THE
BIG
BENEFITS
OF
BIG DATA
ANALYTICS
With businesses already deriving big benefits out
of their big data and analytics efforts, and many
still figuring out the whys and wherefores of data
science, here is an account of the big picture of
analytics in India and the innovative initiatives that
are helping companies save millions.
f o r t h e n e x t
g e n e r at i o n
o f c i o s
June 2015|`100 | Volume 06|issue 05 |A 9.9 Media Publication www.itnext.com| facebook.com/t | @itnext_magazine
10 Mobile Computing Insights
pg 20technology Feature
Opinion
WHY ARE YOU BEING
APOLOGETIC ABOUT
BEING IN TECH?
PAGE 04
Strategy Feature
THE CHALLENGES
OF ALIGNING IT AND
THE BUSINESS
EDITORI
A
L
1 j u n e 2 0 1 5 | ITNEXT
Get Ready for the
Digital Business
Rapid changes in the Indian
business environment are driving
new expectations—and demands—from
the IT department. More and more business units are
keen to utilize the latest advances in technology to deliver new services to customers, improve productivity and accountability, increase revenues, boost customer satisfaction—or to keep up with competition.While budgets for many of these new initiatives are becoming available, the big challenge for the IT department is to prepare the infrastructure and processes to support these escalating enterprise expectations. And to deliver results quickly. To do this, IT leaders will need to hone a brand new set skills that will enable them successfully drive digital innovation.
At the top of the list is the ability to create and deploy mobile enterprise applications. The demand is being driven both by employees and customers—and the urgency is real. But, delivering on mobility can be tricky—given the wide variety of hardware and software platforms, security considerations, and the brisk evolution of the mobile eco-system. So, go out and learn more about the technologies that enable the mobile revolution—and be prepared to re-think your internal processes and systems.
Closely linked to mobility is the delivery of user experience. Technology users now expect—and demand—great convenience and ease of use. They want systems that are intuitive and adaptive, and have little patience for desktop screens that have been merely re-sized for the mobile platform. Responsive design is just not enough—users expect true mobile apps. To do this, you will need to work with business units to re-design information flows, delivery mechanisms and user interactions. So, read up on user experience design.
Next on the list is predictive analytics. If you can find a way to discover useful correlations from the vast amounts of data that your organization has been collecting, your business users will be delighted. Even better, put the tool into their hands and train them to use it. Check out how big data technologies can help you do this.
Finally, keep a close watch on how Internet of Things (IoT) is evolving. You may be able to deliver great value to the organization by connecting and integrating information from a wide variety of smart devices and sensors.
Write in, and let us know how you are getting ready for digital business.
R G I R I D H A R
“ IT leaders will need to
hone a brand new set of
skills that will enable
them successfully drive
digital innovation.”
Blogs To Watch!
Devops- is a concept dealing, among other things with software development, operations and services. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Devops
it operations – Devop http://www.intland.com/ solutions/by-discipline/devops/ Devops definition: Best explained by what it’s not http://searchsoftwarequality. techtarget.com/ news/2240176588/Devops- definition-Best-explained-by-what-its-not
Devops & it Management partners
2 ITNEXT | J U N E 2 0 1 5
CONT
E
NT
JUNE 2015 V O L U M E 0 6 | I S S U E 0 5
F O R T H E L AT E S T T E C H N O L O G Y U P D AT E S G O T O I T N E X T. I N
COVER STORY
12
The Big Benefits of Big Data Analytics
an account of the big picture of analytics in india and the initiatives that are
helping companies save millions.
38 Disruption Is the New Normal | Attempting to apply old-school approaches and invoke protectionist practices in today’s ever-changing business environment is a recipe for disaster
STRATEGY
Fa c e b o o k : h t t p : // w w w. f a c e b o o k . c o m / h o m e . p h p # / g r o u p . p h p ? g i d = 1 9 5 67 5 0 3 0 5 8 2 tw i t t e r :
h t t p : // t w i t t e r. c o m / i t n e x t l i n k e d i n
h t t p : // w w w. l i n k e d i n . c o m / g r o u p s ? g i d = 2 2 6 17 7 0 & t r k = m y g _ u g r p _ ov r
THE BIG BENEFITS
OF BIG DATA ANALYTICS
With businesses already deriving big benefits out of their big data and analytics efforts, and many still figuring out the whys and wherefores of data science, here is an account of the big picture of analytics in India and the innovative initiatives that are helping companies save millions.
F O R T H E N E X TG E N E R AT I O NO F C I O s
June 2015|`100 | Volume 06|Issue 05 |A 9.9 Media Publication www.itnext.com| facebook.com/t | @itnext_magazine
10 Mobile Computing Insights PG 20 TECHNOLOGY FEATURE Opinion
WHY ARE YOU BEING APOLOGETIC ABOUT BEING IN TECH? PAGE 04
Strategy Feature
THE CHALLENGES OF ALIGNING IT AND THE BUSINESS PAGE 26
15
Big Data Momentum Intensifies
pulak ghosh, an analytics expert who is currently in the panel of un’s
big data group, talks about the current state of affairs as far as big data
adoption is concerned in india.
18
‘Machine Learning Help Us Save Millions’
navin Manaswi, a data scientist and a big data specialist with a u.S.-based
food company shares insights on how they leverage data science to forecast
demands of products.
COVER
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STRATEGY
26 The Challenges of Aligning IT and the Business IThe issue of aligning IT with the business isn’t really a clear-cut business, IT or management problem, it’s often a feeling that people experience.
STRATEGY
38 Between a Cyber-Rock and a Risk Place | With the board of directors asking questions about security readiness, CIOs are under pressure to assess their organization’s ability to respond to threats
ESDS
CONFERENCE
REPORT
36 Innovations Simplify DC Management |Latest advances ease resource management, and ensure reliable service delivery
TECH INSIGHT
20Why You Must Leverage these Mobile Insights I If you bet on mobile computing, these insights will help you
TECH INSIGHT
24“IoT Needs a New Network Architecture”I To handle the demands of the IoT environment, Huawei has extended its enterprise networking product lineTECH INSIGHT
35“The Implications of Net Neutrality IThe Implications for Internet users and SMBs
22
Page
How CIOs Can Ensure
Their IT Teams Are a Good Fit
4 ITNEXT | J U N E 2 0 1 5
A good CEO must know the strengths of the
CIO and he should not interfere with the
decisions in his functional area.
