Persistent Systems Blog

By: Mukund Deshpande, Associate Vice President - Operations, BI and Analytics, Persistent Systems

      Kartik Vyas, Lead Business Analyst, BI and Analytics, Persistent Systems

Everyone is talking about Big Data and how it is slated to be the next big thing. However, a novice is likely to be intimidated by the sheer enormity of the buzz to dare ask, “What is Big Data?” So here is an honest and simple definition of Big Data.

Imagine if a survey of one hundred people, asked the question, How big does a house need to be to qualify as a big house?  The answers would range from 1000 sq² to possibly 50,000 sq². So what qualifies a house as a big house? Maybe I would define a big house as one which is big enough to accommodate each member of my family with their own bedroom, in addition to a guest room. Sounds logical? If yes, then that’s how Big Data is defined.

Big Data is data which is too big to fit into the current data devices of an organization. For example, a startup with just a VM as their database, even 10 terabytes could be considered Big Data.  For a big corporation, even Petabytes of data may not qualify as Big Data. The definition of Big Data depends on your current capacity.

There is more to Big Data than just size.  Big Data can be used to derive intelligent insights and to create sustainable and competitive advantages for corporations.  But first, why do enterprises need Big Data?

As an enterprise, you need Big Data technologies if your current analysis needs are constrained by one of the three V’s of data –Volume, Variety and Velocity. For example, you would probably need Big Data Technologies if:

• your dataset to be analyzed is too voluminous to be handled by your current data infrastructure
• there are too many data sources from which you need to pull data or your data is in various formats
• you need quicker insights and the velocity at which your data changes is too fast for your current systems to handle

A lot of enterprises are leveraging Big Data technologies to derive deeper insights from a continuously expanding set of data. Many of these insights are obtained real time at a fraction of the cost that enterprises would normally make had they gone the more traditional BI route. Watch this space for other stories concerning Big Data technologies.

Location Based Services (LBS) is one of the hottest trends in mobile services today. Location services well accepted by users, range from core location services like emergency services Enhanced-911 (E911) to various commercial services like navigation, fleet tracking. Taking it further, market expects to see more traction in the areas of location mesh-up with services like social networking, mobile advertising and enterprise collaboration.

Further, the Mobile cellular ecosystem is continuously evolving to meet the needs of mobile users. One of the important requirements is having high bandwidth data network accessible on the move. This can enable host of applications like video calling, conferencing, etc. To address these needs, wireless networks are continuously evolving, with Long Term Evolution (LTE) being one of the most promising fourth generation (4G) technologies. However, the cost and complexity involved with new network deployment poses challenges to carriers on how to effectively ensure Return on Investment (ROI). Launching popular services such as various LBS helps them many times in improving the ROI.

Location technology being an integral part of wireless network, with network evaluation it is evident that location technology would also require corresponding evolution. To address this, various standards bodies work towards different solutions for meeting different market needs and no single solution can suffice for all the market requirements.  This poses challenges to carriers, their infrastructure vendors and even handset vendors in selecting the appropriate technology to meet their specific market needs.

At Persistent, we have developed significant expertise in location technology and applications by working with different infrastructure vendors, Tier 1 carriers and applications solution providers.  Utilizing this experience, we have recently written a white paper on Delivering Location in LTE Networks which helps provide some direction on how to deliver location in LTE network. It talks about available technology options and how these diverse choices can meet the varying market needs of different vendors and carriers.

We welcome and greatly appreciate your thoughts and comments on the whitepaper.

Download this FREE whitepaper now

By : Shreekanth Joshi, AVP -Cloud Computing, Persistent Systems 

       Vidyut Kumar, Senior Technical Specialist - Cloud, Persistent Systems

At Persistent, we have been finding a common trend amongst our customers: enterprises  are challenged with systematically identifying, categorizing and assessing on-premise applications for Cloud migration.  With the seemingly daunting and difficult task of Cloud migration, business leaders feel the need to understand migration criteria along with an analysis of the ROI and TCO perspective.  

Cloud migration is similar to a backpacking trip: without a map, a proper plan, and the correct tools, it is easy for a business to get lost.  Given the limited luggage space, we can bring only what is necessary, likewise understanding the reasoning and potential benefits of moving applications to the Cloud, from both a business and technical standpoint is critical for success. 

In the current landscape, most of the assessment tools are primitive; data collection consists of interviewing IT and business users.  Assessments of inaccurate data are carried out manually and lack clarity with respect to understanding the actual workloads associated with an application. 

