December Issue 2021

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FOR THE CIOs. BY THE CIOs. DECEMBER 2021

MITISH CHITNAVIS CTO, iVALUE INFOSOLUTIONS PVT. LTD.

VALUE INFOSOLUTIONS:

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EDITOR’S LETTER

ARE WE BACK TO SQUARE?

Hello Friends.

This is the end of the year 2021. It seems we are back to squire where we started the year as the whole country is again under the spell of Covid 19 pandemic. We might see things becoming abnormal again from tech standpoint. There might be increase in the cyber attacks going from here till the mid of next year until the pandemic saturates and organizations become extremely watchful about it.

Looking at the year 2021, we have seen most of things with uncertainty. Many of the organizations have procured new technologies to strengthen their infrastructure at the same time compliant with the social distancing and remote access of the resources.

It has worked fine with many, but many organizations and sectors have performed very badly. Many of the sectors have not revived yet from the one-year lock down and restriction on travel.

Towards the third quarter of the year, when we were looking at everything with normalcy, again there is the news of Omicron spread and it has spread thick and fast. Again, there is travel restriction and night-time curfew and lockdown on various sectors

NEXT MONTH SPECIAL

including health club, spa and cinemas.

So, in real sense things have gone bad to worse by the end of the year. Now people are predicting that the pandemic may run for another 6 months till June 2022.

So, the advice to the enterprises is to bring down the percentage of risk to 1-2 and make their infrastructure modular and flexible and anywhere accessible.

It might be sounding good and easy to do but it is not at all easy as so many points of accesses are there.

The entire system goes through so many protocols of technologies and security firewalls. Plus, there is a huge investment attached to it along with multiple level and multiple type approvals.

So net net, we are back to square where we started during early 2021. Never mind, it is part of everyone’s journey. You cannot do much about it. But I would suggest to learn every day and utilize time to productivity.

As a responsible media house, we are supporting you in creating lot of contents from the experts in various technologies and vertical industries. Keep reading the magazine and enjoy various topics.

S A N J AY M O H A PAT R A S A N J AY @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M

COVER STORY

SUPPLEMENT

CLOUD COMPUTING

QUOTES FROM TOP CIOS

The next issue is dedicated to the Cloud Computing. We would like to take feedback from the CIOs and OEMs and create our judgment on the same.

The supplement story of the magazine would have relevant quotes from the top CIOs in India.

PLUS

Interviews and Case Studies

Catch interviews, guest articles and case studies of recent applications from the Industry stakeholders, IT/ITES Vendors and IT leaders and CIOs from the Enterprise IT World CIO Community.

Send in your inputs to sanjay@accentinfomedia.com 4

ENTERPRISE IT WORLD DECEMBER 2021

CONTENTS

FOR THE CIOs. BY THE CIOs.

Publisher: Sanjib Mohapatra Chief Editor: Sanjay Mohapatra

V O L U M E 0 6 | I S S U E 0 9 | DECEMBER 2021 | W W W . E N T E R P R I S E I T W O R L D . C O M

Managing Editor: Anisha Nayar Dhawan Sub Editor: Kumari Ambika Designer: Shadab Khan Web Designer: Vijay Bakshi, Sangeet Technical Writer: Manas Ranjan Lead Visualizer: DPR Choudhary MARKETING Marketing Manager: Vaishali Shukla SALES CONTACTS Delhi 6/102, Kaushalya Park, Hauz Khas New Delhi-110016 Phone: 91-11-41055458 E-mail: info@accentinfomedia.com

COVER STORY

EDITORIAL OFFICE Delhi: 6/103, (GF) Kaushalya Park, New

16 iVALUE INFOSOLUTIONS: A TRUE

Delhi-110016, Phone: 91-11-41657670 / 46151993 info@ accentinfomedia.com

TECHNOLOGY ENABLER FOR ALL VERTICAL BUSINESSES PERSPECTIVE : /20 Digital Journey of the Organization and the Strategy of IT Leaders

Printed, Published and Owned by Sanjib Mohapatra Place of Publication: 6/103, (GF) Kaushalya Park, Hauz Khas New Delhi-110016

MORE INSIDE

Phone: 91-11-46151993 / 41055458

Printed at Karan Printers, F-29/2, 1st floor, Okhla Industrial Area, Phase-2, New Delhi 110020, India.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced without the prior written permission from the publisher.

Subscription: Rs.200 (12 issues) All payments favouring: Accent Info Media Pvt. Ltd.

Editorial~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 04 News~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 06

ARE PVT. LTD.

24 GUEST TALK

ARUN TEWARY

“Why CIOs Fail?”

38

26 INTERVIEW

GOPALAKRISHNAN PADMANABHAN

“Green Building Continues to Remain a Global Priority”

42 TECH PREDICTION

DC TREND

NIKHIL RATHI

ANKUR GOEL

“DC Trends 2022”

“Poly Identifies Top Trends that Will Shape Hybrid Working in India for 2022 and Beyond”

DECEMBER 2021 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

5

ITWORLD

ROUND UP

Contextual analystic, The first integrated zero trust platform

B Y S A N J AY @ A C C E N T I N FO M E D I A . C O M

The role of IT has expanded significantly over the last two years with organizations forced to rethink and revamp the way they work. Going forward, there will be renewed emphasis on leveraging technological advances to tackle business challenges presented by remote workforces.

“Following the pandemic, hybrid work will be an expectation if not the norm at most organizations across the world. That means cybersecurity, AI, automation, and analytics will play increasingly significant roles in organizational efforts to support this way of working,” said Rajesh Ganesan, vice president of products at ManageEngine.

Here are ManageEngine’s top five predictions in the IT management space for 2022.

1. Organizational insights will become immediately actionable with the rise of contextual analytics 6

ENTERPRISE IT WORLD DECEMBER 2021

When insights are presented directly within a business application, the chances of an organization acting upon them are much higher than when those same insights are presented in standalone business intelligence software. For example, when insights on project efficiency are available within project management software, it’s easier for project managers to relate the findings to their daily work and implement measures to fix inefficiencies.

The way we train and deploy AI models is expected to change significantly in the coming year. With more sustainable techniques like meta learning, transfer learning, and causal AI expected to complement deep learning, AI and ML will eventually become fullfledged, embedded elements of contextual analytics workflows.

D ATA BRIEF

Worldwide PC Shipments Declined 5% in Fourth Quarter of 2021

ITWORLD // NEWS BRIEF

Citrix® Tops in Securing Remote Work

With employees working from anywhere using devices of their choice, companies must defend an expanded attack surface against an increasing number of threats. And according to Expert Insights, Citrix Systems, Inc. is among the best solutions they can use to do it. The leading cybersecurity resource and review platform announced its 2021 Best-Of Cybersecurity Awards, and Citrix was among the winners in two categories.

Designed to recognize the world’s best cybersecurity companies and products, the Expert Insights’ Best-Of Cybersecurity Awards leverage research by Expert Insights’ independent technical analysts and editorial team, customer feedback and industry recognition to identify the most innovative and powerful solutions on the market.

Citrix Gateway is a comprehensive, Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) solution that enables IT organizations to secure web, cloud and mobile applications, across all devices with adaptive security measures that provide access based on user role, location, and device state.

With Citrix Gateway, IT organizations can empower remote employees to stay productive

CIO

without compromising their experience or security.

As noted by Expert Insights, “Citrix Gateway allows users to connect with their work desktops from anywhere, including on mobile devices. Customers have praised the solution for its fast connections, which make it suitable for organizations working with active client relationships. This also makes it a great solution for enterprises with employees around the world connecting across different time zones, when it might not be possible to get into the office.”

Citrix Endpoint Management is a comprehensive unified endpoint management solution for managing applications, data and devices via one integrated platform. Using Citrix Endpoint Management, IT can bring every app and endpoint into a single, unified view to deliver the digital workspace users need to engage and be productive, and Expert Insights recommends it as “a strong solution for enterprises that want unified endpoint management they can roll out quickly and easily scale to grow with their workforce.”

Managing massive datasets is excessively complex and costly. Today, Seagate Technology Holdings plc, a world leader in mass-data storage infrastructure solutions, announced the new Exos® Application Platform (AP) with a new controller featuring 2nd Gen AMD EPYC™ processors. The efficient, scalable, affordable end-to-end compute and storage platform delivers integrated compute and storage in a single enclosure optimising rack space utilisation, power efficiency, heat dissipation and storage density.

Ken Claffey, Senior Vice President, Systems at Seagate, said, “Data is often discarded because the cost of keeping it is immediate, despite significant potential future payoffs,” “The new Exos AP with AMD EPYC processors can help IT professionals build a cost-effective data management strategy that intelligently captures, stores, and analyses data today and leverages it in the future to drive success.”

EVENTS

05-08 JAN 2022 Consumer Electronics Shows

LAS VEGAS, NV & ONLINE

8

Seagate Fuels Converged Storage Platform with New Exos AP Enterprise Data Storage System Controller Powered by AMD EPYC Processors

ENTERPRISE IT WORLD DECEMBER 2021

11 FEB, 13 MAY, 15 JUL & 14 OCT 2022 Digital Workplace Experience: Virtual Conference Series

ONLINE, FREE

23-25 MAR 2022

26-27 APR 2022

MIT Technology Review Presents: EmTech Digital 2022

Gartner Digital Workplace Summit

ONLINE, COST: $800-$1,200

ONLINE, AMERICAS COST: $975-$1,450

NEWS BRIEF // IT WORLD

Pine Labs partners with AU Small Finance Bank to empower the underbanked with no-cost EMI offers

S/HE SAID IT

SUCHI MUKHERJE

CEO, LIMEROAD

“True leadership is about enabling voice of the youngest team member.”

Leading merchant commerce platform, Pine Labs today announced its partnership with AU Small Finance Bank, a Scheduled Commercial Bank and the largest Small Finance Bank in India. The Bank’s credit card holders will now be able to avail Equated Monthly Instalments (EMI) offers at the point of sale and convert their regular purchase into interest-free EMIs across the over 2 lakh merchant base of Pine Labs, pan India.

The collaboration between the two entities is expected to benefit the large underbanked population of India. In fact, ~55-60% customers of the Bank are first-time credit cardholders with presence across west, north, and central parts of India and prominent Tier 3 and 4 cities. Pine Labs’ tech superiority in enabling a seamless and swift point of sale checkout experience for multiple issuers on a single Android PoS device will be an advantage for merchants looking to drive sales through the Pay Later EMI proposition.

Presently, Pine Labs powers more than 30 different credit issuers and NBFC partners on

QUICK BYTE ON

its Android PoS terminals.

Commenting on the partnership, Kush Mehra, Chief Business Officer, Pine Labs, said, “Consumer sentiment in India has improved to a great degree in recent times. We believe there is a lot of pent-up demand in the market especially from the aspirational middle class.

Thrilled to be partnering AU Small Finance Bank who have a strong presence in the semi-urban and rural areas which we believe will be the next pocket of growth for India’s retail sector. We see great synergies for future growth in this evolving BNPL space as the Bank has done admirably well in getting over 80,000 credit card users in such a short span of time since launch and has ambitious targets for this fiscal.”

“The initial journey at AU Bank Credit Cards has been quite exciting. While we offered innovative benefits to the cardholders, the penetration into newer geographies provided an opportunity to serve a large segment of un-carded customer base.

“If you look at data and information technology, generally, it’s never been more relevant around the boardroom table.”

R O G A N M O O R E , T H E C H I E F D I G I TA L A N D I N FO R M AT I O N O F F I C E R , L I V E K I N D LY C O L L E CT I V E , A C O L L E CT I O N O F P L A N T - B A S E D B R A N D S A N D S TA R T U P S .

SECURITY

DigiCert Advances Passwordless Authentication with Support for Windows Hello for Business “DigiCert, Inc., the world’s leading provider of TLS/SSL, IoT and other PKI solutions, today unveiled a key advancement in passwordless authentication with industry-first automated workflows and certificate issuance for Windows Hello for Business (WHfB). Passwordless authentication is a growing trend as companies seek to improve security at the point of access, while simplifying the user sign-in experience.”

DECEMBER 2021 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

9

ITWORLD // NEWS BRIEF

DC Trends 2022

4 Essential Elements of an Effective RFP A new technology project starts with a request for proposal, or RFP. A successful RFP begins with being clear and detailed, explaining thoroughly what your next tech project entails.

Your RFP should have precise specifications, imperative items, and aspects that would be nice but aren’t required and clearly delineate your overall expectations. Here are four essential elements of an effective RFP. 1. Summary and Business Overview A successful RFP starts with a good intro or summary. It will introduce the vendor to get comfortable with who you are and what the project is all about. After the introduction, you should go into the background and an overview of your business. Engage the potential vendor with what drives you and what your core values are, as well

EXECUTIVE

as what services you provide.

2. Project Goals, Scope, and Timeline This section is arguably the most important and lets your prospective vendor know what you’re trying to accomplish and your target audience.

Here’s where you want to include any possible hurdles or potential issues you’re trying to avoid or solve. Rather than offer potential solutions, be as descriptive as possible on what the project is attempting to solve. You’re going to the experts, so let them worry about the how. If there are any specific evaluation metrics, include them here.

Your explanation of scope should be very detailed and thorough, therefore the most extended section of your RFP. Any project is going to have many variables that can delay your project.

Whether it’s video conferencing, collaboration tools, streaming, gaming or ridesharing, today’s modern applications are increasingly designed for automated and elastic deployment at the edge.