M
other India , Amar, Aan, Andaz,Anokhi Ada, Anmol Ghadi… what is common to these all-time classics, apart from being musical superhits? They are all movies made by Mehboob Khan, with music com-posed by Naushad. Mehboob-Naushad combina-tion is one of the most successful director-composer associations in the history of Hindi cinema.
Both Mehboob and Naushad were towering figures in their own areas. Mehboob was the first showman; Naushad turned Hindi film music into a genre by itself.
But why am I getting into musicology here? Because I believe something that happened between the two has valuable lessons for all of us—in this case CIOs.
This is the incident as described by Naushad himself in an interview, which happened in the beginning of their association.
“When I recorded my first song for Mehboob’s ‘Anmol Ghadi’, he asked Noor Jehan to change a note, add a stress there. He was the boss. The next day I purposely went on to the sets while the song was being filmed. Mehboob welcomed me saying ‘Look at your song being shot!’ “May I see through the camera?” I asked. He allowed me.
I peered through it and asked the people around to move the table to the left, a chair to the right. Mahboob caught me by the ear and said, ‘Your job is music, direction is my job’. I said that was the very admission I wanted from him, that his job
Why are you being
apologetic about
being in tech?
M A N AG E M E N T
great professional. Reason No 2: he had immense faith on and respect for Naushad. Anmol Ghadi was a 1946 movie; they went on to produce many super hits after that. Almost all the names that I mentioned in the beginning were made later.
Translated to our lingo, a good CEO must know the strengths of the CIO, must respect him/ her. While being ruthless in getting the business outcomes is needed, he should not interfere with his decisions in his functional area.
What is worrying is that some CIOs have unwittingly started believing in this. They are almost apologetic about the fact that they come from a technology background; they try to play up their ‘business profiles’.
Why is a CIO ashamed of his core function? I myself have argued so many times the need for an understanding of business and appreciation of business outcomes expected from application of IT. No one can argue otherwise. But that does not translate to being sorry about technology.
Shyamanuja Das heads business research practice at Juxt SmartMandate, an analytics and research firm based in Gurgaon.
Sheryl Sandberg
examines why
women’s progress
in achieving
leadership roles
has stalled. She
explains the
root causes and
offers compelling
solutions that can
empower women
SUGGESTION BOX
OPINI
O
N
|
ShyaManuJa DaS
was direction and not music. Mehboob’s answer was clear from thereon — never to enter the music room again, and I did all the films unfettered.”
A pro respects a pro…
The CEO-CIO combination is much like a director-composer relationship. At the end of the day, it is the CEO who is responsible to the shareholders just as the director is responsible for the film’s overall success. In India, music plays an important role in that success.
While it is director who explains the situation; the mood that he wants; the expression that he expects; sometimes even recommends the play-back artist; he has no business telling the com-poser to change a note here or use a dholak instead of pakhawaj for the beats; certainly not in a com-manding tone. The responsibility of producing a good tune is the composer’s.
But why did Mehboob—known in the industry for his life-size ego—listen to a 27 year old? Reason No 1: his ego notwithstanding, he was a
the demands on the cio to be
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tech trenDS | A mobile device emulator allows you to test the respon-siveness and functionality of your app across platforms including iOS, Android, and Windows without actually having the devices with you.
native android emulator
Android SDK comes with a virtual mobile device emulator that allows developers to test and run their apps without having a physical device. It
5 Free Mobile Device
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Jar of Beans is an Android emulator that runs on the Jelly Bean version of the Android platform and is sup-ported by Intel Hardware Acceler-ated Execution Manager (HAXM), for hardware acceleration and improved performance..
Bluestacks android emulator
Bluestacks is very much an Android app player that allows you to run Android apps on your Windows PC or Mac. However, you can also link it with Eclipse to test your apps. Also you can install the apk file of your app and test it using this tool.
WindoWs Phone emulator The windows phone SDK comes with its own emulator that allows developers to test their apps on a virtual device. The default memory allocated to the tool is 512 MB so that you can test your apps for lower memory phones available in the market..
nokia s40 emulator Nokia Asha SDK 1.2 comes with an emulator for testing apps targeted for Nokia Asha 502 phones. Emulator comes with full UI interaction, messaging features and network commu-nication features. This emulator helps developers run and test their apps without having a physical device.
With the usage of web from before you set off your journey
Source: ey.com
cfo-cio: a Growing collaboration
Busine
ss
strate
gy
insufficient understanding of ITissues among finance executives
The absence of a clear set of key performance indicators (KPls) that link financial performance and he IT agenda
Processes and tools are incompatible across the two functions
Lack of finance resources to dedicate to the IT agenda
Our organisational structure prevents this kind of collaboration
44%
7
J U N E 2 0 1 5 | itnext
sony xPeria m4 aQua
The phone has the new ‘cap-less’ uSB port for charging. The micro-uSB charging slot on the left side of the device
is the uSP. M4 Aqua is can be submerged in up to 1.5 metres of water. It is priced at ` 23k (approx)
hooQ, online streaminG service
Singtel, Sony Pictures Television and Warner Bros have teamed up to launch this streaming service.
Hooq will be available in India from june for ` 199 a month.
tech tiDinS | Accoding to Akamai, Q1 2015 set a new record for the number of DDoS attacks observed across the PLX routed network--a jump of more than 35 percent over the last quarter. Not only has the volume of attacks increased, the profile has also changed. Last year, high bandwidth and short duration attacks were the norm. But in Q1 2015, the typical DDoS attack was less than 10 gigabits per second (Gbps), and endured for just over 24 hours. There were eight mega-attacks in Q1, each exceeding 100 Gbps.
During the past year, DDoS attack vectors have also shifted. This
Significant Increase
in DDoS
Attack Activity
and office devices—including routers, media servers, web cams, smart TVs and printers— to allow them to discover each other on a network, establish communication and coordinate activities. If left unsecured and/or misconfigured, these home-based, Internet-connected devices can be harnessed for use as reflectors.
Gaming has remained the most targeted industry since Q2 2014, consistently being targeted in 35 percent of DDoS attacks. The software and technology sector was the second most targeted industry in Q1 2015, with 25 percent of the attacks.
