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Sumit Chowdhury,
CIO,
Reliance Communications
Tenure at RCOM: 22 months
Size of IT team: 1680
Choice of Career in IT: I have a technical background. After obtaining a B.Tech degree from IIT Kanpur, I pursued Masters in Telecom at the Carlidge Mellon University and followed it up with a Phd in management strategy. So IT was an obvious career choice. Infact, I got my first break at KPIT, again one of the leading IT firms globally.
Evolution of IT at RCOM: RCOM is continuously launching new products. As we go further, we are planning to integrate all our systems at DAKC, from where we will manage all the processes and also keep systems ready for future launches.
Historically, there were different teams for data centers, operations, infrastructure, development, etc, who reported to their respective seniors. I merged them all into a unit and brought them under one umbrella. They all have clear cut roles and responsibilities and now we are much more structured and organized.
In the past, a lot of infrastructure did not commiserate with the business. Though we have maintained a lot of legacy systems, some of the servers were replaced and some part of the infrastructure was rebalanced to meet scale. The new architecture at RCOM is designed to meet hi-availability requirements. Earlier outages were frequent, but now we have reduced those to once a quarter and efforts are on even to minimize that. Today, we are completely integrated in line with world industry standards in the service oriented segment. As of today, 98 per cent of our customer processes have been automated, 75 per cent of the back end has been automated.
IT architecture at RCOM: Most of our servers are Sun servers, chiefly Unix based. We also have some HP and IBM servers for Windows. The maximum deployment is however of Sun servers, almost 800 of those, to service internal customers. Our storage is taken care of by EMC, HP, Hitachi, and Sun among other players in the field. Infact, we are planning to scale up our storage from 800 TB at present to 1.2 TBs next year. On security, there are multiple vendors who provide a multi-layered security. Cisco is the chief provider for networks. Since all our services are IT enabled, it gives us an edge to discuss our go-to-market strategies, leveraging our architecture.
Challenges: One has to visualize challenges in infrastructure, add more to systems, to avoid problems in future. Justifying these changes at times is a problem, essentially because people would like quick and dirty changes fast, instead of structural changes that are efficient. In a constant tussle between us and the operations team, we have to push for more of these requirements so that the business can quickly adapt to these changes. We are now shifting towards a more and more model driven concept. The main challenge is the ability to deliver to commit to business; service and delivery and secure infrastructure, team management, future proof architecture, SLA, etc.
Team management and retention of skilled people: is very important. We have added 800 people over the last six months, and have lost 200 people in that time. There are serious guidelines that each of us has to follow at RCOM. It is sacrosanct. I am the head of things that matter to me; and this is one of the key criteria for success. We train people for 100s and 1000s of hours. On projects completed, the ROI is calculated within the stipulated period. This is the kind of commitment I have from my team. The qualities that I look for are that you need not to be an IT person, but should be a business person, have consultancy in mind, people have to be comfortable with you and you should have leadership qualities. I have many visionaries in my team. I tackle attrition through continuous training, reward and recognition, leadership and providing a family atmosphere in the workplace.
How CIOs can be part of the strategic management team: by participating in various fora at the national and international levels, keeping ourselves up- to-date about happenings in our field. Infact, it is a two way approach. The thinking should be on the lines of `I am a business executive first; an IT executive next.’ But there should be no job overlaps.
How I measure IT effectiveness: IT effectiveness comes from new things. A person has to be made IT ready ASAP. We are trying to do it; automate processes, improve employee productivity through IT, take care of the mobile workforce. The cost factor also plays a vital role: themes such as on-time, on-budget; before- time, before –budget; SLA deliveries, achieveables, etc are some of the parameters.
Management Mantras:
- Evolve
- Involve your team at each step
- Be a team leader, a visionary
- First be a Business executive and then an IT executive
- People should be comfortable with you
---------------------------------------- As told to Sonal Desai
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