In 2022, edge-first deployments will continue to gain traction, as will a wave of technology innovations across the infrastructure stack to address the increasing complexity of reliably scaling and orchestrating distributed infrastructure at the edge. Nikhil Rathi, Founder & CEO of Web Werks, has listed a few trends that will mold the data center and cloud engineering space in 2022, in terms of infrastructure, demand and government policies.

Infrastructure Ultra-scalable Technology Today, data centers experience dramatically varying demands for computing power. The answer to that challenge is ultra-scalable technology that allows them to scale up or down depending on the amount of processing power required. Dubbed hyper-scale data centers, these facilities offer outstanding capabilities to handle seasonal computing demands. Edge data centres or edge interconnection will be more prevalent as edge locations are experiencing high consumption and creation of data at an increasing rate leading to decentralized computing.

MOVEMENT

Sourabh Tiwari joins Meril Group as Group CIO – executive movement

Druva Appoints Security and IT Veteran Yogesh Badwe as Chief Security Officer

Veeam Appoints Anand Eswaran as Chief Executive Officer

Vidyaniwas Khetawat joins the company in the capacity of Chief Financial Officer

10 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD DECEMBER 2021

Raghav Hari Choudhary, joins the company in the capacity of VPInvestor Relations & Corporate Development respectively

NEWS BRIEF // IT WORLD

BOOK

SHELF

The Power of Influence

GLOBAL UPDATE

BY

YORITOMO-TASHI (AUTHOR)

DE-CIX Predictions: 4 trends for 2022 Mumbai, December 14 2021: Unfortunately, the pandemic still won’t loosen its grip on the world, and this winter again many activities will need to take place online – from Christmas shopping to events and celebrations. Reliable and failsafe Internet connections with the lowest possible latency are thus becoming increasingly important – for our private lives, certainly, but above all for the economy as a whole. Here, a significant role is played by Internet Exchanges (IXs). They guarantee a smooth, secure, and fast exchange of data packets between networks of any size, ranging from city carriers to streaming providers and cloud service providers. Dr. Thomas King, CTO at DE-CIX, has identified 4 trends that will shape the connected world, the evolution of Internet trends, and the interconnection business in 2022: 1. Automation: Booking interconnection by click Automation is no longer just a topic in manufacturing. More and more industries are developing solutions to automate routine IT tasks to become more flexible.

Especially in uncertain times like we are currently experiencing, flexibility is a crucial asset. If, for example, a retailer’s

business activities suddenly shift from the physical store to the online store, they must be able to react quickly so as not to alienate their customers with downtime. Internet Exchange operators are responding by offering the chance to manage interconnection services via both API and self-service portals. This means that the services at the Internet Exchange can be booked just as easily as computing power can be at the well-known cloud providers. This is possible because a large portion of the infrastructure at an Internet Exchange is now virtualized. But there are also automation approaches in the area of physical infrastructure. In addition to an API and a sophisticated self-service portal, DE-CIX in Frankfurt, for example, now has three patch robots in operation, which reposition cables fully automatically in just seconds, at any time of day.

2. A new era of data exchange Never before has more data been exchanged than today. But problems remain: For example, when it comes to the confidential, bilateral exchange of large data packets, these are sometimes still stored on hard disks and physically transported.

PRICE

RS. 99.00 (PAPER BACK ) WHERE

AMAZON.IN

About The Book This is a compact and compelling edition of yoritimo-tashi’s two great works, influence: how to exert it and common sense: how to exercise it.

About the Author Yoritomo-Tashi was among the three greatest statesmen of Japan. He was a founder of the first Japanese dynasty of Shoguns, the reviser of the Empire’s code of laws, and the organizer of military feudalism. He rescued his native land from the slough of demoralization into which it had sunk.

In 1186, he established the seat of his government at Kamakura, where he organized an administrative body similar in its methods and operation to the metropolitan government.

Mangalam Information Technologies Redefining the IT/ ITES landscape Mangalam Information Technologies Pvt. Ltd. has emerged as an undisputed leader in fulfilling the offshore outsourcing needs of organizations worldwide. This Ahmedabad-headquartered company has instituted some best-in-class practices such as organization-wide SOP for people and process management, emphasis on personal and process training through online resources, in-house library, and sessions with industry experts. The company also has a stringent 3-step HR testing along with a 3rd party verification to hire the best talent and provide them with growth opportunities. Mangalam believes in building a strong work culture and pride for the organization in each employee and achieves

this goal through inter-department employee engagement activities, wellness measures and an open door policy.

Madhvi Bhandari, a seasoned IT professional and entrepreneur, founded Mangalam in the year 2000 with a team of ten employees. Today, the company has established itself as a one-stop BPM solutions provider with a team of 400+ employees, comprising of 30% women, working in a hybrid working environment. The company provides a host of services to the legal, healthcare and IT industry globally.

“At Mangalam, we are steadfastly committed to quality and superior experience.

DECEMBER 2021 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

11

ITWORLD // NEWS BRIEF

Unlock Opportunities for Business through NETGEAR’s Instant Captive Portal Guests in a hotel not only want WiFi, but in many cases need it, and expect their host to provide it. A Captive Portal is one of the best ways to safely and efficiently connect guest devices to your business via WiFi for the last few dozen meters of connectivity in the modern world. Guest WiFi should be Safe, Secure and Useful. This is where a Captive Portal plays an important role and is considered very useful for businesses and schools hosting WiFi. Various Uses of Captive Portal are:  Improve customer experience with fast and secure WiFi  Enhance brand image and credibility through professional portal customizable settings  Understand customers and build detailed customer profiles with data collected by Captive Portal  Log all WiFi access for a whole year for traceability and security  Boost marketing activities with tailored and timely communications A captive portal is a web page that customers use to access public WiFi networks.

Poly Identifies Top Trends that Will Shape Hybrid Working in India for 2022 and Beyond Poly, a global communications company that powers meaningful human connection and collaboration, today revealed the top trends that will shape the future of work for 2022 and beyond.

Ankur Goel, Managing Director for Poly India & SAARC said, “We have come a long way in the last two years. The stigma attached to remote working and remote workers has changed drastically during the pandemic and proved that most work could be done effectively remotely. As a result, organizations realize that their employees can be productive no matter their work location, provided they have the right collaboration tools”.

He added, “Hybrid working is now going to be the norm in India. In fact, it’s reported that hybrid is the preferred working arrangement amongst employees. To ensure that the hybrid working model is successful, companies should invest time in mapping out hybrid work strategies.

JK Tech introduces Hybrid Work Policy for employees JK Tech, a global Digital Transformation services company, introduced a Hybrid Work Policy for all its employees across India, the USA, and the UK. Aimed to improve quality of work and social life, the policy is a step to ensure a flexible working environment in the company post-pandemic. A recent Gartner survey shows that 83% of all employees want to work in either a remote or hybrid arrangement, and only 17% of employees prefer to go back on-site full time. Keeping that in mind, all employees at JK Tech will be considered for hybrid work scheduling on a case-by-case in situations where creative work schedules have been shown to accomplish both work and personal goals, to provide coverage for an individual department, operations and to serve JK Tech with increased productivity without any impact on quality output. The policy may be reviewed again for improvisations and 12 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD DECEMBER 2021

improvements, as per social situations.

The unique and smart Hybrid Work policy brings in features like ‘Flexitime’ which can be availed by JK Tech employees.

Also, the policy includes ‘Compressed Workweeks’ under which the employees can work nine hours from Monday to Thursday and four hours on Friday. The policy is formulated to improve the collaboration amongst employees.

Shyam Verma, Global HR Head, JK Tech said, “At JK Tech, we are proactive towards maintaining a balance between the current scenario and work-life. With the Hybrid Work Policy in place, employees at JK Tech will be provided with adequate liberty to take care of themselves, their mental health, and their families. This will create a positive impact and ensure a collaborative work community, hence improving productivity with quality results.”

DIGEST CITRIX SOLUTIONS CAN NOW HELP DEPLOY YOUR DESKTOPS TO CLOUD SECURELY AND EFFECTIVELY Hybrid working models have led to more and more organizations deploying virtual desktops. Workforce distribution has resulted in IT teams facing challenges related to network security and data breach. This is especially true for organizations that have implemented bring your own device (BYOD) programs and allow employees to connect to public networks, as standardizing security across both unsanctioned devices and networks is an extremely difficult task.

Citrix managed DaaS solutions supports IT teams protect corporate data and provide easily accessible virtual desktops for remote or mobile employees. Because all corporate data is stored securely in the cloud rather than on individual devices, end users can work securely from anywhere, with any device, on any network.

2022 AND BEYOND – TECHNOLOGIES THAT WILL CHANGE THE DIALOGUE We are living in a do-anything-from-anywhere economy enabled by an exponentially expanding data ecosystem. It’s estimated 65% of Global GDP will be digital next year (2022).

This influx of data presents both opportunities and challenges. After all, success in our digital present and future relies on our ability to secure and maintain increasingly complex IT systems. Here I’ll examine both near-term and long-term predictions that address the way the IT industry will deliver the platforms and capabilities to harness this data to transform our experiences at work, home and in the classroom.

CONTEXTUAL ANALYTICS, CYBERSECURITY MESH, AND ZEROTOUCH SERVICE MANAGEMENT TO DOMINATE IT IN 2022 The role of IT has expanded significantly over the last two years with organizations forced to rethink and revamp the way they work. Going forward, there will be renewed emphasis on leveraging technological advances to tackle business challenges presented by remote workforces.

“Following the pandemic, hybrid work will be an expectation if not the norm at most organizations across the world. That means cybersecurity, AI, automation, and analytics will play increasingly significant roles in organizational efforts to support this way of working,” said Rajesh Ganesan, vice president of products at ManageEngine.

Here are ManageEngine’s top five predictions in the IT management space for 2022.

NEWS BRIEF // IT WORLD

MANAGEMENT

MANTRA

“Leaders provide employees the opportunity to be leaders themselves.”

Snowflake enhances data analytics for Adda52

Amit Agarwal, CEO, NoBroker

IndianOil Selects AVEVA Unified Supply Chain Schedule to Transform Refinery Operations

Indian Oil Corporation Ltd (IOCL), India’s largest integrated energy major with presence in oil, gas, petrochemicals and alternative energy sources, has selected AVEVA, a global leader in industrial software, to drive its digital transformation and sustainability. As a key initiative under the banner of its digitalization project i-DRIVE, IndianOil aspires to transform its scheduling work process across nine refineries and one petrochemical complex in India for implementation of Refinery Production Scheduler. AVEVA Unified Supply Chain will enable IOCL to digitalize its refinery and naphtha cracker scheduling workflows, optimize blend scheduling to meet daily product dispatch plans and

provide end-to-end visibility across its operations.

S.M. Vaidya, Chairman, IndianOil said, “Streamlining crude feedstocks with plant scheduling is a particular challenge for our industry, intensified by operational challenges brought on by the pandemic. By implementing AVEVA technology, we shall be able to enhance efficiency by using a digital system-driven scheduling approach for consistent and value-focused operations. Most importantly, the new relationship will allow our energy professionals to focus on the business through enhanced decision support.”

“AVEVA enables oil and gas customers to improve plant performance and energy efficiency while shrinking operating costs.

Built on transformative cloud, industrial IoT and artificial intelligence technologies, our solutions enable teams to visualize the entire value chain in real time, improving collaboration and enabling more precise and agile decisions that drive value throughout the supply chain. We look forward to our association with an energy giant like IOCL and be an integral part of their transformational journey,” said Peter Herweck, CEO, AVEVA.

Snowflake collaborated with Adda52 to enable Adda52 to fast-track time-to-delivery for their business.

By enabling flexible querying and easy optimisation of business data,Snowflake has provided a platform for better management of large workloads for Adda52, empowering the company to scale rapidly with improved focus on delivery, faster implementation, and reduced bottlenecks in the process of prototyping new ideas.

During the pandemic, as people were looking for new means of entertainment, Adda52 witnessed a remarkable increase in recreational or casual gamers from their initial segment of serious gamers. It wanted to tap on this emerging opportunity to widen its user base and channelise this new segment of casual gamers towards becoming long-term users. For this, it was important to micro-segment user data based on different user preferences across age groups and evaluate the kind of gamification and incentives to be given for recreational gamers compared to serious gamers.

To enable this, Snowflake stepped in as the data platform to support Adda52’s data lake needs.

Protect Yourself against the Apache Log4j Vulnerability What happened?

On December 9th, an acute remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability was reported in the Apache logging package Log4j 2 versions 2.14.1 and below (CVE-2021-44228).

Apache Log4j is the most popular java logging library with over 400,000 downloads from its GitHub project. It used by a vast number of companies worldwide, enabling logging in a wide set of popular applications.

Exploiting this vulnerability is simple and allows threat actors to control java-based web servers and launch remote code execution attacks.

The Log4j library is embedded in almost every

Internet service or application we are familiar with, including Twitter, Amazon, Microsoft, Minecraft and more.

At present most of the attacks focus on the use of a cryptocurrency mining at the expense of the victims, however under the auspices of the noise more advanced attackers may act aggressively against quality targets.

What do you need to do in order to remain protected?

Check Point already released a new Quantum Gateway protection powered by Threat Cloud, designed to prevent this attack, and by using ityou’ll stay protected.

If your Quantum gateways are updated with automatic new protections, you are already protected. Otherwise, you need to implement a new protection by following the guidelines here.

We urge IT and Security teams to take immediate remediation measures on the matter.

Is Check Point affected by the Log4j vulnerability?

The Check Point Infinity architecture is not impacted by the Log4j.

