Infotech Lead India: Cipla, a leading pharmaceutical company in India, is currently investing in data center and application consolidation. The global pharmaceutical major is exploring tablet computing to enhance productivity.
Arun Gupta, chief information officer at Cipla, talks about cloud, data center, BYOD policies and tablet adoption to increase productivity. Cipla’s total income increased to Rs 7,125.80 crore in fiscal 2011-12 from Rs 6,422.29 crore in fiscal 2010-11.
What are the major technology adoption challenges in the pharmaceutical industry?
Pharmaceutical industry is highly regulated and thus technology plays an integral role in managing operations. Thus solutions require validation before they can be deployed.
Challenges are similar to any other industry with multiple priorities demanding attention; we have to work together with the business teams to define the roadmap.
There is a tablet boom among Indian enterprises. What are your plans to use tablets? Will the pharma industry see Cipla medical representatives using tablets and sending live sales reports?
Cipla is exploring tablet computing.
Who are your Wi-Fi providers and how do you rate their services?
We do not use any commercial WIFI services
What are your organizations’ devices and social media access policies? How it is impacting growth of the company? Do you prefer BYOD policies?
We allow employee mobile devices to connect to our collaboration and messaging platform. Other applications are not enabled as yet. Social media access is currently partially allowed depending on stated need.
What are the new technologies that you are planning to implement?
We are currently investing in data center and application consolidation.
What is Cipla’s security strategy?
I am unable to disclose this.
What is your ICT budget? What is the growth in ICT budget? What are the new components?
Our ICT budget is pegged at about 1 percent of revenue. I am unable to discuss the growth and new components as of now.
How much is your spend on cloud?
Exploration of cloud has just begun.
What are your main expectations from the IT and Communications industry?
Engage, don’t sell. Please invest some resources on understanding my business and potential interventions rather than offer a menu card.
Who are your main vendors and what are their contributions?
Our main vendors are IBM, HP, Lenovo and Microsoft. They collectively enable our business today.
As a CIO, what are your main contributions to your company?
Having joined 3 months back, I would not want to talk about contributions in such a short time. This would be a good discussion sometime in 2013.
Baburajan K
editor@infotechlead.com
