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IT Implementation-Trends

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

Going by the nominations we received this time for the Best IT Implementation

awards, it seems that the manufacturing segment was the most active in terms of

deploying IT last year. The highest number of IT projects came from this

segment. Next in line were the Govt. and BFSI sectors, which continued to remain

sunrise sectors. Together they constituted more than 30% of all the projects.

Interestingly, there weren't as many IT projects from the IT/ITES segment as the

other three. IT/ITES only constituted about 10% of the overall projects. Amongst

the remaining sectors, the surprise packets were education and power & utility.

Both segments have become 'rather innovative' users of IT. For instance, one of

the utility companies created a GIS map of North Delhi, which captured every

detail down to the last street. On top of this map, the company mapped each and

every piece of electrical equipment that they've laid out, down to the last lamp

post. They say that this project helps them track their assets, as well as

address customer complaints better, apart from many other benefits. Another

company that does power distribution in West Bengal has put tamper proof meters

with a GSM modem for all their commercial customers. This helps them remotely

track how much electricity is being consumed by each consumer. Now that's

innovative! Similarly, in education, one engineering college in the south has

developed and deployed an ERP package using completely Open Source software, and

uses it for a lot of things. Another govt. owned research institute also

implemented an ERP package, which incorporates all govt. policies and practices.

So there seems to be a lot of action in the education sector, and one is likely

to see more in the future.

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Types of implementations across industries



Out of all the different types of projects done in the manufacturing segment

last year, ERP projects topped the charts. A lot of manufacturing companies

embraced ERP. Workflow automation and infrastructure projects were the other key

project types taken up by the manufacturing sector last year. Likewise, the

Govt. continued to have a strong focus on e-governance projects. A lot of govt.

departments and ministries were busy building up their IT infrastructures by

introducing workflow automation, setting up new information systems and portals,

HR management solutions, mobility solutions, etc.

As far as IT/ITES companies go, then unlike others, they continued

strengthening their respective IT infrastructures. The maximum projects that

were implemented in this segment were related to IT infrastructure. The

interesting thing was that they used some of the latest technologies, and we

even had the benefit of seeing some of those this time. They used

virtualization, latest consolidation techniques, the best data center equipment,

the latest WAN technologies, and much more to ensure that their IT

infrastructures are world class.

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Last but not the least is the BFSI segment. This segment was not only busy

upgrading its IT infrastructure with the latest technologies, but was also busy

doing a lot of other things. We noticed a lot of banks moving to core banking

solutions. This is good news for customers because it will enable them to do

banking from any of the bank's branches. Besides core banking, security is

becoming an increasing concern. We noticed many banks deploying information

security solutions. The insurance sector, which hasn't really embraced

technology as much as the banks till now, seems to have woken up. Many of the

public sector insurance companies are trying to get more networked, and some are

even using MPLS technology for connecting their branches. The more tech savvy

companies in BFSI, who have already done all the networking, core banking, etc

are now looking towards improving their internal processes. Hence they're into

workflow automation.

That was all about the overall project implementations that we observed

across the country. Let's now drill a little deeper into the kinds of

technologies and trends being used by IT projects.

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Technology usage



While going through all the projects we received, we came across some very

interesting trends in the technologies being adopted by organizations for their

projects.

MS .NET for Portals



Most of the portal solution projects that we received were developed using

ASP.NET or VB .Net. We spoke to the project heads of these portals to find out

why they chose this platform. The answer was simplicity. According to them,

creating projects on ASP.NET is mush easier and requires less code to write.

Plus, it's very easy to find people who know how to develop on this platform. In

fact, developers who can code in VB can easily shift to .NET without too much

training. Interestingly, a lot of the public sector projects that we analyzed

were also developed on .NET platform.

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MPLS VPNs for WANs



We found that a lot of large enterprises with branches all over the country

are moving towards MPLS VPN technology. The reasons quoted for this are a more

secure and scalable network, better connectivity between multiple offices and

higher bandwidth. This helps an organization consolidate its IT infrastructure

and bring all of its remote offices under one umbrella.

Organizations are using MPLS for remotely managing their branch offices,

doing remote patch and update management, VoIP, and even running their business

applications. Some companies doing offshore software development for key

customers abroad have linked all their software development houses with MPLS.