DECEMBER 2021 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

13

ITWORLD // NEWS BRIEF

Agora Announces Smule as New Customer to Live Stream Holiday Carols

Thoughtworks Wins Multiple Awards in Recognition of its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Initiatives Thoughtworks, a leading global technology consultancy, was honoured with multiple awards across categories in the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) space. The acknowledgements celebrate the company’s leadership in building an equitable and inclusive workplace that is reflective of the society we live in.

In response to the commendations, Tina Vinod, global head of diversity, equity and inclusion at Thoughtworks said, “Diversity and inclusion have the power to create transformative social change. At Thoughtworks, we strive to push boundaries and create a community that enables individuals to belong, grow, be respected and valued.

One of Thoughtworks’ diversity and inclusion aims is to have 40% women in tech roles by 2022. We are keenly aware of how much more needs to be done. We are humbled by the recogni-

tion and acknowledge that inclusion is everyone’s job.”

Below are details of the awards received: n Great Place to WorkCertified™ and featured in India’s Best Workplaces™ top 75 list in IT & IT-BPM 2021 n AccelHerate Awards by JobsForHer 2021 for Vapasi n Top five most innovative practices – women returnee programs n Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) D&I Excellence Awards 2021. n Best employer for D&I (midsized company) n Best employer for women (midsized company n Recognized as ‘GOLD’ employer by the India Workplace Equality (IWEI) 2021 index by Stonewall for second year in a row.

Agora, Inc. a pioneer and leading platform for real-time engagement APIs, has announced Smule, a popular social singing app that lets users enjoy millions of karaoke songs, as its latest customer to enable users to sing carols in real-time this season and spread holiday cheer with the improved Sing Live feature. Utilizing Agora’s robust Software-Defined Real-time Network (SD-RTN™), Smule users will be able to sing together and connect to one another virtually with zero lags and latency for a seamless experience during the holidays.

Smule became Agora’s latest customer due to the company’s ability to scale and quick time-to-market delivery. Using Agora’s interactive live streaming software development kits (SDKs), Smule was able to utilize interactive streaming at a very large scale with excellent synchronization between endpoints. With the ease of use of Agora’s APIs, Smule is enabling deeper connections with users and driving additional revenue opportunities.

Parker Ranney, SVP of platform engineering and technology operations at Smule said, “With Agora’s SD-RTN we were able to dramatically improve our Sing Live feature, which allows our community members to sing together anytime from anywhere in the world,” “Agora’s efficiency and scalability allowed us to connect the audience to the singers quickly and easily and reduce latency to nearly zero – which removes one of the most frustrating challenges of connecting virtually.”

Adobe and Microsoft partner to transform the future of work Today we are excited to announce the next step in our partnership with Microsoft to reinvent the future of work. Together, we’re exploring new ways to meet our joint customers where they’re at in order to help employees and businesses thrive in an ever-changing hybrid world.

As we enter a new chapter — the biggest transformation in how we work since World War II — it is critical to give employees modern tools to collaborate seamlessly, no matter where the team is or what device they are using. In this new environment, where documents are the currency of business, businesses must adapt to deliver against customer and employee demand for 14 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD DECEMBER 2021

digital-first everything. We’re really excited about finding unique ways to further integrate Adobe and Microsoft’s core productivity tools to unlock endless possibilities that come with the burdens of ineffective collaboration in the modern workplace.

Ashley Still, senior vice president and general manager of Digital Media at Adobe, said, “I am thrilled to deepen our partnership with Microsoft to reimagine a modern, secure, and connected workplace that helps employees thrive,” “These deep product integrations allow people to do their best work by connecting the apps they use daily — from negotiating and signing a contract from

within Microsoft Teams, Outlook or SharePoint, review PDFs on a mobile device with Liquid Mode in Microsoft Edge and more.”

Jared Spataro, corporate vice president, Microsoft, said “Our deeper collaboration has never been more important as companies become digital-first workplaces and pioneer new ways of working,” “We’re expanding our partnership with Adobe to solve the productivity paradox and make digital work and life as creative, collaborative, and efficient as possible.

NEW ANALYTICS HERO // TECH PREDICTION

THE RISE OF A NEW ANALYTICS HERO IN 2022

DAVID WANG, VP PRODUCT MARKETING, IMPLY

Every year industry pundits predict data and analytics becoming more valuable the following year. But this doesn’t take a crystal ball to predict.

There’s actually something much more interesting happening that’s going to change everything in the analytics world: the rise of a new hero, the software developer.

If the past is any indication of the future, then what we are seeing is a major transformation unfolding across every industry: a changing of the guard, so to speak, of the ones who are creating value from data.

Today, the industry at large equates analytics with data warehousing and business intelligence.

It’s a traditional approach of BI experts querying historical data “once in a while” for the executive dashboards and reports that have been around for decades.

But for bleeding-edge companies like Netflix, Target, and Salesforce, their use of analytics is much more progressive – and much more impactful and real-time. Companies like these see the true game-changer for data in the hands of their software developers.

Their developers are building modern analytics applications and doing it with Apache Druid to deliver interactive data experiences for investigative, operational, and customer-facing insights.

But what’s causing the emergence of these apps and what’s it mean for developers?

Let’s break down the Top 5 reasons:

1 The need for interactive analytics at scale is taking off Increasingly, analytics are needed to understand a situation or investigate a problem. This requires the freedom to slice and dice and interact with data live with sub-second query response at any scale. It’s a dynamic user experience that can be best created via a developer-built application.

No one wants to sit around waiting for a query to process. And while many databases will claim the checkbox for interactivity and speed, they’ll come with lots of scale constraints. They’ll rely on tricks like roll ups, aggregations, or recent data only to make queries appear faster, but that just restricts the insights you can actually get. So the operative word here is “scale”.

2 High concurrency is becoming a musthave for every use case The days of relying on a few BI analysts to write SQL queries are seemingly in the rear-view.

Data-driven companies today want to give everyone – from product managers to ops teams to data scientists – free access to explore. And, multi-tenancy takes user count even further. But concurrency doesn’t just come from the numbers of users. Developers are being asked to build analytics apps with dozens of visualizations with each firing off several concurrent SQL queries.

Now I’ll admit – it’ll be hard to find a modern database today that doesn’t claim high concurrency. You obviously wouldn’t want to force fit Postgres (or even Elastic) in uncomfortable positions. But what about scale-out cloud data warehouses? Doesn’t elasticity = scale = high concurrency? Of course, but elasticity without insane compute efficiency (like with Apache Druid) is going to be a really expensive app.

3 Desire to unlock the value of streaming data with analytics Businesses of all kinds are rapidly adopting eventstreaming platforms like Apache Kafka. Our friends at Confluent, the creators of Kafka, have built a data mesh that puts data ‘in motion’. With data swirling around constantly, what better use of it than to analyze it for continuous, real-time insights?

Companies like Netflix are doing this and

their developers are creating a huge competitive advantage by bringing together Apache Kafka and Druid to build an analytics app that enables a high quality, always-on, user experience.

With an eye on real-time analytics, several things have to be taken into account. Is analyzing streams alone enough – or does the use case need to compare streams against historical data? For Intercontinental Exchange, it’s the full spectrum from present to past that gives them the right security visibility. Does ingestion scalability matter – do you need to process millions of events per second? What about latency or data quality?

4 More and more companies want to give their customers analytics Analytics of the past were about making better decisions for the business. While still very relevant – and a huge opp to create more value – we are increasingly seeing companies build analytics apps to deliver insights to their customers.

Companies like Twitter, Cisco ThousandEyes, and Citrix are doing this and driving material revenue. They’re giving their customers visibility and insights – and that in turn creates big business for them.

But it can be a pretty hairy outcome to use any database to build a customer-facing analytics app. There’s way more on the line than internal use cases when you think about SLAs and the customer experience. It’s in these apps where microseconds of latency makes a difference, downtime is costly, and concurrency and $$ goes through the roof. Thankfully there’s a database for that!

5 The digitization of everything is built with analytics At this point in tech, I think we all see that every company is becoming a software company. But with everyone having easy access to the cloud, simply building cloud software and services isn’t enough to sustain an advantage. That’s why companies like Salesforce and AirBnB build analytics apps to optimize how they build their products.

To access the complete article log on to: www.enterpriseitworld.com

DECEMBER 2021 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

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COVER STORY // iVALUE

iVALUE INFOSOLUTIONS:

A TRUE TECHNOLOGY

ENABLER FOR ALL VERTICAL BUSINESSES With the current phase of economic growth amid the continued pandemic, the organizations in India including government, BFSI and enterprises need an experienced technology provider who needs to be a consultant, a friend, and an advisor. But there are a few IT companies who believe in creating friends in the industry and understand the requirement then pitch the solution. iValue on the contrary believes in value creation based on mutual trust and respect. The ethos of the company trickles down from its founders and top management as they come with decades of experience from cross vertical industries.

BY SANJAY@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM

F

ound in 2008, iValue has grown over the period. It has focused on DNA of every business meaning Data, Network and Application of every business. The founders then had realised that availability, performance, security and scalability need of enterprises are the most critical and fast evolving areas.

In order to help mitigate the challenges of their customers, iValue had signed up with compelling and complementing OEM brands and created a core leadership team who had proven records of working with the biggest brands in BFSI, ITeS, Telecom, Manufacturing, Pharma and Hospitality segments so that the whole business objective of iValue is on track. Till day iValue is evolving and bringing in senior leaders to align its business objective. The most recent induction is Mitish Chitnavis, who has been onboarded as the CTO. Mitish has played a valuable role for companies like OXYGEN, Health5C Wellness Solutions, Binary Spectrum, etc. KrishnaRaj Sharma, Director & CEO, iValue InfoSolutions Pvt. Ltd. says, “Mitish has a blend of experience. He was working with an OEM and has worked with a System Integrator. With this experience, he can help iValue to achieve its objective of providing technology led integrated solutions, consulting services, identify new products, and implement operational efficiencies.”

Indian market is divided into three verticals, companies that provide only consulting, companies that provide only audits / compliance services and companies that provide products. iValue is in unique position to offer all three under one umbrella.

KrishnaRaj added, “iValue’s core business is 16 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD DECEMBER FEBRUARY 2020 2021

product sales - point solutions etc. Cyber Security has 12 domains and customers are looking for integrated solutions in each of these domains.

With Mitish on board, iValue’s consulting practice would now focus on integrated solutions on compliance, cybersecurity, incident response, insider threats, Cloud Risk Management etc. This will now differentiate us from the rest.”

In fact, iValue wanted to ensure that their customer focuses on their core business not bothering much about the core technology around DNA (Data, Network and Application) and multiple brand associations, vendor engagements.

The company had taken the rout of becoming niche and crated practices around Government, BFSI and Enterprises, although iValue has created a lot of credentials around other vertical industries.

KrishnaRaj maintained, “iValue since its inception has primarily focused on four segments in terms of growth: Government, BFSI, Enterprise and Commercial sector. At iValue, our solutions are geared towards helping governments successfully achieve this. Our rich domain experience in this sector has led us to forge long-term partnerships with government agencies both at the central and state levels.”

He added, “We are deeply cued into all Government of India (GOI) projects and initiatives while being aligned with GOI project consultants for utmost clarity on RFPs. We are thoroughly aligned with key consultants involved in important BFSI projects, our long and successful association with the banking industry has allowed us to gain considerable domain expertise and significant successful implementations.”

The strategy of the top leadership has helped the

company in not just riding with the tide but also reach new heights. Market trends such as Privacy, Compliance and Automation driven by Analytics, AI and ML will drive revenue streams in 2022-23.

The 1st step towards being able to stay top of the trend is to anticipate what the market will come up with and what our customers need. With this formula, the company always faced any challenge including the pandemic and emerged successful.

The company is also aggressively pursuing inorganic growth opportunities both on capabilities and geography coverage to maximize profitable growth therefore they are building organic and inorganic expertise in the area of consulting and services around GRC with new / niche cybersecurity services relevant to the heightened risk due to WFA. Mitish Chitnavis, CTO, iValue InfoSolutions Pvt. Ltd. added, “iValue approach has been understanding and addressing business outcomes of Customers in the Data Network and Application management space. Since the core team has been focusing on this area since 2000, we have built tremendous expertise around technology, vertical needs along with Governance, Compliance and Risk area. We leverage our expertise and learning with customers in a similar business space to ensure risk-free and relevant solutions with relevant services. As an example, we work with the largest PSU and Private banks on a regular basis.

We translate these learnings and deployments for mid-size and smaller banks as they take comfort with our success in the same domain with established names. With a business outcome centric approach coupled with a laser-like focus around DNA and practice-based GTM with domain skills developed over 2 decades, iValue is unique.”

iVALUE // COVER STORY

MITISH CHITNAVIS CTO, iVALUE INFOSOLUTIONS PVT. LTD.

“We leverage our expertise and learning with customers in a similar business space to ensure risk-free and relevant solutions with relevant services.”

The global cyber security market is expected to register a CAGR of 10.9% by 2028. How do you anticipate the growth of this segment in India? What are the factors driving this growth?

The cyber security market is crucial to ensuring India’s stature as one of the world’s leading investment hubs, as well as the security of its major sectors, and is expected to become more pronounced and grow exponentially. This is in part driven by nationwide initiatives such as Digital India, and increasing digitization of the country’s business environment and daily life. According to estimates, the cyber security market in India is expected to grow from USD 1.97 billion in 2019 to USD 3.05 billion by 2022, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.6%—almost one and a half times the global rate.

The advancements in technology and its usage have connected people, businesses and organizations in India and brought them closer, leading to economic progress. However, these

advancements come with critical vulnerabilities which can be exploited by those who are experts in misusing technology for economic gains.

