September, 2016

The two-day event at the JW Marriot, Pune, honoured the best, the brightest and the transformative CIOs of the Indian IT industry.

Known as the Oscars of the Indian IT industry, this year’s CIO 100 event brought together CIOs from across various vertical sectors to participate in a two-day symposium which was about transformation, leadership, and innovation.

In an era where digital transformation is necessary for businesses, CIO 100 awarded the transformative 100 of the Indian IT industry.

The two-day symposium was inaugurated by Arvind Gupta, BJP’s IT Head, who spoke about how CIOs can help the government alter the digital DNA of the country.

International keynote speaker, Stuart Knight, who is an author and a motivational speaker, spoke to the audience at multiple sessions on how to incorporate human qualities in a leadership role. The keynote sessions, which were powered Sify Technologies, were very well received, thanks to the energetic Stuart Knight.

Leaders from various companies spoke about how CIOs should look at digital transformation as a strategy in their organization.

Kamal Nath from Sify Technology spoke about IT transformation which is at the core of digital IT.

Dr Ravi Chandran gave his views on transformational leadership.

Taru Dahiya from Google spoke about how employees should be empowered by tools for digital transformation.

Indian Ocean and Taal with their music made sure that the CIOs had a good time.

One hundred CIOs received the main award this year-The Transformative 100. Eight special awards, namely, Sourcing Shoguns, Networking Pioneers, Information Masterminds, Mobility Mavens, Intelligent Enterprise Champions, Business Transformers and Security Supremos, and Collaboration Champions, were given out. The Hall of Fame Awards were presented to CIOs who won four consecutive CIO 100 awards from the same organization.

And of course being the Keynote Sponsor for CIO 100, Sify Technologies pulled all stops to deliver an interesting experience for the CIOs with Waxed Hands, Tweet Café, Selfie Contest and Mini Golf contest.

With every passing year, IT security is becoming the most significant issue for the industry. While threats to any part of the infrastructure are a big risk, Data security is the biggest fear in enterprise.

The Data Center has grown up from being a multiple server, energy guzzling mammoth to a practically invisible, sleek, virtual storage arena, mostly on the cloud. It has become smarter, faster, more agile and highly scalable, at very little extra cost.

But this development comes at a price. Now, it has the added threats that the cloud faces, or virtualised networks and data face…or worse, the connected technologies face. Mobile networks, cloud based and virtualised accessibility, in other words, has made the Data Center extremely vulnerable to hacking or cyber attacks. So, evolving with the Data Center, these threats also present a new security paradigm that enterprises need to be ready to meet head on.

Risks unique to virtualisation are now coming to the forefront, as Data Centers adopt the virtualisation technologies. Here are a few known risks:

In a virtualised environment, protected by traditional security apps, there is no visibility to machines on the same host, unless they are routed through outside the host machine, creating critical Communication blind spots. One of the ways to meet this risk is to dedicate security scanning virtual machines that scan the communication connecters between the VMs within the host. But for a cloud host, they will need self defending virtual machines.

The connected nature of virtualised environment makes guest devices a big threat. One compromise means risk for all the devices and machines. You need a firewall and a malicious activity detection system at the VM level. An attack on the hypervisor often means bigger risk since then all the machines are compromised, especially when the API is threatened. Most vendors strive to keep the API s secure, because that is the first line of threat for the data canter and everything else that’s on the platform. The risk goes even higher when critical data is stored on the same host as less critical ones, resulting in Mixed Trust Levels. Then it is difficult to protect only the critical data, and the way out is usually self- defending VM security that can help protect against.

Data Centers on the cloud also face the same threats- since the cloud sits on a virtual environment. In addition, the cloud computing devices, which cover multiple points like roaming mobile devices, stretch the perimeter and make the environment more vulnerable. In addition, on a cloud based Data Center, data is often moved around for optimal utilization…and this means the owners are often unaware of the location of their data. Also any residual data, which may be critical, needs to be eliminated during this shifting. Multi tenancy clouds are anyway more vulnerable, provided the security is designed so that any one user cannot access any other Data center. Data encryption is most often the security app used, but with evolving usage and constant expansion of the environment, threats will always ensue.

So is there any way of staying secure with your next generation Data Center? Of course- the answer is next-gen security!

