PCQuest SMB Forum is a series of IT events, held each
quarter since the last five years. It provides a unique opportunity to IT
decision makers of small and mid-sized companies to interact with each other,
share IT-related problems and experiences in deployment of IT solutions. During
June, 2010, the Forum was held across five cities: Chennai, Delhi, Mumbai,
Ludhiana and Jaipur. It was organized as a single-day event in the evenings, as
a series of speaker sessions on technologies and trends, a live demo on using
virtualization in data centers, rounded-off with a panel discussion amongst key
IT heads from the local industry.
The theme for the event series this time was something
that's on every single organization's business agenda today-how to do more with
less. Although we're gradually coming out of the economic slowdown,
organizations are still taking cautious steps forward. They are trying to
understand where to put in new investments and how to leverage existing ones
better. The SMB Forum focused on new technologies that could help Indian SMBs
get more out of their investments, and leverage their existing assets more
effectively.
Doing business on the Web
The PCQuest team dwelled on the various |
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Adeesh Sharma, Operations Editor | Adeesh Sharma, Operations Editor | Rahul Sah, Sr Technology Analyst, CyberMedia Labs |
Speakers from PCQuest dwelled on Cloud Computing and SaaS
technologies and the business domains where SMBs can benefit from such
technologies. The APC team, partners for this event, showcased their latest data
center solutions that not only make data centers more efficient but also ease
the process of scaling them up in future. The speaker from Wipro discussed how
an organization can reduce cost of ownership by 30% for infrastructure and 25%
on applications by leveraging Wipro's cloud-based services.
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Sandeep Koul, Technology Analyst, CyberMedia Labs | Deepak Singh Thakur, Regional Sales Mgr, Telecom & Services-North & East |
Hitender Grover, National Program Manager-SMB |
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Umashankar Kesavan, Regional Sales Mgr-South | Manish Gokhale, Country Sales Mgr-Services & Telecom Vertical |
Shailendra Shukla, Head-System Integration Business |
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Dheeraj Malhotra, Practice Manager-Cloud Computing Services, Wipro talked about their latest Cloud-based solutions. |
Sathya Gautam, Head-IT, Dorma India, Chennai spoke on ERP, Web-based and security solutions deployed by her organization. |
The event was concluded with heady tech discussions amongst
the audience over cocktails and dinner.
As awareness increases, so do expectations
For people who've participated regularly in the Forum, journey over the
years has been both enriching and intriguing. In the initial days of tech
adoption, companies would typically be allured into getting solutions deployed
based on recommendations by peers, aggressive marketing by vendors, and the fear
of losing out clients to the technically more advanced rivals. A globally
expanding economy has added fuel to tech desires. A case in point is ERP. A
standard ERP deployment is meant to automate end-to-end processes in a
manufacturing company. Over the years, after investing susbstantial amounts on a
complete solution, quite a few companies realize it's not just about deploying
but utilizing technology to the max. There's cost associated with maintaining
such a complex deployment and quite a few companies realize they could've done
with a few simple applications, especially as returns are not in consonance with
the investment. Also, nobody is sure about the recurring costs in maintaining an
IT application, howsoever small it might be. For instance, quite a few smaller
companies feel shortchanged by their website developers, who they feel are not
doing enough to ensure a steady stream of visitors. Worse, they keep charging
them for any modification or innovation carried on a website. One key reason
behind such acrimonies is the lack of SLAs amongst small-ticket service
providers and end users. The whole business of providing IT services to SMBs is
quite disorganized, with companies getting trapped by small-time providers, who
have little experience in end-to-end application development and support.
Improving operational efficiency |
The panel discussion in all cities centered around the various hardware, applications and hosted services that improve the operational efficiency of an organization. Representatives from local industries spoke about IT deployments in their companies and how they're raking in business benefits through them. |
Now, as the economy recovers, organizations have become
more skeptical about each penny they spend on innovation. And as the focus on
efficiency increases, so does the demand to know the RoI on any prospective IT
deployment. The awareness surrounding the potential ups and downs associated
with a deployment and expectations on the benefits to a company have also
increased. Smaller companies are still very loyal to the big IT vendors and show
more faith in commercial software as compared to Open Source, which apart from a
few popular applications, seems to have fallen out due to poor support. But they
want these vendors to do more to convince them about the real business benefit
in adopting newer technologies.
