To IT, With Love

NOIDA, INDIA: In a poignant scene from the movie ‘Dead Poets’ Society’, Robin Williams urges his students to stand up on their chairs. The instruction sounds weird to most of them - as naturally expected. But when they do, they get his point. Sometime, all it takes to get a new perspective and angle at the things we see, is to just rise above our places of comfort.

J S Sodhi, Group CIO for Amity, is neither a poet, nor a professor. But the way he talks passionately about IT and its unleashed tangent in the quadrant of education, makes you believe that there is someone here who has dared enough to rise above his chair, even though unnoticed. For every ‘what’ that he has put in place at his organization, he has a strong and lucid ‘why’ too. That in part, explains the unusual Doctorate degree that you notice on a CIO’s profile for a change. The rest of the interview explains more.

What can or has IT been used to do at Amity so far?

Some recent highlights are mail exchange solutions. We have just cleared an order of 4000 users’ exchange which helps to build up on the erstwhile smaller one. This will help us give mail exchange features to all faculty staff members while also taking care of some Unified Communications areas. It would be a fully-loaded system. We are coming up with a video streaming solution with the help of which we will ensure live broadcasting of classes, events etc across our campus and other Indian as well as international locations.

How does it feel using IT in a vertical which does not have a relatively strong appetite for technology in the conventional sense?

It’s just a matter of perceptions. We have been proving to the world how much is possible with technology. All our 30 locations are connected to the main hub on a common network at Noida MPLS. It is a big IT set-up. We have Blade servers, VMWare solutions, and about 600 mbps of bandwidth to name a few. The Noida campus is fully wi-fi. We record all class lectures. There is an in-house developed ERP Amizone. Smart classes, digital projectors etc make sure that technology is used prudently and with full effectiveness.

Most CIOs from other verticals cite ‘consumerisation of IT’ as a big challenge currently. Do you confront the same issues with a highly tech-savvy younger generation?

We face two kinds of challenges. This emerges from the two types of user genres we have. On one hand are students who are very tech-advanced. On the other hand there are some faculty members who are experts in their respective domains but not as tech-savvy as students. We are coming up with Audio-visual solutions as well as a lot of contemporary solutions that are on Android, Flash etc. A class broadcast can be consumed at devices like iPod or BlackBerry. Our focus is on solutions that wipe out issues of OS incompatibility.

Having tried both the approaches, would you rate DIY (Do It Yourself) IT better than sourcing IT from vendors?

We have a strong team of 150 members and a separate group that takes care of IT at all Amity locations as a nodal function. It is pretty much an independent set-up. We have over 500 surveillance cameras and a Cisco 4500 series setup so the IT infrastructure is huge. It needs a mixed approach as we have to manage a vast stretch of back-end.

How would you define your experience so far?

Technology and security implications is one equation what keeps me passionate at this point. I did my research study in this very area. Be it wi-fi or device enablement, every thing has its threats. With ISO standards, all processes are in place and we strive to ensure a good balance.