Akamai’s
New research from F-Secure warns
of Growth in Extortion Malware. The
company has witnessed SMS message
sending trojans and ransomware attacks
on Mobile Wallets and Virtual currencies
on rise in the H2, 2014. According to
the report, both Android & iOS have
experienced malwares which have tried
to attack the banking applications and
mobile wallets in H2, 2014.
arounD the worlD
Attacks on Mobile
Wallets and
Virtual currencies on Rise
steve Jobs (1955 –2011)
“That’s been one of my
mantras —focus and
simplicity. Simple can
be harder than complex;
you have to work hard to
get your thinking clean to
make it simple.”
quarter, Simple Service Discovery Protocol (SSDP) attacks accounted for more than 20 percent of the attack vectors, while SSDP attacks were not observed at all in Q1 or Q2 2014. SSDP comes enabled by default on millions of home
quicK Byte
micromax canvas doodle 4
The Canvas Doodle 4 has a 6-inch HD display with 720 x 1280 pixels resolution. The smartphone has a quad-core 1.3 GHz processor and runs Android
5.0 Lollipop. It has an 8 MP rear camera, and is priced at
pho
TeCH TIDInGS | Government IT spending in India will reach $6.8 billion US dollars in 2015, an increase of 5.7 percent over 2014, says Gartner.
“IT services, which includes consult-ing, implementation, IT outsourcing and business process outsourcing,
will be the largest overall spend-ing category throughout 2019 within the government sector,“ said Dr Anurag Gupta, research vice president at Gartner. Inter-nal services IT spending will increase 8.8 percent in 2015 to reach $1.6 billion USD in 2015.
Internal services refer to salaries and bene-fits paid to the information services staff of an organization. The information services staff includes all company employees that plan, develop, implement and maintain information systems.
Software spending will grow 10.2 percent in 2015 to reach $860 million USD, up from $781 million USD in 2014, led by growth in vertical spe-cific software (software applications that are unique to a vertical industry. These are stand-alone applications that are not modules or extensions of horizontal applications).
Leveraging its deep relation-ships and expertise in the telecom services industry, Huawei has announced an APT security solu-tion that aims to provide compre-hensive protection to the cloud, pipe, and devices. The solution combines Huawei’s FireHunter security sandbox products, a Cyber-security Intelligence System, and a software firewall product. Huawei has also announced plans to form a Cloud Clean Alliance that will pro-vide real-time cleaning services for denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.
Huawei’s FireHunter security sandboxes are designed to detect and defend against APT attacks. The devices are equipped with reputation system and multilayer inspection technology, and can inspect over 180,000 files per day.
The Huawei USG6000V series of virtualized cross-platform soft-ware firewalls integrate multiple security functions including tra-ditional firewall, VPN, intrusion prevention, antivirus, DLP and
anti-Government
in India to Spend
$6.8 Billion in 2015
Huawei Tackles
Security
Threats with a New Strategy
The devices and can inspect over 180,000 files per day.
DDoS. The software can can be flex-ibly deployed on SDN switches and routers to provide security capabili-ties to network element devices. The software firewall supports many popular virtual environments including VMware, KVM, XEN and UVP, as well as Netconf, REST-ful and OpenStack architectures. It employs Intel’s latest Data Plane Development Kit using Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) tech-nology to deliver compresehnsive security for cloud environments, and the software pattern-matching engine is claimed to deliver up to 40 Gbps performance.
From data center to boardroom, how do you see the responsibilities of CSOs evolve?
CISO now shares common responsibility of all cyber crimes committed in his organi-sation. For example, if an organisation is traced via its IP address for a cognizable offence and the organisation lacks reason-able security practices by not finding the right accused, the CISO is implicated as accused. The dominant trend is to rely on security solutions vendors --to shift the responsibility on the solution offered by vendor, which is a sad state. Security needs holistic approach backed by strong man and machine policies.
In the wake of IT Act 2000 & the Com-panies Act 2013, has the rule of the game changed for CISOs?
IT Act 2000 & the Companies Act 2013 have made the CISO as statutory designa-tion --designadesigna-tion recognized by law that makes all organisations to hire CISO or designate one for them. They have become important resource in organisation and security has become the board matter.
What’s your advice for CSOs to have smooth sailing with regard to imple-mentation of best practices keeping in mind regulations, compliance, etc?
The CSOs should have compliance chart ready encompassing ISMS, IT Act, 2000, SEBI, Companies Act and other rules and regulations his organisation is subjected to. He needs to become “Security Hawk” in the organisation because he has a legal responsibility and he is also responsible for the legal risk his organisation gets exposed.
Till September 2014, 15k sites were reportedly hacked in the country; a majority of the cases have been filed under the IT Act. What’s the message for the CSO from this?
India and Indian organisations are on con-stant radar of malicious attackers. I advise that every large organisation or large group should have its own CERT . This CERT can have parallel relationships with other CERTs across countries. This brings better resilience to a scenario like “Zero Day Exploit” or mass “Cyber Attacks”.
intervieW
ADV. PRASHANT MALI
Cyber Law & Cyber Security Expert
9
J U N E 2 0 1 5 | itnext
UPDA
T
E
TeCH TIDInGS | Honeywell launched the first digital dashboard designed to proac-tively monitor, measure and manage cyber security risk for control systems for refin-eries, power plants and other automated production sites throughout the world that are at increasing risk of cyber attacks. The Honeywell Industrial Cyber Security Risk Manager, is designed to simplify the task of identifying areas of cyber security risk, providing real-time visibility, under-standing and decision support required for action. It monitors and measures cyber security risk in multi-vendor industrial environments.
The threat of cyber attacks on industrial targets is a major concern according to a global survey on cyber security conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs in September 2014 on behalf of Honeywell. More than 5,000
adults in 10 countries were surveyed about the threat of cyber attacks on critical indus-tries in their counindus-tries. Three quarters of respondents said they were fearful that cyber criminals could hack into and control major sectors and elements of the economy. Two-thirds of those surveyed thought that the oil and gas, chemicals and power industries were particularly vulnerable to cyber attacks.
Risk Manager uses advanced technolo-gies that translate complex cyber security indicators into clear measurements and key performance indicators (KPI), and provides essential information through an easy-to-use interface. The intuitive work-flow allows users to create customized risk notification alerts and perform detailed threat and vulnerability analysis so they can focus on managing risks that are most important for reliable plant operations.
