Event

CA hosts SMB Summit

Integration of business with IT is essential for SMBs in India. This was the topic of discussion at CA's event for SMBs, reports Kushal Shah.

From starting as a small textile company to becoming India’s largest private sector company, Reliance Industries has seen all phases of business. Most organisations have gone through the phase of being an SMB (Small and Medium Business). This segment plays a significant role in growth of the Indian economy. No business can go ahead without IT which is a critical building block for all businesses including the SMBs. Keeping this in mind, CA India organised a seminar on IT for SMBs. This seminar was attended by senior management from CA India including Ninad Karpe, Managing Director, CA India; Murad Wagh, Senior Consultant, CA India. Along with these members of CA, Prashant Rao, Executive Editor, Express Computer and Network Magazine, Indian Express Newspapers; S.R. Balasubramanian, Advisor-IT infrastructure who is currently working with Barclays Bank and V Subramaniam, CIO, Otis India were part of the discussion panel. This event was specially organised for SMB and was attended by IT heads from this segment.

Need of the Hour

“Not only large, but small and medium businesses will also grow because of their hunger and passion for success” said Karpe in his introductory note. He feels that IT has become an integral part of business rather than just an add-on and it is vital to use IT appropriately for the growth of SMBs.

Ensuring infrastructure availability, managing risks such as viruses and hacking, speed of operations, regulatory compliance, span of control, cost control and efficient use of technology investments are some critical factors in managing and securing SMBs from an IT perspective. According to a survey conducted by McKinsey & Company, SMBs spend about 60 percent of their budget on infrastructure, of which 60 percent is operating expenditure. When this kind of money is spent, business should be managed properly. Some issues faced by management in SMBs are human dependency, which is when a person leaves the company the work done by him comes to a standstill for some time, which needs to be tackled. One major problem is lack of standardisation when it comes to working methods.

Murad Wagh suggested remedies to avoid such problems. He said, “Choose a solution which is practical, scalable and flexible which should also be able to align IT and business.” While choosing a solution one should make sure that it provides single console management such that, in the entire IT network if a problems occurs, it should be pinpointed for faster resolution.

Management Issues

This seminar gave an overview of the major areas of management to look after and solutions for some of the issues faced. The most important areas of IT management are storage, security, desktop and network. Discussing storage management, Wagh listed a few recovery management problems such as business continuity planning, need for higher application availability, data protection and media management. To solve all such problems, he gave the details of CA products such as Brightstar Arcserve Backup (BAB) and XOsoft.

Irrespective of the scale of the business that you are running, security is of utmost importance in most organisations. Service continuity and risk mitigation are crucial for running business process. Counting the numbers, in 2004, 23 billion spam messages were reported and that is expected to reach about 42 billion in 2008. If those numbers are not enough then for record, about 75 to 90 percent of the messages received by an organisation are spam. To solve these security problems, Wagh discussed two solutions CA integrated threat management which is a Web based anti virus and anti spyware, and eTrust secure content manager for protection against, viruses, phishing etc.

When we talk about desktop management; inventory management, standardisation of desktops, support for remote desktops, deployment of software and function or project based software deployment are key issues10. CA provides software such as Unicenter asset management, Unicenter software delivery, Unicenter remote control for desktop management.

Last but not the least; Network management is a complex but a necessary facet of any organisation. Network complexity with new technology, high dependency on the network for distributed business applications, information overload and reduction of MTTR are important for the continuity of a business. Spectrum is a software from CA which is capable of solving most network related issues such as fault management, reporting on crucial metrics and network asset management. Apart from these issues, the concept of a service desk was also discussed; this is an interface between IT and business.

Small businesses cannot have a huge budget; CA has a solution for them. CA is provides a Network Management Value Pack especially for SMBs. This can be set up in seven days and is best practices based implementation. This solution costs anywhere between Rs. 5.5 to 6 lakhs.

Experts Speak

Insight into industry problems faced by SMBs was followed by a panel discussion. Moderating the panel discussion, Rao started off by saying, “IT hasn’t been used much by SMBs”. He hoped that if managed properly, SMBs can become the largest contributors of India’s journey to become a superpower. A huge SMB sector with over 7.5 million organisations in India is expected to spend about $7 billion out of which 18 percent will be invested in revamping infrastructure. After giving such financial details Balasubramanian said, “We have to start now putting away our laid back attitude and work towards growth before some other country overtakes us.”

“Whether it is a big or small organisation, IT is a crucial aspect of any business,” says Subramaniam. He feels that IT is a habit and should be implemented as an IT solution and not as a business driven solution. Balasubramanian explained the importance of information and according to him information should be preserved or archived in such a way that when needed it should be available at the click of a button. Subramaniam stressed on the importance of e-mail for any organisation. E-mail should be treated as a service. A company needs a strong e-mail policy to restrict the flow of unwanted messages. People need to know how to segregate e-mail. Only those messages which can be used later should be archived.

Balasubramanian gave an example of phishing and suggested some ways to avoid falling in phishing traps, the major one being not disclosing your password to anyone. According to him the distance between IT and business is narrowing.

Framing policies

Companies need to know the objective of security within their organisation, after which you can deploy various security policies. Giving an example of security for data theft, an organisation can have USB, floppy drives and CD writers disabled. Forming a new security policy and making a list of all hardware required for the same are one thing and getting them approved from CEO or CFO is another. Balasubramanian gave a wonderful example of dealing with these people in a well defined financial way. He gave an example of how a company can face a massive loss if the working goes down for 5 hours due to a technical error.

This seminar was very useful for IT heads from SMBs. A small business can’t grow without the well defined integration of IT within its business. This seminar provided all the possible solutions for the same.

V Subramaniam and SR Balasubramanian

A section of audience

Murad Wagh, Senior Consultant, CA India