Dataquest CIO Series: Cost-Effort-Time Combination should Work

Globally established trend, based on the success ie extensive use of hosted contact centers and cloud computing, is now making waves in Indian IT industry. But its entry is witnessing lots of apprehensions from the technical heads. They are weighing its pros and cons carefully, especially when cost-benefit analysis is all time high after global economic slowdown. CIOs now after getting over with their wait and watch strategy are openly questioning the utility and efficiency of the new infrastructure models, whether it is about managed services or hosted contact centers or cloud computing. BT teamed up with Cisco, its Gold Partner in collaboration with Dataquest gave industry a platform in a form of a event to question, argue and discuss their top concerns about the need and utility of changing IT architecture in the organizations.

Need is the mother of most of the inventions. So same has happened with the global as well Indian IT industry. Mridul Srivastava, director, marketing, BT India outlined the major trends - rise of analytics, proliferation of social media, redundancy of PCs, and consumerization of IT. Primary reasons for the formation of these trends has been the urge of enterprise and individual customers to have better service, efficiency, and convenience. Srivastava explained that, " BT has always adopted structured approach to meet these challenges and equip the industry as changing needs and trends."

Mobile technology has been the major force in altering the dynamics of the operations in the enterprises. It has helped as well as challenged the existing traditional IT infrastructure to undergo transition and find newer and newer solutions to its problems. It is high time for the enterprises to marry mobile technology and work upon the need to bring fresh air to old infrastructure. Having in-house IT department or on premise infrastructure will ensure data security is actually a myth. Professionally managed services and hosted contact centers have proved their efficiency and utility as they are easily scalable and cost effective.

Dinesh Verma, senior director, Business Transformation, BT India shared BT's experience about the cloud computing, in terms of efficiency, ease of use, affordability, and ability to swiftly cope up with the technological developments in IT domain. He also claimed that BT's technology and service offerings in cloud (IaaS, PaaS, CaaS, SaaS) are geared towards not only serving its own customersbut also its customer's customer.   

As aforementioned analytics and social media today have proved to be the game changers not only for the IT industry but has contributed to the multi-dimensional growth of every possible industry. Social media is not just another media but it is shaping and consistently leading other media platforms and have given way for next generation workspace. Therefore, workforce has become mobile, social, virtual and more video oriented, unlike before. Alok, Cisco Systems India added to this argument, " Business transformation has been enabled due to improved collaboration. As a result, organizations should adopt architecture centric approach rather than product centric approach."

 

While discussing the positives of these emerging infrastructure models, BT-Cisco also discussed the concerns of the industry. The top concerns include - security, service level agreements of these models, cost management and support, ROI, scalability, network availability, and smooth collaboration and execution of new infrastructure with the existing one. Answering these concerns is not only important for the vendors to increase the penetration of their solutions but also genuinely resolving the queries of customers and adding value to their business.

Shekhar Mahajan, manager global telecommunication technologies, Egon Zehnder International questioned the maturity and performance analysis of the cloud computing. He also raised the apprehension of inconvenience of handling existing legacy infrastructure in the organization, if they opt for the newer models. Harsh Marwah country lead, Sales & Business Development, BT India, answered the query that, "Vendors are also evolving and learning at every stage.Therefore, we ask our customers not to move their 100% apps or data on cloud, but prioritize the need to move in stages to the cloud. "

Time, effort and cost combination involved in opting for any new infrastructure should justify the need of business. Rajeev Gupta, chief technologist, AirOne Communication, feels, "Public cloud is a good option for SMBs as its ease to operate and cost effective whereas for large organizations it should be a combination of cloud, in-house infrastructure and hosted contact center or managed services as per functions."

Prasanto Kumar, chief editor, Cybermedia India concluded that customers should clearly argue and then decide (on the basis of affordability and present and future needs of the business) which infrastructure (hosted contact center, managed services or cloud) model completely or partially will suit them. And accordingly opt for it to reap its maximum benefits.

Prasanto Kumar Roy, chief editor, Cybermedia India