Honeywell
to Manage Risk for
Industrial Sites
Health care providers in India are expected to spend $1.2 billion uS Dollars (uSD) on IT products and services in 2015, an increase of 7 percent over 2014, accord-ing to Gartner. This forecast includes spending by healthcare providers (including hospitals, as well as ambulatory service and physicians practices) on internal services, software, IT services, data center, devices and telecom services.
Internal services will achieve the highest growth rate amongst the spending categories with a 17 percent increase in 2015 to reach $297 million uSD. Internal services refer to salaries and benefits paid to the information services staff of an organization. The information services staff includes all company employees that plan, develop, implement and maintain information systems. Software spending will grow 6.2 percent to reach $103 million uSD in 2015, up from $97 million in 2014, led by growth in verti-cal specific software (software applications that are unique to a vertical industry.
tech trenDS
healthcare
Providers in india
to spend us $1.2
Billion on it in 2015
The areas of cyber security risk
‘Nasscom Cyber Security Task Force’ aims to make India the hub
for cyber security related research, training and products. Led by
NIIT chairman Rajendra Pawar, the task force is going to form a
comprehensive cyber security plan within the next 12 weeks.
NEWS @
BLOG
NASSCOM’S TASK FORCE FOR CYBER SECURITY
1 0 itnext | J U N E 2 0 1 5
Thanks to the changes that are sweeping the business landscape,
enterprises were rediscovering new use cases for already
established technology tools. Video conferencing, for example, is
providing a whole new set of business values. Judicious selection
of a partner is key to optimize that value creation.
Vodafone Managed
Video Conferencing:
Solutions for the New Era
powered by
Vodafone
B
usinesses are increasingly realizing the power of collaboration. Technologies that catalyze collabo-ration and enhance the quality of collaborative processes are now being looked at with new expectations. Video conferencing stands right on top of the list of such tools.To be sure, video conferencing is not new at all. It has existed in large enterprises for long—as a replace-ment for travel. The ROI for such systems were initially justified comparing the investment with cost incurred on travel. Those ROIs are still largely valid.
But that is not the reason why businesses are look-ing at video conferenclook-ing with renewed interest. From a cost save, video conferencing has transformed itself into a value creator in the new business regime.
There are multiple ways businesses are using it to derive value. Some of them are as follows
Improving efficiency: The traditional ROI justifier; by reducing the requirement to travel, video conferenc-ing not just saves on travel cost but also on travel time. That contributes to enhanced efficiency in the organization.
Real time collaborative processes: Whether it is a product development or a classroom teaching; decision making or a professional discussion, video conferencing closes the distance gap between teams and individuals. Verticals from health care to educa-tion; services to government have found their own
"From a cost
save, video
conferencing
has transformed
itself into a value
creator in the new
business regime."
Satish Mittal1 1
J U N E 2 0 1 5 | itnext
innovative use cases. The value derived from these collaborations—not possible without the technology—goes far beyond the cost savings.
Why should the decision wait? This is a fairly new application of video conferencing. Mobile has revolutionized the way businesses work. With connectivity and power coming to mobile devices such as phones and tablets, one is never too far from one’s colleagues, partners, clients or vendors. So, why should a decision wait? Increasingly, there is expectation that users should be able to smoothly join a video confer-encing from device of his choice. A hassle free mobile video conferencing capability is increas-ingly becoming important while choosing video conferencing applications and vendors.
Just hanging out: However strange it may sound, a few knowledge enterprises are now having video conference just to keep each other abreast
of what is happening, in what is called no-agenda meetings. VCs, law firms and other such professional firms where indi-vidual teams by and large work on their own, are using video conferencing to share knowledge. Needless to say, no organi-zation would do these meetings if travel were required!
Choosing a Solution
Changes in technology and business environment have made enterprises look for hassle free management and investment protection while choosing a technology solution. It is no surprise many of them are choosing managed video conferencing solutions.
While investment protection and easier manageability come naturally with managed services, choosing a right partner for managed services is a little different from choosing a traditional product vendor. Product features keep changing frequently but a partner without the requisite “services” experience creates problems in the long run. This has resulted in many businesses turning to their trusted telecom partners.
There are questions that need to be answered before embark-ing on a video conferencembark-ing journey. For example, how will the video conferencing be used in the enterprise? Is it for specific applications or enterprise-wide? What will be the usage volume? Will it be used simultaneously by many groups? What kind of information would be exchanged? How to plan for bandwidth based on estimated usage? Will the meetings be required to be recorded? How will video be integrated with other communica-tions tools/devices in the enterprise?
Once the answers to these basic questions are obtained, the actual solution has to be decided based on careful evaluation of some basic as well as newer expectations.
Here are some of the more sought-after features being looked for in a video conferencing system.
Smooth experience: Today’s consumer technologies—led by Apple—have thrived by creating better than expected experi-ence. No user is going to compromise on quality of experiexperi-ence.
Vodafone managed video conferencing solution provided full high-definition (HD) video quality for near real experience.
Heterogeneous network connectivity: Video conferencing has to work in all types of network—be it corporate multi-protocal label switchng (MPLS) virtual private netwrk(VPN) or a public Internet or a small integrated services for digial netwrok (ISDN) connection in a branch office. The Vodafone video conferencing solution is network agnostic.
Anytime, Anywhere connectivity: In the age of bring your own device (BYOD), one of the most important user demands for any enterprise application is accessible from mobile phones and tablets. As many are now using video conferencing to do on-demand instant meetings to speed up decision making, mobile connectivity is a must. Video conferencing solution from Vodafone is device agnostic and supports all major mobile devices.
Easy manageability: One of the nightmarish experiences of the old-age video conferencing is managing the meetings and application. Vodafone managed video conferencing solution provides web self-care portal for scheduling and reporting.
Recording for non-participants and analysis: Recording is becoming another much sought after feature. Vodafone video conferencing solution incorporates features for on-demand recording.
Of course, the managed services model allows the users to avail of pay per port as they grow and protects investments.
Vodafone, with its years of experience as a service provider, understands delivery side issues very well. It also understands the new needs arising out of demand for mobile access.
As sweeping changes happen in business and technology environments, enterprises have to keep pace. And that should reflect in their choosing a technology solution. As the ogy strategy of businesses moves more towards buying technol-ogy as services, those with experience of delivering high quality services would be natural allies.
