Execution Bound To Falter If Thought Process Is Flawed

Kamal Sharma - Group CIO, Mindlance, who will turn 31 this year, is among the youngest CIOs not only in India but globally. Handling the IT Infrastructure Business unit as well as the CIO office for the Group, he also supports the Inorganic growth of the company. He talks to Biztech2.com about the business impact of some of the key IT projects he has headed for Mindlance since joining the company last year. He also shares from his experience what it takes to roll out projects under set deadlines.

How critical is the role of IT in your company?

Although Information Technology plays a critical role in a company, usually it’s still considered as a ‘support’ function and not being given the status that it rightly deserves. A datacentre (DC) outage can result in operations coming to a standstill and on the other hand a single innovation in the DC can considerably shoot up the productivity levels.

More from Biztech

Future Group - Reliance Retail Deal approved by CCI RBI ban on cryptocurrencies takes effect; prohibition could force investors to tap the black market

At Mindlance, the importance of IT is perfectly understood, and that is precisely the reason why during inorganic growth plans IT is the first to be taken into consideration in terms of how it will promise the business assurance to the customers of the acquired company. This is just one aspect. Overall, the opinion of the CIO office is sought for a seamless acquisition process.

Even before designing a new product or service, the CIO’s office is approached for their suggestions on how can they bring in their leverage and further enrich the product/service.

Project management will be a key skill set for the enterprise CIO. What is your mantra for successful project implementation?

Any IT implementation goes through two processes - one is the thought process and the other is the execution process. The latter is bound to falter if the former is flawed.

The secret to successful project implementation lies in proper articulation of the rationale behind it to all the team members of the project management office (PMO). I sensitise them about the value add the project will bring in not only for the company but also for their career as a whole, how will it add to our existing skill sets - basically a multi-faceted explanation that will fit to all the different levels of executives who constitute the PMO.

Every executive possesses a different IT and business skill maturity. My role is to understand their mindset and get the message across. But, how do I do it? I think speaking a common language that is universally understood by all employee levels is important. Any typical project committee has a GM, Manager, Senior Manager, Consultant and an engineer. The success rate rests on their understanding of what the project means to them and the company. If they get the rationale right in their heads, it’s all a matter of time before the project is completed successfully.

So far we have beaten our project deadlines for all the major projects that have been undertaken in my leadership.

Can you share details of some of the critical IT projects that you have undertaken and how they have impacted business?

Mindlance undertook some critical projects about a year back when I joined the company. Due to a wide geographical footprint, there were a lot of challenges around data and voice communication and it was becoming a major bottleneck for carrying on smooth business operations. Instead of an in-house model we opted for the cloud computing model. The entire e-mail, instant messaging and mobile communication were transferred onto the private cloud. Today, it is a private cloud with about 1000 users with plan to move approx. 625 users in the next couple of months

The access to cloud services is user based. The executives who by the nature of their job need added features while they are not in office and are always on the move are given access to the respective services on their mobiles. This helps them to support business operations 24/7 irrespective of where they operate from.

Another key project undertaken was on the data management front. A large part of our business comes from the government vertical in USA. Other business verticals include Life sciences, IT Infrastructure management. The data size for us was increasing by leaps and bounds, Quarter-on-Quarter. We were already investing a lot in data storage, security and back-up devices. This time around, instead of investing in similar storage boxes, a decision was taken to go for an advanced storage and back-up solution. The product suite also included the adoption of data deduplication technologies.

After adopting the solution we found out that the back-ups included 40% of duplicated data. This has improved the availability by 99.95% and the productivity of our users has also gone up. Our overall storage costs have reduced by 28% annually.

We are also doing a due diligence for Network Virtualisation. The POC is underway. I believe after taking the required decisions, we will begin the project in March and complete it by May this year.

Tell us about Mindlance’s recent initiatives on Information Security?

On Information Security, we have taken a centralised approach. Currently, Mindlance is establishing a Network Operation Control Centre (NOC). Alongside we are also revamping our security structure at our centres and offices. The idea is to standardise the security policies, devices across locations so the endpoint security, local encryption etc, and then have a central location to manage and monitor these services. This will streamline the provision of security services to the employees and customers. It means that our Bengaluru office would have an identical security policy and devices as the USA or UK or any other Indian office.

What is your strategy to manage the DC?

Mindlance has recently bought a new real estate space to build a Greenfield Datacentre in Bengaluru. The construction is due to be completed in the next three months. The DC will house infrastructure in accordance to the required compliance standards. We will only be using devices that are compliant to five star ratings. This will define the DC to be called ‘Green’ in real terms.

The efforts are also to make the DC virtualised to get the best out of our IT investments and to make it more energy efficient.