Cyber security breaches across organizations have become common place, regularly grabbing headlines that alarm both consumers and leaders.

As our reliance on data and interconnectivity swells, developing strong resilience to withstand cyberattacks has never been more important.

While many factors are contributing to this high growth rate, the study shows that three factors are significantly driving the cyber security demand market in India—digital growth, increase in cyberattacks and stringent regulatory mandates.

What are the major expectations that client companies have from the players in this segment? How do you strategize to meet those?

Employees on the front line will play an especially important role in keeping the organization safe

as normal on-premise security measures become less relevant.

The extraordinary efforts of many organizations to protect workers and serve customers during the COVID-19 pandemic have also increased their exposure to cyberthreats. Largescale adoption of work-from-home technologies, heightened activity on customer-facing networks, and greater use of online services all present fresh openings, which cyber attackers have been quick to exploit. The overarching challenge for chief information-security officers (CISOs) and cybersecurity teams will be protecting their institutions while enabling operations to go on without interruption. For example, cybersecurity teams at companies that provide web-based services to consumers must adjust their security programs to match scaled-up operations while securing a massive shift to work-from-home tools. At the same time, CISOs must make it possible for security-team members to look after themselves and their families during a health crisis.

In India, Companies’ cybersecurity measures aren’t keeping pace with today’s business environment demands. Only about 10 percent take aim at cyberrisk reduction. Most are more reactionary, filling security gaps as they arise. Chief information-security officers must balance two priorities to respond to the pandemic: protecting against new cyberthreats and maintaining business continuity.

Considering the business dynamics, demands will increase in Security Consulting, Security Implementation, Security Product Implementations, Security Testing, Security Operations, Incident Response.

DECEMBER 2021 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

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COVER STORY // iVALUE

How is iValue positioned in the cyber security segment? iValue is positioned as of the top Cybersecurity Companies in India, providing a blend of product, distribution, and services. With an objective of delivering the best to the customer, iValue’s Ecosystem is unique, this ecosystem consists of partners, system integrators, global and regional consultants, small and medium cyber security companies, and cyber security professionals.

This ecosystem is utilized to deliver the best to customer.

new platform that will assure business continuity in a secure and productive manner while requiring minimal changes to existing infrastructure.

At iValue InfoSolutions, we are actively working with clients and partners to quickly build and deploy relevant solutions that enable their workforce to accomplish targeted business outcomes safely and without disruption. With our experience and expertise in providing solutions and services, we can help enterprises adopt a

iValue is a leader in providing smart, cutting-edge technology solutions that help Enterprises to manage, optimize and protect their Digital Assets. How do you accomplish this?

Since the inception of iValue, the focus has been on bringing the cutting-edge cyber security products in India for Indian customers. iValue has a framework to identify these cutting-edge products. The framework includes some basic criteria’s, product ownership, product development R&D Centres locations. These criterions are important to ensure we select the products / technologies that secure the enterprises, governments etc and these products are not manufactured in countries that India does not have conducive relations with.

What are the key specifications of the “Work From Home Solution” offered by iValue? How is it helping the clients to optimize their productivity while working securely from home?

Business is no longer conducted within the confines of an office. Enterprise data has expanded beyond the traditional network perimeter of an organization over time, embracing appealing technologies such as cloud, mobility, and IoT. With the cloud emerging as the new “Corporate Datacenter” and the Internet as the “New Corporate Business Network,” the old perimeter has been further eroded in the Covid era, allowing all distant company employees, customers, partners, and vendors to work from home.

This new globally distributed and diversified workforce has specific requirements.

Access to corporate resources that is secure, flexible, and cost-effective, regardless of user location, device type, employee affiliation, or application location.

IT stakeholders and leaders all over the world are attempting to design, create, and migrate to a

18 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD DECEMBER 2021

powerful and secure Work from Home solution for your employees, based on the specific needs of your organisation.

Our goal is to manage time efficiently in this adoption process, and focus on boosting your team’s productivity while working from home. We start by understanding the objectives, and studying your IT landscape and security policies. Based on that, we recommend solutions and services that will fulfil our goals.

KRISHNARAJ SHARMA DIRECTOR & CEO, iVALUE INFOSOLUTIONS PVT. LTD.

“Our long and successful association with the banking industry has allowed us to gain

considerable domain expertise and significant successful implementations.”

Tell us about iValue team. What effect would the addition of Mitish Chitnavis as CTO have on the team’s efficiency? iValue is growing multi folds, started offices in Singapore, catering to SEA market, and for that scale we need to drive efficiencies in our operations. iValue is going to drive technology led solutions rather than only point solutions. Mitish Chitnavis’ addition will strengthen Technology led Solutions, 360-degree solutions to secure an enterprise, help customers build Risk Management models for traditional and cloud etc. Risk management for clouds is needed as more and more customers are moving to cloud.

Is there anything you think that the readers must know about your

company?

We at iValue strive to think beyond our consumers, partners, and services and as a Technology Enabler, we combine value. Our main goal is to provide an environment where businesses could simplify their approach to imagining, planning, implementing, and simplifying their business operations.

We provide technology from our principals, as well as advice and services to help enterprises adopt and use that technology, as well as help them construct the infrastructure that will allow them to provide value to their clients and consumers. iValue, as a Technology Enabler, helps businesses evolve to meet today’s issues and the unknowns of tomorrow. We assist businesses optimize their operations by providing holistic consulting and technology services.

Hybrid Cloud Management

Security Analytics

Next Gen Security

Availability & Performance Management

Services

Consolidation & Automation

iValue Infosolutions Digitally Empower and Transform Your Enterprise At iValue we help companies manage, optimize and protect their digital assets. Our capability set encompasses decisively implementing and deploying solutions that power Data, Network & Application (DNA) management for enterprises in collaboration with our trusted partners. We possess over two decades of experience as “Technology Enabler”, while our vertical expertise and practices cover BFSI, Government & Enterprises of all sizes. Our global presence spans 18+ locations across multiple continents.

Forge ahead with confidence Our competency and experience help us craft and develop seamless digital infrastructure solutions spanning the entire gamut of enterprise needs. We help organisations scrutinise and reimagine their existing IT infrastructure smartly, efficiently & effectively.

Winner of the Deloitte India technology Fast 50 award for India and Fast 500 award for AsiaPac for “The Fastest Growing companies” and Red Herring “Asia 100” finalist across two consecutive years.

Contact: www.ivalue.co.in / marketing@iValue.co.in / +91 95359 99484

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PERSPECTIVE // STRATEGY OF IT LEADERS

Digital Journey of the Organization and the Strategy of IT Leaders There is nothing like Plan-A, Plan-B and Plan-C, as regards the time is concerned.

You cannot be hiding under the umbrella that the transformation is happening, and transformation would take long time – not possible.

20 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD DECEMBER 2021

I

n many businesses today, the new quest is to be “digital.” Companies across an array of industries are devoting resources to becoming a digital company as a perceived means to streamline work processes, to embed new products with added technology, and to reach more customers. As we look ahead to this increasingly digital world, there are instructive lessons from previous transformative periods. At the same time, “becoming digital” will require a different set of adaptations.

Already embarking on the digital transformation, a number of companies are buying this new capability through acquisitions of small start-ups. For some companies, becoming digital is defined as having an Internet presence so the journey begins in marketing. Other leaders may wish to start on the digital journey through better deployment of big data and robotics creating a call to action for the IT functions. Others take on a broader mandate with a more holistic approach to reimaging their workplace, products and customer interfaces.

All of you must understand that you do not have to look at the CEOs for the decisions. Many of the things as CEOs, or CIOs or CTOs will depend on all of you because as they say quite commonly the organizations will not require CIOs why because the CEO will be the CIO, IT and digital has become so ubiquitous, it has become so all pervasive that today we do not say that any company is a company in any business, we say it is an IT company in the business of X so banks are IT companies in business of Banking, the Hotel chains are IT companies in the business of hospitality retail chains are IT companies in the business of retail. So that is the extent today of various IT companies and the and business changing hands to such as either ‘Michale Portner’s 5 Forces Theory’ or begin with if we have to look at the digital technology or digital ‘McKinsey 7 S Framework’ strategy, we must know what is and fit all of your individual happening around us first what placeholders and examine.” are the strategic technology trends this has been given by Gartner this is not my own so, this is this is something which is globally accepted. First is thatthree dimensions are playing out: people centricity, locational independence and resilient delivery. People centricity has taken a completely new dimension because of the connectedness of the behaviours earlier we were calling it internet of things today we call it internet of behaviours if your behaviour in X platform or let us say that platform is your social ecosystem that is not isolated from your behaviour in the commercial ecosystem or in the physical ecosystem or in the governmental ecosystem so all these behaviours are getting connected and a people-centricity will depend on how quickly leaders are able to embrace this internet of behaviours. Second is that total

“As digital leaders, all of you must take into account a framework

experience individual experiences are no more valid.

What we are looking at connectedness and providing an aggregate experience which is better than the individual experiences. Example of you buying a car will no more dependent on the showroom experience alone, it will also depend on the prior information that you have sent- the journey to the showroom, the probably waiting period, post sales experience.

So total experience will be critical determinant of how things will happen.

In people-centricity last one is respecting the privacy. The millennial generation will continuously push back on anything that is impeding their privacy or their individualism so computing in the new world has to be not just privacy compliant but also privacy enhancing. In people-centric digital trends, always, earlier we were talking about experiences, but today all the software all the applications have to be privacy enhancing.

The second group of trends is the locational independence, wherever I am or whenever I am, I should be able to do things and this will require this anywhere operation which is at the middle will define the top, which is the backward integration, will define the bottom, which is a Cyber Security mess.

What is the Cyber Security mess? Cyber Security mess used to be very much premises centric. You have big firewalls, big security policies and you are trying to do things as an individual excellence but it is Cyber Security is going to be an internet of Cyber Security. Wherever you go, handover will happen like a mobile network. Whichever best Cyber Security protocol is available; the collaboration is going to be the writing on the wall.

You will not be able to deliver a product unless you have partnerships in cyber security and of course the trend that is ruling today is intelligent composable business. Intelligent you know it was very fashionable probably one year or two years back to talk about AI and ML. Now AI and ML have gone beyond seminar and conclave talks to real life implementation.

So, AI has to be engineered to get embedded into businesses and the proof of the pudding will be in the hyper-automation how quickly AI automates a particular journey will distinguish men from the boys.

Having seen this, what success looks like? All of you as people who are engaged in the business of providing digital transformation to the world, you must know what success looks like. It begins with digital workplace and digital leadership – there is no doubt about it. There are some old themes, there are some new themes. The old themes are - digital strategy, innovation culture, customer experience management.

The new things are continuous digital revenue. Gone are the days where digital transformation will be a bottomless pit into budgets would be poured.

What is the economics of information, which is infonomic.

How are you contributing to the digital ecosystem for not just your organization but all of the partner organizations of the ecosystem. Ecosystem may not be exactly what a hospitality industry ecosystem, probably will also involve a banking industry ecosystem, a travel industry ecosystem, a health industry ecosystem, etc. And, all these would be combined DECEMBER 2021 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

21

BY AMBIKA@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM

STRATEGY OF IT LEADERS // PERSPECTIVE

PERSPECTIVE // STRATEGY OF IT LEADERS

and the ability would be for all of you to map these things continuously and provide solution centric discussions will define what is your digital business success. As digital leaders, all of you must take into account a framework such as either “Michale Portner’s 5 Forces Theory” or “McKinsey 7 S Framework” and fit all of your individual placeholders and examine. Even in the digital world nothing which would replace a pure white boarding and finding out what digital business success means to all of you.

What leaders think is the way forward?

A survey which was done both by Gartner and Forester, says that by 2021, timely tactic would define the success of the IT leaders.

If you have missed the bus, you missed the bus, you missed the train and you will miss the aeroplane. There is nothing like Plan-A, Plan-B and Plan-C, as regards the time is concerned. You cannot be hiding under the umbrella that the transformation is happening, and transformation would take long time – not possible. Your stakeholders would get bored, tired and would withdraw their support.

First of all, no more hiding under long duration transformation umbrella. If there is good time, the time is now. You must establish quick wins.

Second, digital leadership has to be changed in a timely manner. You may one of the leaders and you may be under threat from your management for being changed unless you change your digital leadership pipeline. Third is that: do not always wait for formal procedural experiment or innovation.

Incremental innovation is a natural urge of human beings, and we should have the capability to harvest and harness, the natural experiments that keeps on happening on our minds and that keeps on happening in our teams’ minds.

Secondly that uni-focus is not going to work – no Either or Or. Digital acceleration has to be bi-focal or bifurcated, because on both the tracks. If in the innovation or futuristic tracks, you are moving with a great speed, but you are not renovating, innovating or repositioning, you are not recalibrating, your productive along with your traditional IT track, you will be left behind.

It is as famously said that the strength of the chain is the strengthen of the weakest link. You may be having a very strong digital acceleration in parts but unless the legacy stack is brought forward, we will be left behind.

Digital and environmental Ecosystem and digital has to go together. Product and productivity has to go together. There is a mad rush today led by some of the e-payment systems of bringing out products. But without timely intervention, products with great innova22 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD DECEMBER 2021

tion, products have fallen into cracks because there is no productivity. I can vouch for this as this comes from my own experience. Unless there is a scale and ROI, which is quickly established, probably, the product and the productivity needs to be re-engineered.

Disrupting the disrupters Market is a place for gorilla warfare. People are watching over each other whoever is kidnapping the digital initiative because some headway is there likely to be stopped on the track because leaders are investing heavily in not just innovating but stopping trespassers from their track.