COVER STORY
|
Big data & analytics`
By Mastufa ahmed
Design by Haridas Balan | Illustration by Peterson PJ
with businesses already deriving big benefits
out of their big data and analytics efforts,
and many still figuring out the whys and
wherefores of data science, here is an
account of the big picture of analytics in
india and the innovative initiatives that are
helping companies save millions.
THE BIG
BENEFITS
OF BIG DATA
ANALYTICS
INSIDE
15 | Big Data Momentum intensifies
18 | ‘Machine learning helps us Save Millons’
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ig data and analytics is all the ragetoday with several big initiatives taken by Indian businesses delivering results already. Among those who’re reaping the benefits from their data-driven efforts include banks and ecommerce companies. Etailing players who were in the league of early adopters have transitioned from just analyzing customer sentiments to betting on data and analytics to a deeper level to leapfrog to the next level. FlipKart’s analytics report, for instance, is being leveraged by over 200 decision makers on a daily basis. So are Amazon and Snapdeal.
Coming to large banks, analytics have proven to be a crucial ingredient of success with banks like ICICI, CITI, having their own analytics wings comprising of data scientists and statisticians.
Quality of data makes the case for the banking industry to invest on big data and analytics. The largest commercial bank of India, State Bank of India has recently started a vertical on analytics with a group of experts comprising of statisticians, banking professionals and computer scientists to develop advanced analytics methods. This new data-driven
business model gave them an impetus to their initiatives of doing more business with the existing customers.
Analytics transcends beyond the walls of business verticals in terms of its use case scenario. The biggest election victory, in over three decades, for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) resulted from the process of capturing and analyzing humongous data. Auto makers such as Tata Motors, Maruti Suzuki India, and even Hero MotoCorp are all in the process of sieving through data pools amassed through customer interactions to rev up their decision making and advance efficiency of selling more vehicles.
Adoption of analytics is also picking up in Indian healthcare. Fortis and Apollo are some of the healthcare providers that bet on analytics. Apollo Hospital seeks consultations on project basis in areas like resource optimization, dashboard analysis and segmentation of patients. A fresh new concept called ‘health eCommerce’ starts gaining traction recently.
We spoke with the Pulak Ghosh, a big data and analytics expert who is a professor in IIM-B in the Quantitative Methods and Information Systems area. Ghosh is also a member of United Nations’ big data group and he lectured extensively on how business can benefit from data-driven efforts.
This month cover story gives you a big picture of big data and analytics in India, how it all started and what is the current level of adoption. This is an in-depth analysis of why and how analytics is set to gain momentum with an exponential rate soon. This also features in some of the top issues and challenges facing data science including the dearth of professionals.
So, if you are seriously contemplating over betting on your stored customer data pool, this piece will provide you some insights on how you can leverage the same.
Navin Manaswi, a data scientist and a big data specialist shares how General Mills, a multinational food companies in India, saves millions of dollars using machine learning algorithms.
Navin discloses how they leverage data science practices to forecast demands of products and save money. The data wizard also gives some advice for IT managers on how to identify strengths and limitations of all popular machine learning algorithms and do classification, clustering, prediction, associate mining, optimization and mathematical modeling, to be able to help business leaders take better decisions.
Snapdeal deploys Big Data for better consumer experience. they have moved their systems from relational Database Management System to a real time in-memory noSqlDB with Big Data capabilities to empower the Snapdeal portal with scale, speed and real time information. the other technology that has been implemented at Snapdeal is the recommendation engine; the Big Data element of the engine provides intelligent recommen-dations to the frequent visitor.
-Vishal Chadha, vice president, Market Development, Snapdeal
the recent mobile-first move of the ecommerce giant FlipKart is an experi-ment underpinned by insights from the data they gather everyday. Seventy per cent of FlipKart’s traffic comes from the mobile app. Plus, app can serve users’ request better than mobile sites. So, if the top priority of the company is to add on to the user experience and grow their business, then the top driver for them to enable this change is analytics.
-Ravi Vijayaraghavan, VP- Analytics, FlipKart
Why e-commerce companies
deploy big data solutions
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How do you see big data and analytics initiatives being embraced by businesses?
While the potential benefits of Big Data are real and significant, and some initial successes have already been achieved, there remain many technical challenges that must be addressed to fully realize this potential. Big data is supposed to be a $25 billion industry and India has the great opportunity to take a large share from it. However, Big data is in a nascent stage in general and more so in India and many believe that this technology is about large volume of data. While this is true and has always been there, what compounds its intricacy is the nature of data which is mostly ‘unstructured’. The real value of big data is combining off-line (structured) and on-line (unstructured) and making the inference real-time.
Firms in India are yet to combine the two in this real-time fashion. Either they are doing analytics on the massive data or they are doing analytics on social media data (mostly very simple negative-positive sentiment analytics only), but separately. While some start-ups are moving in this direction, the wave is yet to become a tide. Heterogeneity, scale, timeliness, complexity, and privacy problems with Big Data impede progress at all phases of the pipeline that can create value from data. In India, analytics is mostly service based and very few are product-embedded. Companies here are weighing in its benefits while many eTailers are already storing data to underpin their likely future initiatives. They may not be cashing in on the data insights yet, but this is what big data tackling warrants to start with, and then move onto advanced analytics initiatives.
BIG DATA
MOMENTUM
INTENSIFIES
Pulak Ghosh,
an analytics expert who
is currently in the panel of un’s big
data group, talks about the current
state of affairs as far as big data
adoption is concerned in india.
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What are major drivers of big data and analytics and who’re the frontrunners in india?
Let’s understand the growth pattern in India’s big data and analytics ventures. When I came back to India back in 2009, after having a decade-long stint in United States as a data scientist in health care and biostatistics, there was almost nothing on data analytics. It was mostly data analysis! Use of data based analysis in healthcare and clinical trial was almost non-existent and nowhere comparable to the western market. However, some movement started happening in the banking sector. Post 2008, banks started realizing the potential of the humongous customer data they already had stored. This eventually led them doing more business with the existing customers by betting on customer preferences and addressing their pain points. Banks did move fast also because they always had quality data! The new data-driven business model gave them a fillip to their new initiatives of doing more business with the on-board customers, given that
banking data is more reliable than the data from other business verticals such as retail. So, it wasn’t unless the year 2010/11, when some frontrunners like ICICI Bank, and HDFC Bank jumped onto the bandwagon on a serious note. State Bank of India started investing on Big data analytics heavily.
