Do It Yourself! It works

Has the linkage between CEO, CIO, and CFO changes in Indian business landscape?

I am glad that all business decisions are taken together and there is regular collaboration between all three sides. There is strong interaction and complete grip on business processes, which helps a lot. At Samtel, business visibility, process improvement and cost savings are KPAs of IT area that has direct impact on business.

Is there is new direction towards making IT more of a profit centre?

As an organization policy, IT is embedded in the organization deeply. So our role and strategy is to improve processes, facilitate direct business impact etc. So far we have not done any calculations in context to cost Vs profit centre. In many organizations IT is a cost centre because IT has emerged from its original role of a support centre and has been working in isolation in many places. In our company, it’s a cohesive force and has direct business impact.

How does the interface between business and IT work exactly? Do you come with solutions to cater to needs that originate first or can this be the other way around?

We present solutions to business side, but the decision is taken in a joint format. IT plays a role in achieving objectives in innovative ways. For example in 2009 the pressure was obviously on cost cuts along with productivity demands. For this we thought a BI (Business Intelligence) solution would fit but that meant crossing Budget constraints. So we went for open source options.

How has your experience been with open source?

There is a big misconception that open source is cheap and free. I would rather say its virtues are flexibility, robustness and its capability to address any kind of business challenge, which is what, is often missing in other options. For one, security loopholes are less of a concern with open source. Many applications and the email platforms have now been virtualized and powered with open source at the company. And that has interestingly been with purely in-house efforts. That has helped us save a lot of capex and operational costs.

Is DIY (Do It Yourself) work always smooth?

Yes, there are challenges.  In proprietary systems there are a lot of choices. But it helps to do it your own way when one thinks of business requirements, Budget issues, hardware constraints. Such situations show that open source works, if it’s a unique requirement, I prefer internal teams then. Because they come with understanding of my infrastructures and requirements. My team is well versed and better there.