Sify and Cisco in collaboration with Dataquest conducts CIO Meet on ‘Future-Ready IT Infrastructure’

Digital Transformation is the new kid on the block. As enterprise IT organizations grapple with the plethora of challenges in inking an IT Transformation plan of action, the creation and access to a state of the art data centers play a critical role. It is in this backdrop Dataquest collaborated with Sify Technologies and Cisco for a CIO event titled “Embarking upon the Future-Ready IT Infrastructure". The meet looked at demystifying the myths surrounding the Data Center transformation and aimed at helping Sify and Cisco’s customers’ to collaborate more effectively. Dataquest was the knowledge partner of this 3-city CIO event.

Both Sify and Cisco engaged the leading CIOs across various verticals in Chennai through this meet. The key discussions were around the myths surrounding the Data Center transformation and helping customers to collaborate more effectively.

Setting the context and tone, Arvind Gautam, EVP – TIS BU, Sify Technologies, in his presentation talked about aspects that make Sify the big differentiator in the ICT industry. Discussing on the differences between traditional IT players versus the new age ICT providers like Sify, he pointed out the key challenges any CIO faces in today’s enterprise environment- manageability, uptime, unified collaboration, cloud and more. Gautam also gave an overview of some of the deployments made for clients like the Postal Department of India where the design, integration, operations and management of 30,000 locations (including DC & DR) secured network infrastructure in an outsourced model. Other clients like Muthoot Fincorp where design, integration, operations and management of 3,500 locations secured multi-tower IT infrastructure in a managed services model were also explained in the event.

In his keynote address, Umesh Sachdev, CEO & Cofounder, Uniphore Software Systems, spoke on the digital leverage with special respect to the contact center industry. He spoke in detail on aspects like the adoption of digital in Indian enterprises, the role played by digital transformation to make life easier and more.

Meanwhile Bhavesh Mathur, VP & Head, DCT and Managed Services, Sify Technologies, on his interaction with the participants said that the services model is directly aligned to the digital journey. He also explained the ‘pay-per-use’ model of Sify in terms of utility bills, insurances, stocks and more. Sify also showcased their success story on conducting the exams for the more than 37 lakhs candidates in 98 cities in 42 batches across 15 days for recruitment. This was one of the largest online exams to be held anywhere in the globe.

ASAP MODEL
Navaneeth Radhakrishnan, Regional Manager- South, CISCO & Anup Gupta, Data Center Sales Lead, South India and Sri Lanka CISCO in their presentation touched on maximizing application performance, security and economics to accelerate Digital Transformation. Speaking on the impact of digital transformation on data centers and cloud, the Cisco team said that close to half of the fortune 500 companies are expected to no longer exist within 10 years if they fail to re-invent. Quoting an insight from a survey done by Forbes on enterprises, Cisco said that 65% of the respondents discontinued or scaled back from public cloud. The three key challenges being deciding the application locations, empowering LoB and app developers and mitigating risks.

The team described the ‘ASAP’ data center, which gives emphasis to: Analyze, Simplify, Automate and Protect. The objective isn’t just to make today’s enterprise faster and more efficient. It is to bring the future closer by helping customers adapt, reinvent, and reimagine their businesses and capture opportunity more quickly than ever before, stated the Cisco team members.

In his closing remarks Pankaj Gupta, Chief of Operations, South region for Sify Technologies, summed up aptly by saying why a pro-active IT infrastructure is vital for digital transformation and how companies like Sify and Cisco are playing a leading role.