The next big player for use of big data analytic are e-commerce companies such as FlipKart, Amazon, etc. They are mostly using unstructured and structured
data in a combined way. For example, e-commerce companies also need to develop algorithm for cross-sell /up-sale. However, with nearly 1.5 lakh product on display how does one develop the algorithm in real-time. Added with that, the problem of sparseness in the data because not every product get sold frequently and there is an inherent minimum time before a customer buys the same product again!
The third segment where I see more and more use of analytics is in retail and FMCG.
What’s the current level of adoption of data-driven initiatives across businesses? Appreciation of analytics is gaining momentum with an exponential rate! Already convinced players like, banks, e-commerce companies are taking the analytics expertise to the next level. While, Citi, HSBC, HDFC, ICICI and Axis bank has now a dedicated team to look at problems using advanced analytics, the largest commercial bank of India, State Bank of India has started a vertical on analytics with balanced group comprising of several statisticians, banking professionals and computer scientist to develop advanced analytics methods. Coming to retail, Amazon and FlipKart started betting on their data following the early success stories scripted by the banks. Snapdeal has also started on analytics recently.
More and more firms are today convinced that there is a great deal of competitive advantage in taking decision which is supported by findings through analytics. Some of the new players in this league are Madura Fashion, ITC, Marico, Spencer to name a few.
Bangalore today has some 500+ analytics firms, while 80% of Indian firms are not yet over to analytics. Apart from retail and banking, analytics adoption in healthcare is also picking up in India. Fortis and Apollo are some of the healthcare providers that bet on analytics. Apollo Hospital seeks consultations on project basis in areas like resource optimization, dashboard analysis and segmentation of patients. A fresh new concept called ‘health eCommerce’ starts gaining traction recently. Former CEO of iGate Phaneesh Murthy is launching an online healthcare marketplace.
Another area which is being leveraged by almost all firms having a presence across social platforms is ‘social media analytics’. This move transcends
Heterogeneit
y
Scale
Timeliness Privacy Human Collabor
ation
The Big Data Analysis Pipeline. Major steps in
analy-sis of big data are shown in the flow at top. Below it
are big data needs that make these tasks challenging
Overall system
Source: www.purdue.edu
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the borders of business verticals where product companies keep a tab on users’ sentiments and feedbacks. Today customers’ sentiment analysis is one of the most common modus operandi for companies to gauze their product strengths and weaknesses which many are working upon.
india would see a huge demand for data experts in coming days. How do we get the manpower given that we don’t have interdisciplinary course available in india? This is a genuine problem. Those who understand business are not comfortable with programming or for that matter visualisation tools. In other words, a programmer may not find statistics intriguing and hence this gives rise to another problem of hiring multiple people --one for statistics and one for programming, and so on. Additionally, we don’t have enough number of statisticians in India. Having said, things are changing and I hope soon we would see interdisciplinary courses starting off across institutes.
What steps, best practices, and how-tos do you suggest for those seriously pondering over leveraging analytics for business gains?
There are three pillars of analytics. Technology, data science and business insight. This is a team work. In the technology domain, knowledge of mapR, Hadoop, etc play a major role. While in data science two main divisions are statistics and machine learning. This is where the maximum job are created and will have more and more demand. This is also the hard one to get a grasp over. Third one is the business insight. Often analytics does not bring the desired fruit because of lack of business insight.
By business insight I do not mean business communication, but asking the right question. More often asking the right question needs great deal of business insight and half of the advantage of analytics lies in asking what to be solved and half is how to solve.
In statistics one has to understand that a lot of existing predictive models usually won’t work in a big data framework. A very simple example is, ‘is “mean” still a summary measure for a 40 million transactional data?’ Does random sampling still work, as doing random sampling for a large data will have higher chance of having multimode? Similar is the case of machine learning. Usually, ML tools are not very robust and with slight change of variables, the entire results can change. So how one can develop more robust algorithms? These are some, among many, issues that analytics industry is struggling due to the lack of academic and industry collaboration!
Could you cite a few innovative data-driven initiatives being undertaken by indian businesses?
Well, one of the first things that come to my mind is the use of data analytics in the recently concluded National election campaign of the BJP! Bigbasket.com
is working on an innovative idea of creating a digital smart basket which will be individualistic and will help the shoppers online to shop more effectively. HDFC bank is using analytics to get a complete 360 degree view of customer. State Bank of India is using a very innovative algorithm combining both online (social media, blog) and offline (customer level) data to come up with a recommender system on real-time to send promotion. Gitanjali Group, the global integrated diamond and Jewellery manufacturer and retailer, uses Visual Analytics to explore and analyse business data such as supply chain and profitability metrics.
if Booz Allen, KPMG, Apple, Wallmart, terradata, netflix, intel, Dell are the top hirers for data scientists in US, who all do you think would be the top hirers of data wizards in india?
Banks (both private and public) including Citi, HDFC, ICICI, and SBI. E-commerce companies including FlipKart, Amazon and Snapdeal. Master Card and American Express. Retail firms like future group and shoppers Stop, etc.
What do you do in the Un’s big data group?
My role is three fold: I lend my expertise to the development of guidelines and practices that mitigates risks associated with privacy in Big Data, while preserving utility for global development. To contribute on how Big data analytics can be used for responsible social value creation and participating in an ongoing privacy dialogue, providing feedback on proposed approaches and engaging in a privacy outreach campaign.
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‘MACHINE
LEARNING HELPS
US SAVE MILLIONS’
Navin Manaswi,
a data scientist and
a big data specialist with General
Mills --a U.S.-based food company,
shares insights on how they
leverage data science to forecast
demands of products.
By Mastufa Ahmed
Give me an overview of how big data and analytics is being leveraged by indian enterprises?
Indian Big Data market would touch $ 1 billion by 2015 from nearly $ 0.2 bil-lion in 2011 and global Big Data market would grow at the same rate and touch nearly $ 25 billion by 2015, according to NASSCOM and CRISIL. In only a few big companies, big data analytics is being applied to understand, help and lure customers and to maximize the revenue while others are just storing Big Data in Data Warehouse and trying to create some basic reports.
Gradually, e-commerce, telecom-munication, giant retailers, media, oil-exploration and mobile tech busi-ness entities are recruiting data sci-ence professionals and that too, with hefty packages that indicate the boom of data science and big data analytics.