What enterprises need is a tool that can provide a clear analysis of the assessment and takes into account not only the business perspective, but also the workload of an application and then assess its viability for Cloud migration. Enterprises need a tool that will enable them to draw an accurate assessment with real data to justify the categorization of the applications, along with a ROI/TCO comparison between an on-premise deployment and the Cloud.

Persistent has built a tool which we feel addresses the above mentioned challenges, click here for test drive and let us know your feedback.

According to a new report by Global Industry Analysts, Inc., the global market for enterprise mobility is likely to exceed US$168.8 billion by 2015. Organizations cannot embark on an Enterprise Mobility strategy without taking into consideration the complete ecosystem. The precursor to laying out an enterprise mobility strategy lies in the analysis of the business processes and delineation of the problems that need to be addressed through mobility. It is important to nail down the role of mobility in various functions vis-à-vis marketing, sales, manufacturing, field personnel management, supply chain/transportation logistics etc. A harbinger to any technology and architecture undertaking is to gauge what is the value proposition of incorporating mobility into some of these processes? What is the ROI? Does this increase your productivity? Does it reduce waste? Does it improve your top line?

The endeavor of planning and deploying enterprise mobility is a process of cooperation with players in the ecosystem. No one player can do it entirely in a cost effective way. There are some competing approaches for solving this problem and it is imperative to do a full ROI before selecting a certain option. The partnership with the right software services company is crucial to a successful implementation.

To read the complete article, please click here

We have seen a growing trend in large mergers and acquisitions recently, especially since 2007, the year the effects of the global financial meltdown were beginning to be felt. This increased volume, combined with the complexities of cross-border operations, means more executives will be exposed to an M&A environment and will have to be adept at navigating such an environment.

The IT organization’s  role in an M&A is seen as vital given that it  will be one of the major drivers in most organizations to get lines of business integrated and operational. It is imperative that duplicate business functions will have to be looked at not only from a personnel standpoint but also from an actual IT infrastructure standpoint, i.e. common customers, consolidation of accounts, supporting a combined view in the case of online banking etc.

It is critical that the process of merging and de-duping business functions also ensures the quality of data in a merged environment. A rigorous enforcement of data cleansing policies and procedures when consolidating data instances is essential, otherwise the integrity of applications that access these merged data instances can be compromised, putting the success of the M&A engagement at risk. Consequently, data quality needs to be at the core of the M&A process. Making appropriate technology choices in tools to ensure that all data quality issues are detected, flagged, and fixed before going live is critical

In the white paper titled “Critical Data Issues in Mergers & Acquisitions: A Blueprint for Success”, Persistent Systems discusses how IT leadership can succeed in an M&A environment. The role of IT is vital given that technology is now a major driver in most organizations’ operations. An M&A transaction can be an excellent opportunity for IT leadership to leverage technology to improve the IT experience within the organization.

This whitepaper focuses on how IT leadership can succeed in an M&A environment. Specifically, the whitepaper will discuss:

• What challenges IT can expect to encounter in an M&A transaction?
• How to address application integration resulting from M&A activity?
• How to leverage an application’s integration framework for M&A?
• What are the key factors for successful IT integration post M&A?

Download your FREE whitepaper now.

Weighing the initial advantages of cloud computing is simple. The ability to eliminate upfront infrastructure investment and “pay per use” for applications in the cloud offers enterprises significant start-up cost benefits and significantly reduces time to market. The amount of supporting data in technology and business media regarding these benefits is overwhelming.

But how can IT executives calculate long term ROI of Cloud? How can they calculate ROI of Cloud for legacy applications that are more complex than email and CRM? It is difficult to quantitatively measure the cloud advantages and risks in ROI terms.

Persistent Systems’ White paper “Assessing the ROI of Cloud: An Executive Decision Framework” provides IT executives a concrete methodology for calculating the ROI of Cloud for their organizations. This white paper enables to quantitatively measure the cloud advantages and risks in ROI terms. It also elaborates the type of internal assessment that needs to be done in order to develop an accurate estimate of the future ROI of Cloud.

Download your FREE whitepaper now.

I travel regularly to meet our customers. Normally, we work with the VP Engineering and the CTO of product Companies.  I meet them regularly and most of the time our meetings are technical discussions or discussions about specific projects we may be working on.
As the market was slow, most of our customers were not in a position to discuss specific projects.   Most projects were on hold, and our customers were under pressure from their CEOs and Boards to reduce costs.  This meant that they were pushing us for rate discounts.

As our customers were pushing us for rate discounts, we used the opportunity to get our contact points to get us meetings with their CEO in exchange.  Systematically, since January 2009, Hari and I have met more than a 150 CEOs and heads of business.  During these meetings were able to observe how CEOs think.  This was the best thing that happened to me.  I quickly realized that the CEOs have a very different approach to their business as compared to the VP Engineering and the CTO.