The traditional means of Data Center security will definitely not help to secure your modern infrastructure. To keep your virtualised data safe, an answer could be security appliances with numerous points in the Data Center. Their virtual nature allows them to keep track of all parts of the network, and in some cases, these can be programmed to do a specific security function as well, creating a new layer of security can help fight malware, unauthorized devices and network viruses. In addition, advanced deep scanning engines like data-loss prevention (DLP), intrusion detection/prevention services (IPS/IDS) can help create a security lock. Intelligent network monitoring algorithms can also help control the movement of data in and out of the machines, while access can be prevented for certain type of devices, unless authorised. The smartest move for a keeping a modern Data Center safe is layered security. This can place entire apps behind intelligent engines that continuously scan for anomalies.

Despite all the technology, security threats will always be there. Deploying intelligent applications and barricades for Data Centers could be your safest bet in a battle that will never end.

As Data Center technologies evolve, so will threats. The best one can do is to have the right teams, armed with the right kind of technologies and applications to counter this threat that modernisation and evolution brings.

Are we all aware of the staggering statistics about Future of Internet?

India will add 40% of the world’s incremental Internet users by 2020!

More than 175 million people will do their purchases online because of convenient payment options like e-wallets and easy payments. E-commerce business will be worth $17 billion at the end of FY 2016.

82% of CMOs (across all Industry verticals) report that the Brand health of their organization is directly proportional to the number of visitors of their websites.

When computing power was at a premium in 1990s, web pages were often hosted in local standalone servers and were served as unchanging text files. This type of static content is efficient, but it can quickly become stagnant and viewers lose interest. With the advent of low-cost computing and faster Internet speeds, the concept of Dynamic Content was burgeoned that could capture user attention due to sheer dynamism and possibilities of creativity. The low-cost pay-as-you-go model is ensured via virtualization when we have transformed to Cloud. In bygone days, IT would do a CAPEX investment in Hardware purchase and invest in maintenance especially when your best hired resources should be focusing on core business.

For the organizations where-in Internet facing Application/Site performance and users experience is the key to growth, Cloud Services powered by best CDN (Content Delivery Network) is the panacea. Quick, reliable, secure and personalized viewing experiences across all the devices on your fingertips is what CDN offers.

Empiricism is the theory that all knowledge is based on experience derived from the senses. That’s where human beings sense of feeling will always reign over machines or robots. Businesses in all verticals flourish only when Empiricism gives way to a satisfied customer. It thrives on the fact that customer thinks exactly the thoughts which you want them to think so that they get hooked-on and his brain signals his fingers again and again to key in just the URL of your website and better still – don’t even open the competitor’s website on the adjacent tab.

CDN service providers delivers Internet contents like – web-objects, Applications, live/on-demand streaming media and social networks to the end-users.

Load-time, Availability, Response time, Security are few parameters on which a good CDN is adjudged.

Direct visible impact of CDN is on Business Revenue, Business Agility and increase in ability to take it to global scale.

How?

Take an example, Mr. ABC, the CIO of organization – XYZ is sitting in US with best Internet Connection speed (25 Mbps), his site is hosted in Data Center in India with Best Compute, Storage, and Network, Redundancy ensured at the First mile. When he accesses his website – www.xyz.com, he starts counting – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7…..while his eyes are forced to see that vexatious Loading icon.

Oops, it takes 8 seconds to load the Home Page of his own Brand. If I were a site visitor, I would definitely go to next tab and load another site to do justice to those 8 wasted seconds. So result is rise in distraction, confusion and higher chances of site abandonment and hence Revenue.

That’s where the concept of CONTENT DELIVERY NETWORK was incepted.

Following are the series of steps executed when customer keys in his web-site address on the address bar of his browser:

Step 1: Browser contacts DNS for conversion into IP address

Step 2: Browser will establish connection with the web server that hosts the website using IP address

Step 3: Retrieval of HTML code over the internet of the requested web-page

Step 4: HTML Content is delivered over the internet to the browser which then displays the HTML page – bare bone html structure, followed by hyper-linked stuff – static images etc. and lastly Dynamic content.

Step 5: When you leave the browser window idle for long or close it, the connection with Web server will end

So Step#4 above entails the need of a CDN to ensure rendering of page with lightening speeds. In absence of CDN, the complications of middle-mile will ruin all the performance optimizations, best coding practices you might have followed in creating your website.