So this is going to be a very interesting market place and every body is looking not no more.

Product and productivity is ruling the roost but at the same time, people are thinking 10 years from now. Organizations are adopting agile learning which is necessarily dedicated for two things - fail fast and learn fast.

If we know what the organizational trends are and what are the leaders’ think tank thinking, the disrupters would be tracked and thwarted. Technology would be deployed to stop some of the technologies, which would be completely dead.

This is both good and bad. Some of the innovation which would have bloomed would have been tracked and thwarted because big one’s are not ready. What is happening is to P5 chips and 5G is because big boys are not trading. There is a lot of back stock which is to be distributed with the old chips and this would lead to a big loss to the chip manufacturers. So the next generation chips which are ready are not released to the market.

Second is scale. How quickly you can scale your innovation to the factory. Gone are the days when innovation life used to be for a long time. Gone are the days when POC used to happen in long time now POC happens in 15 days. And ability would be determined how you are mapping the capability of the incumbent and you are challenging it. How you are making attractive for your customers to migrate to your digital offerings. Are you a good advisor? If you are a CIO, bring good technology so that your leaders become good advisors.

Value would be created not by individual components but by the aggregates. One +one +one +one will be equal two four but one would remain one.

Always think of how to be disruptive and thinking has to be design thinking. Thinking cannot be reactive and responsive thinking. All of you must open up to the design principles coming and being embedded into your process of strategy.

Business vulnerability and risk management has to migrate to internet of things and internet of behaviour in order to give results.

The economy is already a API economy. Your

ability to consume APIs from others and your ability to expose APIs to get fast to the results that you want would determine how good you are doing.

Another think is how your employees are behaving in an entrepreneurial manner. Whether they are able to take risks. Whether they are willing to envision how the future would look like. Like any other business man, whether you employees are continuously increasing their ability of being an entrepreneur or who I call intrapreneurs will define you success.

Incumbent challenges A few things, you must invest right now. One is on challenging yourself. What you want to do? What is the benchmark in analytics? Are you participating or hosting hackathons? Are you investing in the data science teams or only foxed by the marvel and amazement about the capability of the Data Science and do here and there? Can you consume and contribute to open source, and can you get back to your customers? I successfully did it. I call it Ghar Wapsi Technologies.

A lot of rejigging is necessary A lot of rejigging is necessary at all of your verticals. First is that you may be having a lot of data in a lot of tables but it is like crude oil which has not gone through the refinery. So you do not have usable petrol, usable diesel, usable kerosene or usable coal tar even. So data tables must be converted into insights and there must be a clear plan for that.

Community infrastructure There will be many things which would not be there for any of you to harness. All of you must collaborate to create that infrastructure and it is very important that all the things must have to be thought in a win - win fashion. I win and I lose does not work anymore. So we would have to get to that level looking at how we can do a little bit of global thinking while remaining local.

RISK MANAGEMENT // GUEST COLUMN

TRUST IS THE WEAK LINK IN SUPPLY CHAIN RISK MANAGEMENT

JASON PLUMRIDGE,

BY SANJAY@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM

Head of Advisory, Tesserent.

The risk of cyber attacks threaten an organisation’s operations, finances and reputation, but there is one often overlooked, and significant, blind spot when considering organisational vulnerabilities: supply chain risk management. Organisations place trust in their chosen suppliers for everything from services to hardware, but this trust can be a chink in an organisation’s security armour.

When a compromised piece of equipment is introduced into a network, or when data is stored with a trusted but breached service provider, then even the most effective internal cybersecurity controls can come up short.

Supplier risk management relates to the risks of dealing with a specific entity. When you purchase a specific item or service from one party, you only need to assess a single entity. But, when assessing the risk across an entire supply chain, the scale is much broader and more complex.

Assessing an entire supply chain with multiple parties, some of which you may have absolutely no visibility of, makes the risk far greater and a serious blindspot in most organisations’ cybersecurity defences. Cybercriminals know this and are exploiting it to their advantage.

Recently, a hacking group was able to infiltrate Intel’s supply chain and embed chips with code that allowed unauthorised parties to access data from systems.

This supply chain attack took advantage of the trust put in Intel by its customers and highlights the significant challenges in detecting the potential risk.

Threats to a supply chain also include communications between an organisation and its partners. Business email compromise attacks rely on threat attackers exploiting a trusted relationship. A breached email account from a trusted partner or supplier can be used to misdirect a payment to a criminal’s account, request confidential information or give access to a system.

Every organisation has a supply chain. We typically think about supply chains in physical terms, such as when raw materials are shipped to a factory where they are transformed into a useful end product before shipping to distributors and end users.

But services companies using cloud providers have their own supply chains as well. Whether they are using a cloud-based business software solution or Infrastructure-or Platform-asa-Service offerings, they have a supply chain that ultimately relies on trusting external third parties.

The challenge is to mitigate the risks This may sound like an impossible problem to solve. But like all risks, the challenge is to mitigate the risks as much as possible so that the residual risk is acceptable and manageable.

The process starts by identifying all the third parties involved in your organisation’s supply chain. This includes all hardware and software suppliers. Then, document what services they provide and your level of dependency on them and the potential impact of a compromise. This

will help you understand the risk arising from compromise from that supplier.

This can be fed into a risk register that is then monitored regularly to ensure the likelihood and impact of a risk remains at an acceptable level. Having a robust supply chain risk management framework in place is also only part of the answer. You still need controls in place to minimise the damage should a supplier be compromised and to ensure your systems and data are protected.

Supply chains are dynamic and need a risk aware culture Incumbent suppliers can leave and new ones need to be onboarded. Organisations must have robust governance in place to manage supplier relationships that go beyond ensuring performance indicators are met. That means undertaking risk assessments before a new supplier is engaged and regular checking that security and other compliance requirements are adhered to.

For this to become embedded in an organisation, a risk aware culture is needed. Procurement teams, whether they are brought together for a specific project or part of an ongoing effort, need to think about risk from the outside of an engagement. If a potential supplier is unwilling or unable to answer your cybersecurity questions then you need to decide if that is an acceptable response given your risk appetite.

Supply chain risk management is complex. But, ultimately, the questions you are trying to answer are “Do I trust that supplier or partner?” and “Do I have appropriate controls in place should they be compromised?”

Australian organisations can no longer afford to overlook this blind spot in their security defences – supply chain risk management is a critical factor in your cybersecurity strategy.

DECEMBER 2021 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 23

GUEST ARTICLE // WHY CIOs FAIL

WHY CIOs FAIL?

BY AMBIKA@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM

Why IT-management strategy is not aligned with business strategy?

“If we look at the current corporate scenario in last two decades, the entire corporate world has undergone a massive transformation. Things are evolving. And along with that, many of the related functions, are also undergoing very transformational change and IT is no exception so now what is needed is a more collaborative and agile IT strategy. And if that’s not there, then it is bound to fail.

That gap is called as disconnect and that is where the failure begins. Underlying currents and challenges, because there are many other factors in addition to the change in the corporate landscape. This is also contributing to this disconnecting between its strategy management and business strategy and business needs.

What the CIO is?

CIO is an entity which is at the heart of the business and gateway of innovation. What is expected from us is… all sorts of innovations. We are the epicenter of innovation and expectation is that we would lead such innovation initiatives and if we go by Simple definition. CIO is a C-Suite executive who’s responsible for all aspects of Information technology, including Organization process and systems and he or she also helps Develop vision and strategy of the organization ensures availability of aligned systems and processes the aligned system being referred here is Indicative of. The alignment between the IT strategy and the business strategy and business need. That’s what is being referred to as aligned systems.

What is currently needed or expected of CIOs? A CIO first point is CIO role is of a strategic partner with business Gone are the days. When we were able to survive talking technology only.

Now the expectations much more and technology is a part of that momentous CIO starts giving more weightage is and gets dominated by technology only in his or her approach, it would start creating some confusion reimagined entirety. Let’s approach the strategy. The operating models communication and interaction with with 24 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD DECEMBER 2021

business. The entire landscape has to be remained and reworked. Get value from outside and people from inside what is being referred here is. Look around what’s happening globally.

What are the best practices emerging, the new technologies? The new way of working Get the value from outside and to the extent possible try to groom the internal resources. Resourcing is a big challenge in the current days so everybody would be all the organizers would be required to look for the resources from outside, but it would be a good strategy to try to re skill internal resources also and then after exhausting that option. There’s still a gap in the resource requirement. Try and source from outside a new agenda for digital business and beyond.

Currently I’m working on a very ambitious digital transformation program. In fact, I have started using the term digital acceleration because pace is required. The total definition, the approach is as I see it, what I used to do it previously as compared to that, what I’m attempting currently, there’s a significant difference in the approach in terms of the starting point, the roadmap the expected and projected values it would give (the digital transformation program) and all such factors. So very aligned strategy and the last one when I will look at: this term is being used quite frequently these days and more so by Gartner – Hunt and Harvest. I was quite curious what it is meant here. It is the reference to looking for suitable solutions, new technologies, new trends, from outside examine those validate and if those are of use to us. At the same time try to gradually sunset the legacy systems or take an approach where we can continue with those not making those too expensive as long as we can. So the approach is Hunt and Harvest.

What are the competencies required for the CIOs? Top of the list is leadership skills and business acumen.

If I am not familiar with the business processes, the business challenges, the way forward of the business, there’s no way. I as a CIO can come out with alliance and good strategy to take my business forward. CIO should also have competencies

ARUN TEWARY DIGITAL ACCELERATION VETERAN, STRATEGY & TECHNOLOGY ADVISER, DIRECTOR, CIO, UAE

in business transformation.

There’s talk and team is. And bringing a new technology without looking at the processes and changing the bringing any Transformers in the process. Is a few tile attempt; it’s just a waste of money it will not killed. Business value and benefit business transformation governance talent management resourcing is a challenge. It’s difficult to get resources, and it’s more difficult to Keep them motivated and retain them so talent management is very, very needed. Competency for the CIO’s and another very important one is communication. There should be continuous, clear and convincing communications across the business about what we are doing, why we are doing? And what is coming next? And then interdisciplinary background and knowledge outside it only technology knowledge will not or how other departments, other functions? There should be a familiarity for those areas also so these are the competencies needed at this point in time for the CIO’s. If we have most of this is fine. We are bound to come out with a good idea strategy if not we, need to develop those.

What is the current environment ?

Top of the list is the IT strategy and wider penetration of vendors. Gone are the days where vendors used to go to other departments of the organizations through IT. Now they are able to go anywhere in the organization. User have become very aware because of cloud and availability of information about new software and products. It

WHY CIOs FAIL // GUEST ARTICLE

manner, otherwise each and every department will start picking their own software and implementation and all those challenges would come.

Another one is lack of influence of IT department in the organization, success guarantee becomes higher if the CIO and the IT department is strongly supported and blessed by the CEOs and top management, If not, then it creates a lack of influence and hence the challenge in decision making and implementation and strategy formation.

Next one is inadequate communication?

We must be very clear with continuous communication sharing with the business what we are going to do so that everybody is in sync everybody would be walking with us. Then another one which I do not know how universal this phenomenon is but I noticed that this excessive control by procurement department. They will like to get involved with everything at every stage which slows down the process.

Fear of change is the next major factor Fear of change from the IT side and fear of change from the business side.

is a very futile attempt to stop them but approach is collaborative.

SaaS, IaaS, PaaS availability Today everything as a service is available because current economy is service based. In a service -based economy, equation and approach changes.

Paradigm shift happens in the services with new tools and methodology. Now it is time of DevOps, Microservice, low code, zero code, etc. so many new things are coming up. There are more awareness business users. Their knowledge level about the technology is much higher and it is another challenge, which I would see it as an opportunity.

Generally, there is a feeling among the users that if we rout through so development or new requirement of IT, it gets a big bureaucratic and hence a bit slows down. If we go and talk to the vendors directly, we can roll out just like that. It is

challenging but we should work in such a manner that the corporate IT remain intact or remain in synch.

So having looked at the environments, skillsets and where do we stand, we come to the disconnect.

What are the reasons for failure?

The top of the list is the IT strategy does not link up to organizational business strategy. This is the most common cause. Then, we have got siloed business - parallel digital strategy and movement you see a department is trying to get software independently and trying to work out their own IT road map, that’s a clear sign that there’s a parallel digital strategy going on in the organization and to this phenomenon, many of my colleagues, they use the term Shadow IT. That’s not a good sign that needs to be addressed in a collaborative

We didn’t work we didn’t do a good job We didn’t do a good job in coming out with some strong mechanism which can demonstrate the value of what we are doing we still talk about 98% of time and all sort of those statistics whereas we should be talking as to what this activity or the system gave as a benefit to the business in terms of business languages so fine these are the reasons now what can we do top of the list it’s very obvious develop aligned: IT strategy with strong governance aligned is again aligned with the business strategy avoid using the legacy terms like it is a facilitator and service provider no we are the front runners we run with you we will take you where the organization has to go we are not there just as a facilitator we will facilitate but we are leaders also good stakeholders management is another major thing which would help in avoiding such situations of failure our communications rapper with other stakeholders sharing with them taking their inputs what we are doing and that will save us very matured IT strategy sell in a convincing and confident manner not necessarily whatever we propose will be accepted but if you are challenged in the boardroom stand up and sail in a convincing manner speak business languages and speak up front that would help these are some of the things which based on my experience I could think of that if applied it might help the situation and we might be able to come out with good aligned business IT strategy aligned with the business.

