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Outsourcing is great except for lock-in concerns

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Abhigna
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JAIPUR, INDIA: Krishnan Kutty, DGM IT, Gammon India Ltd fleshes out IT's new blueprints from recent past into the imminent future. Let's find out how much IT has changed and how much it is re-architecting for Indian enterprises here

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Let's start with outsourcing as a concept. How do you assess its relevance and pros and cons in today's context?

Well, in some way headache of certain areas of IT is certainly taken out of mind and that way it is good. There are so many facets that are not possible to pragmatically handle on a 24/7 basis by an in-house team. It also reduces dependency and improves uptime. The flip side is the worry about lock-in period and it springs up as a concern for a long-term commitment.

Can Indian CIOs be compared to international CIOs today in their mindsets, approaches and strategic bents?

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Think of elements like networking or IT backbones, and so much is similar more or less in both leagues. Vendors like Dell, Cisco, IBM, HP are the same everywhere globally. Even application suites like those of SAP are now bringing a leveled field. The only difference I can think of is the challenge of connectivity and infrastructure in remote areas and due to which bandwidth issues etc pose a greater challenge to us.

How has this year been for the engineering space as you see it from where you stand in terms of IT adoption?

When you think of traditional engineering companies, IT influence is not too much because construction activities can go on even if a server is down, so we are not critically dependent on IT. But still things are changing when we see how managed services, support IT, Internal Help Desk outsourcing etc are penetrating here. That way, earlier when issues like a power shut-down happened, it was not possible to inform every one, at every branch. Now we have outsourced IT to some extent and so even if the headquarters has no power, it is ok as work can go on seamlessly on other work locations.

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What's your take on trends like SDN and how IT basics are changing?

Earlier IT used to be in a box but now different flavors are emerging which is an interesting change to watch and consume. Solutions like Video-Conferencing (VC) are reducing barriers of distance and time.

Are such solutions making IT more complex or simpler?

My aim itself is to make IT as simple as possible for the user. As of now, people take a lot of help from IT in setting VC up but with training and simplification we aim to make it very smooth and handy for everyone.