Static files like images, javascript, css files can be cached by the browser so that in future it doesn’t have to fetch them again. Of course, many technologies and CDNs exist which ensures caching. The Site owners face the chill wind with regard to performance only when there is good amount of Dynamic content in their website.

Dynamic content is web content that changes between subsequent requests based on user access time, user preferences and personal information in order to ensure an engaging online experience. Some of the world’s largest websites are powered primarily by dynamic content as static content cannot capture user interest. According to recent studies, Seventy-four percent of online consumers get frustrated when a website promotes content that isn’t tailored to their interests

E.g. Amazon is delivering you a personalized content experience in an attempt to make you buy more. Notice the section called “Buy It Again” below the items you want to purchase. Amazon is populating this section by pulling your previous orders from its backend servers. This is much more effective for upselling purposes than listing random items.

The very reason why site performance is impacted in case of dynamic content is due to enforced round trips to the origin server, as it cannot be cached.

Only few CDNs on the planet give the required acceleration to dynamic content. Several techniques like route optimization are needed to optimize communication between the CDN edge servers and origin infrastructure to deliver dynamic content to the user that avoids Internet problem spots.

So the philosophy of having good dynamic content in your website with the lure of increasing user interest and hence hits, should be carefully chalked out along with the appropriate choice of CDN adoption.

Walking with the false myths of considering CDN as just a redundancy (or good-to-have) service can jeopardize the Business strategy significantly and will eventually become the bane of Business advancement prospects.

Facing performance pressures with your Websites and Web Portals? Feel free to reach out to us at cdn@sifycorp.com.

 

An increasingly connected world needs a smarter, faster and much more agile technology driver.

And this new business paradigm demands much more secure networks and storage, more efficient and completely clear communication and collaboration. Anything less than perfect will instantly become an Achilles heel of any enterprise, jeopardising their market status, reputation and in some cases, even existence.

What organisations need are domain-specific, integrated solutions than can transform the IT infrastructure, providing better focus on their plans for increasing asset productivity, thus contributing significantly to business growth. Transformation that leads to adoption of more agile, innovative tools and practices drive lower TCO and higher RoI for enterprises. A deep drive analysis of an organisation’s operational structure can actually identify the areas where transformational integration of technologies can achieve this business value.

Communication being the stronghold of enterprise operations today, anytime -anywhere access of data and systems information can be the differentiating factor between a good business plan and an excellent one. Deployment of emerging technologies that make a single platform communication a reality, that connect stakeholders across geographies, time zones and business interests- is a process outcome of transformational integration of collaborative and communication technologies. What is needed is a partner that can support through the giant leaps in a constantly evolving networking technology landscape. Simply because to grow, every organisation needs a real time, converged, application oriented network infrastructure – to achieve productivity and efficiency at a reduced TCO.

Ensuring these systems and the infrastructure is secure is critical, integration of all functionalities needs to be protected by extremely efficient security tools and applications. Enterprises need a partner who can provide state-of-art correlation technology including vulnerability and threat correlation with a robust and pre-emptive cyber threat intelligence framework. This framework should also be equipped to assure real-time risk monitoring and modelling for critical assets. Without a doubt, this level of support would need expertise and proven value on remote monitoring and management of networks, servers, applications and managed security services that ensure each aspect of IT infrastructure is free of threats and risks.

Between 2013 and 2010, data is more than doubling every year, says an IDC report. By 2020, human world will have created 44 zeta bytes of data. Are we ready for this deluge? And the zillion dollar question is, where are enterprises going to store all this data? Virtualization can help engage cloud storage, but innovative Data Center tools can help organisations cut costs of storage while increasing efficiencies. Virtualised Data Centers ensure effective and robust IT infrastructure for all critical business needs for every organization, working on consulting and design/product supply/deploying and managing services, etc. These are the pillars for IT transformation in any organisation and help to achieve its targets of growth.

This Data is invaluable if it speaks to the strategy makers of an enterprise. Communication here needs to be available throughout the enterprise, and assure insightful strategies are created. These strategies will be the drivers of growth, today and in the future.