DECEMBER 2021 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 25

Q&A // GBCI

26 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD DECEMBER 2021

GBCI // Q&A

GOPALAKRISHNAN PADMANABHAN MANAGING DIRECTOR – SOUTHEAST ASIA & MIDDLE EAST, GBCI INDIA

In India, Ctrl S data centers, ITC Hotels, Infosys, DLF, K.Raheja Corp, Embassy Group, Delhi Metro, GMR group, TRIL, Aditya Birla Group, RIL, Saint Gobain India, Unilever, Macrotech Developers (Lodha Group), CapitaLand, IKEA, SRK Diamonds,

Pathways School, Delhi Metro Rail Corporation, MGM Healthcare, Manipal Hospitals, Amity University, RP-SG Group and many more are already actively pursuing green buildings.

GREEN BUILDING CONTINUES TO REMAIN A GLOBAL PRIORITY

BY SANJAY@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM

Sustainability is a key focus globally. Can you tell us how GBCI is playing a key role in this effort?

The Green Business Certification Inc. (GBCI) administers LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), performing third-party technical reviews and verification of LEED-registered projects. Founded in 2008 to drive implementation of the LEED green building program,

GBCI has proved instrumental in ensuring LEED remains the world’s most widely used green building program. Under GBCI’s stewardship, there are now over 104,000 registered and certified LEED commercial projects, nearly 2 million registered and certified residential units, and more than 205,000 professionals transforming buildings and implementing LEED around the world. Through our LEED program, we help buildings and cities

DECEMBER 2021 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 27

Q&A // GBCI

that houses people become more energy & water efficient, and environmentally friendly through waste management. This in turn helps these buildings reduce their Greenhouse gas emissions making them more sustainable and healthier to occupy. Today, close to 23 billion sq.ft. of space works with LEED across the world.

the belief that healthy people in healthy places equals a healthy economy. We are confident that India will continue to make great strides in its commitment towards securing the overall wellbeing of its citizens as it seeks to recover from the global COVID-19 pandemic by adopting green buildings across the value chain.

As a veteran in the industry, can you share your thoughts on global trends in efforts by businesses to align with sustainability goals?

Our parent company, U.S Green Building Council (USGBC) recently announced the results of the 2021 World Green Building Trends report, of which it is a contributing partner. The new report demonstrates that despite the challenges of the last two years, commitments to increase green building efforts continues to remain strong. The report shows that green building continues to remain a global priority, driven by extreme events and despite rising concerns like the COVID19 pandemic. There is a high level of growth expected in the next three years among those who anticipate doing more than 60% of their projects green, and a corresponding reduction in those who plan on engaging in fewer than 15% green projects. These findings show that green building continues to remain a global priority, likely driven by increasing extreme weather events and despite other rising concerns like the global pandemic.

Additionally, industry professionals surveyed cite both social and financial reasons for increasing their green building efforts with top reasons including lowering operating costs, lowering carbon emissions, reducing energy and water consumption, market demand, building healthier buildings, living up to internal corporate commitments and that it’s the “right thing to do.”

Indian Government has rolled out the vision to make India the Global Hub for Data centers? Could you share your thoughts on carbon footprint and sustainability perspective as India may witness a large number of datacenters emerging over the next 3 to 5 years?

As businesses realize the dynamism of their data and what it can achieve, they are moving on from their existing resources to well-equipped Data Centers to aid better data management. In a short span of time, India has become a destination of choice when it comes to setting up of data centers. However, this industry is responsible for approximately 3 percent of global power consumption and 2 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions which is the same carbon footprint that is generated by the aviation industry. While India adds more data centers, we will have to be mindful of our sustainability targets as a nation without losing out on business opportunities.

Where do you see India in the global scheme of things?

India ranks amongst the top three countries for LEED outside of the U.S. This is a testament to its focus on sustainable development and achieving its Paris agreement targets. Going forward, India’s continued momentum in adopting LEED across sectors and Industry segments will play a large role in ensuring the overall wellbeing of its citizens and communities in the coming years. The pandemic has highlighted those green buildings are not a solution for tomorrow, they are a solution for now. It has also strengthened

28 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD DECEMBER 2021

Do you see large buildings, hotels, and data centers in India aligning with sustainability goals?

Climate change is not a local problem, it is a global crisis. Each and every business, government, and individual have an important role to play in mitigating the effects of climate change. To this effect most organizations and governments are setting science-based targets for themselves.

While doing this, one cannot leave out any kind of buildings whether large or small, residential or commercial, office or warehouses, hotels or hospitals, SEZs or data centers; as they host people and are the primary consumers of electricity, water, and other natural resources. Making all our existing as well as future buildings green will go a long way in ensuring we live sustainable and healthy lives while also ensuring we meet our emission reduction goals. In India, Ctrl S data centers, ITC Hotels, Infosys, DLF, K.Raheja Corp, Embassy Group, Delhi Metro, GMR group, TRIL, Aditya Birla Group, RIL, Saint Gobain India, Unilever, Macrotech Developers (Lodha Group),

CapitaLand, IKEA, SRK Diamonds, Pathways School, Delhi Metro Rail Corporation, MGM Healthcare, Manipal Hospitals, Amity University, RP-SG Group and many more are already actively pursuing green buildings.

According to you, have you noticed any player who has made good progress in the sustainability space?

CtrlS Data Centers is a great example of how data centers can reduce their carbon footprint and achieve the highest levels of sustainability. CtrlS is the most advanced and sustainable data center (DC) in India. Sustainability is embedded in the DNA of CtrlS, as the company is focused on best practices in energy management, good indoor air quality management, high performance across rainwater management, heat island reduction, water conservation and efficiency management, atmosphere and light pollution management, grid harmonization, waste management, purchase optimization, green cleaning, and other innovations. All CtrlS Rated-4 Hyperscale datacenters are certified as LEED v4 O+M Platinum by Green Business Certification Inc. (GBCI), setting a benchmark for the datacenter industry both in India and around the world.

Let’s focus on the enablers of Indian economy – the datacenters.

Can you tell us, how data centers may work towards reducing their carbon footprint?

Data Centers can become green by reducing their carbon emissions and increasing their overall energy efficiency. This is because Data Centers rely very heavily on electricity for data storage equipment from a usage and maintenance point of view. They also have to maintain an ambient temperature for the servers to avoid overheating.

In our latest version, LEED v4.1, we not only raised the energy reference standard to ASHRAE 90.1 2016, but also added a carbon metric for the first time to the rating systems for new and existing buildings to directly measure the building’s climate impact as dictated by building energy efficiency, onsite generation and storage and the associated grid. Changes to the renewable energy credit further rewards projects that make choices that lower greenhouse gas emissions.

What are some of the immediate step’s data centers should take to

GBCI // Q&A

go green?

As a first step, Indian DCs can implement best practices at the design stage for ensuring energy conservation in their buildings. Right from room cooling, to chiller plant operation and maintenance, to installing energy efficient electrical systems, and adopting efficient IT hardware and management systems, data centers can move towards becoming green. In addition, metering and monitoring of all energy sub-systems in data centers is highly recommended as this enables the data center operators to track and improve performance. Real-time tracking of key metrics such as PUE and cooling kW/kWr alerts the operator to critical issues that bear on energy performance. Additionally, by subscribing to LEED V4.1 standards which uses realtime data, many data centers can avail of expert guidance, support, and implementation of green strategies to ensure that their premises are truly world class and sustainable. All these initiatives will help Indian Data Centres to move towards LEED Zero, the leading Net Zero program in the World.

Is it possible for data centers to pursue the dual objectives of sustainability and cost reduction at the same time?

Currently, most companies are pursuing sustainable goals internally as well as externally, where they expect that their partners also show commitment to the environment. Data centers host and manage data on behalf of multiple organizations, therefore they must be compliant to client requirements as well. However, the good news is that true sustainability drives optimization of resources by ensuring efficiency in processes and systems. For example, LEED‐certified Data Centers are the triple bottom line in action; benefiting people, planet and profit. LEED certified Data Centers consume less energy, less water, fewer natural resources and are ultimately aimed to reduce the overall impact of development on the local, regional and global environment. By implementing LEED strategies, these high intensity projects become efficient, cost‐effective and sustainable projects that have a significant positive impact on the triple bottom line. In developing the LEED rating systems, certain prerequisites and credits were adapted to reflect the specific needs of the data centers. For example: n Fundamental and Enhanced Commissioning and Verification

n n

n n n

Minimum and Optimize Energy Performance Building Level Energy Metering and Advanced Energy Metering Minimum IAQ Performance Enhanced IAQ Strategies Thermal Comfort

How do Indian data centers fare in comparison to their global counterparts when it comes to adopting LEED and other green initiatives?

While Indian DCs are working to optimise the energy efficiency of their facilities by improving their Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), Global DCs are a step ahead as they are increasing their investments in renewables (onsite & offsite) to reduce overall carbon emissions from their DCs. This is also helping global DCs to leap towards their net zero carbon & energy goals. One such LEED certified DC – Telia Helsinki Data Center, Finland is wheeling hydro power to their site, to achieve carbon-neutrality.

Additionally, increasing water scarcity for data center cooling is driving few projects in India to adopt air-cooled chillers (low efficiency) instead of water cooled chillers (high efficiency). In such scenarios of water scarcity, investment in renewables can help DCs to compensate the additional carbon emissions.

What’s your vision for GBCI? We spend most of our time in buildings.

Whether it is at home or work, at the train or bus station, at the airport or port, at the mall or even at a local mom and pop store, we are always in or surrounded by buildings. With buildings so central to our lives, they have a profound impact on our overall health and wellbeing. The LEED green building program provides a framework for healthy, highly efficient, and cost-saving green buildings in India and around the world. India has maintained a steady status as number four market in the world for LEED, representing the ever-growing domestic demand for LEED certification in India as a tool to both reduce emissions and support health and well-being.

Our vision at GBCI India is to ensure that both new and existing buildings in India commit to reducing their carbon footprint by adopting sustainable and green practices – because resilient buildings make a resilient world. More importantly GBCI can support India’s commitment at the Glasgow summit by not only Greening

the buildings and cities, but also take the built environment to Net Zero goals through the LEED Zero program.

What are the challenges faced by large buildings and structures in India from an environmental perspective?

There is a compelling reason for large assets and portfolios to go Green. The good news is that the people at the helm of affairs like the Project / Design / Facility heads are aware and are keen to move ahead. They are aware that going green has a shorter payback period and in the medium to long run also adds to the triple bottom line.

More importantly the intangible benefits of Green buildings positively impacting the health and wellbeing of the occupants is also a big draw. But for more of these assets to go green, the CXOs and the Boards needs to be equipped with deeper knowledge on the positive economics of LEED certified buildings.

What’s your message to the Indian Industry Leaders?

My message to Indian industry leaders is that healthy people in healthy places is the fastest way to build a healthy economy. And the global pandemic has only made our beliefs that much stronger and our mission that much more vital.

We don’t have to choose between public health and a healthy economy. The future will require both to thrive. That is why going forward, we have to prioritize our efforts to build people’s trust that their spaces are healthy and have a positive impact not only on them, but the economy at large. While we embark on this mission, let us also ensure that Sustainability and Green is an inclusive topic and embraces all citizens across strata and cities or towns.

DECEMBER 2021 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 29

TECH PREDICTION // RACKSPACE TECHNOLOGY PREDICTIONS 2022

RACKSPACE TECHNOLOGY

PREDICTIONS 2022 SANDEEP BHARGAVA,

MANAGING DIRECTOR, ASIA PACIFIC JAPAN, RACKSPACE

As we venture into 2022, organizations will be looking for ways to recover from the pandemic and serve new consumers with reimagined business models. Just like IT helped organizations survive the crisis, technology is also positioned to serve as the foundation for the new normal. Here are three ways that technology will change over the next year The rise of low-code/no-code solutions – Accelerated by the pandemic, we will continue to 30 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD DECEMBER 2021

see this trend especially in the data, AI, ML and IoT space. It will be a driver for smart apps and innovation for businesses into the future. In fact, Gartner has predicted that 80% of technology products and services will be built by people outside of technology fields by 2024. Most will be focused on software development, and many will be constructed with low-code/no-code development tools that give people with little to no technical background or someone with business

logic understanding, the ability to stitch together remarkably sophisticated applications.

In turn, what this is doing is empowering people who don’t necessarily have deep technology capabilities and expertise to be able to build out solutions. From a business point of view, it’s about encouraging experimentation and moving into and then beyond, proof of concepts quickly shortening time to market. These low-code/nocode solutions, which are often serverless, have the added benefit of reducing infrastructure costs.

Micro-segmenation to deliver customer value – In the age of the customer, one size fits few.

And it is with the effective use of data available to businesses, where they can find a competitive edge. Having a holistic view of data from internal and external sources is critical for businesses to discover what makes them tick, so you can deliver relevant experiences and solutions. Understanding your customers will be the driver to business success and impact. In 2022 and beyond, we’re going to see more businesses using microsegmentation that can lead to highly personalised experiences and compel customers to take action.

The future of 5G is imminent – If 2020/2021 taught us anything, it is to expect the unexpected. Yet despite the impact of an unforeseen pandemic, we saw great progress in technology, especially as vendors all around the world began to roll out 5G. We expect for this to continue into 2022 and beyond, particularly towards 5G connectivity and how it will impact everything from the mobile market to IoT to a greater proliferation of 5G networks. When 5G becomes a norm, it will fuel a new era of innovation and it will redefine consumer experiences and drive transformation across every industry.