This helps their software development teams coordinate better on software

projects.

Video conferencing being put to some serious usage



Video conferencing is finally being put to much more serious usage then mere

remote meetings. In one of the projects, video conferencing was being used for

tele-medicine and tele-education. This has a huge social impact, as you can

provide healthcare in areas that don't have qualified medical practitioners.

Apart from this, we also interacted with many CIOs who have implemented video

conferencing, and saved huge costs and time that would otherwise have gone into

travelling. SAIL for instance, conducts regular meetings at the director level

over a VoIP based video conferencing system. Cisco has devised a video

conferencing system called TelePresence. It's a high-end, room-based, video

conferencing solution built to operate seamlessly with Cisco's VoIP architecture

and products. It's designed around the IETF standards for Voice over IP and

video conferencing. Namely, SIP is used for connection management and signaling,

and RTP for media transmission.

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The video images of the participants are life size and people appear on the

screen in the same size that they would appear in person when sitting across a

conference room table.

SMS based Mobility solutions



While we didn't get too many projects that are using these technologies,

there is potential. The projects that are using GSM and GPRS technologies are

quite innovative. It can be used as a connectivity option in remote areas. It

makes sense to use this technology for communication simply because it's now

becoming commonplace. Everybody has a cellphone these days, so a company can

easily leverage it to communicate with customers. Some innovative applications

of mobility that we found were remote meter reading, door to door order

processing, and even banking at your door step.

The usage of SAN and NAS



From the IT projects we received, we noticed that organizations are

increasingly adopting storage appliances. There's also a growing need for secure

and centralized storage in enterprises. 21% of the projects we received were

using NAS boxes as file servers. Many of the portal solutions and information

systems were using SANs for data storage. The storage capacities being used

ranged from 1 to 5 TBs for the projects.

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UTM appliances for security are gaining ground



The hot hardware in security nowadays is the UTM (Unified Threat Management)

appliance. Quite a few organizations have started deploying the same, or are

planning to deploy it. This makes life easier for security managers, as

configuring and managing a single UTM device is always easier than managing 5

different devices. One thing we noticed in some of the projects was that though

they were using the best of breed UTM devices, they were not creating DMZs for

their servers. What they're doing instead is very interesting. Instead of

deploying a single UTM/Firewall appliance, they deploy two. One is deployed in

the datacenter and connected to the Internet or leased line and the other is

deployed in front of the proxy server for the LAN. In most of the cases, the

datacenter doesn't even have a direct route to the LAN.

Rack servers have taken over



After seeing so many implementations, we found that the humble tower based

servers are vanishing. They're being completely replaced by rack servers. Most

of the servers we noticed were based on x86 architecture. 4GB RAM is now

standard across all servers, and in case of specialized applications like

virtualization, we even noticed 32GB RAM being used.

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Trends in software usage



On the software front, ERP implementations are happening like jungle fire. A

lot of companies are moving to ERP for automating their internal processes. We

received quite a few projects for SAP and Microsoft Dynamics implementations.

ERP is also entering newer verticals. For instance, there's an ERP solution

available for governments now. It's called GRP or Govt. Resource Planning, and

it adheres to govt. guidelines and amendments out of the box. There was another

ERP deployment for a poultry business.

Despite all the hype, we didn't find too many virtualization deployments. One

of them was a large consolidation exercise using virtualization, and another was

more interesting and used it for disaster recovery. A software house put backups

of all of its critical applications on a virtual server. These were used for

failover.

From the project forms that we received, we found 56% of the projects were

using Windows, which includes 34% Windows 2003, and 22% Windows 2000 Server.

There were around 24% projects that were using Linux. Based on feedback from

some of the project heads, the key reason for using Linux is not the source

code, but cost saving. But one area where Linux is still widely being is

embedded applications. A lot of devices being used in IT projects run on Linux.

UNIX usage was lower at 14% and Solaris at 9% amongst the projects that we

received.

These were some of the trends we observed from the IT projects we received.

In the pages to follow, we'll take you through the specific project

implementations and the benefits they offered.

Anil Chopra, Anindya Roy and Sanjay Majumder

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