Panelists in Chennai: L to R: Adeesh Sharma, Operations Editor, PCQuest; Umashankar Keshavan, Regional Sales Manager-South, APC; N. Varadarajan, Sr. Gen. Mgr-IT, Madras Cements; M. Vishwanathan, Head-IT, EBM Nadi International; Sathya Gautam, Head-IT, Dorma India; S. Balaganapathy, Head-Network Operations, Irevna; Saravanan Vishwanathan, Head-Internal Systems, Hexaware Technologies; and Visweswaran M, CTO, Ma Foi Randstad. |
L to R: Rahul Sah, Sr Tech Analyst, PCQuest; Manish Jhawar, GM-Technical, Data Infosys; Susheel Sharma, AGM, MIS Wires and Fabriks; Manish Gokhale, Country Sales Mgr-Services & Telecom Vertical, APC; and Dheeraj Malhotra, Practice Mgr-Cloud Computing Services, Wipro. |
L to R: Dheeraj Malhotra, Practice Mgr-Cloud Computing Services, Wipro; Dinesh Lakra, Member, Medium Industries Development Board; Hitender Grover, National Program Mgr-SMB, APC; Abhay Pratap Singh, Mgr-IT, Eastman Industries; and Anil Bedi, CEO, Bedico Automotives. The discussion was moderated by Sandeep Koul and Rahul Sah, Sr Tech Analysts, PCQuest. |
There was keen interest shown by the audience in Cloud
Computing technologies, their potential benefits and associated costs; this
however was hyphenated with concerns on potential security risks associated with
all hosted deployments. A manufacturing company in Chennai has gone for a
private cloud deployment for sensitive applications and left mundane tasks such
as email archival for the public cloud. Lack of reliable last-mile connectivity
and sufficient bandwidth are amongst the key reasons why they are more happy
having an in-house setup. The most popular hosted application for organizations
is CRM, which they feel can be better managed in such a setup.
Panelists in Delhi: L to R: Deepak Singh Thakur, Regional Sales Mgr, APC; Anil Chopra, Editor, PCQuest; Vijay Sethi, VP-IS & CIO, Hero Honda; S.S. Sharma, CGM-IT, JK Tyres & Industries; and Kunwar Naresh, AGM-IT, Liliput Kidswear. |
L to R: Adeesh Sharma, Operations Editor, PCQuest; Geeta Ramachandran, VP-IT, Bharat Oman Refineries; Ravish Jhala, Systems Mgr, Trident Hotels; and Ashish Dandekar, CIO, Power Exchange India. |
Managing server rooms/data centers
Traditionally, smaller companies have paid little attention to their server
rooms. Most still have IT equipment strewn all over the place, and the addition
of equipment over time, adds to the tangled up mess. As few have the knowledge
of techniques or budgets to effect a makeover within a reasonable period of
time, scalability and maintenance are biggest casualties. APC showcased several
cost-effective techniques and equipment to streamline the server rooms and data
centers. Built on a modular-design, their racks provide a neat stack-up of
equipment which removes clutter while providing easy interoperability with
legacy equipment. Their products are designed to provide for even distribution
of cooling, optimally arranged cabling, power efficiency and real-estate
savings. The UPS have been designed to weather extreme fluctuations in power and
can be easily scaled up to provide additional backup, with minimal effort. The
company has a wide range of datacenter equipment to effectively match
requirements of smaller organizations.
Virtualization demo
The event was rounded-up with a demo of virtualization techniques. The
PCQuest team showed two such techniques to the audience: desktop and server
virtualization. Desktop virtualization was demoed by running VirtualBox
hypervisor on a laptop. On top of VirtualBox one can run different operating
systems. As part of server virtualization the team showed how one can use ESXi
hypervisor (that is freely available) on top of a server. One can create virtual
machines with just a few clicks and run different OSes on these virtual
machines. This is done using the remote client called vSphere.