THE DIGITAL DIVIDE // TECH PREDICTION

THE DIGITAL DIVIDE WILL PUSH VENDORS TO RETHINK THEIR SALES APPROACH

RENAUD DERAISON,

JAMES HAYES,

MARTY EDWARDS,

CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER AND CO-FOUNDER, TENABLE

VP, GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS, TENABLE

VP, OPERATIONAL TECHNOLOGY, TENABLE

Some organizations are stepping into 2022 with mature, organized IT processes and ample budgets for security. Others are struggling to secure budgets and adopt modern methodologies to keep up with the evolving threat landscape. In 2022, the gap will only continue to widen. While it can be tempting for vendors to gravitate toward the companies with the heftiest security spend, it will be important for them to prioritize both ends of the spectrum in order to flatten the divide and provide solutions to the organizations that need them most.-Renaud Deraison, Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder, Tenable

From the Biden administration’s executive order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity to CISA’s directive on remediating high-risk vulnerabilities, security has taken center stage for the federal government in 2021. As a result, 2022 will see more and more agencies hardening their security postures — adopting zero trust, gaining better visibility into attack surfaces, increasing collaboration and more. This will be increasingly apparent among high-risk environments often targeted by foreign adversaries like critical infrastructure and operational technology (OT). Securing our nation’s infrastructure has become more important than ever and agencies will prioritize accordingly.-James Hayes, VP, Government Affairs, Tenable

Colonial Pipeline set the table for improvement Attacks like Colonial Pipeline made security tangible for non-security professionals. Spikes in gas prices and lines at the pump are something that the everyday citizen, CEO and Congress member can understand. Every board of directors is now interested in what the cyber risk is to their company. Stakeholders are more invested than ever, and Congress/policymakers are no exception. If the government and private sector can acknowledge their shared priorities and work together toward a more secure world, 2022 will bring a promising climate for improvement.Marty Edwards, VP, Operational Technology, Tenable.

Federal agencies will get serious about cyber fundamentals

DECEMBER 2021 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

31

TECH PREDICTION // OT THREATS

RICK PETERS CISO OPERATIONAL TECHNOLOGY, FORTINET

BY SANJAY@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM

ARE YOU PREPARED FOR MORE OT THREATS? For years, Operational Technology (OT) systems have been working to control everything from factories to transportation networks to utilities.

The reality is most citizens don’t think about these systems until there’s a problem. That’s why the the attack against Colonial Pipeline in May 2021 was so startling. The attack on a segment of the enterprise transcended IT and resulted in a temporary but severe disruption of the OT based fuel supplies and led the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to issue an advisory urging critical infrastructure (CI) asset owners and operators to take on a heightened state of awareness.

Unfortunately, the attack against Colonial Pipeline isn’t the first or last time an adversarial cyberattack on an OT target will make headlines.

Malicious cyberattacks are likely to increase given the opportunities for mission impact, social anxiety, and profit that disrupting systems and stealing intellectual property from OT and IT systems represent. If there’s any silver lining to this high-profile attack it’s that it has put a renewed focus on securing critical OT assets.

OT cyber events also have demonstrated the consequence of failing to invest and commit proportionally to a cybersecurity strategy. For years OT system owners relied on the “air gap” that separated OT systems from IT to protect them.

But as more and more OT organizations digitally connect OT infrastructure such as supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems with IT networks, the resulting evaporation of the air gap has dramatically increased the level of risk. Given this situation, it’s not a surprise that in the “2021 State of Operational Technology and Cybersecurity Report” 9 out of 10 OT organizations experienced at least one intrusion in the past year and 63% had three or more intrusions.

32 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD DECEMBER 2021

To protect cyber physical assets, OT organizations need to commit toa proactive cybersecurity strategy, paying particular attention to visibility, control, and behavior analysis. It’s critical to protect every point of connection to the outside world to proactively safeguard OT. OT Is No Longer a Niche Exploit In the past, exploits against SCADA or industrial control systems (ICS) were viewed as an infrequent subset of highly structured and often nation-state sponsored targeted attacks. But the OT market is expected to continue to grow through 2027 at a CAGR of 6.40%. Relying on obscurity as a defense strategy doesn’t work anymore; it’s practically an invitation to cybercriminals to penetrate and ultimately compromise OT systems. Although IT-related exploits are still more prevalent, according to the Global Threat Landscape Report from FortiGuard Labs, a growing number of exploits are targeting OT. The long-held perception that ICS exploits are an obscure niche of the cyber threat landscape is simply no longer the case.

Why Now? In the past, OT attacks were the domain of specialized threat actors who knew how to exploit ICS and SCADA systems. But now, many of those tools are now being packaged as attack kits on the dark web, so they are available to a much broader set of less technical attackers. The motivations behind the attacks range from gaining a profit through extortion, stealing intellectual property, to simply testing infrastructure resilience. The attacks offer a side benefit in that they create a climate of uncertainty and can force actions by executives in the government and commercial sector. The headlines generated from a successful attack on OT infrastructure only serve to

amplify these effects. Attacks on large enterprise businesses in energy and manufacturing and even smaller more discrete intrusions at the municipal utilities level are all newsworthy. The alarming cybersecurity news in 2021 reinforces the fact that OT infrastructures require attention to reduce the attack vectors, tactics, and techniques that focus on industrial environments.

The Need for Better Visibility The rapid expansion in the threat landscape and the increase in attacks demonstrate the increased need for integration between enterprise solutions and operational infrastructure. In most cases, security considerations need to extend to on-premise systems and extend to the Internet of Things (IoT) and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) devices. It’s also important to have an infrastructure control strategy that restricts and contains suspicious activity and behavior. At a minimum, organizations should implement zerotrust network access (ZTNA), which limits user or device access to only those resources required to perform a specific role or function. ZTNA also strictly limits the range and level of engagement, which serves to restrict activity if a system is compromised.

OT organizations that put comprehensive security policies in place give themselves an advantage over threat actors and can limit the impact of a breach. OT infrastructure is no longer benefiting from obscurity and the adoption of near-universal convergence of IT and OT networks implies traditionally isolated environments are no longer safe. Organizations must take proactive steps to harden OT environments, including integrating tools and practices designed to protect, detect, and respond to threats in realtime. Although attacks are inevitable, they don’t have to be successful.

OT THREATS // TECH PREDICTION

DECEMBER 2021 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 33

TECH PREDICTION // CYBERSECURITY AND TECH SPACE

JAMES FORBES-MAY VICE PRESIDENT, BARRACUDA NETWORKS APAC

RANSOMWARE WILL CONTINUE TO DOMINATE CYBERSECURITY AND TECH SPACE Barracuda Networks, a trusted partner and a leading provider of cloud-enabled security solutions, revealed predictions that will shape the future of cybersecurity and tech space in the coming year.

BY SANJAY@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM

Ransomware will still be a problem Ransomware would continue to dominate the news for being the most lucrative way of making money for the bad guys. However, there will be a renewed focus on the governments prioritizing cybersecurity initiatives, building alliances with vendors, and sharing data with other countries.

This level of collaboration will help improve security for everyone.

In this post-breach era, ransomware attackers have been ahead of their targets since they have their hands on stolen data, including credentials.

These attacks range from extortion on valuable data to penetrating the software supply chain.

It has gone beyond disrupting business operations and goes as far as revealing information to discredit a corporation and destroy the trust chain. Figuring out how to slow that down by encouraging collaboration between governments and developing alliances with vendors will be critical in the year ahead.

Critical infrastructures are expected to face the greatest security challenge The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that cybercriminals are willing to exploit the crisis to attack critical infrastructures like healthcare and the vaccine supply chain. It will be necessary for hospitals and healthcare organizations to understand the three steps of ransomware protection: avoiding credential leaks, securing access to their applications and infrastructure, and backing up their data.

In 2022, critical infrastructure will continue to face significant security challenges. This also 34 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD DECEMBER 2021

includes everything from energy and financial services to education and healthcare. For example, there have been numerous stories about how ransomware attacks that hit hospitals affect patient treatment and even lead to deaths. Attacks on critical infrastructure have the most direct impact on people’s lives, so security will be a challenge as cybercriminals continue to focus on these vulnerable areas.

Privacy requirements will drive security decisions In 2022, privacy will dominate the security conversation because data can no longer be leveraged without accountability. Almost 75% of countries have some type of privacy regulation. So, all businesses must protect and enrich any data they collect from customers in a way that respects their privacy requirements.

These conversations about privacy policy also come up in the context of digital transformation.

Companies are adopting many SaaS technologies, downloading apps and software, but they should be aware of the privacy implications of all of the technologies that are being used. In 2022, companies will be making decisions about which products to use, based on whether or not the data compliance is sufficient for their customers.

Having the tools in place to ensure compliance will become more important as well, especially for small and mid-sized businesses. While leveraging SaaS solutions like OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams, they would need to understand what their teams are doing and make sure they have the tools to secure the data and are also compliant.

Forensics and XDR are new skills IT security executives would need in 2022 IT security executives would need to develop the ability to understand forensics and incident

response. Many large and small IT security organizations, working with a managed service provider, are still struggling with too many tools and not getting the signals to work together.

Detection and response will be the keywords to help IT security executives achieve what they need to in 2022 and beyond. Improving in this area will require an Open XDR platform or managed XDR solution through a service provider.

Those tools will enable IT security executives to respond more efficiently than they are now. Right now, most enterprises are investing in tools to protect multiple attack surfaces. It will be essential to capture the signals from each tool and correlate the data for actionable insights. From prevention, detection to response, it will require forensics and security analytics skills to defend against today’s cyberattacks. With the existing shortage of cybersecurity skillset, utilizing a managed SoC (Security Operations Center) with XDR capabilities could be the answer for all small and medium enterprises.

Data consolidation is expected to see in 2022 by the security market Consolidation on data-driven platforms is one change that is expected to occur in 2022 as the market shifts to more of a service-driven kind of tooling, including XDR and managed detection and Response.

Detection and Response, skillset many organizations are missing will get more complex.

Many companies, especially SMBs or small-tomedium-sized enterprises, will need this skillset to respond efficiently and effectively to survive these cyber-attacks without investing so much in building an in-house team.

To access the complete article log on to: www.enterpriseitworld.com

CYBERSECURITY AND TECH SPACE // TECH PREDICTION

DECEMBER 2021 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 35

TECH PREDICTION // 2022 AND BEYOND – TECHNOLOGIES

JOHN ROESE GLOBAL CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, DELL TECHNOLOGIES

2022 AND BEYOND – TECHNOLOGIES THAT WILL CHANGE THE DIALOGUE

BY SANJAY@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM

We are living in a do-anything-from-anywhere economy enabled by an exponentially expanding data ecosystem. It’s estimated 65% of Global GDP will be digital next year (2022). This influx of data presents both opportunities and challenges. After all, success in our digital present and future relies on our ability to secure and maintain increasingly complex IT systems. Here I’ll examine both nearterm and long-term predictions that address the way the IT industry will deliver the platforms and capabilities to harness this data to transform our experiences at work, home and in the classroom.

What to look for in 2022: The Edge discussion will separate into two focus areas – edge platforms that provide a stable pool of secure capacity for the diverse edge ecosystems and software defined edge workloads/software stacks that extend application and data systems into real world environments. This approach to Edge, where we separate the edge platforms from the edge workloads, is critical since, if each edge workload creates its own dedicated platform, we will have proliferation of edge infrastructure and unmanageable infrastructure sprawl.

Imagine an edge environment where you deploy an edge platform that presents compute, storage, I/O and other foundational IT capacities in a stable, secure, and operationally simple way.

As you extend various public and private cloud data and applications pipelines to the edge along with local IoT and data management edges, they can be delivered as software-defined packages leveraging that common edge platform of IT capacity. This means that your edge workloads can evolve and change at software speed because the underlying platform is a common pool of stable capacity.

We are already seeing this shift today. Dell Technologies currently offers edge platforms for all the major cloud stacks, using common hardware and delivery mechanisms. As we move into 36 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD DECEMBER 2021

2022, we expect these platforms to become more capable and pervasive. We are already seeing most edge workloads – and even most public cloud edge architectures – shift to softwaredefined architectures using containerization and assuming standard availably of capacities such as Kubernetes as the dial tone. This combination of modern edge platforms and software-defined edge systems will become the dominant way to build and deploy edge systems in the multi-cloud world.

The opening of the private mobility ecosystem will accelerate with more cloud and IT industries involved on the path to 5G. Enterprise use of 5G is still early. In fact, today 5G is not significantly different or better than WiFi in most enterprise use cases. This will change in 2022 as more modern, capable versions of 5G become available to enterprises. We will see higher performance and more scalable 5G along with new 5G features such as Ultra Reliability Low Latency Communications (UR-LLC) and Massive Machine Type Communicators (mMTC), with dialogue becoming much more dominant than traditional telecoms (think: open-source ecosystem, infrastructure companies, non-traditional telecom).

More importantly we expect the ecosystem, delivering new and more capable private mobility, will expand to include IT providers such as Dell Technologies but also public cloud providers and even new Open-Source ecosystems focused on acceleration of the Open 5G ecosystem.

Edge will become the new battleground for data management as data management becomes a new class of workload. The data management ecosystem needs an edge. The modern data management industry began its journey on public clouds processing and analyzing non-realtime centralized data. As the digital transformation of the world accelerates, it has become clear that most of the data in the world will be created and acted on outside of centralized data centers.

We expect that the entire data management ecosystem will become very active in developing and utilizing edge IT capacity as the ingress and egress of their data pipelines but will also utilize edges to remotely process and digest data.

