Hindustan Times to implement SunONE

According to CHANDNA, the initiative marks the first such implementation of SunONE in India

When the 77 year-old Hindustan Times media group decided to integrate all its offices, the only solution it saw up to the task was SunONE, the Web services suite from Sun India. The company is now in the process of implementing the solution and seems to making fair progress in this regard. Pankaj Mishra reports

When the 77 year-old Hindustan Times media group decided to move up the value chain by seamlessly integrating all its offices across India, D Chandna, chief information officer of the group knew, that a daunting task lay ahead. Chandna drafted a broad IT strategy for the group that would not only integrate all 12 locations but also let users access the system ‘anytime, anywhere and from any device’ using Web services. Hindustan Times has offices in all state capitals apart from other important cities. For the last eighteen months, the group has been expanding its reach into second tier cities. “We wanted to benchmark the best media practices in the global scenario. There was an immediate need to scale up the infrastructure and make robust,” admits Chandna. The group has now decided to implement SAP, PPI and a workflow solution from Vignette in the first phase to be completed by the end of 2002.

After phase one, Hindustan Times plans to put into place all the components of Web services to be provided by Sun Microsystems India, making it the first of its kind implementation in the region of Sun’s Web services architecture.

The beginning

Hindustan Times’ head office in New Delhi will serve as the hub of all data storage and a dozen locations across India including important state capitals. These will be inter-linked through a Wide Area Network (WAN). Siemens India will implement SAP R/3 as well as PPI a media application.

“Phase one of implementation will be over in five months. Subsequently, SunONE will go live. The sales cycle went on for almost eight months. Once SunONE is in place, any HT employee can get into the system and update himself about his or her respective function,” says K S Ramanujam, sales manager-software development industry, Sun India.

This phase also involves implementation of a workflow solution from Vignette which will be done by Bangalore-based Mindtree Consulting. Once the workflow solution from Vignette goes live by this year-end, all HT journalists across India can file reports directly from their respective locations.

ERP and PPI

“For SunONE to happen, it was essential to have a sound back-end infrastructure. We therefore decided to start with SAP R/3 and PPI,” says Chandna. SAP R/3 will integrate the commercial processes involved in the overall logistics. Functions of finance, inventory and production from across the country will be integrated and can be accessed through a single platform.

PPI will take care of advertisement bookings, electronic page assembly, composing and other functions of production. When SunONE goes live, online booking of advertisements and content monitoring would become possible. HT is also in the process of increasing the number of channels on its website.