Our customers are of all sizes from Billion Dollar companies to start-ups.  The CEO and heads of businesses we met corresponded well to our customer mix.  By and large, CEO behavior is independent of the size of the Company we met.

Let me share with you the highlights of what we observed from our meetings.  There are many corollaries from these basic observations which I will subsequently share with you.

1. CEOs like to focus on a few important items. CEOs are very concerned about their own bandwidth and want to focus on a few important items and leave the rest to someone else to handle.  For items that are top-priority, the CEO is deeply involved and wants to track the initiative in detail and at a fine level of granularity.  For all other items, the CEO would much rather have someone else take complete responsibility of the task and wants to know only about exceptions.

We observed that management bandwidth of the senior management in the organization is a very big concern for the CEOs.  They are keen to conserve management bandwidth and want to ensure that adequate management bandwidth is being devoted to important tasks and is not being spent on the not so important activities.

2. CEOs want to focus on growth of the Company. Universally, we observed that growth is the most important item for all CEO.  They are far more focused on the top-line of the Company and not as focused on costs cutting and efficiency improvements.  We realized that outsourcing and offshore development when positioned as a cost efficiency exercise is not exciting for the CEO.  Those are items for the CFO or the VP Engineering.  We observed that we could get the CEOs attention when we had proposals that could provide boost revenues and growth for our customers rather than provide just cost efficiency benefits.  We also observed that most CEOs are market focused rather than being focused on internal efficiency.  CEOs want to spend more time in the market to understand market trends as that would help them develop sharper insights for future planning.

I quickly realized that to get the CEO’s attention, it is important to offer the CEO some suggestions on growth of his Company rather than just cost benefits.

3. CEOs are interested in solving the ‘entire’ problem for their customer. We observed that when CEOs sell, they are selling a relationship rather than a transaction.  They want to interact with their contemporaries – CEOs and other C-level executives of the customer and are keen to understand the challenges faced by the customer.  They want to provide a complete solution to their customers.  In many cases, and especially when they do not have a complete solution for their customer, they are open to working with other partners to solve their customer’s problem.  They realize that if their customer views them as a true partner, a partner who can “solve” their problem, business will eventually happen.

In contrast, most sales executives are focused on completing a transaction.  They are completely focused on “the sale.”  In the process they are very keen to sell their own products sometimes at the expense of being concerned about solving the customer’s problem.  Sales incentives play a role on how sales executives approach the sale.

It was very clear from our meetings that to get sustained interest from the CEO, we must focus on finding ways to solve their problems. Instead of focusing on pre-prepared service offerings, it helps to be creative in thinking of ways to address the customer’s problem.  In several cases we realized that we did not have service offerings that solve customer’s problem.  In such situations, stepping back and referring someone else who may be better suited to help the customer solve their problem was much appreciated by the CEO.  Even though, we may miss out on the transaction, I am sure it will help us get business from them in the long-term.

I have been reflecting on these observations and have realized a few corollaries on how to engage with CEOs.

I have also been reflecting on my behaviour … do I behave like a CEO?  Will write more on this subject.

After the market slowed down in October 2008, many of our customers decided to reduce their “burn-rates” and this decision impacted our business.  While it was tempting to go out and look for new markets and customers at this time, we decided that it was prudent for us to spend the time with our existing customers even if though they were on a budget freeze.  Our premise was that if we stayed with our customers during difficult times, they will come through when the times improve.  I had adopted this strategy during the down-times of 2001 and we saw significant growth in our business post 2003 when the market improved.  Many of our customers who were hurting in 2001, grew their business with us when the market improved.  While some of our customers did not survive the down-turn and the Companies shut-down, the individuals who worked with us moved on to other Companies and were able to take us along.

With this strategy, starting January 2009, Hari Haran our President and Head of Sales and I have been on the road and we have met more than 200 customers.  Most of these meetings were with CEOs and very senior executives.  These meetings were setup as relationship meetings and with the difficult market conditions, we were not exploring immediate opportunities for new business and hence these meetings were very open-ended.  We discussed with CEOs about their business and sought their guidance on how Persistent can help them when the market improves.  Additionally, we asked our customers about their technology road-map and trends that they thought were important.
After having been on the road over the last eight months, I must say that these meetings were the best thing that I have done. The meetings were a tremendous learning opportunity.  We were able to observe how CEOs think and get their perspective on how we at Persistent could make a difference.

Over the next few blog entries I will share some of what we learned from these meetings.

Seasons’ Greetings to all of you.  It has been some time since I updated my blog and I thought of taking advantage of Diwali season to revive the blog.