As the data management ecosystem extends to the edge this will dramatically increase the number of edge workloads and overall edge demand. This correlates to our first prediction on edge platforms as we expect these data management edges to be modern software-defined offerings. Data management and the edge will increasingly converge and reinforce each other.

IT infrastructure companies, like Dell Technologies, have the unique opportunity to provide the orchestration layer for edge and multi-cloud by delivering an edge data management strategy.

The security industry is now moving from discussion of emerging security concerns to a bias toward action. Enterprises and governments are facing threats of greater sophistication and impact on revenue and services. At the same time, the attack surface that hackers can exploit is growing based on the accelerated trend in remote work and digital transformation. As a result, the security industry is responding with greater automation and integration. The industry is also pivoting from automated detection to prevention and response with a focus on applying AI and machine learning to speed remediation.

This is evidenced by industry initiatives like SOAR (Security Orchestration Automation & Response), CSPM (Cloud Security Posture Management) and XDR (Extended, Detection and Response). Most importantly we are seeing new efforts such as the Open Secure Software Foundation in the Linux Foundation ramp up the coordination and active involvement of the IT, telecom and semiconductor industries.

To access the complete article log on to: www.enterpriseitworld.com

2022 AND BEYOND – TECHNOLOGIES // TECH PREDICTION

DECEMBER 2021 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 37

DC TRENDS 2022

Whether it’s video conferencing, collaboration tools, streaming, gaming or ridesharing, today’s modern applications are increasingly designed for automated and elastic deployment at the edge. In 2022, edge-first deployments will continue to gain traction, as will a wave of technology innovations across the infrastructure stack to address the increasing complexity of reliably scaling and orchestrating distributed infrastructure at the edge. Nikhil Rathi, Founder & CEO of Web Werks, has listed a few trends that will mold the data center and cloud engineering space in 2022, in terms of infrastructure, demand and government policies.

Infrastructure Ultra-scalable Technology Today, data centers experience dramatically varying demands for computing power. The answer to that challenge is ultra-scalable technology that allows them to scale up or down depending on the amount of processing power required.

Dubbed hyper-scale data centers, these facilities offer outstanding capabilities to handle seasonal computing demands. Edge data centres or edge interconnection will be more prevalent as edge locations are experiencing high consumption and creation of data at an increasing rate leading to decentralized computing.

BY SANJAY@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM

5G to become a major part of business’ infrastructural development As 5G is coming into the picture, enterprises can leverage for their IT environments that are close to the 5G access points. 5G will become wireless and it will be a major part of business’ infrastructural development. 5G will provide wider coverage, greater reliability, higher bandwidth, and improved security as an access network. This will open up new opportunities and possibilities for robotics, drones, autonomous vehicles, telemedicine, and tactile internet, among others.

Sustainable and green data centres Sustainable and green data centres is predicted to be a trend in the coming days with renewable energy and carbon neutrality. 2022 may witness an increase in sustainable data centres. By 2030, several operators promise to run their data centers on 100% renewable energy and carbon neutrality. In 2021, data centers are positioned to have a strong impact on the environment, given the growth of the digital economy. In 2022, we expect to see a significant increase in “grid-andsustainability”-positive data center projects. The next generation of data centers will be decentral38 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD DECEMBER 2021

NIKHIL RATHI FOUNDER & CEO, WEB WERKS

DC TRENDS 2022

DC TRENDS 2022 ized and integrated into communities, serving as resilient ecosystems for computing, connectivity, power and heat.

Service-specific geographic zones Cities like Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai and Kolkata are likely to experience an influx of data centre infrastructure as per Cushman and Wakefield. Cities such as Pune, Gurgaon, Ahmedabad, Nagpur, Kochi and Jaipur, particularly, are also likely to witness the completion of edge DCs during 2021-23, on the back of their ability to service-specific geographic zones.

Big Data and cloud computing becoming more mainstream With tech such as AI, IoT, Machine Learning, Big Data and cloud computing becoming more mainstream, DC developers are increasingly redesigning their offerings with an aim to incorporate edge computing so as to process data as close to their end-users as possible.

Demand New business models are likely to emergy New business models are likely to emerge including colocation services, pay-per-use utility model, built to suit, etc. Location and design, easy scalability, security, infrastructure, sustainable practices and reliable partner are the key determinants for Data Centre demand. In India, a captive Data Centre still has the highest market share however colocation service model is witnessing tremendous growth and is soon expected to be almost equal to captive.

Hybridization & RIM You’ll see fewer and fewer organizations using purely on-premises or purely public networks because the blended capabilities that hybridization

offers are simply too compelling to pass up. Capabilities like security and control are at the top of the list, particularly in comparison to the public cloud. Cloud can be public, private, or a combination of both with a “hybrid” approach. Each “type” of cloud is necessary, but for very different reasons: private cloud for steady workloads and those with specific compliance needs, public cloud for variable workloads to leverage efficiencies, and SaaS for specific supporting functions. Digital Transformation is being built on hybrid cloud architectures as organizations increasingly depend upon distributed IT resources, including multi-cloud, edge, and cloud-adjacent storage. Each of these is locationsensitive and will perform best in low-latency and secure environments.

Developing an agile, resilient, and distributed approach requires mastering connectivity and having enough network bandwidth. One of the most recent and important developments coming out due to Covid-19 in Remote Infrastructure Management (RIM), which allows companies to manage their IT infrastructure remotely in portions or entirely. Remote monitoring of security and network services, desktop administration, database, and server management are all part of RIM. Cloud Native Infrastructure and Technologies Cloud Native Infrastructure and technologies will be trending in the next year as workloads are shifting completely to cloud with new paradigms especially hybrid cloud.

Cloud-native technologies will become more prevalent and accelerated in 2021 across virtually every layer of the infrastructure stack, as well as digital infrastructure orchestration from the edge to the multicloud. According to Deloitte, virtually all (97%) IT managers are planning to take a best-of-breed approach by distributing workloads across two or more clouds to boost

resilience and support regulatory requirements.

Fate of Digital Transformation IDC predicts that by 2022, the economy will remain on its digital destiny with 65% of global GDP digitalized, driven by that expected $6.8 trillion of direct DX (Digital Transformation) investments for 2020–2023. Products, service, and experiences that are improved through digitally enhanced features and functions are much more desirable to markets and consumers.

By 2023, direct digital technology investments are expected to be over 53% of all ICT investments. In contrast, nondigital ICT technology investments are contracting by 1.4% over this same period as more and more companies accelerate their digital transformation capability buildouts.

Government Policies Given the country’s rich network connectivity, cost advantage, availability of skilled labour, low climate risk and strong data protection laws, India is well-positioned to serve as a regional Data Centre hub in Asia and likely to attract significant Data Centre investments. We expect demand for Data Centre space requirement to increase by around 15- 18 million sq. ft. across the major cities in the next 4-5 years.

An ambitious incentive scheme worth up to Rs. 12,000 crore is in the works to encourage companies to set up data centres in the country. The government is targeting an investment of Rs. 3 lakh crore in the next five years as part of the hyperscale data centre scheme and is planning to provide between 3% and 4% of capital investment as an incentive to companies, along with real estate support and faster clearances. Government officials said the vision is to “make India a global data centre hub” and termed the scheme’s target as the largest so far in terms of expected investment in the country over a period of just five years.

DECEMBER 2021 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 39

TECH PREDICTION // 4 TRENDS FOR 2022

DR. THOMAS KING CTO, DE-CIX

DE-CIX PREDICTIONS: 4 TRENDS FOR 2022

BY SANJAY@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM

Unfortunately, the pandemic still won’t loosen its grip on the world, and this winter again many activities will need to take place online – from Christmas shopping to events and celebrations.

Reliable and fail-safe Internet connections with the lowest possible latency are thus becoming increasingly important – for our private lives, certainly, but above all for the economy as a whole. Here, a significant role is played by Internet Exchanges (IXs). They guarantee a smooth, secure, and fast exchange of data packets between networks of any size, ranging from city carriers to streaming providers and cloud service providers.

Dr. Thomas King, CTO at DE-CIX, has identified 4 trends that will shape the connected world, the evolution of Internet trends, and the interconnection business in 2022: 1. Automation: Booking interconnection by click Automation is no longer just a topic in manufacturing. More and more industries are developing solutions to automate routine IT tasks to become more flexible. Especially in uncertain times like we are currently experiencing, flexibility is a crucial asset. If, for example, a retailer’s business activities suddenly shift from the physical store to the online store, they must be able to react quickly so as not to alienate their customers with downtime. Internet Exchange operators are responding by offering the chance to manage interconnection services via both API and self-service portals. This means that the services at the Internet Exchange can be booked just as easily as computing power can be at the well-known cloud providers. This is possible because a large portion of the infrastructure at an Internet Exchange is now virtualized.

But there are also automation approaches in the area of physical infrastructure. In addition to an API and a sophisticated self-service portal, DE-CIX in Frankfurt, for example, now has three patch robots in operation, which reposition cables fully automatically in just seconds, at any time of day.

2. A new era of data exchange Never before has more data been exchanged than today. But problems remain: For example, when it comes to the confidential, bilateral exchange 40 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD DECEMBER 2021

of large data packets, these are sometimes still stored on hard disks and physically transported.

In the future, in the context of Gaia-X, highperformance and confidential data channels will be developed to address this issue. The basic idea behind the Gaia-X project is to create a sovereign European system for secure data exchange based on decentralized, interconnected infrastructure services. Another security-related service that will be increasingly in demand is Closed User Groups, which allow different actors to connect with their private networks via an IX. Closed User Groups enable enterprises to create their own interconnection environment – away from the public peering infrastructure. They can connect with select partners, suppliers, and customers present in multiple different locations, in order to share data securely and efficiently.

The interconnection platform provides a direct connection between members of the Closed User Group, with optimized security measures and improved performance. This allows business partners or suppliers to quickly, securely, and directly exchange the data needed to develop or operate complex digital services – ranging from digital health services to autonomous driving.

While cloud solutions facilitate data storage and handling, interconnection platforms are key to enabling many-to-many data exchange.

3. “Glocalization” is gaining traction Various new technology applications such as virtual reality, cloud gaming, and e-health, not to mention connected and autonomous cars, are creating ever higher demands for the lowest possible latencies. Especially for mobility applications, extremely low latencies of less than one millisecond are crucial. Data does not move infinitely fast, so it is necessary for the nearest data center to be a maximum of around 80 kilometers away.

A centralized Internet structure, where exchanges exist only in metropolitan areas, can no longer cope with these developments. So, we will see the hosting and processing of data move increasingly close to the edge. In other words, moving closer to the actual location of the consumers of this data and data processing. To some extent, this is already the case: An American streaming provider will host its new series in European data

centers when it launches them there. Currently, however, this is only the case in large hubs. We are already seeing accelerated growth in Tier 2 and Tier 3 Internet Exchanges, such as the Ruhr-CIX in Germany, which will open up populous regions further removed from the existing digital hubs. In fact, Germany is leading the way here. However, this development will also continue globally, and Internet Exchanges will in future be found not only in the established digital metropolises, but also in regional centers, all over the world.

4. The car of tomorrow is connected A stable data connection is becoming increasingly important for vehicles. Real-time information on the nearest charging station, for example, can be crucial for the operating radius of electric cars. At the same time, there are more and more advances in connected cars and autonomous driving, and these also bring high data demand and the need for low latency with them. Next year will therefore see a continuation of a trend that we are already seeing today: Automakers are becoming digital companies. They then have to decide which systems and services to outsource to big tech companies and which to build and operate in-house. In both cases, what is needed is a framework for data exchange between car and server and between different partners. This data exchange needs to be as fast as it is secure.

The bottom line: We cannot predict the further course of the global Covid-19 pandemic. But we can say, looking at the last two years, that the growth of digital services has increased massively. Where direct, physical exchange is not possible, these services take its place. Content providers, network operators, Internet Exchanges and, increasingly, individual companies that were not previously part of the tech sector are working to provide the infrastructure for these services not only to people in digitally developed centers, but also in previously less well-served regions. The guiding principles are the basic needs of our digital age: Flexibility, security and speed.

To access the complete article log on to: www.enterpriseitworld.com

4 TRENDS FOR 2022 // TECH PREDICTION

DECEMBER 2021 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

41

TECH PREDICTION // HYBRID WORKING

POLY IDENTIFIES TOP TRENDS THAT WILL SHAPE HYBRID WORKING IN INDIA FOR 2022 AND BEYOND

ANKUR GOEL, MANAGING DIRECTOR, POLY INDIA & SAARC

Poly, a global communications company that powers meaningful human connection and collaboration, today revealed the top trends that will shape the future of work for 2022 and beyond.

Ankur Goel, Managing Director for Poly India & SAARC said, “We have come a long way in the last two years. The stigma attached to remote working and remote workers has changed drastically during the pandemic and proved that most work could be done effectively remotely. As a result, organizations realize that their employees 42 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD DECEMBER 2021

can be productive no matter their work location, provided they have the right collaboration tools”.

He added, “Hybrid working is now going to be the norm in India. In fact, it’s reported that hybrid is the preferred working arrangement amongst employees. To ensure that the hybrid working model is successful, companies should invest time in mapping out hybrid work strategies.

Furthermore, they should ensure that they deliver an equal meeting experience to the growing anywhere workforce so that no one feels the

inferiority of working remotely”.

According to Nasscom’s ‘Return to Workplace Survey, ’ 70% of tech organizations in India are looking at a hybrid work model. For hybrid working to succeed truly, organizations must have the proper framework, insights, technology, and workspace investments in place to ensure they match the dynamic work styles of an increasingly distributed workforce.

Transforming telecommunications enriching the customer experience atos.net

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