What are some of the top trends currently in the big data and analytics domain? Leveraging machine learning algo-rithms and graph theory: Data scientists leverage machine learning to predict and strategise to get a compact and clear picture of the future business trends by using past data. Every business stake-holder including manager, executive, investor is interested in finding weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly forecasts in aggregate and detailed form in cross-tabular or/and graphical analysis so that they can optimize their resources and save millions of dollars.
Using R/Python programming languages: Every bit of data science including machine learning, data visu-alization, data manipulation, and web based and interactive visualization is done on R or python, mostly. Industry verticals including finance, telecom-munications use R or python.
Working on distributed computing including Hadoop clusters: With the
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emergence of Internet of Things, mobile devices and the increasing interaction among these, data size and its analysis are increasing more than exponentially. So the need of faster real- time analytics and large mobile data storage has been increasing exponentially.
Using Tableau/Spotfire/Qlikview and D3 for visu-alization: All industry verticals need to analyze inter-dependencies and complex relationships between indicators including KPIs by using lucid and powerful visualization capabilities including network graphs, tree-maps, surface and contour plots and hexbin plots.
What are your prime responsibilities in General Mills as a (supply chain) data scientist?
Forecasting demands of products each week accu-rately is the most important job of Supply Chain Management. Understanding the linear or nonlinear relationships between different KPIs (key perfor-mance indicators) to get the best possible insights is the second most important job.
Understanding the customers, sup-pliers based on data and then classi-fication or clustering them is another important job. Here analysts use R and python languages for doing pre-dictive analytics and optimization.
How do these initiatives translate in terms of adding to the business?
We try and solve business prob-lems more accurately with help of machine learning. Having solved it and built the confidence of stake-holders, our team has started new projects on prediction, classifica-tion, clustering and optimization. All these initiatives have helped our company save millions of dollars with the help of accurate prediction of demands and under-standing of complex relationship between different KPIs. Please note
that one percent accuracy improvement in demand forecasting translates to huge savings for a com-pany. Plus, minimization of the production cost and transportation cost also brings in a lot of savings in supply chain management.
Data science being in the nascent stage in india yet, what all challenges do you face today?
Data format and management are not consistent throughout the system. The main challenge lies
in making it consistent and clean before applying various modeling and optimization techniques. In addition, we need to be ready to know the business more holistically and more deeply before we start working on any project.
Can you share some insights on the tools that you use?
Time series clustering helps us cluster products based on various parameters. Bayesian networks and markov models help us get big insights out of data pool. (Bayesian networks is a statistical model that represents a set of random variables and their dependencies via a directed acyclic graph. For example, Bayesian network could represent the relationships between diseases and symptoms. Markov model is a random probability pattern describing a sequence of possible events in which the probability of each event depends only on the state attained in the previous event.) Understanding
the delivery networks through graph theory also helps us reduce transportation cost significantly.
What’s your advice for it Managers on how to leverage analytics tools?
IT Managers are supposed to be aware of strengths and limitations of all popular machine learning algo-rithms and should be thinking where they can do classification, clustering, prediction , associate min-ing, optimization and mathematical modelmin-ing, so as to help business leaders take better decisions.
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i n s i g h t
5 Ways
mobile applications are
extremely vulnerable and least
secured
Unlike web applications where the secu-rity is implemented at the server level, for mobile apps the security is installed in the device that could be reverse-engi-neered and exploited
As a lot of sensitive data resides on the device, the same can be easily extracted by using the right tools
Reverse engineered apps on open-source platforms can be repackaged with malicious code and redistributed There is minimal or no control over using enterprise apps on jail-broken / rooted devices
Mobile apps are often used in less
“i admire people
who are very
successful. But if
that success has
been achieved
through too much
ruthlessness, then
i may admire that
person, but i can’t
respect him.”
-
Ratan Tata
Ex-chairman of
Tata Group
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Why You Must
Leverage these
Mobile insights
in an interview with iT next, hTc Global
Services’ Practice head –Mobile coe, Venkat
Alagarsamy shares these tips that can help
tackle your sensitive data.
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secured / unsecured public networks and Wi-Fi zones
Top mobile vulnerabilities that might compromise enterprise security
Connectivity using unsecured protocols Offline corporate data residing in the devices
Weak Encryption techniques Losing the device
Weak or no password protection to open the device or to use the application Building applications that could be easily re-engineered
Inadequate, improper or no enterprise mobile application security strategy / policy
No enterprise wide mobile device / application management
Malicious mobile apps from unauthor-ized sources / stores
The real loss of the device happens due to the device getting stolen at public places - restaurants, work locations, pub-lic transport bus /train etc.
This happens mostly between 12 PM and 5 PM. Device loss or device theft results in loosing identity, productivity, company data, money, credibility, etc.
15 Best practices that corporates follow to ensure data security
1. Installation Protection – Restrict installation authorization only on non jail-broken or non-rooted devices and subsequently disable running the app if the device is jail-broken or rooted after installation
2.Enable Application Expiration – Enable the application to run only for a specific period before it is set to time-out due to inactivity
3. Authentication – Build a proper authen-tication process like SSO, device autho-rization, biometric verification, etc. 4.
Device Data Encryption –
Implement-ing stronger encryption algorithms like FIPS 140-2 and Suite B for sensi-tive and user-critical data
5.
Data Connection Encryption – Use of strong encryption algorithms for data transferred OTA with absolutely no compromise on keys.
6.
Application Connectivity protocols – A protocol to give access to only
authentication methods – for example, body authentication etc.
Vendors are improving the encryption methods for data connectivity and local data storage
New methodologies, process, and workflow are getting implemented in authorized stores to identify malicious applications
Still the big challenge of tracking lost / stolen devices exists. Vendors should build stronger techniques to track sto-len /lost devices
5 Areas security technologies are evolving towards tighter security 1.Newer encryption techniques 2.Mobile Locks
3. Device tracking and Remote wipe 4.Mobile activity Monitoring and Audit 5. Proactive data management using Big
Data
2 Latest Indian mobile security breaches
1. Security Researchers at F-Secure Cor-poration, an antivirus firm, have con-clusively shown that Xiaomi RedMi 1S handset sends a lot of personal and sensitive data to the “api.account. xiaomi.com” server located in China, and this includes:
IMEI Number of your phone IMSI Number (through MI Cloud) Your contacts and their details Text Messages
2. A German security firm stated that the low cost and popular Chinese Android Smartphone, Star N9500, comes pre-installed with a Trojan that allows the man-ufacturer to perform unrestricted spying on their users’ personal data and conversa-tions without the users’ knowledge. its specific functionality and not the
entire device.
