In 2009, CSC launched C3 (Connect, Communicate and Collaborate), a Jive-powered community for its 97,000+ CSC employees around the world. Its internal social media has made CSC one of the first professional services firms to become a true social business. Ashwani Tikoo, CIO, CSC India, in an email interview, talks about technological challenges faced by major enterprises.
What are the major technological challenges in the industry?
At any point adding value to business and cost optimization are the top concerns that CIOs face. Without security & privacy in place the whole business could be thwarted. With new technologies like mobility & cloud services, security & sustainability has become an imperative. For any business to thrive, it is important that business is conducted efficiently to get more out of the stipulated budget. Alignment of IT and business to achieve business agility and increase IT reliability and efficiency are definitely next in line. Others can be Business process re-engineering, IT strategic planning and Revenue generating IT innovations
What are your devices and social media access policies?
A major demographics of workforce employed by any IT company falls under the age bracket of 21-26 years. This is same as the age bracket of most people who are actively engaged on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin etc. According to Socialbakers Social media report, about 47 percent of all Facebook users in India fall under the age group of 18-24 years followed by 29 percent from the age group of 25-34. In such a scenario, corporates aim at replicating the social environment external to its workforce internally in order to leverage the environment to enhance the productivity of employees.
In 2009, CSC launched C3 (Connect, Communicate and Collaborate), a Jive-powered community for our 97,000+ CSC employees around the world, our internal social media, which has made us one of the first professional services firms to become a true social business. C3 stands for Connect, Communicate and Collaborate. C3 is an open forum with communities that have been developed by the employees, for the employees and moderated by the employees. For an enterprise as large as CSC with close to 97,000 employees, an internal social media platform like C3 provides two-fold benefits. C3 acts as a social platform for connecting our people who are otherwise separated by Geographies and time zones, thus promoting internal collaboration for generation of new, innovating ideas which have potential of becoming great offerings for our customers someday. It also becomes imperative for an organization to constantly harness the knowledge which is created every single day by our employees. C3 thus acts as a knowledge repository, which houses the experience, knowledge and know-how of our people for sharing with the larger CSC community. Benefits also include greater collaboration, reducing business pitch processing time and lessening duplication of effort, which is often a key issue in enterprise-wide businesses. The system is self-managing and viral in that there are no deadlines and participation is voluntary.
At CSC we allow employees to bring in their own devices, but it is mainly restricted to smartphones and tablets as of now – we do not allow employees to bring their own laptops into the workplace environment at this point in time. However this is a journey in progress. Enterprises need to prioritize their requirements and accordingly provide access to enterprise applications. They will increasingly look at applications which are more beneficial for employees but require less effort in deployment.
What are the new technologies that you are planning to implement?
We are looking at expanding the mobile footprint of our applications. We are looking at expanding use of cloud in our environment. We would be looking at enhancing the collaboration tools within our environment. We would also enhance the use of video in our environment.
You are speaking about cloud. What is your security strategy?
Some of the trends like Social networking have become an integral part of our lives and many a times it can cause security concerns to the CIOs. Access to remote machines, shared network and enhanced mobility usage are leading to security breaches thus necessitating tighter security controls. CSC being a global IT services provider has a very sharp focus & stringent standards for the security. We have a global security frame work which is extended in India also. The security frame work defines the parameters within which we need to operate and at the same time ensuring business interest are adequately met.
What is your ICT budget? What is the growth in ICT budget? What are the new components?
We would not be able to share these details.
What is your opinion about cloud and importance of cloud?
Cloud is the latest industry buzz word and is the next big wave after the Mobile era. India with its huge population base, part of which comprises people who are entrepreneurs / going to be entrepreneurs, is looking at the cloud as a viable option for accessing enterprise class technology at affordable costs. India is a cost sensitive market and technology can address this challenge extensively by providing access to IT resources in an affordable way.
At CSC, we understand that cloud is the next wave of IT growth. Given CSC’s role in facilitating the uptake of cutting edge technology for business productivity, we have been successfully offering cloud services to our clients. At CSC we understand that Cloud enables business workloads from top down and transforms business processes into agile, innovative and cost-efficient workloads. We bring with us the experience of being preferred by the world’s most security conscious enterprises and the ability to adapt to dynamic regulatory climate. CSC’s workload driven approach to cloud maximizes the business value of all components in an enterprise infrastructure – not just cloud service elements.
There has been a dramatic demand for cloud solutions from the market. At each of the layers (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS), optimization can be achieved for varying sizes of organizations. Infrastructure, Software and Services can be optimized in the cloud environment. There are possibilities to expand from BPaaS (Business Process as a service) to XaaS (Anything as a service). Though currently the services are revolving around planned / subscription model, one can clearly see that, this can evolve to a true utility model for computing. Cloud solutions provide a natural ecosystem for a true ‘follow the sun’ work model; an industrialized solution that can truly work as single virtual global resource.
What are the ICT risks that bother you the most and how do you handle it?
Major trends sweeping through the enterprise are: Rapid rise of consumerized endpoint, onset of virtualization and cloud computing. Each of these critical technologies is transforming business and forcing a fundamental shift in how security is developed and deployed. CSC provides seamless integration of security services into our other IT infrastructure services. The breadth and depth of our security solutions has continued to grow in response to the needs of the business. Our offerings include End-To-End Security Administration Services, Computer Security Operations and Incident Response Services and Integrated Antivirus Management.
