KPIT Cummins: A 'business enabler'

BANGALORE, INDIA: Shrikant Kulkarni, KPIT Cummins' CIO talks to Pankaj Maru of CyberMedia News about how the company's IT infrastructure is playing the role of business enabler, challenges of dealing with complex IT environment, benefits of virtualization and cloud along with latest BYOD trend.

CIOL: Brief us about the company's overall IT infrastructure that brings out solutions to address the sectors of like automotive, energy & utilities, industrial equipments, engineering products and semi-conductors

Shrikant Kulkarni: At KPIT Cummins, we have built our IT infrastructure which is robust, scalable, highly efficient and fully secured and truly 'Business Enabler'. We have implemented ERP to ensure best in class business practices and processes and have successfully implemented SAP covering all the business, functional areas of the organization.

We have also set up a Global Network, which is high performance, resilient global network infrastructure facilitating anytime, anywhere data and voice connect along with Global Helpdesk - to provide our project teams a single integrated solution for all IT support requirements for incidents, problems, service requests, change management etc.

Beside, we have Unified Communication — a single integrated platform based on Microsoft Exchange 2010, Office 2010 and Lync 2010 that enables our project teams and business managers to connect with each other using options like IM, Audio, Video, Live Meeting and Desktop/Application sharing. The Dynamic VLAN- offers flexible workplace and has given flexibility for project team members to work from any of the KPIT offices.

Also, we have Private Cloud and Virtual Desktops, where all corporate applications servers and majority of test and development servers function. This has reduced the server provisioning time from 6 weeks to 2 hours flat for the business and it helped in big way in optimizing on data centre resources. On Virtual desktop infrastructure front, 1200 VDI have been implemented successfully giving flexibility to user to work from anywhere, using any of the gadgets without compromising security.

We have a Global Telepresence roll out with high Definition Video conferencing solution that is implemented across domestic and international offices for improving connect internally and with customers/partners.

For Disaster Recovery, we have implemented solutions for all critical infrastructure/ applications along with Information security to insulate the IT infrastructure from external threats and have deployed perimeter security solutions including intrusion prevention system and firewalls.

We also have web content management solution and end point security solutions for ensuring information security of the organization as well as of the customers.

Most of the technology solution implemented at KPIT are the very latest and belong to Gartner's leader magic quadrant. It will not be out of place to mention here that KPIT Cummins is one of the few IT companies to implement private cloud with Virtual Desktop Infrastructure.

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CIOL: Given those different sectors, how challenging and complex it becomes for you as a CIO to keep the IT infrastructure and environment constantly up and running?

Shrikant Kulkarni: It is indeed a challenge to run the infrastructure with the same level of performance and almost nil downtime, when the organization is growing with high pace, expanding to newer geographies and acquiring more and more entities.

Things become more complex and daunting during the phase of integrating acquired entities. People, processes, systems integration pose unique challenges. These have to be addressed without affecting the people, business and infrastructure efficiency.

However with elaborate planning and co-ordination, effective and structured communication, support from partners and business stakeholders we have been able to meet these challenges with resounding success.

CIOL: In the past many years, virtualization has made strong inroads across enterprises and now it has been followed up by cloud computing. So how much is the presence and usage of virtualization and cloud computing in your organization?

Shrikant Kulkarni: KPIT Cummins is an early adopter of Private Cloud infrastructure and implemented private cloud solution in 2011. All mission critical production applications such as Microsoft Exchange 2010, Microsoft Lync 2010, CA service desk, SAP ERP, Project management and other configuration management systems, etc. are running on the cloud infrastructure. Being an IT organization, a large number of tests and development servers are always required and most of them are now migrated to the cloud platform.

CIOL: How open and comfortable are you with BYOD concept in your organization?

Shrikant Kulkarni: KPIT Cummins has implemented Virtual desktops, which allows users to install the VDI client on their tablets, smart phones or personal laptops /desktops and connect to their own virtual desktop located in the corporate data centre.

This has helped users to access corporate applications, data from anywhere using any devices without compromising security. However this is currently rolled out to selective users and we are implementing mobile device management solutions which will enable us to increase the coverage to more number of users.

We are still evaluating the risks associated with BYOD and there are no immediate plans to roll out any policy across the organization.