking to various vendors
to evaluate their offerings in this area.

What are a few of the foremost problems you face as
a CIO/CTO?

Being early adopters of technology you are faced with new sets of
problems in the new areas of operation, which may not have been reported
earlier. There would be less trained resources available for such new
technologies. And, vendors' knowledge of such new technologies and related
problems would actually be developing with the problem we throw up.

New technologies are being talked about and promoted
by vendors on a regular basis. Are there any equipment-, product-,
solutions-related issues that you would like the vendors/SPs to address?

Some of the areas that we would want vendors to address include
comparison of technology/product being offered with other competing products
from other vendors. By this, we mean that they need to incorporate features that
are not available with them and work with partners, where required, to offer the
complete set of features and functions available in the market at competitive
prices.

A brief on the evolution of technology being offered would be beneficial.
This is an important issue because if the technology roadmap is not rightly
identified and spelt out: there could be lot of support, customer service, and
cost issues that could arise.

What is the trend at the enterprise with
communi-cation infrastructure and solutions? What are the top five technologies
that will make a mark in future?

At the enterprise level, communication infrastructure is seeing a lot
of change with newer technologies and new service provider offerings coming to
the market. We are definitely seeing consolidation, which would in effect lead
to better services and lower cost for the enterprise. Some of the leading
technologies that will be seen are MPLS, VoIP, Wi-Fi, RFID, voice/video/data
integration.

What is the promise that IP has for your company? Do
you plan to deploy IP-based technologies like VPN solutions?

TCP/ IP has evolved from an experimental technology used to hook
together a handful of research computers, to the powerhouse of the largest and
most complex computer networks in history: the global Internet, connecting
together millions of networks and end devices. The convergence of voice, video,
and data onto a unified IP network gives us new options to control communication
costs while planning for future technology. VoIP can consolidate your traffic
and eliminate the need for managing two separate networks. We have already
deployed different flavors of VoIP-based solutions, IP phones, IP trunks, IP
softphones, etc. We are evaluating various MPLS solutions and will soon have our
own MPLS -ased networks or MPLS services from service providers.

What are the regulatory issues that hamper
deployment of new communication technologies in India?

While new technologies are allowing a very wide array of mix-n-match
product deployment and multi-site, multi-city, multi-company connectivity some
of the local laws of the land have not been updated to keep pace with the
technology enhancement and hence in the long run could prove to be the stumbling
blocks for the faster adoption of newer technologies. While the regulator's
concern on revenue loss, cyber safety, etc are partly valid, many of these could
be achieved with stricter imposition of demarcations, new firewall/SSL/VPN
requirements, etc. There is definitely an urgent need for the regulator to keep
pace with the advancements in technology and maybe also evaluate each case
individually before taking a collective decision.

With networks becoming cumbersome and difficult to
manage, do you feel outsourcing is the need of the hour?

With ever-increasing investments in high-end technical resources and
training and retaining them, outsourcing is a better bet to get the complex
networks managed with lower cost, and to maintain the QoS by having stringent
SLAs. For different needs, there would be different levels of outsourcing, which
could be adopted. But yes, outsourcing would be the way forward for most
organizations.

Minu Sirsalewala