7.
Copy /Paste and Screen-shot Protec-tion – Disable copy /paste opProtec-tion and / or screen-shot data capture within the application
8. Remote Wipe – Application should have the feature that would remotely wipe the data without MDM
9. Data Integrity Check – Build an algo-rithm that verifies the data integrity to avoid any worm data that is part of the data model
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0.Application Integrity Check – At the time of app login, calculate the check-sum of the app with the checkcheck-sum of the app when it was first downloaded to check for integrity
11. Auto update – Verify the new ver-sions of an app and facilitate for the automatic updating of the applica-tion to keep in line with bug fixes and security enhancements
12.
Log Enabling – Enable app logs to track user activity and capture crash logs and share it with mobile apps admin without the intervention of user
13.
Track application usage and analyze – Track application usage data and share it with mobile apps admin 14.
Implement MDM and MAM tools
that best addresses the enterprises’ needs. Air-Watch is one of the best MDM tools. WSO2 is an MDM tool and is licensed free.
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5. Install sound antivirus protection tools on mobile devices4 New methods vendors are embed-ding into their devices for enhanced security
Improved authentication using finger-print, face authentication, voice authentication etc. Vendors are
invest-ing hugely to come up with better Find more at online on the website www.itnext.in/resources/articles
analyzing roi based on specific factors will
enable buyers to find the right cloud delivery
model to meet business needs
BY STA N TO N J O N ES & S C OT T F EU L ES S
Cloud’s ROI Is More
Than a Numbers Game
new revenue streams.
4. Most cloud solutions provide a narrow set of services, and most still require support from the buyer. When buyers see X dollars per person per month for SaaS, or Y cents per hour for IaaS, they are seeing only a portion of the cost buy-ers will incur to successfully implement and run a cloud service. Including ITIL-based support and governance costs in ROI calculations is critical.
5. For IaaS services, ROI will vary tremen-dously depending on the size and type of workload going to the cloud. If you’re bursting a high-performance comput-ing application to the cloud durcomput-ing the two days per month when you need to double its compute capacity, you’re pay-back could be significant. Meanwhile, applications with relatively steady use may have modest returns or none at all. 6. ROI will change dynamically over time.
Many organizations have shown that they begin to achieve increased organi-zational efficiencies and reduced costs after they reach a certain tipping point, a point at which they have moved a certain significant percentage of their infrastructure to the cloud. Being freed of the ongoing work involved with purchasing, installing, configuring and upgrading hardware pays off over months and years, but when buyers begin avoiding major tool purchases, or when they are able to close a data center, then there is often a sudden, step-wise increase in the return. The cloud creates significant new oppor-tunities to reduce costs and move faster. However, these opportunities vary dra-matically depending on the cloud delivery model, the workload and the amount of time buyers are willing to commit. Analyzing ROI based on these, and many other factors, will enable buyers to find the right delivery model to meet business needs.
—Stanton Jones is an analyst of Emerging Technologies at ISG, and Scott Feuless is a prin-cipal consultant at ISG.
This article was first published in CIO Insight. For more stories, please visit www.cioinsight.com.
STRATEGY
F
or companies that are not born in the cloud, moving to a cloud-centric delivery model involves choreographing a complex migration of many parts, each with its own associated risks and rewards. Calculating the return on investment (ROI) for making these moves involves measuring the cost, the benefits and how those will change over time for both a traditional on-premises solution and one or more potential cloud solutions. While figuring cloud ROI is not easy, it is a critical calculation that will inform decisions about how IT delivers value to the business and how the business invests in IT.Here are six factors to keep in mind regarding cloud ROI.
1. Start by actually measuring it. Many believe that the cloud is inevitable and simply take it on faith that the ROI will
be there. But going through the exercise of figuring ROI—learning where cloud makes business sense, how the greatest benefits are realized and what the trade-offs are—can be incredibly valuable in supporting key decisions as you form and revise your cloud strategies. 2. A cloud buyer’s ROI will look different
depending on the delivery model that the company employs. The ROI on soft-ware as a service (SaaS), for example, may take much longer to realize than the ROI on more infrastructure-focused cloud services.
3. Like many business decisions, mov-ing to the cloud is not all about sav-ing money. Much of the ROI from a cloud delivery model may come from the agility that goes with faster pro-visioning times, improvements in
service or the opportunity to support Find more at online on the website www.itnext.in/resources/articles
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“IoT Needs a
New Network
Architecture”
W
ith thousands of new typesof devices connecting to the Internet every day, the tra-ditional network architecture is being overwhelmed. That’s because many of these devices have limited functional-ity and intelligence, and are often auto-mating single functions like sensing and monitoring. “In ten years more than 100 billion connections will be created, and two million new sensors will be deployed every hour. Our current networks cannot provide the connectivity to support this,” asserts William Xu, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer at Huawei.
To handle the demands of the IoT (Internet of Things) environment that includes smart factories, connected vehicles, wearable devices, smart buildings and smart cities, Huawei has extended its enterprise network-ing product line. The company has developed three new components—an IoT gateway, an IoT controller and the LiteOS. “The explosive growth in IoT requires not only a new network archi-tecture, but also greater standardization of the ICT infrastructure. This will enable quick development and deployment of useful applications,” Xu explains.
Underpinning Huawei’s IoT strat-egy is LiteOS, a lightweight open source operating system specifically created for IoT devices. “The OS has a footprint of just 10 KB, and it supports zero configuration, auto-discovery, and auto-networking,” Lu says. Auto-matic discovery and ad-hoc network-ing enables LiteOS devices to find each other and establish a mesh network after powering on. Comprising less than 10,000 lines of code, the LiteOS has been architected for fast response time (10-6 seconds), and is designed to consume very little power. The OS can run on hardware platforms with restricted resources such as MCUs and ARM embedded processors, and can be used for applications involving data col-lection and real-time control. LiteOS also supports Zigbee and LTE connectivity, and its APIs are POSIX compatible.
“LiteOS will help simplify the devel-opment of smart hardware. Since it is open source, developers will be able to
T
o handle the demands of the IoT
environment, Huawei has extended its
enterprise networking product line
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