Business Bread and Butter and IT Breakfast 

At the Dataquest – Sify Mumbai breakfast roundtable, players from the industry, service providers and enterprise customers chewed upon some hot issues that surround networks and digital transformation– like smart execution, visibility, zero-trust tools, collaboration, and customer requirement analysis. 

It was a rainy day. And alongside a heavy downpour, there was a torrent of ideas in a room packed with the providers and users of cutting-edge technology for business networks. 

Editor, Dataquest, and PCQuest, Sunil Rajguru set the steam well by opening the theme of the discussion- Enhancing user experience with Digital Services, Secure Cloud, and Software-defined Network Infrastructure. He underlined why these areas have become critical- especially as the Fintech revolution is progressing and platforms like UPI, etc. are making India a Fintech super-power. But security, network issues, and changing UX due to digital platforms are crucial issues to ponder upon as we unleash more force ahead- he stirred the panel to share their views from their sides of the table. 

Experience – The Clincher 

Core presenter Tirthankar Mitra, CEO-West, Sify Technologies started by identifying one common glue which brings everyone together in the digital transformation paradigm- it’s called customer experience. “How your customers experience your services and platform- how is it getting more agile and keeping pace with fast changes – that matters. Whether it’s a capital market company, an asset management company, or a bank- everyone has been challenged. Customer generation is also quite fragmented. Getting the customer’s attention- with your array of services- is an opportunity but also tough when the customer is fiddling with the mobile.” 

At this apt point, Pranav Desai, Director – Sales & Operations, Enterprise, BFSI, CISCO took the discussion towards regulatory frameworks in India. “As a Fintech company, or a bank, or as an asset management company, you are covered by one or the other regulator. The fine balance around agility, adaptability, and meeting regulatory guidelines – can be challenging. Another struggle is on the side of many applications still residing in on-premise environments while some are on Cloud. How to ensure that the end-user experience is similar, then? And also to ensure that the experience is secure?” Overall user experience – given the customer’s impatience and little attention span- is a big pursuit that matters for many companies, he captured some current issues while also confronting network-related application-performance volatility. 

Fintech players raised practical hassles like workload management, APM effectiveness, the need for strong drill-downs, network problems, bandwidth issues in remote areas, etc. Also with changing technologies like virtualization, and dockerisation players are moving towards seamless experiences but a lot remains to be done. 

Desai acknowledged these concerns and explained, “Full-stack observability is an important evolution. When a user accesses an app on any device, it goes through multiple paths. Strong observability can help a lot in giving a seamless experience.” 

Some panelists concurred that a comprehensive view during Cloud transformation is something that the ecosystem needs to look into. 

Singlehood in Demand 

The round table packed many key players and disruptors in the industry like Madhusudan Warrier, CIO, Mirae Asset Investment Managers; Mukesh Mehta, CTO, Investec Capital; Vishal Chandane, Chief Business Officer, Cloud Services, NSEIT; Dr. Deepak Kalambkar, CISO, SafexPay and Ravi Pandey, Chief IT Manager, Nippon India Mutual Fund. These players contributed a lot to the think-tank by red-lining some practical issues and gaps they wanted to solve. Especially the factors posed by multi-cloud and single-cloud models – like applications, security, IT frameworks, the need for single dashboards, and compliance. 

“As a business you should look at a partner that can provide a single-stop ease with multiple solutions instead of going for many point solutions,” Desai recommended. 

Balram Choudhary, CISO, Ask Investment Managers also pointed out areas like password identity management, zero-day vulnerabilities, long patch management, tools for multi-cloud environments, and extreme need for real zero-trust architecture tools. Panelists from the Fintech community brought in many issues that are relevant to digital transformation and business in the current age. 

A panelist chimed in here saying how having a core team and infrastructure capabilities can make a lot of difference – given the challenges of changing vendors, and business dynamics. Skill sets are key elements, and are we doing enough from an academic side, asked Nikunj Panchal, CDO, Mahindra Finance. “What are we doing to build skill sets for new environments?” 

I See…. 

Many such pragmatic predicaments came up during this discussion. 

How can we fix business downtime and why can’t OEMs collaborate on a one-stop solution? Wondered Vijay Kumar, CTO, Maximus. Dinesh Singh, Head Technology, Edelweiss Housing Finance shared how visibility is a need, especially with a single-pane-of-glass ease, and Melwyn Rebeiro, Director, Julius Baer hoped for more clarity on data protection regulations. 

While many important struggles like these were weighed in at the round-table, Tirthankar Mitraalso spent some time highlighting the basic distance between a business’s radar and IT. He was right in pointing out that a business’s core focus is not IT but its main business product or service. A bank does banking. An asset management company does asset management. It is not their bread and butter. 

Tirthankar also laid down many facets of a distributed architecture- like building a team with a diversified talent pool. “But if you look at an asset management company whose business is not technology- would that company make those investments. IT is an enabler to the core. CFOs will always look at IT with a third lens- is this investment necessary?” 

He added how Sify’s biggest assets are people. “The biggest challenge I see in today’s organizations is two-fold- smart execution and people. Business, customer acquisition, IT implementation, or using a portfolio to solve a problem- all these areas need smart execution. Building an ecosystem of diversified Talent pool is important- whether you have it in your own team or you outsource it to someone.” 

Emphasis on processes and people- with an honest assessment – emerged as one point as the panel dwelt upon some post-pandemic challenges. 

A core idea that everyone converged on was the significance of nailing down an area of identifying a business need and doing it properly. “As a customer one has to be clear about one’s requirements. Why do you need any technology or tool and how it will help in expanding or serving your customer base- that should be done in a collaborative manner.” Tirthankar suggested. “It is a challenge for the customer also because the need is also diversified. A customer is also trying hard to define a need properly.” 

As he recommended, capping it all up – we need to thrive in an environment where we are successful, provided, we collaborate in an effective way- that’s something we need to deep dive in. 

That’s some good coffee to wake up and get going, with.  

By Pratima H