With communication and collaboration technologies having evolved many times over in the last few years, a unified approach to communication is imperative for every organisation. The ability to efficiently communicate and collaborate across varying medium could be just the edge that drives an enterprise to higher market presence. Convergence across audio, video and other collaborating capabilities- ensuring seamless collaboration between varying devices- this resilient network fabric can provide the ability of real time and synchronous communications within the enterprise, as well as with the suppliers and customers’ network.

One of the strengths that organisations that look for in transformational integration support services, is the ability to power communication interfaces with open standards architecture, to make sure that their unified communication is future ready. What also helps is the ability to provide a single user interface, interchangeably between devices and networks. And finally, if these strengths reach out to business applications integration, they can be leveraged to drive a much faster, more agile, scalable and robust business decision protocol. This may mean encompassing clients, geographically diverse teams or backend suppliers- but the net result is driven by clear communication across devices. All that is needed is a robust security deployment to make this entire platform foolproof and completely secure.

At the end of the day, it is time enterprises wake up to the fact that IT processes working in silos may not be the route to success any more. It is only when all systems can be integrated with the objective of transformation, on a single, highly secure platform with converged networks, enabling virtualised data storage and seamless communication between business stakeholders, will an enterprise be ready for the future.

The reach of every human and business is fast expanding with almost the same speed as which the globe is shrinking. Businesses that are able to stay in constant touch- by various innovative and fast developing communication technologies, will have a definitive edge over competition – they will be available, connected to the market real time and hence the winners!

Keeping up with the speed of business would be impossible if communication technologies did not take the way of collaboration. It has been proven by research that providing improved and innovative communication that allows real time collaboration actually delivers measurable business benefits. Most enterprises have these tools in place, but as individual bundles. Standard phone calls and net connectivity is simply not enough to keep in touch with internal teams, and neither with your market. It has to be a real life, constant communicability experience that Unified communication provides. Besides, if all communication technologies are used as standalone tools, their RoI is much lower and so is their efficiency. It is only with use that enterprises realize the value addition that comes with a collaborative communication channel that takes care of all connectivity on a single platform. The savings become clear, and so do the added benefits.

Here are the top three advantages your business can get, with a single deployment of collaborative communication technology:

# 1. The topmost benefit that shows up as business savings in your balance sheet– is the saving made on connected networks. While networking is an imperative in today’s enterprise environment, a collaborative Communication implementation that saves the cost of separate stand alone networks- and a converged infrastructure is an upfront benefit! Added to this is the saving in executive travel and lodging- which can be completely avoided by virtual meetings that provide the clarity and convenience of a face-to-face meeting. Here, a voice, video and IM communication on a converged network, promises many times less the cost of a single executive’s travel for a location meeting. These tools reduce communication delays and failures, improve decisions quality and sharpen the collaboration process – all at a lower cost.

# 2. Shorter customer relation cycles that add to the customer experience hence the productivity process, ensures faster, higher growth in the market. Clearly any businesses that can deliver a shorter sales cycle, faster customer response and more efficient and satisfying market response time- is a winner. The savings are tremendous, the downside is very limited. The calculations will be very simple- the potential benefit of collaboration in the product development cycle can easily be forecast by observing the number of new products releases planned in a time period and the change in market share and company revenue in that period. The shorter development and launch cycles ensures the benefits start showing up in terms of a reducing cycle, and addition to market revenue as well as savings on cycle processes.

# 3. Collaborative communication places the onus of in the hands of the IT team of an organisation. This adds to it the sheen of higher security and better management, miles above standalone vendor driven tools for communication. This is a great opportunity for enterprises to straighten up their security policies, and achieve an almost seamless collaboration for all teams, personnel, offices and operation centers on a single platform. This platform being managed by the technology team, will be an asset to the company, in terms of security, and allow immediate and strategic decisions to be made. One needs to remember that deployment of collaborative communication tools is a business strategic decision, and hence the RoI that this deployment will achieve will definitely be an add-on to the business processes- without compromise on security or quality of communication.

With these clear, game changing benefits, it is imperative that enterprises use the power of collaboration. Whether it is expansion or just speedening up processes, this is the way to go. The benefits in terms of increase in revenue and market share will certainly manifest, but what’s more, it will also show higher employee productivity. A very clear relationship between communication and workflow efficiencies will start showing up as the outcome of using UC. The result will be a solid foundation, one that enables technology of communication to help the leaders make sound and collaborative business decisions, at a much faster pace and a much lower cost.